PALU

Lower troop count that on a corresponding terror mission. I don't have any useful input regarding the exact numbers, though.

With no way to implement withdrawal, I'd retain a lower troop count. Sure, it will usually be a cakewalk if you shoot up the UFO badly, but you can consider that a reward for good preparations (and you don't get any UFO parts either). It can be noted that base assaults are the most dangerous when the aliens is one tech step ahead of you, at which time your base defenses may just scratch the paint of the UFO, and aircraft you send against it may be completely inadequate, and so fail to do much damage either. Your under equipped troops will then face more or less a full complement of invaders, with no chance to retreat. The game doesn't allow for a "desperate fight for survival" adrenaline surge either, as nothing like that is implemented.

There are some other significant differences between base attacks and terror missions: You have to protect the command center, while being attacked from multiple directions, and the enemies are fairly concentrated, with no civilians to distract them (although there is base destruction). If the aliens were programmed to do so, they could easily just overrun your positions. Sure, you'd kill some, but the remainder will kill multiple defender in every turn in that scenario, with the defender fire power dropping a lot faster than the alien one. Tactics to delay enemies are sort of counter productive, as e.g. gas will just allow them to smash your facilities while being protected against your forces. Base assaults take place in a much smaller area than terror attacks, and line of sight is mostly blocked by walls and doors. While this means aliens can't subject you to a massive number of attacks from out of sight range, you can't fight them at medium distance either, much of the time, so it's a lot of turning corners to find yourself rubbing noses with an alien. It can also be noted that the breaches are fairly crammed with hostiles as it is, so they'd struggle with sending more troops in without either further breaches or the ability to send in reinforcements through existing ones (and those reinforcements would be in trouble if base defense batteries could attack targets at the surface level...). And, as mentioned, the total loss on a failure is devastating.

Some further massage: "Commander, after that alien assault on our base we have frantically tried to analyse the event as well as collect any information we can on similar events happening to our sponsors. To start with the latter part, I've squeezed intel out of an old friend in the armed forces about a ground assault on a deep nuclear launch facility. A covert group of ETs was able to access the base despite most of it being half a mile underground, and beat the hell out of base security. It was only by deliberately collapsing the residential wing that the base commander saved anything. Unfortunately, secrecy has prevented us from getting to prepare for this threat, as it was only by mentioning our own experience we were able to take part of theirs. Although this information comes too late to serve as a warning to us, it strengthens our analysis of how the aliens behave: It's clear the aliens divided their efforts between destroying the base assets and trying to take over the base completely. The loss of a base will obviously mean the loss of all assets in it, and will leave the area it protected undefended until a new base can be built. Even if we drive them off, the ETs can cause lasting damage by wrecking hangars, destroying labs and demolishing workshops, and it's obviously in our interest to prevent that, so try to take the fight to them, Commander, and go and meet them in force! Without a way of intercepting and decoding alien communications, it will be hard to tell if a UFO is going to mount an attack on our base (and, if so, which base) or if they’re intending to attack a city. Look for escorted Massive class signals. They aren’t going to make it obvious that they’re going for us, but sooner or later they will have to head directly to our base. The bases most likely to be attacked will be the ones they have the most operational data on – i.e. typically the oldest ones, but don't rely on "most likely" overly much. It would probably be a good idea to station a garrison or erect defenses at the bases most at risk, and to ferry troops to bases suspected to be targeted. Also note that defensive base batteries won't do us any good if we can't see the enemy, so a base out of radar coverage (its own or that of another base) is a sitting duck. As for the base assault craft, we have made some interesting observations. After action analysis of surveillance of the craft indicates it had mounted populated drop pods even before we were able to observe them. This implies they prepared for the assault well in advance and intended to launch it as fast as (in)humanly possible to deny us the chance to deploy our troops closer to the breach points and to set up booby traps in our base. While interesting in itself that they consider our bases to be something of a threat, it also provides us with a tactical advantage: Damage sustained by UFOs rarely if ever kills any crew members: all casualties usually occur due to the impact of a crash. In this case, however, damage to the UFO is likely to also cause damage to the troops in the drop pods. Our best estimates are that we may be able to kill up to 50% of the crew if we damage the craft to 100% (at which point it will crash), with the casualty rate essentially increasing linearly with the damage inflicted (20% damage to the craft = approximately 10% of the crew killed). We also estimate that damage inflicted by base batteries has the same effect as damage cause by our airborne forces when it comes to killing ETs. Interestingly enough, the aliens don't seem to be nearly as interested in a rapid deployment on terror missions, where they mount, enter, and deploy the drop pods only at the last minute, which indicates they're not nearly as worried about local forces that they are about X-Divison ones, which we can take some meagre pride in. While the drop pod deployment strategy difference ought to allow us to determine if a mission is a terror or a base assault one, our current technology only allows us to determine that by examining surveillance images in detail back at the lab, which takes hours, at which time the attack has already taken place. I hope we'll be able to develop a technique to transfer photos over a radio connection and perform automatic analysis of them, or have the rather unlikely luck of acquiring the means to intercept and decode the aliens' communications. And, finally, let's go over our emergency protocol for in the event of a base loss: Our pilots have instructions to seek out free hangar space on other bases, and, if that's not possible, perform emergency landings wherever they can, preferably at some kind of airport. However, I'd expect the local authorities to be too greedy to let us have working aircraft back, although they'll likely let the pilots return. We can expect to lose all soldiers at the base, as they'll be tasked with protecting the civilian evacuation, which means they have to be at defensive positions as the evacuation craft takes off. Engineers and scientists will be evacuated in a flight to the base that can make the most of them, i.e. have available berths and free lab/workshop space, while the remainder will seek shelter among the local population, but we can't forward them to other bases even if there is free space in them. Our guess is that the lost base will be converted into an alien base rather quickly, but we hope that if we can retake it reasonably quickly we may be able to recover it to a larger or lesser extent, and that hope extends to stored equipment, as they have little use for our equipment. The only way to know for certain is to actually lose a base and then try to retake it, and that's a proof I'd rather not get."

New attempt: "Commander, after that alien assault on our base we have frantically tried to analyse the event as well as collect any information we can on similar events happening to our sponsors. To start with the latter part, I've squeezed intel out of an old friend in the armed forces about a ground assault on a deep nuclear launch facility. A covert group of ETs was able to access the base despite most of it being half a mile underground, and beat the hell out of base security. It was only by deliberately collapsing the residential wing that the base commander saved anything. Unfortunately, secrecy has prevented us from getting to prepare for this threat, as it was only by mentioning our own experience we were able to take part of theirs. Back to our analysis of the event itself: It's clear the aliens divided their efforts between destroying the base assets and trying to take over the base completely. The loss of a base will obviously mean the loss of all assets in it, and will leave the area it protected undefended until a new base can be built. Even if we drive them off, the ETs can cause lasting damage by wrecking hangars, destroying labs and demolishing workshops, and it's obviously in our interest to prevent that, so try to take the fight to them, Commander, and go and meet them in force! Without a way of intercepting and decoding alien communications, it’ll be hard to tell if a UFO is going to mount an attack on our base (and, if so, which base) or if they’re intending to attack a city. Look for escorted Massive class signals. They aren’t going to make it obvious that they’re going for us, but sooner or later they will have to head directly to our base. The bases most likely to be attacked will be the ones they have the most operational data on – i.e. typically the oldest ones, but don't rely on "most likely" overly much. It would probably be a good idea to station a garrison or erect defenses at the bases most at risk, and to ferry troops to bases suspected to be targeted. Also note that defensive base batteries won't do us any good if we can't see the enemy, so a base out of radar coverage (its own or that of another base) is a sitting duck. As for the base assault craft, we have made some interesting observations. After action analysis of surveillance of the craft indicates it had mounted populated drop pods even before we were able to observe them. This implies they prepared for the assault well in advance and intended to launch it as fast as (in)humanly possible to deny us the chance to deploy our troops closer to the breach points and to set up booby traps in our base. While interesting in itself that they consider our bases to be something of a threat, it also provides us with a tactical advantage: Damage sustained by UFOs rarely if ever kills any crew members: all casualties usually occur due to the impact of a crash. In this case, however, damage to the UFO is likely to also cause damage to the troops in the drop pods. Our best estimates are that we may be able to kill up to 50% of the crew if we damage the craft to 100% (at which point it will crash), with the casualty rate essentially increasing linearly with the damage inflicted (20% damage to the craft = approximately 10% of the crew killed). We also estimate that damage inflicted by base batteries has the same effect as damage cause by our airborne forces when it comes to killing ETs. Interestingly enough, the aliens don't seem to be nearly as interested in a rapid deployment on terror missions, where they mount, enter, and deploy the drop pods only at the last minute, which indicates they're not nearly as worried about local forces that they are about X-Divison ones, which we can take some meagre pride in. While the drop pod deployment strategy difference ought to allow us to determine if a mission is a terror or a base assault one, our current technology only allows us to determine that by examining surveillance images in detail back at the lab, which takes hours, at which time the attack has already taken place. I hope we'll be able to develop a technique to transfer photos over a radio connection and perform automatic analysis of them, or have the rather unlikely luck of acquiring the means to intercept and decode the aliens' communications. And, finally, let's discuss what happens if we DO lose a base: Our pilots have instructions to seek out free hangar space on other bases, and, if that's not possible, perform emergency landings wherever they can, preferably at some kind of airport. However, I'd expect the local authorities to be too greedy to let us have working aircraft back, although they'll likely let the pilots return. Engineers and scientists will be evacuated in a flight to the base that can make the most of them, i.e. have available berths and free lab/workshop space, while the remainder will have to be fired (but can be rehired, of course). Our guess is that the lost base will be converted into an alien base rather quickly, but we hope that if we can retake it reasonably quickly we may be able to recover it to a larger or lesser extent. The only way to know for certain is to actually lose a base and then try to retake it, and that's a proof I'd rather not get."

Hadn't heard of either a base takeover or a base recovery before either. Those things would have to be mentioned as speculations.

Never heard of the emergency protocol before, so no, it's not in any other entry. This is probably the best ones, even though it gets a bit long. Which base is chosen for engineer/scientist transfer? The closest one, the one with the most room, or something else? Do scientists and engineers always go to the same base as the other group? I was considering something about decoding enemy intentions, but didn't get to it. I'll try to add something.

Here's a proposed version of the entry (and I realized the same thing Dagar did, that the entry contents didn't quite match the context): "Commander, after that alien assault on our base we have frantically tried to analyse the event as well as collect any information we can on similar events happening to our sponsors. To start with the latter part, I've squeezed intel out of an old friend in the armed forces about a ground assault on a deep nuclear launch facility. A covert group of ETs was able to access the base despite most of it being half a mile underground, and beat the hell out of base security. It was only by deliberately collapsing the residential wing that the base commander saved anything. Unfortunately, secrecy has prevented us from getting to prepare for this threat, as it was only by mentioning our own experience we were able to take part of theirs. Back to our analysis of the event itself: It's clear the aliens divided their efforts between destroying the base assets and trying to take over the base completely. The loss of a base will obviously mean the loss of all assets in it, and will leave the area it protected undefended until a new base can be built. Even if we drive them off, the ETs can cause lasting damage by wrecking hangars, destroying labs and demolishing workshops, and it's obviously in our interest to prevent that, so try to take the fight to them, Commander, and go and meet them in force! Without a way of intercepting and decoding alien communications, it’ll be hard to tell if a UFO is going to mount an attack on our base (and, if so, which base) or if they’re intending to attack a city. Look for escorted Massive class signals. They aren’t going to make it obvious that they’re going for us, but sooner or later they will have to head directly to our base. The bases most likely to be attacked will be the ones they have the most operational data on – i.e. typically the oldest ones, but don't rely on "most likely" overly much. It would probably be a good idea to station a garrison or erect defenses at the bases most at risk, and to ferry troops to bases suspected to be targeted. Also note that defensive base batteries won't do us any good if we can't see the enemy, so a base out of radar coverage (its own or that of another base) is a sitting duck. As for the base assault craft, we have made some interesting observations. After action analysis of surveillance of the craft indicates it had mounted populated drop pods even before we were able to observe them. This implies they prepared for the assault well in advance and intended to launch it as fast as (in)humanly possible to deny us the chance to deploy our troops closer to the breach points and to set up booby traps in our base. While interesting in itself that they consider our bases to be something of a threat, it also provides us with a tactical advantage: Damage sustained by UFOs rarely if ever kills any crew members: all casualties usually occur due to the impact of a crash. In this case, however, damage to the UFO is likely to also cause damage to the troops in the drop pods. Our best estimates are that we may be able to kill up to 50% of the crew if we damage the craft to 100% (at which point it will crash), with the casualty rate essentially increasing linearly with the damage inflicted (20% damage to the craft = approximately 10% of the crew killed). We also estimate that damage inflicted by base batteries has the same effect as damage cause by our airborne forces when it comes to killing ETs. Interestingly enough, the aliens don't seem to be nearly as interested in a rapid deployment on terror missions, where they mount, enter, and deploy the drop pods only at the last minute, which indicates they're not nearly as worried about local forces that they are about X-Divison ones, which we can take some meagre pride in. While the drop pod deployment strategy difference ought to allow us to determine if a mission is a terror or a base assault one, our current technology only allows us to determine that by examining surveillance images in detail back at the lab, which takes hours, at which time the attack has already taken place."

Yes, that's a considerably better choice of an entry (and the type of entry I tried to find first). I failed to find it because it's labeled as "Xenonaut Base Assault Mission", leading me to think it concerned our team attacking the enemy, so I didn't look at the text. Obviously it will have to be massaged slightly to change the source of the info to own observations rather than interrogation, but that shouldn't be too hard. Concerning "when crew is killed", that's actually intentional. "The crew" implies everyone, while just "crew" means "some of the crew". The word "crew" is used as an uncountable in the same manner as e.g. "Fish was killed by the poison spill...". If you think it's too awkward I can change it to e.g. "parts of the crew".

I've taken a look at the Xenopedia entries available, and I think the least bad place to provide base assault casualty info is in the two Early Assault Operator Interrogation entries (so, two instances of the same info), according to the logic that these enemies are responsible for that kind of operations. After all, the info is not critical, so it's not a big problem if it takes some time to get it. Something along these lines: "We did extract some information that's potentially useful out if the interrogation of this enemy operator: In order to assault the target base as quickly as (in)humanly possible to deny us the chance to deploy our troops closer to the breach points and to set up booby traps for them in our base, the assault troops are stationed in drop pods along the hull of the UFO well before reaching our base. This means that damage sustained by the ship is also likely to result in casualties among the crew, as opposed to the standard situation when crew is killed on a crash only, while well protected inside it until that happens. Our estimates indicate up to half of the crew may be eliminated if a base assault UFO is shot down, compared to about 10% killed in a regular crash. Similarly, engaging a landing base assault UFO without succeeding in bringing it down ought to result in a casualty proportion that increases more or less linearly with the damage up to about 50%, and we think we reap about the same benefit regardless of whether the damage is caused by engagement by our airborne forces or by base defense batteries. Interestingly enough, the aliens aren't nearly as worried about regular ground forces as of the X-Divison ones, so terror missions are performed in the normal, more leisurely fashion, which means only an outright crash is likely to kill any troops. I guess we can take some meagre pride in being considered a harder nut to crack."

I believe I've encountered Reapers hiding out inside craft occasionally (i.e. bigger craft, where you have to teleport between levels), although I can't say if they were terror ones. I've definitely encountered Roboreapers (a recent mission saw one teleport down, get shredded of of one layer with reaction fire (with the attendant cloud hitting 8 soldiers), and then get killed completely in the next turn (again, the second cloud hit, but all remained standing). Base attacks: - You only find out through experience that you can have 16 soldiers on base assault defense, as I don't think you're told anywhere except by the number of soldiers you get to equip for the encounter. - While you may be able to have 3 vehicles, I'd expect most not to have that, unless they're teleporting troops and equipment around. - Defense batteries often do very little damage, in particular in the very vulnerable phase transitions when the troops don't have new phase equipment yet, but the enemies are new. - Enemies attack from multiple directions, so most defenders will be elsewhere. - I've probably only done one or so actual base defense mission since the end of phase 2, as the enemies have been shot down. However, those who fail to shoot them down probably struggle with defending their bases too... - While it's true for all missions, number counts is a major factor in base defense missions. It's only because of enemy ineptitude (coming in dribs and drabs, staying to destroy equipment, etc.) you stand a chance at all (a coordinated attack from all breaches would be impossible to stop).

Androns aren't EXACTLY reviving, but it has a similar effect in the end. You may or may not have encountered force fields yet. They act like shields with the extremely important difference that there's no way around them (no vulnerable backside, area effect do not bypassing them, nor do melee attacks [I think, I'm not sure I've tried]), so you have to deal damage to them until they're destroyed to get at the unit underneath, and it takes quite a lot to do that as they're generally stronger than current level shields (and you'd have to spend quite some time if you're using antimatter weapons, since they're dealing out comparatively little damage, and the ability to bypass armor that isn't present anyway doesn't provide any benefit). Once the force field is down you have to start to wear down the Andron itself (which isn't exactly weak either). Here antimatter works well (although the buggers still have a lot of HPs). Also note that you can't damage the Andron itself until the shield is completely gone, so an explosive of any kind will at best blow away the (remainder of the) force field, but won't hurt the unit underneath even if the shield had only a single HP remaining (A minigun can wear through both a force field and the unit underneath because each bullet is a separate attack [with the occasional odd situation where a unit reaction fires while being pelted with minigun bullets and then dies, potentially resulting in both units dying, but that's a side track]). There's also a mechanism with multiple "skins", with each skin having different protective properties, and each skin has to be destroyed separately (again, overshooting explosive damage is lost, with the next "skin" being in pristine condition). Thirdly, there's a protective "spore" mechanism that causes select units to form into a "spore/pupa" on the cusp of destruction, to eventually emerge as a new unit. When all mechanisms are present in the same unit the maximum times you may have to destroy an incarnation of it is 5 (I believe it's possible to extend this cycle further, for extra pain, but 5 is the maximum number in the current version of the mod). If I understand it correctly, robosadists have to have a stake through their hearts to stop them from rising again. The maximum number of incarnations you have to take down in that case is 4 (assuming you "place the stake" in a timely manner). I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had to deal 10000 HP of effective damage to get rid of a top tier robosadist. Concerning the comment about using weapons with large mags to work around enemy unit counts, the last Energy line of weapons has an incredibly poor mag size (and I'm still not sure they're actually better than the second last one. Rather different, yes, but better?), with the mags being filled with lead, judging by their weight. Lore: I'll try to find somewhere to explain away why downed assaults suffer heavier casualties than other downed craft. As dead units tend to litter the interior of downed craft, it ought to be possible to count the ones not killed by your team the next time such a mission is performed (assuming you're sufficiently interested).

@Changeling_wilHow to deal with UFOs depend on the craft (which differ between phases, as they're a bit different in each phase). - Large craft: Use mines when you get them, before that you'll have to use missiles/torpedoes. - Medium craft: I take those out by sending a full wing of repurposed alien interceptor craft (the latest I can get hold of, of course) and set those on the alien's tail to blast them from behind. One way is to send two one way and one the other: the craft will turn, which will allow the one(s) on the remote side get in behind. Afterburners and changing speed is very useful. You can also often cross the UFO firing field diagonally, since, fortunately, aliens haven't figured out that you should fire at where the target's predicted position at the time of impact, and not the current one (this is essential for mine deployment, as many craft fire at your bombers with powerful cannons, but by having a sufficient angle they'll miss). Another useful trick is to fly towards the enemy and then roll out of the danger zone (which can also be used to get the craft to turn so another aircraft can get at the tail). In some cases you can just take the damage and fly straight at them at afterburner speed. It can be noted that some bombers can be taken down by a couple of wings of repurposed craft with little risk. - Major craft: Bombers, bombers, and more bombers until you get the buggers down. For some you'll have to accept taking damage, while for others a correct/perfect execution will leave the bombers unharmed. - Alien Interceptor craft: I leave those to auto resolve. You should have a good or very good chance if you're using suitable latest generation weapons (I haven't experimented, but stuck to what seems to be working: ballistic cannons, both because they work and because they don't require weapon system part, which I've rather used for other things (aircraft and repurposed interceptor weapons: I'm a fan of the Focus Lense line of very short range hard hitting few shot weapons. Works great against escorts if you manage to execute your rolls correctly).

The Andron raw number count does in no way reflect the pain of their terror missions. I just did a phase 4 terror craft mission (shot down, so some units should have "died" in the crash), and the after action report said 163 killed (the final one cut the mission short as the Robodog Ghost spawned, which is a know bug). - 8 Terror Elite, each of which had to be taken down 5 times. - 2 Robosadists, both of which had to be taken down 4 times (including the "corpse" destruction). - 4 Andron bosses morphing into Robodog Ghosts, which had to be taken down 3 times each (including the dog). - A bazillion Roboreapers, most of which had to be taken down 3 times (some where terror troops originally). A small number did not start with a force field. - 1 "Normal" Andron boss that only had to have its forcefield destroyed and then the unit itself. - The remainder were normal Androns, Robodogs of various kinds, and 9 or 11 Drones. Can you imagine any way in which you could even haul the amount of ammo required to take them down (I made a very heavy use of an exploit to even have a chance to make it, on top of save scumming to be able to take them out at the rate they surged forward)? Edit: Not only terror missions. As I'm no longer desperate for resources, I bomb downed Andron craft because of the pain to slog through all the terror units and the Roboreapers (plus optional sadist).

@dipmonk Mini-mines work too, but you need more of them (which means even more Bombers to deploy them). The only difference between the different kinds of mines is the explosive yield, unless I mis-remember things. I've brought down almost all UFO's encountered (although some into the drink, but that at least provides relations = money), giving up on only a few of them (I count raiding landed craft as bringing them down), and much of the time I've been short on at least some current level component while I've scrambled to update my fleet to be/stay competitive. It didn't help that I've tried to provide my troops with armor and weapons at the same time, so production facilities have run non stop until very late [sometimes stopping due to a lack of money, but with a little foresight it's possible to switch to resource production, such as picking apart enemy soldier armor and weapons, which doesn't consume much money (but does consume a fair bit of time when you've got large piles of them]). I'm probably sporting more soldier teams than what's optimal, which results in a drain on resources and production facilities to equip them, especially since you can teleport them around in a shorter time than it takes aircraft to fly the distance, but on the other hand shipping weapons around cost money too (and re-equipping the soldiers is a pain, as the gear availability isn't uniform, nor is the soldier strengths, so predefined uniforms are of little use except possibly as a starting point: I find constantly correcting the missile loadout on my troops as they're sent out to be a drag).

At least the Lotus and Archelon depend on technology acquired by researching specific terror wrecks (and the Archelon requires material as well). There are many technologies (weapons as well as aircraft) that require you to bring down a particular craft, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. The Contrail was uncovered quite late for me (I think it was a bit into phase 4), at which time the previous interceptor craft really wasn't up to the task. I take down craft escorted by alien interceptor craft by first taking out the escorts with a full wing of repurposed alien interceptor craft (of as late a type as I can muster) and then I send in bomber craft to wear the main craft down (for the cases where the escorts are major craft I use bombers throughout). The human interceptor craft are used exclusively to deal with wings of 3 alien interceptor craft, and I'm still not sure it wouldn't have been better to use repurposed alien craft for that task as well. It can be noted that I find escorts of the very last alien interceptor craft to be very hard to deal with: I haven't been able to take down any of them without losing at least one of my craft. The second last one was a lot easier to deal with, and Hunters should be up to the task [I'm using Short Circuits as their weapons, and used Focus Blast (if I remember the weapon development order correctly) prior to that]). I've never used Firebirds, Merlin, or Night Owl. I unlocked the Lotus early, but the resources to build it were scarce (only terror craft provided the Extreme critical component until phase 4), so my bombers were generally Drakes. It's possible to bring down all the major craft using Drakes, but you need an awful lot of them. About the only good thing about Drakes is that they can be rearmed in a sufficiently short time to make two sorties if attacking from a nearby base, but as many late craft have unavoidable attacks that wear away at craft you may or may not have them in a sufficient shape to actually be able to take off again (or survive the second sortie, for that matter). By the time I unlocked the other bombers I started getting the resources to build Lotus craft. Unfortunately, changing the loadout of craft takes too long to be useful, so you have to equip you craft according to what you think will be the most useful against what may come up in the next wave. This has resulted in me using mines exclusively, as that's the only weapon that can be used against all major craft, while missile usage is suicidal against many of them. Using proper deployment of mines it's possible to wear down all major craft and survive the encounter (although one craft require an annoying special tactic of exiting via a corner of the map or get shot down by an extremely long range missile: it took much frustration to figure out why retreating craft were killed after leaving most of the time and even longer to find a way to avoid it). Each major craft has its own properties, so you need to use different tactics when deploying mines against them. For one I had to make several (ideally 4, I think) close U shaped flybys (exiting the engagement and then return again) to deploy the mines so they'd hit, enabling dropping of mines only in a narrow stretch of the path. In other cases you'd get the craft to chase the bomber while its dropping mines, etc. Since I'm using mines exclusively, it's extremely important to have the latest mine technology. You also need to have a sufficient number of bombers to actually be able to deploy the mines (as well as being in range of the target). If I remember correctly it takes 13 Stealth Mine deployments to bring down a Mothership, so you can do it with 13 Drakes (they'd be in a very poor shape when leaving the engagement, but they'll be repaired by the next wave), or 7 sorties of a craft that's capable of deploying 2 mines at a time, or 5 Archelons (which probably won't happen). Note that bombers without countermeasures are next to useless late in the game, as there are few craft that don't sport missiles. I've got 6 "regular" bases that sport a full wing of interceptor craft (currently Contrail), a full wing of repurposed alien interceptors (currently Alien Interceptors with a small number of Heavy Alien Interceptors), and 3 bombers (Lotus, with some bases having an Archelon), plus a drop ship. In addition to that, I have 3 support bases that have a varying number of somewhat outdated Drake bombers that I don't plan to replace except with Lotus craft that occasionally are replaced by an Archelon on a "real" base. I'm sure there are other ways to deal with enemies, but I've found a way that works for me, and given that resources are scarce, I haven't been in a position to engage in experiments. In my thinking, the important thing for a bomber is the number of mines it can deploy while still being equipped with countermeasures. Sure, faster, nimbler, or more resilient is nice, but getting hit by major craft major weapons tends to be lethal regardless of resilience (there's one craft in particular that's fast enough that it's a bit of a struggle to get away from it once you've deployed the mines. but it's still possible even with a Drake). Edit: It should be made very clear that success for me is very dependent upon save scumming. There are probably people out there who can repeatedly follow a working pattern without making mistakes, but I'm not one of those. Also, it takes a fair number of attempts to figure out how to deal with a new craft (or recall how to deal with a known one at times). I'm playing at the NG level, but without the air game nerfing mod. I'm also not above letting the game auto resolve fights that should be won and save scum when that fails (but there are certain fights that the auto resolve claims have a 0% chance that aren't that hard to win with proper tactics, and, conversely, cases where auto resolve gives you 100% chance when it isn't possible to deal the required amount of damage manually).

1. If you bring it down some of them are killed in the crash. I don't know if just damage affects terror mission, although base attack missions see an enemy casualty based on damage. Note that crashed terror mission attacks tend to be more dangerous, however, as there are few locals to soak up damage/delay the enemy, and there doesn't tend to be as much cover as in a terrorized city. 2. Carriers can be shot down. However, there are certain combinations that are not intended to be possible to shoot down because they are escorted by extremely dangerous craft. "When" is subjective. I think it's possible to do it with starting craft (assuming there are no murder escorts) if you're prepared to have a lot of them shot down, but I have never tried that myself. 3. A single remaining alien is capable of slaughtering any locals, so yes, pulling out of a terror mission is a failure. Pulling out of a UFO attack mission is a failure as well. In both cases you can salvage marginall amounts of gear by placing it in soldier inventories. Note that any dropped gear (including inside the drop ship) may get lost, so don't free up inventory space by dropping valuable weapons on the drop ship floor! 4. I use heavy save scumming at the "easiest" difficulty and terror missions are a pain (I don't get real terror missions any more as I shoot the craft down, but the downed craft I'm currently slogging through is plain silly (and I'm still not sure I'll make it). I'm just waiting for the final piece of the puzzle to be made available by the RNG to enter the end game, so that's at the very end of the campaign. I haven't failed any terror missions (or downed terror craft), though (save scumming and an exploit!). Note that every kinetic/energy hit wears down armor, so even if all the damage was resisted, the shot still removed a small amount of armor (15% of the nominal damage), so resisted hits still contribute towards the damage of following hits. Smoke is useful to block enemies from firing at you, forcing them to come closer before they fire. It may buy you time and can protect you from long range shots. I made a test of a Division Mk-3 rifle vs a normal Andron, and it took over 30 hits to kill it (save scumming to make sure every shot hit using aiming to increase the accuracy from abysmal to lousy. Two soldiers were participated in firing at a camping Andron, and no other enemies were active outside of the (non terror) craft at the time, so I had plenty of time). I believe the first damage was cause around hit 22. Thus, kinetic weapons contribute marginally against Androns, but it's better to aim them at softer targets (they're useful against small drones, for instance).

It's better to give a trained soldier better gear later than to equip a replacement rookie with shiny gear now. Thus, stun if you can do it with limited risk, kill most of the time, and splat (i.e. destroy body and equipment) if you must. Terror crews in particular may benefit from a rather heavy splatting with missiles in the beginning to reduce the pressure to a survivable level, after which you can switch to "regular" killing, and then go for stunning as the number of enemies thin out and you happen to get suitable encounters.

@venom274 I get a display to the right of the target icon with "XX TU Hit: XX%" My best guess it an incorrect mod installation of some kind, such as e.g. trying to use incompatible mods, but that's all it is: a guess.

@venom274 I get a hit chance displayed in % when playing hovering over a prospective target (when a soldier is equipped with a weapon), and didn't find anything in Options to disable it, so yes, it's there. As to why you can't find it I have no idea.

@Changeling_wil Each phase provides tougher aliens as well as better equipment. The thing called "mitigation" is armor penetration and counters armor (=resistance). In addition, kinetic and energy armor is ablated/worn away by taking damage (armor penetration does not wear away armor, it just ignores up to that amount of armor, but "regular" damage that has to push through armor does wear it away slowly [by 15% of the damage stopped]. It's possible to destroy an Andron with Division rifles alone, but it took about 30 hits when I tried it out, and the first damage happened on hit 22 or so, which means even with save scumming to ensure a 100% hit rate, you can't carry enough ammo to use that tech exclusively against Androns, unless using an exploit). Something that's useful to know is that the kinetic/energy weapons of each phase aren't straight better replacement for the corresponding weapons of the previous phase technology (the Mk-1, Mk-2, Mk-3 versions within a technology are essentially better replacements within a technology, though). Each phase's weapon technology has its own profile (typically a theme applied to all weapon types using that technology), which forces you to adapt to how the new weapons behave.

@Mr. MisterYes, it is possible to have an entry being unlocked by one research in a set (that's how the Caesan/Sebillian specialist entries work, for instance). It's a limitation of the structure that you have to make a guess at which order most players unlock things in, as the entries themselves are fixed (and even if it was possible to select entries based on what other entries have been unlocked, it would bloat the entry count a fair bit). I believe it's technically feasible to introduce new entries that have their own prerequisites, and I believe it's possible to have the "research" be automatic (that's how a number of entries show up currently, e.g. alien craft). However, introduction of new Xenopedia entries has to be done together with new/modified Research entries (or they would never be triggered to appear). Since my work has been Xenopedia entries exclusively, I've had to work within the existing structure. Also, as far as I understand, changes to research that has been unlocked or addition of research that would have been unlocked can lead to the complete inability to get those researches (i.e. screw up your game), so it's something I won't get involved in (I'm close to the end game, waiting for the RNG to drop the final piece of the puzzle, and the game is getting rather long in the tooth).

@Casaubon The AWACS is available from the start and can not be manufactured. You start with one, and can never get another one (or a replacement).

@Dr. Ethan Charon has a curious legalistic view according to which it seems that nothing that hasn't been written in a contract is a promise. Thus, any kind of encouragement and help is, from this perspective, just a way of helping the other party to hack their own copy of the mod for their own enjoyment and does in no way mean anything in terms of promises unless a promise is made explicitly (which probably won't happen). People who have not encountered Charon previously are unlikely to understand that, as this is the only person I've encountered that act is this way.

Here's the latest Xenopedia.xml version. Obviously, it doesn't cover any reworked Ancient weapons... xenopedia.xml