Mid-game questions

Hey guys,

I'm currently playing my first round of Xenonauts and enjoying it very much so far I intentionally didn't read tutorials before starting to avoid spoilers. However, after noticing a decrease in funding and reading up on the forum, I think I made some strategic mistakes and I'm wondering whether continuing my current game makes sense. My current situation is:

• Playing on normal, currently December 1st.
  
• Two bases, first one in central America (not the best starting position from what I've read) with fully upgraded radar covering most of the continent and the second one in northern Africa with one radar upgrade (built at the beginning of the second month).
  
• No trouble shooting down the UFOs that I see. I have (in total) 4 foxtrots, 3 condors and 1 corsair and researched the Alenium weapons.
  
• No trouble doing ground combat. I never bombarded downed UFOs, always sent troops. Troops are pretty well equipped (I think), with some upgraded armor and laser weapons here and there. Managed to lose only one guy so far (pretty early in the game).
  
• 45 scientists, so research is going well.
  

However, my income is pretty much just enough to pay my upkeep. I currently have ~$250,000 left in the bank, which is not enough to establish a third base. I didn't lose any nation yet, but I only have poor relations to the eastern half of the geoscape, so it won't be long before that happens. How should I proceed? I feel like I should build a third base right now or it'll be too late, or isn't it? How to acquire the money to expand?

Thanks!

You can do just fine with 30 scientists. I'd invested more into engineers.

No other way to get money except for doing crash sites/alien bases/terror missions. Each of these gives me $150~180k (carriers; late mid game). Do not rush for 3 radar arrays right away. Two is a must, third one comes if you have some money to spend. As you may noticed you can see UFO beyond your actual radar range. Therefore if you place your bases wisely you'll be fine even with two radars.

You can cut down radars to two per base, also cut back the scientists to around 20-25 to reduce up-keep costs. Also, if you get a terror mission in one of those regions (possible considering the lack of coverage), and complete it you'll get a huge relations boost. Should probably start saving all your funds for a second base and plan to move a foxtrot and corsair over. It's normal so you should still have time to save enough and keep Indo-China and Soviet Union.

Also worth keeping it mind the foxtrots have decent range and their own built-in radar. If you see events popping up, send them out and see if you can find something to shoot down. On the harder difficulties, I find doing this regularly is practically required if you want to keep your income high until your bases go online, but it may help you here as well. Make sure to keep up your air tech levels, since they increase effectiveness drastically while costing you nothing in cash but the scientists.

It's not unusual for a region to have poor relations before you can put the third base up. If you're unlucky, you'll lose the region, but losing a single region or even two is not the end of the world. Or the aliens might completely ignore that region for a month. It's pretty random.

You should have a third base up by December. Two bases is the absolute minimum at that point. Geoscape coverage is the most important thing in xenonauts, followed by the ability to shoot down UFOs.

Ground combat is the least important aspect of the game. You can theoretically beat the game by doing less then 10 ground missions. The final mission will be tough though because your men won't have experience.

You should have a third base up by December. Two bases is the absolute minimum at that point. Geoscape coverage is the most important thing in xenonauts, followed by the ability to shoot down UFOs.

Ground combat is the least important aspect of the game. You can theoretically beat the game by doing less then 10 ground missions. The final mission will be tough though because your men won't have experience.

this is exactly why I keep ranting and ranting and ranting about how screwed the economy is in Xeno... this my friend, is a hard truth, and is THE big big mistake of Xeno failing to be xcom. It just CANT be played like xcom. It made me so sad, that I mod the sh!t out of it.

*end rant*

To schnitzl: theres no way but to mod the game to economically expand. You played exactly like me, and bad news are, vanilla Xeno doesnt play like Xcom (yeah, you read that right). Your sad two options are, start all over, make bases and a minimal 6+tank team to tech progress, and once you have everything in order, (3 bases minimum, good overall relations with countries) develop tech and ground teams for final mission (although, good luck if a terror mission appears, they will kick your ass sadistically for being ground unprepared, and you HAVE to do those or you will lose almost $200.000 in founds from that country).

OR

do like me, and at least tweak some game values to make it more balanced so all that time that you put in ground missions (like me!!) are really worth it. If you are interested, pm me because I have already been pointed for "cheating promotion" for posting that (Tactical im looking at you).

hope that helps!

You assume that it is meant to be played like x-com which is not true.

It is a similar game and inspired by x-com but it is not, and was never designed to be, identical.

Yes if you try to play Xenonauts in exactly the same way as you played the original x-com game then it will respond differently.

It is your assumption that you should play both games the same way that is flawed.

Adapt to the differences between the games and you will have a much more enjoyable time than ranting about how it doesn't work the way you expect

Half the fun for me is developing new ways to try and win, and trying to dig myself out of the situations they get me into.

If I could just copy/paste the same tactics I used twenty years ago in x-com then I would feel like I was wasting my time.

You pretty much need three radars in it if you build a base in the middle east/egypt, it's worth too much coverage area to not do so. Your aircraft is a little light, but probably manageable (although your Condors are about to be useless for anything other than air superiority flights).

You may have slightly overbuilt scientists, but that shouldn't really be a big issue. The first couple months you probably want to focus on maximizing your radar coverage.

@axiar - While similar, this game is different than XCOM. If you play exactly like XCOM, you will struggle and possibly fail. It's a different game that requires a different strategy. There are many reasonable criticisms you can point at this game, but complaining it's not identical to XCOM is one of the more silly ones.

I don't even know what "plays like XCOM" means. I've known a bunch of people who played XCOM and they all had a different style than me. For one thing you practically had to use exploits to get XCOM's economy runniong effectively. Like using engineers to build/sell stuff. Once you had the right tech level you didn't need to worry about monthly income from the nations.

And ground combat the least important part of the game? I'm not a hardcore player or anything, but seems to me ground combat is THE most important part of the economy in Xenonauts. You're never going to make it to end game just doing 10 ground missions. Not only will you not have experienced troops, but you'll never have the $$$ and special materials you need to research and build the equipment you need.

Air strikes are all well and good when you're sitting on a pile of dough, or simply don't have the troops avialable to do them...but ground combat pays out in multiples of what you earn from air strikes. And the more careful you are in ground combat (not blowing everything up) the more $$$ and special materials you gain. So I can hardly say that ground combats are the least important thing.

Air combat and global coverage gain you good relations with the funding nations, but ground combat is the foundation of your funding, experience and rare resource gathering.

Air strikes are all well and good when you're sitting on a pile of dough, or simply don't have the troops avialable to do them...but ground combat pays out in multiples of what you earn from air strikes.

I always end up rolling my eyes when the tip pops up that says (Paraphrasing) Airstriking crash sites will award you almost as much cash (/paraphrasing) When I've always got double if not tripple the airstrike reward from marching my troops into a crash site and blasting xeno-scum. Was that tip ever accurate?

I always end up rolling my eyes when the tip pops up that says (Paraphrasing) Airstriking crash sites will award you almost as much cash (/paraphrasing) When I've always got double if not tripple the airstrike reward from marching my troops into a crash site and blasting xeno-scum. Was that tip ever accurate?

Airstriking did at one point give around 2/3 of the cash of doing the GC, but was reduced due to people complaining that it made the GC avoidable

Well that's fair enough, though I'd personally imagine that avoiding Ground Combat would make the game dull. It's pretty much the core of the game (from my standpoint).

I suppose editing the tip is pretty low on Chris' priority list, so I'll let it slide.