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Hello everyone. After last years amazing Xcom: Enemy Unknown I've been itching to find similar kinds of games and I stumbled upon Xenonauts. While they are pretty different, I've fallen in love with the way Xenonauts plays and I an enjoying my time with it. Unfortunately the skills and tactics I used in the Firaxis game don't really carry over so I've been just getting stomped without much success. Last night I got as far as I've ever gotten (got to late January) before I was completely wiped by the crew of a shot down cruiser, with their bullshit bombardment cannons and hordes of angry androns. I was hoping you guys should answer some questions and throw out some tips because I really don't know how to do better, and I really want to progress in the game. 1). Scientists feel more important than technicians, is this accurate? I always hire more scientists and I feel getting the tech researched usually opens up more tech to research. Should I focus on technicians instead? 2). When I do research, I make sure that I have just enough scientists to make the research go 'excellent' and then put the remaining scientists somewhere else. This assumes that once research hits excellent it can't go any faster, is this correct? 3). How early do I need foxtrots and how many should I have? I found that up until I hit large ships (which I'm pretty sure I didn't have the tech to really deal with) 3 condors worked well. Am I missing something important about foxtrots because they seem kinda useless. 4). Is the hunter scout car worth getting early? How does it hold up against enemy fire? Is it worth losing 2 soldiers for it? Should I wait till I can get lasers for it? 5). Where should I focus my research, land upgrades or air? Should I go for weapons or armor? Is there a path that usually more effective/efficient? 6). What are some good soldier loadouts/compositions? I usually run with 2 snipers, 2 machine gunners, 2 rifleman who have shields and batons, and 2 rocket launchers who have shotguns. Am I missing something here? I feel like the rocket launchers and shotguns is a weird combo but idk how else I'm going to use a shotgun if not with those guys. 7). Other than flashing aliens when you breach a ship, when and where are grenades useful? I just can't seem to get the hang of them, they don't work like I thought they did. 8).Should I get laser or just skip to plasma? Is it worth upgrading all weapons or are there some I should keep as ballistic until much later? Are upgraded pistols worth it? 9). Who should get armor and what armor should they get? I used to run with unarmored snipers but if aliens swarm your ship they just don't last long. Is jackal armor on everyone worth it or just a few until I can get wolf? Where does buzzard fit in? 10). How many bases should I have and how quickly should I build them up? Is it ok to have only a single chinook base or should every base have it's own chinook and soldiers? 11). How many interceptors should I have per base? When I get upgraded ships do I destroy my older ones or is there a better way to use them? 12). How can I get better transports/chinooks? 13). What do I need to successfully breach or defend a base? Every time I've tried I just get swarmed and cut down? 14). How can I tell if I am keeping up with tech progression? At what point should I start feeling like I can hold my own in fights? 15). Should I have more than the starting 10 soldiers, and should I rotate rookies in so that experience is more spread out? 16). Is there a effective way to capturing an alien officer? 17). Is there a place where I can get a clear view of the research tree? I can never tell which research is a means to an end and which is an end of a line. I know these are a lot of questions, I appreciate any help I can get. I've been watching let's plays but most of those seem to be more about messing around and while entertaining I don't feel like I'm learning how to play the game (even though it's pretty clear most of those dudes are leagues better than me). I love this game and I can't wait for it's official release.

G'day all, So I purchased Xenonauts a while ago but never got around to actually playing it. Today I finally started but got turned into mincemeat in my first battle on normal difficulty. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good series of Tutorials that I can look through, so I have more of an idea what I'm doing. While I tried hiding behind walls and the like, I found aliens were able to take out my entire squad without much effort. Thanks!

I better post this question in off topic, since I so far only played and loved the new X-COM and am not an original X-Com player nor have I installed my Xenonauts pre-order yet, so excuse my potential sillyness: In the new X-COM with its two action system, a safe way to explore the map was to move one soldier as far forward as possible with the first action, then move the other soldiers in behind, but never forther forward than the first soldier. If you didn't stumble upon an enemy, you put everyone on Overwatch and did repeated this for the next move. If your first soldier did run into something, the rest of the team still had all their actions, so you didn't run into the risk of just having spent all actions right before the discovered enemy makes their turn. This is what I call the snail-leapfrogging tactic. It is pretty effective, but also extremely slow. It was fun for the first playthrough, since it added to the tension, and keyboard shortcuts made plaything this way less tedious, but so far it has kept me from starting a second playthough. So, does Xenonauts also need this extremely cautions forward clawl, is this maybe even inherent to turn based combat? Or are there better ways to move about the map, in either X-COM or Xenonauts?

They teleport all over the place, and I'm chasing one around inside one of my bases, and have been for almost an hour, I can't find the guy, do you have any neat tips for me?

I came to a point when the landingships arrive, I've got only 2 Laserrifles and some jackal armour, to get bet stuff i need alenium, but if i start a mission, the chopper is surrounded by aliens with exceptional weaponry that shoots me outside of my LoS. If even dare to step out, i will lose this brave man's life .. I would use combat shields, but they cause bugs so i can't end missions at all.. Any advice how to save myself ? Should i just retreat from such missions for now and try find easier targets ? (but i haven't seen any scouts for a good while now ) Or should i try to win such a mission and try to get better weaponry, armour ?

Does anyone have advice on how to play this game? I was a huge fan of UFO enemy unknown(x-com UFO defense) and felt I was pretty good but in this I feel there are some situations were death is unavoidable. My research goes like this: Alien invasion, High speed interceptor at the same time as alien plasma pistol, jackal combat armor, alien plasma rifle(Dang scouts with there rifles), alien plasma tech, Laser tech (cant seem to remember when But I research alien alloys and alenium whenever possible). Any advice you have is helpful. Also a few builds ago the combat shield was broken. Is it fixed now?

*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.

A thread to help new players and old ones (like me.) So, I'll open with a couple of things I'm having trouble with. 1. I know some of you have managed to build multiple bases, but I never seem to have enough money for that and upgrading my equipment. How are you pulling that off? 2. How many scientists and engineers do you buy at the game start? I've found that I tend to go with 15 scientists at the start plus you need to build an extra lab and workshop fairly soon.

I'm new here, hello! For those of you who have the X-COM from 1994 and are playing it still here is a thread to ask questions. I'm new to the game myself, recently bought it to get into the series. I'm playing it without any of those CPU dampening utilitys and it runs like intended, not hyper fast like I see on some LPs. Setting up is easy and fun, follow this link to the steam forums: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1146530 Don't have the game? Check ebay! I'm loving it and excited for xenonauts. I don't find myself too keen on Firaxis as they seemed to trash TUs, Base Defense, Putting your base wherever you want, and having multiple bases. For me, this really kind of sours the strategical aspect. No one wants less options, am I right? So far, in UFO Defense, I'm doing well. It's overwhelming and I had to read a lot to get into it. Each game is an improvement and maybe eventually I won't be wiped consistently on terror missions. I'll start this off with my own question: What do you do to avoid alien grenades? My hatred for them started early on when someone threw an alien grenade into my ship and knocked out almost the entirety of my team from turn three. Not one to get angry over video games, I found myself laughing but some how dreading the next time that happens.

What strategies/builds do you do in Xenonauts? For air interception, base management, soldier loadouts etc.