True, but it also means that if she does get controlled or panics, she's guaranteed to murder a teammate or two.
I had a game where one of my starting team members ended up as a Sniper. He never got hit, so he lead every mission. He was a rock. I swapped him out for the final mission because he had a raw 70's Will, which I thought was too low. It was only afterwards that I realized there's an achievement for someone going on every mission. Yeah, things are not likely to line up like that again soon.
Is the optimal strategy on any mission without a time limit to get your snipers in cover, put everyone on overwatch, advance a few turns to see if any alien patrols get close, creep forward a tiny bit, and do the same thing? Or since you start out on the middle of a side do you generally want to go for a corner to start so that you can minimize multiple patrols entering your area at once?
The main thing to keep in mind is not advancing someone into new territory unless everyone else has full movement available to react. Since the aliens get a free move upon sighting, but can't fire until you end the turn, you want to take full advantage of your first turn of attack. When moving someone into new territory, advance them into cover and only at one move so they can get back out if it looks bad.
Yeah, I do that, but in two straight missions, a second group would patrol in on their turn right after I spotted the first group. And then with an unfortunate missed shot or two I'd be fighting 4 to 6 aliens and taking heavy casualties.
Don't forget you can beat a tactical retreat. :) All six guys are unlikely to chase you back to your new location, and if they do, they may well walk into a storm of overwatch. Regarding classes, at least on Classic, I found that heavies are strongest in the early game, while snipers rule the late game. Early on, when your soldiers are lousy shots, being able to land a near-guaranteed kill on multiple aliens is a lifesaver. By the midgame, rockets will only weaken aliens, but once you unlock archangel armour, an experienced sniper hovering behind the squad will be able to consistently 100% entire alien armies. :)
Unless I wanted to abandon the mission I actually couldn't. I got swarmed within 30 feet of the skyranger. Maybe this is rare and I got unlucky twice in a row.
I've been playing around with different team configurations and while snipers are great late game, I found out that once you upgrade to the blaster launcher, heavies become significantly stronger. If you are packing 2 heavies with blaster launcher and danger zone (enhanced rocket size), you can take out any pack of enemies of Muton elite strength or below. The only enemies you cannot take out in this manner are the muton berzerker and ethereals. With the blaster launcher upgrade, your rockets now do 9 damage so 2 rockets will deal 18 damage, or 36 to mechanical enemies such as sectopods. This is a significant tactical advantage in enemy engagements and offers a different way of playing the game. If you also picked mayhem (1 extra rocket) you can do this twice per mission. I find this team configuration interesting to play with along with the dual sniper configuration as they are strong in situations where the dual sniper option is weak and vice versa.
There was a patch released yesterday but I cannot find a changelog anywhere. Apparently the update addresses the "teleportation" bug, but does anybody know what else it does?
This is the first thing I think of, every time there's news around this game. I have a feeling we're not alone there.
Hi guys! LTTP and I haven't read this whole thread. So call me a dumbass if you've all talked this over to death. I'm on my first playthrough, and I've got my first alien base mission. I've left it for awhile simply because I couldn't make the skeleton key to get in. Now I have, and I tried it once and chrysallids basically ate me for lunch. I've got some laser weapons, but don't have enough resources to make the laser shotguns yet, and I've only got two sets of the better armor. I've researched to get the chitin plating but I don't have the stuff to produce it yet. I think I've got to leave off trying the alien base until I have better stuff, but I'm afraid that by leaving it there I'm going to start losing countries and funding and go into an economic death spiral. So what's a commander to do? Secondly, I've got two satellites up, on in Europe and one in China. I got a request to put one in Argentina but it told me I had to build a second uplink in my base, so I built it, but the time ran out on the request. So now when I got to "Launch Satellite" it tells me I don't have any satellites, but I can't find where to build them. Can someone tell a dumb guy how to build and launch a satellite?
In the workshop. It might behoove you to start over and build an uplink or two from the start. I'm no XCOM XPERT, and I'm sure the real badasses were able to go straight through on their first blind playthrough, but I found it extremely helpful to get a little ways in, get a handle on just how crucial satellites are to money and in limiting alien incursions, learn what to expect as far as the scripted events like the first terror mission, and then start over with my new knowledge.
More specifically, they are under the aircraft tab IIRC, which can be counterintuitive. A satellite takes 21 days to build, so unless you have one in reserve it's difficult to meet a request for satellite in time. It's hard to say what you need to go after the alien base, because what is in the alien base gets harder as time goes on. So it depends on where you are in the story. (Also on what difficulty you're playing, but I assume Normal.) At the time the base first pops up, you can usually do it with lasers and the first armor upgrade, if you are careful about your tactics (particularly in terms of not revealing aliens later in your turn). There shouldn't be that many Chrysalids, and once you have a sense of how they work they are not that hard to kill due to their melee-only attack and lack of tactical intelligence (i.e. they will use both moves to reach you even though it means they have to end their turn next to you without attacking, making them easy prey).
Also your skills make a big difference, having one or two assaults with the auto-opportunity fire perk if a model gets within 4 tiles, and/or heavies that can fire an additional time if they don't have to move, etc, can all help a great deal.
The difficulty of the base mission is scaled to your progress in the game. If you go there early, you fight against sectoids and thin men. If you go there late, you get mutons and heavy floaters. The only thing that isn't scaled is the miniboss at the end, but that's what grenades/rockets are for.
Reldan had a really good quick rule of thumb for scheduling your satellite builds and uplinks, iirc, that integrate the timing to ensure you are doing the best you can with your resources for your monthly income. Hopefully the summon will draw him here in short order. But yeah, I wouldn't be shy about starting over. Being able to cleverly xp distribute across your team in those first few easy missions once you understand combat better *and* knowing the satellite timing makes it a far more accessible set of problems.
So yesterday while all you guys were giving me this good advice, I was playing. I did a few more missions, basically so everyone on a squad could have the armor upgrade and I could finally build laser shotguns. I went into the alien base this time and it was full of Thin Men and Floaters, with only three Chrysalids in the last room. The first time I tried it I had at least 4 Chrysalids in one room and 4 more in another. I lost one squaddie, an assault who gave her life to take out a Chrysalid while there was still one left. Cover doesn't really matter with those things, just distance, but if she hadn't taken that one down I would have lost two squaddies. I found where to make satellites! Actually things are going fine. I'm now being much more careful, and I'm on a UFO landing mission now with tons of Mutons, but I managed to stun one. Yay! Stunning aliens is always a "You've got to run right up to that thing and pray it works, and when it doesn't (too often), you better have enough other guys ready to take it down or the poor guy with the stunner is going to get his head ripped off." I've also now finally built the Foundry. I've upgraded medikits and scopes, but I don't see a place to build upgraded stuff. Are the ones I've already built now upgraded, or do I have to build new ones of those things?
All currently built items upgrade automatically, and building new ones will include the upgrade at the same price. Tragically, scopes still remain unimpressive for me past relatively early points in the game, but the upgraded medikit is amazingly handy.
Pro Tip:The less HPs he has left the higher the % you'll successfully stun the bad guy. Once they're down to 1 bar it's pretty much guaranteed stun. (The only time a crit hit is a bad thing is when you accidently kill the Commander you're trying to stun)
Yeah, it says 3 or less, but less is more. Also when it says 70% to hit, that doesn't mean 70% chance to stun, just to hit with the stunner. That why I walk an assault right up to him with a 95% chance or better to hit. My first Commander I didn't even bother. Kill that sumbitch and let the eggheads yell at me for a bit because I don't know what he can do. The problem with that is that I still don't know what he can do because he was dead so quickly.
/sarcasm Sorry, forgot to add that. My point is that the stunner stuns when it hits, so 70% chance to hit is 70% chance to stun.
Really, the scope remained good throughout the game for me. That 10% bump is helpful for everyone, but especially new replacements. And the additional crit chance is always nice too, with the upgrades.
Really? Because I was getting 95% to hit, I would shoot, then it would say "Alien is not stunned!" The animation looked like I hit him in the face. If I'm standing next to a Muton with all his hit bar, will it say 100% chance to hit? Or 0% chance to hit because even though I'm standing in the open next to the guy he has like 8 health so there's no chance of stunning him.
95% is not 100%! It should say 0% chance to hit (or it might say this enemy cannot be stunned, I forget actually, I haven't played in a long while). The to-hit is from the health, not the distance. Getting close doesn't change the value, the value is based on the health. Which is why the item is not a pistol. The range btw is 2 squares in-line to the target, and I think it's only one square if you're diagonal. Not sure about 2 squares out and 1 to the side.
Yeah, for rookies, they're always nice to have. It's been mentioned upthread, but the light plasma has an innate aim bonus which, when paired with a scope, can make your rookies a lot more useful in combat. Their damage potential won't be great, but at least they'll be able to hit something. I like giving scopes to heavies, too, because they have the worst base aim of any class. Some of the Second Wave options randomize stats and stat increases, which I like a lot better than the cookie cutter troopers in the standard game.
I really, really like SCOPEs on Heavies. Both the increased to-hit and the increased crit chance are super useful when gunning down aliens.
Did we ever determine if actually hitting things is what netted +XP for rookies? It's been so long I only recall believing that's how it might work, and it's why I tended to do as Raife suggests above: scope + plasma rifle, so red shirts would land a shot here and there for XP while my experienced soldiers did the heavy lifting. I may be way off on this, though.
There are other things that grant block XP, but killing things is definitely the way to go, especially if you can get them to deliver the killing blow on a more powerful alien.
For the AOE Psi Mind buff... is it 30 XP if you succesfully buff anyone, or 30 XP per squad member bufed?
I actually don't know, since I have quit every game long before psionics became a central feature in my arsenal. I don't see why it wouldn't be per action, but that does seem easily farmable.
Best thing to do is have a rookie throw a grenade into a pack of Chryssalids that have already taken a grenade hit.
