svidangel

You can "dodge" by outrunning it, you just have to plan out your angles in advance.

Depends on how you do your research etc. Can check my thread for advice on your intro, should make a difference. Right now things seem fairly balanced on normal. And much easier on my second playthrough. http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/5737-Drunky-s-gaming-advice-tips-because-I-m-drinking

Pistols!

Hmm, think I asked this before but.. what ever happened to the armor piercing rounds? I miss those for plowing through walls early on.

+1

To whomever was talking about the cannons not being worth it, I can't really speak for the laser cannon since I didn't use it first playthrough, but the plasma cannon was useful for taking out Medium sized ships, and the MAGSTORM is just amazing. I don't even need missiles anymore, I just fly my Marauder in behind stuff and take it down with cannonfire. The heavy fighter roll just negates the first missile, it doesn't actually matter if you micro and stagger the missile launches. Still have never seen a battleship, so I don't know what those were like. Researched everything I could, then got bored and restarted without seeing them. Maybe I'll go back and see how long it takes for one to show up. I found the shrike to be decently faster than the charlie at least. Yeah, ation funding was pretty much useless aside from helping cover some of my base costs (after medium ships start showing up). Even then I wanted to make sure I had at least 1million saved before the end of the month so I didn't go negative. Not sure what happens if you go negative but I'd guess it's not good.

The command room and hallway entrance makes me reminisce about blaster bombs.

Hmm, maybe I'll add anther section with base advice if we can gather some more useful stuff for it.

Is the scimitar supposed to be able to plow down "walls" like a super version of the Predator armor? Or some other effect like that... and maybe there is no graphic for the walls being removed from the chinook? I might have to make one and play with it

My second playthrough: month 1. Usually place first base in North Africa, far to the east. Covers a good portion of Europe, North Africa, South Africa, Middle East, and some of USSR and Indochina, giving you a chance of some positive rep with all of those nations. Build: Living quarters, Hangar and Medical Bay, demolish Garage and Missile defenses. Hire 2 soldiers, 3 scientists. I only focus on highest reaction stat. Everything else increases much faster and fairly safely. Note that if you purchase a soldier, he is replaced on the list. So if you see only one soldier listed with 60 reaction, exit out of the selection screen, purchase 1 soldier at a time, and hope the first one you buy is replaced by one with good stats. Anyone know what else might reset soldier stats? Save game and start the timer going. If you are desperate for perfection, you can reload until the first UFO shows up on your radar and not somewhere else in the world. First aerial combat should be fairly simple, sidewinders away! I prefer to arrange my soldiers in the Charlie so there are a couple at each exit that can at least turn and look out. You can do this on the aircraft tab, then select dropships on the second tab on the right Ground combat, I tend to go heavy on the heavy weapons and pistols for the current build (swap to pistols and lead with the heavy weapon guys, at this point they won’t have enough TUs to move far and actually shoot anyway). Last build it was 8 snipers leapfrogging in groups of 4. Play how you want! Finish Alien invasion research, start High speed interceptor. Research: Plasma Rifle once acquired from the Small ufo is next up. LAZERS PEW PEW I had trouble early on capturing power cores because I went a little crazy and gave my Foxtrot all Avalanche missiles. For a Small you only need 4 Sidewinders. Or if you want to be really careful, use to Condors and have one shoot it in the butt with the Autocannon while it chases the other. When the living quarters is complete, hire however many scientists and engineers you need to hit 15 (cap for 1 lab 1 shop). Soldier equipment: Keep those backpacks just under the red weight! You’ll want all the strength you can get for wearing armor, so check before every mission. If you avoid getting the Jackal armor early like I do, you may find you can’t cram enough weight onto your soldiers with grenades and ammo by the end of the month. Note that the LMG has a higher weight per square of backpack space than most other stuff you have access to, so have everyone who can carry one around for… fun. At some point, build a second Foxtrot, OR start your base in Central/North America sooner. I went with building the base in North America on the 16th, after selling all but one of my alenium, all alien clips, and most of the alloys, plus the one reactor I’d gotten. Ended up putting in 2 hangars, one radar and one storeroom. Later in the month after another wave I added a third hanger and a living quarters. Ended up with the second foxtrot finishing around the 23rd, then transferred it to North America as soon as that base had a free Hangar. Research: Was able to research Alenium, Alien plasma weaponry and Laser weaponry by the end of the month, with Alenium explosives coming in just after the end of the month. Started with a stack of laser pistols and a few rifles, till I get scatter lasers researched. At the beginning of the second month I was waiting on another hanger and the living quarters to start up in the second base so I could get a Chinook running over there, had a second workshop and laboratory in the Africa base, and had a decent chunk of cash saved up to expand to my third base. This second time was actually a LOT smoother and I doubt I will have the same problems in December and January with the Heavy Fighters I did the first time. Understanding the progression and the tech trees a bit more means I will be able to save quite a bit of time (will be skipping precision lasers and such this time since I don’t use tanks). If anyone has a list of all the ingredients to items that can be crafted, I’d love to include that. All I noticed was that Laser rifles take 5 Alloy each and I’m guessing other laser weaponry is similar… so I don’t need to save much early on. End of month report. Main Base, Oct 1 Second Base, Oct 1 Sebillian Herding near the end of September, what your soldiers will look like with some aggressive herding through the month. Note: Apparently expanding to a new base accelerates the invasion ticker all on it’s own. Not necessarily the best idea to do it early, but it also might cause you to get UFO’s faster and thus more cash more quickly. Questions: Do you ever use anything other than a snap shot for reaction shots? How is the hit % calculated for a snapshot from a Heavy weapon like the LMG? Does grenade throwing improve a stat like accuracy? Armor doesn’t seem to work as advertised– walk through walls when you can’t see the other side? Jump over walls/hedges?

Other notes: Aliens Caesans : Basic aliens, some seem to have psy powers, but nothing noticeable on my first playthrough. Have long enough sight ranges that you can’t just toy with them. Take em out quick and safe, and hope for more lizards. Sebillian [FARMABLE]: Lizardmen. Basically cannon fodder, and un-armored/sentinel suit Xenonauts should be able to use them as target practice/reaction fire under most situations in open scenery. At the moment herding one against the edge of the map and then standing just at visual range of the edge is the best way to up reaction fire. Using low damage/accuracy pistols will allow you to get more shots/reaction shots off before killing it. I try to get at least 6 reaction shots per soldier per ground combat vs the Sebs. Reapers: Also reaction fire fodder. Might run away in order to Reaperize an NPC. You can either try and take it out first, or enjoy the opportunity to further up your troops reactions/accuracy as they replicate. Cyberdisks: At the moment not much of a threat. Supposedly will explode but for now they do not. Vague Air combat notes from memory: Weapons important! 2 Condors with magstorm can take out any solo large UFO. Might be able to do it with escorts with 2 or 3 Condors as well. Advanced craft make it easy, but you can make do with advanced weapons. Foxtrot afterburner speed avoids missiles when moving at a decent angle relative to the incoming missiles. Condor can fly inside a cruiser’s firing arc while moving perpendicular with afterburners on and avoid damage.

*Vanilla, no mods no maps Someone asked for a brief description of how I started off, and here is the long version, along with some information that might be useful to new players that are frustrated with the difficulty at the moment. This is all as of the first build released on Steam and will likely be useless once the first update comes out. If anyone wants to take this and edit it or move it or whatever, go for it. Correct anything that is wrong, and if you are a mod go ahead and just edit the post. I'd love to include an actual chart of all the costs to produce items at some point as well. Anyway, here goes terrible and drunk. And the maths may not be entirely right. Ground combat Rocket launchers destroy gear, less cash. I’ve stopped using them since that change. Autoshot is the biggest trap in ground combat. It is almost never worth using, unless you practically have your muzzle jammed down something’s throat. Basically, until the single shot hit % is way over 95%, your theoretical average damage is higher using single shots. I often take the autoshot anyway if I’m within 6-7 squares just because it’s a FUN trap. Also a lot of the accuracy information isn’t, well, “accurate” right now so actually auto shots are a bit better than they should be at the moment. One example from a combat I’m in. 15% chance on Autoshot. 62% chance using a 40TU shot, and 23% chance using a 20TU shot Chance to hit at least once on autoshot = 28% vs the 62% chance on the 40TU shot. Of course with the autoshot you have about a 2% chance for a hail mary landing two shots! Better have that save game ready. Shot type to use: In most cases it’s far better to use your highest TU shot available than to use multiple lower % shots if you are actually trying to hit and damage your target (vs suppressing, skilling up troops). Each 10TU seems to roughly double your hit chance, without the initial 10TU cost for the 20TU shot. Kneeling is NOT generally worth lowering your type of shot by one “zoom.” If you have 41 TUs, take the 40 TU shot, not the 30 while kneeling. Otherwise it’s great and better than taking one more step towards your target unless you are one step away from a piece of cover you’d have to shoot through, or in some cases at certain ranges with auto-fire weapons like the LMG (The last 4-5 squares with the LMG each make a huge difference). Oh, and turning while kneeling costs 2TUs per turn instead of 1, so do your turning before you kneel! Flashbangs only work well from very short range, 10 squares. I find them fairly useless because of this. Smoke grenades help reduce the accuracy of shots fired through them, but do not actually obstruct vision at all, unlike previous games. Pistols, flares, grenades. Flares only from quickslot, only during night/base missions. With a pistol in hand, flares can be thrown for only 30ish TUs, which can make a big difference when flarinating the surroundings. Same with grenades, until the range issues is fixed, you can easily use grenades on anything out of range of your pistol. Carrying around 14 grenades is usually enough to wreck any aliens hiding behind hard cover. Reloading : Currently takes more TUs to reload from quickslot than in inventory, and I’ve heard even fewer if you drop the weapon and clip, and reload it on the ground. Reaction shots Your chance of performing a reaction shot AND your chances of being shot at during your own turn are based on the weapon have in your hands. Pistols, for example, give an 80% increase to your reaction rate, and heavy weapons a 50% penalty. This is why I like to carry pistols when exploring with troops that have sufficient points to pull off a weapon swap and a shot after moving. I think it requires about 60 TUs to swap the pistol for the LMG and fire it, so if you have 120 movement points... goody! Sight range with armor The first two types of armor reduce sight range. I recommend a mix of armored and unarmored, but I prefer to use them differently depending on what I’m fighting. For example, lizards have a relatively short sight range compared to your troops, so I prefer to lead with unarmored troops against them, while the armored troops provide support. Seeing them before they see you usually means not getting shot at all, which is better than any armor in the game. The star trek escapees, on the other hand, seem to see far enough that your unarmored point troops will still be shot from beyond their sight range, so you may as well stick the guys in armor up front and tough it out. Heavy weapons and sniper rifles Kneeling and turning are fine, if you move so much as a square during that turn though your accuracy will take one heck of a hit. It doesn’t get any worse after you move one square though, so once you’ve moved you may as well go as far as you want. One example: LMG hit % 14, after moving one step forward and one step back, hit % 6. Healing troops: A medical bay helps, but once someone hits 50% and is no longer “Injured” take them right out and heal them up first turn with a medkit. On that note, if anyone is below 50% and hasn’t been medkitted up, make sure you do that before combat ends. It will reduce their time in the Injured state and let you get them… well… injured again. You can use the same type of zoom toggle (mouse scroll wheel etc) to increase the amount of healing the medkit does. I saw someone in a vid doing it 5 HP at a time, and that is fairly time inefficient.

"Ufo sighted by local fisherman. Local communities reporting safety fears." Dead center of the Atlantic. Beware Ariel... beware...

I actually really like it if it is a bug. Makes it WAAAY easier to find alien bases. And quickly.

Heh, buzzard armor, another thing I've never built.

Just started a second playthrough to try to remember what I did to start as a terrible sort of startup guide, and have been far happier with the maps this time. Made it all the way to the end of February getting 70% desert and 20% farm maps it seems. Finally got a cityish/industrial map for the first time towards the end, and this time I got my first snow map and a few others I hadn't seen, which have been a lot better than that drab military base with the occasional rock or cactus about 15 squares from anything.

Oh right, keep forgetting that, and trying to use them again, and being disappointed.

Still finding flashbangs useless. I get more suppression from shooting the ground a couple of times near someone vs throwing 3-4 flashbangs right in their face. Maybe I need to try using them earlier in the game or something

Heh, agree with most of it, cept for pistols. Pistols are amazing when you play to their strengths. Also 5v5 aerial combat would start to eat up a LOT of your base space with just hangers.

"features like the two described above that could give a significantly different gameplay experience between difficulty levels." The extra cash on startup on the harder difficulty levels would open up extra options. It would be nice if the harder difficulties had a whole different feel to them, with other changes like this to the global part of the game, even if the ground combat could be made challenging by adding more aliens. EDIT: Actually I'd prefer some changes to both vs just ramping up the alien count until the missions were enough of a meat grinder to slow you down heh.

Minor ditail, but it seems pistols and medkits can overlap at the corners, although attempting to cram grenades into these magical corners doesn't work. Unsure if this is intentional. Image shows where I can successfully place the pistol

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I am REALLY liking the idea of a faster smaller craft to start, with the chinook being either researched with the foxtrot and the construct-able, or just being another, more expensive, option to buy. If you want to go in hot and fast with a few troops, maybe you can make it to the landing site while the craft is still down. More aliens to fight, but more intact UFOs. Worried about bigger UFOs? Shoot em down, send in a whole chinook.

My guy was just shot through the wall where the red arrow is. No wall tiles seemed to have been destroyed. Not sure if all of these walls are going to be looked at, or if specific examples are still useful.

Right click

+1 Combat isn't pretty.