Drunky's gaming advice/tips because I'm drinking.

[svidangel]

*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.

Edited June 13, 2013 by svidangel

[svidangel]

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.

[svidangel]

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?

[Sathra]

All pretty good. All I've got to add is that you can rotate rooms before placing with the mousewheel.

And Caesans have the largest range of weapons in the game (they can use all alien weapon types).

EDIT: Alright, another thing to add. I think even if you try to hire more, but only pick less, it'll only take the cash for the number you select.

Early laser weapons: Scatter lasers cost 12 alloys, snipers cost 6 I think. Later tiers are double, and powered armour is 50 and 75 each.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Sathra

[svidangel]

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

[PerfectDeath]

I usually put about 1-2kg more weight than what they can carry if i'm training strength, I end up with CMD ranks with 75-85 strength.

One think to keep in mind is that if there is some close alien activity to your base you can send a condor out early on to see if it can spot it. One condor for interception and one for hunting and spotting those light scouts at the beginning.

When do you get terror missions, I've played a round for 3 months and had an alien base + base invasion after the 3rd month but not a single terror mission. =\

[svidangel]

You get them if you let the Medium ships with 2 escorts land, generally. If you shoot them down... no terror sites! And more cash from the alloys and reactors etc. I think there might be some sort of mission progression (scout for base, something something, base, profit?) since it took over a month of skipping all interceptions to get a base around mid-march. Or in both our cases it could just be down to random rolls.

On strength there's no need to go over. My guys were mostly around 90 str by the end of the first month by being just under red. I like my TUs.

[PerfectDeath]

I must have gotten lucky then since those terror groups were all flying by my one base!

I deal with these one of two ways:

- Use a foxtrot to fire 4 torps at the corvette, then run! Finish the excorts off whenever with condors.

- Use 2 condors to kill the fighters, then probably run, laser gattlings seem to only deal ~30% damage to corvettes each, finish the corvette off later. =P

Splitting my aircraft has been useful when my foxtrot was off shooting down something else or my condors were already out after engaging fighters or something. =\

[svidangel]

Aww, they already nerfed Sebillian herding.

[svidangel]

Ahmgad, THEY GIVE SHIELDS RIGHT OFF THE BAT? ahaahah, Super happy pistol time now. Game now at least 70% more faceroll even with Sebillian sight range change.

[Max_Caine]

Shields aren't super happy awesome good. Diagonal shots will pierce almost half the time atm (only a 65% chance of blocking diagonal shots).

[Jorboc]

You call that drunken gaming?! You left out the part where you spilled beer all over your nice keyboard, causing only the keys on the left side to stop working, and then you walk out to best-buy ten minutes before they close and buy some terrible p.o.s. that was in the discount bin which begins shorting out your usb hub. (Ah, and they wouldn't let me return it since I got it from the discount bin)

Oh, and something something... aliens something. Gotta stay on topic.

[svidangel]

At the moment I'm mostly using them straight on for Sebillian herding since i can't just hover out of sight anymore.

[Max_Caine]

Don't you find they break easy? I find a couple of shots and bam!

[svidangel]

They have 120 HP, so generally 3-4 shots from a pistol, or two from a rifle. I haven't gotten very far, so still working well in the first month for herding Sebs. Plus their accuracy is atrocious, so the shield only comes into play once in a while at just under max range.

Still trying to work out a way to make them run INTO my field of fire rather than sitting at the edge of theirs. They pretty much just run away though.

But yeah, I'm totally not running into their face with the shield shouting "I'M KING OF THE WORLD" or anything.

[Max_Caine]

Seeing as how Sebs are supposed to run towards the hermings, GJ has his work cut out.

[Sathra]

Could try increasing their recklessness stat. All the aliens of a particular rank have the same stats at the moment I think.