I suck at this game. Help!

[anarchy_79]

Hi all, 

thanks for a cool game, devs, I played maybe 50 hours in XN1, and now perhaps 10 in XN2, and while I really love both, I also suck at both. 

I play on normal in XN2, and I like the challenge, and don't mind the difficulty level.

I do however lack in tactical skills, and would love some input on how I should think about entering the battlefield.

I would appreciate a general rundown of squad composition, and then how to maneuver the various roles and understand what their purpose is.

I have watched what little tutorials on XN2 there is on YT, but I think I need professional help here.

 

Thanks, cool to be here!

[Komandos]

2 hours ago, anarchy_79 said:

I do however lack in tactical skills, and would love some input on how I should think about entering the battlefield.

If the game increases the number of soldiers in a tactical mission (at the "beginner" difficulty level), then the requirements for the player's tactical skills will not be so strict. It is easier to change the balance of the game by adjusting the maximum number of soldiers on the battlefield than to adjust a huge variety of other game parameters to make the player's squad feel comfortable.

[Kamehamehayes]

5 hours ago, anarchy_79 said:

Hi all, 

thanks for a cool game, devs, I played maybe 50 hours in XN1, and now perhaps 10 in XN2, and while I really love both, I also suck at both. 

I play on normal in XN2, and I like the challenge, and don't mind the difficulty level.

I do however lack in tactical skills, and would love some input on how I should think about entering the battlefield.

I would appreciate a general rundown of squad composition, and then how to maneuver the various roles and understand what their purpose is.

I have watched what little tutorials on XN2 there is on YT, but I think I need professional help here.

 

Thanks, cool to be here!

Yeah, these kinds of games are difficult to fully get into if you are not well versed in tactical games, but it will get much better as you keep playing and get more experienced. I do have some starter tips though. 

Team Compoaititin and loadput advice: 

1. For soldier stats, I find strength and time units to be the most widely useful as they both allow you to bring more uttility items onto the battlefield and to take more actions on the field itself. Other stats often radically change in general usefulness depending on playatyle and team composition, and should be considered later when you have a playstyle nailed down (like on accuracy if you do not like engaging aliens from a short distance, or reflexes to prevent alien reaction fire for shoeter distances for example).

2. It is perfectly okay to not have have a "balanced" team of various classes. If you really like shotgunners than making half of your team shotgunners is completely fine for the most part for example. You never need to have one of every class or even have all ranges represented or anything like that. (I personally really like using shotgunners aggresively in the earlygame and slowly progressing to a more "balanced" team as the game progresses).

3. Make sure to make good use out of utility items like various kinds of grenades (demolition, smoke, and flashbangs are the main ones), and equipment (for extra armor and accuracy) to load out your soldiers with (this is mainly what having soldiers with high strength was about in point 1). Sometimes, you can do weird builds like equiping a soldier with a shotgun and a sniper rifle if the soldier is built balanced enough in order to do that as well, so you can get effective builds that are much different than what the game generay encourages to use.

4. It is a good idea to get a Mars early on fpr its high stats early on, it is expensive but you get an incredibly strong soldier without the training needed to grow it. It will outclass most of your soldiers for most of the game (with the exception of endgame soldiers or strategoes that rely entirely on reaction fire).

5. In terms of the in game economy, the present and immediate future are the most important things. If you need to build up your air force (for example) but you are afraid of losing funds from the sell cost decline, you should sell them anyways because the short term benefits of getting a better air force can reduce panic and make the game easier, which can often make up for the money defacit in the long run. This can apply to virtually anything from soldier equipment to base structures. But if something is necessary for your success, sacrificing future monital gain is worth it for the short-term benefits imo. 

Very general combat tips: 

1. Always have a backup strategy in case a crucial shot misses. This one trick will save you a lot of deaths and rage over the unfair rng. This backup strategy can be as simple as throwing a smoke grenade to reduce casualties or supressing an alien (likely with a flashbang) to reduce its time units on its turn.

2. Adding on to point 1, never assume that high accuracy shots will indeed hit their target. In a game where you are repeatedly relying on rng hundreda or thousands of times to make shots hit their mark, you will see shots that have even a 90% chance to hit miss many tomes across a campaign. 

3. Always make sure to achieve some small objective every turn. This can be to move forward, kill an alien, or make the next turn more impactful by getting closer to a mission objective. Making no progress can hurt you a lot if you are time pressured or are dealing with psionics. There are some missions that do have "turn timers" or soft timers due to reinforcements, but at an efficient pace where you are achieivng something evey turn, these missions (and potentially the game as a whole) will get much more lenient. 

I might be able to give you much more specific tips if needed, but if there is anything you want to be explained here, than I can clarify for you.

3 hours ago, Komandos said:

If the game increases the number of soldiers in a tactical mission (at the "beginner" difficulty level), then the requirements for the player's tactical skills will not be so strict. It is easier to change the balance of the game by adjusting the maximum number of soldiers on the battlefield than to adjust a huge variety of other game parameters to make the player's squad feel comfortable.

I definetely disagree with this a lot (as I have said within some other topics). Increasing the number of soldier does not necessarily make a game easier for a beginner to play (arguably making it harder due to more cognitive load), and it also messes with the game balance a lot as it is more difficult and costly to equip and maintain such a large amount of soldiers, which can mess with a beginner even more due to messing with the economy. I would argue that reducing the number of aliens has a much more positive effect on beginners than increasing soldier count. 

[Alienkiller]

You don’t need to raise Soldiers in Xenonauts 2 in to high Numbers (Keyword: Limited Resources and high Personal Costs). The much better Solution is to have more R & D Personal, which can create (especially the Engineers in secondary Bases daily income) as well as faster global Research-Speed.

Like Komandos several times explained from the Devs and important Main-Beta-Testers you can have to many underdogs of Soldiers (Quantity with bad Equipment / Weapons) and loosing the Game or you have specialized Soldiers (Quality with best Equipment / Weapons) incl. MARS-Vehicle-Support (with big Upgrades in Weapons / Armor and later on a big surprises for them).

Doesn’t matter what Difficulty you play the 12 beginning Soldiers with 1 (Skyhawk), later 2 (Dragonfly) MARS-Support-Vehicle are for the Beginning and most of the Mid-Game enough.

With the next Transport you get, you can transport 16 Soldiers and / or 14 Soldiers and 2 MARS-Support-Vehicle / ARES-Support-Vehicle.

To hold your Soldiers alive are 5 easy Points important:

1. use Cover (Walls, Doors, Trees etc.)

2. use different Armor (Shield, Plates, big Armor / Armor-Suits)

3. make an Mix of Soldiers with different Weapons (Long-Range, Medium Range, Short Range)

4. use the MARS-Support-Vehicles / ARES-Support-Vehicles (the first will be very long your Support-Vehicle with a lot of Upgrades) 

5. use the limited Resources you have wisely (your Airforce and Base-Upgrades need them too)

The best Thing is, that you can make the Crash-Sites / Terror Sites / Enemy Bases / Special Mission directly again with the same Transport, which have Lift off from your last Mission.

That’s an big Advantage to Xenonauts 1, old and new X-COM-Series, Phoenix Point and the direct Predecessor the UFO Extraterrestrials-Series.

[Komandos]

The player should be able to: solve any problem that arises in the game without resorting to the help of advisors. The player should be able to solve the problem on their own, even if the player has to reduce the difficulty level of the game.

Therefore, I am in favor of the game having the necessary tool for this. In X1, such a tool was the ability to easily and quickly edit the parameters of the game.

 

[Kamehamehayes]

6 hours ago, Komandos said:

The player should be able to: solve any problem that arises in the game without resorting to the help of advisors. The player should be able to solve the problem on their own, even if the player has to reduce the difficulty level of the game.

Therefore, I am in favor of the game having the necessary tool for this. In X1, such a tool was the ability to easily and quickly edit the parameters of the game.

 

I have seen some games nowadays have the option to reduce the difficulty mid-campaign if they feel the difficulty they selected is too difficult or not enjoyable. I feel like this game can implement something like this too and increasing the number of soldiers could be an option if the player switches to a custom difficult, but this certainly should not be the recommended solution as I feel players shpuld be encouraged to usr the vast amount of tools the game gives you to problem solve as opposed to dumbing down the problem itself. 

[Alienkiller]

You choose your Options of light, medium, heavy or extreme Gameplay directly in the Beginning. Therefore the new Custom-Choosebox get in in the Difficulty-Seting since Beta 26 / 27. There you can choosse your Starting Money, monthly % income and much more.

More then 18 to 20 Soldiers aren´t needed for the full Campaign. An similar Soldierpool I and others have too for the complete UFO-ET-Series.

 

[anarchy_79]

On 6/5/2023 at 11:32 AM, Kamehamehayes said:

Yeah, these kinds of games are difficult to fully get into if you are not well versed in tactical games, but it will get much better as you keep playing and get more experienced. I do have some starter tips though. 

Team Compoaititin and loadput advice: 

1. For soldier stats, I find strength and time units to be the most widely useful as they both allow you to bring more uttility items onto the battlefield and to take more actions on the field itself. Other stats often radically change in general usefulness depending on playatyle and team composition, and should be considered later when you have a playstyle nailed down (like on accuracy if you do not like engaging aliens from a short distance, or reflexes to prevent alien reaction fire for shoeter distances for example).

2. It is perfectly okay to not have have a "balanced" team of various classes. If you really like shotgunners than making half of your team shotgunners is completely fine for the most part for example. You never need to have one of every class or even have all ranges represented or anything like that. (I personally really like using shotgunners aggresively in the earlygame and slowly progressing to a more "balanced" team as the game progresses).

3. Make sure to make good use out of utility items like various kinds of grenades (demolition, smoke, and flashbangs are the main ones), and equipment (for extra armor and accuracy) to load out your soldiers with (this is mainly what having soldiers with high strength was about in point 1). Sometimes, you can do weird builds like equiping a soldier with a shotgun and a sniper rifle if the soldier is built balanced enough in order to do that as well, so you can get effective builds that are much different than what the game generay encourages to use.

4. It is a good idea to get a Mars early on fpr its high stats early on, it is expensive but you get an incredibly strong soldier without the training needed to grow it. It will outclass most of your soldiers for most of the game (with the exception of endgame soldiers or strategoes that rely entirely on reaction fire).

5. In terms of the in game economy, the present and immediate future are the most important things. If you need to build up your air force (for example) but you are afraid of losing funds from the sell cost decline, you should sell them anyways because the short term benefits of getting a better air force can reduce panic and make the game easier, which can often make up for the money defacit in the long run. This can apply to virtually anything from soldier equipment to base structures. But if something is necessary for your success, sacrificing future monital gain is worth it for the short-term benefits imo. 

Very general combat tips: 

1. Always have a backup strategy in case a crucial shot misses. This one trick will save you a lot of deaths and rage over the unfair rng. This backup strategy can be as simple as throwing a smoke grenade to reduce casualties or supressing an alien (likely with a flashbang) to reduce its time units on its turn.

2. Adding on to point 1, never assume that high accuracy shots will indeed hit their target. In a game where you are repeatedly relying on rng hundreda or thousands of times to make shots hit their mark, you will see shots that have even a 90% chance to hit miss many tomes across a campaign. 

3. Always make sure to achieve some small objective every turn. This can be to move forward, kill an alien, or make the next turn more impactful by getting closer to a mission objective. Making no progress can hurt you a lot if you are time pressured or are dealing with psionics. There are some missions that do have "turn timers" or soft timers due to reinforcements, but at an efficient pace where you are achieivng something evey turn, these missions (and potentially the game as a whole) will get much more lenient. 

I might be able to give you much more specific tips if needed, but if there is anything you want to be explained here, than I can clarify for you.

I definetely disagree with this a lot (as I have said within some other topics). Increasing the number of soldier does not necessarily make a game easier for a beginner to play (arguably making it harder due to more cognitive load), and it also messes with the game balance a lot as it is more difficult and costly to equip and maintain such a large amount of soldiers, which can mess with a beginner even more due to messing with the economy. I would argue that reducing the number of aliens has a much more positive effect on beginners than increasing soldier count. 

I appreciate your well thought out and long answer, I got a lot out from it, thank you. Yeah I always forget to use grenades, and in either case everyone is so heavily shielded that they can't carry much of anything beyond their standard gear anyway. I prioritize TU always, I find that without everyone having good TU nothing really works. 

The only point you make that I don't understand is #5, what is sell cost decline? Sales of what? The stuff I find on missions? 

Oh, also, one thing I don't get about smoke grenades- if I throw it at an enemy and it hits them dead center, they are engulfed in smoke, and will suffer accuracy penalties or w/e. Question is, if I throw the grenade halfway between my squad and the enemy, does it work exactly the same, so that for instance one might smoke grenade oneself to make the squad harder to hit? 

Also I'm having problems with assault on fixed positions, like the UFO, where I know there's aliens barricaded in there with overwatch and whatnot, and I lose at least one squad member per UFO breach no matter how I twist and turn it.

Lastly, if you will, please give a brief overview of how to properly use explosives when breaching a building. What are those satchel charges that every soldier comes equipped with by default, how do you use them? For what?

Again, thanks for taking the time!

[anarchy_79]

Thanks for the insights everyone.

[Alienkiller]

Smoke Grenades work exactly like you described. It makes your Squad / the Enemy harder to hit.

And it have an other Effect too. You get Stunded with Time (Inhalation of Smoke). That works for the lighter to catch Aliens perfect, after you reduced their Health.

Against Baricades this Grenades help too as well as the Shock Grenades.Belongs in what Situation you come.

The other Grenades you mean are Breach Grenades. That’s Grenades to destroy Cover / Armor. Very good to destroy enemy Cover-Points in Houses / open Aeras and medium / big enemy Armor (like Robots, Drones and similar).

The last big Explosive you have is C4. With that you can make more entries if Nesecarry.

 

[Chris]

On 6/6/2023 at 10:47 AM, anarchy_79 said:

I appreciate your well thought out and long answer, I got a lot out from it, thank you. Yeah I always forget to use grenades, and in either case everyone is so heavily shielded that they can't carry much of anything beyond their standard gear anyway. I prioritize TU always, I find that without everyone having good TU nothing really works. 

The only point you make that I don't understand is #5, what is sell cost decline? Sales of what? The stuff I find on missions? 

Oh, also, one thing I don't get about smoke grenades- if I throw it at an enemy and it hits them dead center, they are engulfed in smoke, and will suffer accuracy penalties or w/e. Question is, if I throw the grenade halfway between my squad and the enemy, does it work exactly the same, so that for instance one might smoke grenade oneself to make the squad harder to hit? 

Also I'm having problems with assault on fixed positions, like the UFO, where I know there's aliens barricaded in there with overwatch and whatnot, and I lose at least one squad member per UFO breach no matter how I twist and turn it.

Lastly, if you will, please give a brief overview of how to properly use explosives when breaching a building. What are those satchel charges that every soldier comes equipped with by default, how do you use them? For what?

Again, thanks for taking the time!

I think the satchel charges are actually borderline overpowered, and I guess it's interesting that their use isn't intuitive to an inexperienced player.

They do damage to a target and can blow up the cover they are hiding behind, making them much easier to hit and finish off. They're also great for taking out a wall if you need to create line of fire to an enemy that's currently hidden, or just to make a hole in a wall to save TU so your soldiers don't have to walk a long way to get to a door or something. I think they can also take out the doors on a UFO, which can make attacking it easier.

[Conductiv]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

I think the satchel charges are actually borderline overpowered, and I guess it's interesting that their use isn't intuitive to an inexperienced player.

They do damage to a target and can blow up the cover they are hiding behind, making them much easier to hit and finish off. They're also great for taking out a wall if you need to create line of fire to an enemy that's currently hidden, or just to make a hole in a wall to save TU so your soldiers don't have to walk a long way to get to a door or something. I think they can also take out the doors on a UFO, which can make attacking it easier.

if it still has the same stats as it did in the demo, and UFO doors havn't changed... it does not blow off UFO doors with a single charge.

when I wrote my feedback regarding grenades, all grenades save the basic frag where considdered good. (suppression was strong in the demo, smoke could be used as an ad-hoc stun grenade on top of its defensive ability and the satchel could destroy most battlefield cover and did fairly okay against alien armor.   while the satchels relatively low damage made sure you didn't end up destroying your loot)

because the demo had a very limited day count...and I read people getting close to half a year in the current beta's...I was wondering whether the support grenades got upgrades, much like the frag so they could actually keep up with the aliens rising stats. and "demolition satchels" not simply got replaced by a single primairy weapon shot to remove the same level ...or more...of cover or armor. 

[anarchy_79]

I think my biggest issue is that if I breach and clear, I am at the mercy of Alien overwatch soldiers shooting whoever enters first, but if I blow the cover they get a direct line of sight to me and shoot me multiple times. 

 

I even asked the chatAI what the proper procedure is for this type of situation in the police and armed forces, but didn't get much out of it.

 

Edit: Also, how do you capture a live alien? I've got one unconscious, but I'm sure it'll wake up and start firing again, I want to subdue and capture it but there are no zipties or anything. Much appreciated.

Edited June 8, 2023 by anarchy_79

[anarchy_79]

Ok here's what I've learned:

* If you do an alien unconscious, they stay unconscious and you capture them.

* Stun rifles are extremely effective.

* I spread out across the map in 3x3 fire teams.

* Grenades are super useful. 

* It gets really hard really quick.

[CaptBeefheart]

One thing to know is that you can get an alien down to less than 20 h.p. or so from frag grenades and kinetic shots, then hit it once with a stun baton and it goes unconscious. I usually give my shotgun toters a stun baton. I've never had an alien wake up before the mission is over.

Also, I tend to set up snipers a ways out from the UFO front door, then have a close in soldier open the door from the side. The snipers get off a few shots and the aliens usually miss the snipers since they are far enough away. Then if I don't feel good about entering the UFO, I'll have a soldier on the side toss a smoke grenade in front of the door and then everyone waits for the next turn. An alien may pop out through the door and the smoke during the alien turn, in which case there should be a few overwatchers on the side demonstrating how that's a fatal mistake. Rinse and repeat until you are comfortable entering the ship. One thing to know is the LMG carriers are dangerous at this point since they can easily spray your own people near the door (best case they'll rob them of TUs instead of HPs). I usually put a pistol in their hand and put the LMG in the rucksack for the UFO entry phase.

I suppose once this is officially released some of the intrepid gamers will come out with user guides. Guidance on when to establish a second base, where to put bases, what to research, etc., will be useful for those who don't want to play too many iterations before getting the hang of it.

Cheers,
CB