The Official XCOM Thread

[MrWookie47]

Dang, Blarg. That's a whole lot of work. I disagree with some things, though, and I have some to add. There are some spoilers in this, though, with regard to some stuff in the tech tree. If you want to discover it all for yourself, I'll try and keep most of the tech spoiler stuff to the end.

First of all, money. According to the last time I did a calculation, the laser cannon, not the laser pistol, was the most profitable thing to manufacture. It's a little slower to produce, but the profit margin is huge. It's possible that the laser pistol is fast enough to make up for the difference, but I'd have to double check my math. As for selling your spoils,

Research: I like to get a team of 100 scientists up and rolling ASAP. It'll usually be by the second month. This will also necessitate the production of a second lab and 2-3 more living quarters. You'll also need a second workshop and an expanded team of engineers (30-50) to eventually produce some of the larger pieces of equipment, but that's not as high a priority. Your first priority should be getting your men laser rifles. Bullets just aren't going to cut it. Your second priority should be getting them some basic armor. (Spoiler: <font color="white">Start w/ alien alloys </font> ). When you go to get them plasma weapons (probably next), the thing is that, unlike lasers, you don't need to research the pistol to unlock the rifle, etc. You can jump straight to the heavy plasma. Getting the heavy plasma, however, will unlock the plasma cannon, which is the perfect weapon for your craft. Its range is longer than that of any UFO except for the battleship (Very Large), and, the most beautiful thing, it doesn't require anything to reload it. No elirium. No money. Nothing. Getting it on your ships is a beautiful thing.

With regards to taking aliens alive, I think you only ever need one containment facility. I was never aware that my first one could be filled up. Maybe blarg is more active in capturing them alive than I am (or is more lax at researching them when they come in), but one is plenty for me.

Weaponry: I don't know why Blarg said so much about smoke. In my experience, it's virtually irrelevant. If a soldier stands in smoke from the aftermath of a rocket blast, he inhales at one point per turn. If he inhales smoke equal to his health, he passes out. Health bars are typically 30+. If you have a guy standing around in the smoke for 30 straight turns, you're doing something horribly wrong. With that in mind, the rocket launcher (and tank rocket launcher) should be oft-used staples well into the game. When in doubt, blast it out. Blarg mentioned the risk of blowing up stairs. Sure, you may not want to blow them up. However, aliens (save Sectoids, in my experience) are seldom found upstairs). In the rare event that they are upstairs, it only takes a second rocket to blast the floor out from under them and/or kill them. Blow the hell out of the terrain. It's often better to blast a hole in a wall than it is to walk in the door. The hole will be there next turn for you to go in, and a big hole will allow your whole team to see and kill the baddies, not just the poor rookie you sent in first. With regards to explosives on terror missions, here are your priorities.

1. Kill the aliens
2. Bring your men back home still breathing.
3. Civilians are not your men.

Blast the hell out of things, and don't be afraid to lose a few civies. It's easier to make up for the point loss than it is to make up for a killed veteran. Oh, gas stations blow up really well. Another point about taking out walls: Sometimes you have one soldier spot an alien on one side of a wall, but he's the only one who can get onto that side to shoot, and he's already fired, missed, and used up his time. You can have another guy spray autofire at the wall in line w/ the alien to hopefully take out the wall and the alien in one burst, but if not, you'll probably have a clean shot the second time.

Oh, I disagree with Blarg in that I love tanks. Tanks are huge. They lead the charge, they can take a lot more punishment than the average soldier, and they're expendable. They're not like a veteran who takes time to build up. One tank is as good as the next, so if it dies, it's sad, but it's not that bad. For a lot of missions, having too many guys along is unnecessary, and makes you overly succeptible to well-placed explosives. I try to never leave home w/o one, unless I'm taking on a battleship or other large UFO, where having a lot of guys is key, and tanks can't always get in.

I don't love lasers as much as Blarg does. They just don't pack as much of a punch. Not needing ammo is nice, but the only ammo problems I have is heavy plasma ammo early when not every alien is using it. Heavy plasma is my standard arm once ammo becomes plentiful, although given Blarg's claims about the superior accuracy of the rifle, I may go experiment. Of course, my most recent foray has been on the 4th difficulty level, where it sometimes takes 2 bolts of heavy plasma to take down even some early aliens. If you're taking down the baddies with one laser shot on an easier setting, then going laser is great. I really prefer taking down the baddies in 1-2 shots if possible. I seldom bother to give my guys a laser pistol. It's rare that I don't have enough time to fire a shot with my main gun, but I do have enough time to whip out a pistol and light one off.

I don't know why Blarg was talking about picking up artifacts as you go. You pick up everything that was lying around automatically at the end, anyway. If you need ammo, sure, grab the alien's gun, but don't pick it up if you can't use it. It's a waste of time.

Base placement:

Countries give you money. Not oceans. Not the arctic. Thus, your goal is to protect countries, not water or ice. I like to put my first base in Mongolia to maximize the amount of land area I cover. A large radar system will cover almost all of France from here, and you'll get to Japan, too. Everything you cover is giving you money. I like to put my second in the US. The US just gives you too much money to lose, so protect it. This also applies to terror missions. If you're unlucky enough to have two simultaneous terror missions, go to the one in the richer country first. Spoiler: <font color="white">Also, once you capture an alien navigator, you get to build an upgraded radar system that detects all UFO's in a huge area. Build this, and remove your other radar systems. A base with this in the US and then in mongolia will almost have overlapping fields of coverage. Even small ufo's have a navigator, which is almost always the alien deepest inside. Take one alive and profit.</font>

Psi attacks: Aliens can't access your soldier's backpack if they take him over. You can safely give him a rocket launcher if he's prone to this, as long as you keep it unloaded. If it's only loaded immediately before he fires, he's no danger to your squad. This is even safer than a laser pistol.

Battleships: These very large UFO's are tough. Don't send an interceptor after one. It'll be shot down with a single shot. It's range is longer than your plasma beams. The minimum you can use to shoot down one is a firstorm and an avenger each with dual plasma beams. The firestorm will sustain heavy damage, though, and will be out of commission for a while. The avenger will be damaged, too. As an alternative, you can just follow these things around with your skyranger/avenger until they land and take them on in tact. However, all the aliens will be alive, and there are a LOT of aliens inside. And they are armed to the teeth, including nasty explosives. OTOH, attacking UFO's that have landed is one of the best ways to obtain elerium. You get elerium from the power cores, 50 units per. If you shoot the ufo down and the core blows up, it's nice that it kills some aliens, but you don't get any of this vital resource. All but the very small ufo's have at least one core, though, so you can use this trick with any UFO.

Last word on base defense: Any base defense except fusion ball defense is totally useless, and you need at least 4 of them to do any good. You also want the grav shield and mind shield to help you out here. When your base is attacked, it's done by a battleship. You may have seen how hard it is to shoot them down. One shot from missle defenses is absolutely nothing. You need 3-4 hits from fusion balls. Since a grav shield doubles your output, 4 launchers and a grav shield is a good defense. It's better to not be detected, though, so a mind shield is critical.

[astroglide]

i never played it, but it is shocking that a game so heralded has yet to be re-released with a new engine

fwiw there is a game boy advance game that was put out recently by people that were related to the original x-com, and the game is supposed to be similar. it only got okay ratings though, not great.

[MrWookie47]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I never even bothered researching the laser weapons...I would pump out medkits for income and throw all my scientists on the plasma weapons

[/ QUOTE ]

minispoiler in white

<font color="white">I bet those sectopods were a pain in the ass, huh?</font>

[/ QUOTE ]

Response in white:

<font color="white"> Those buggers are a bitch no matter what. According to the last calculations I did (a while ago), laser rifles do almost the exact same amount of damage to them as heavy plasma. The firepower deficit of lasers compared to plasma is too big for the succeptibility of those guys to lasers to make up. </font>

[Blarg]

Pretty much all the follow-ups got that reaction. They never were able to recapture the magic.

It's true that it's surprising there has been no good follow up to such a hugely loved game. I think one of the big problems is they always try to add something extra that just takes things away. And the subsequent monster designs have usually been very uninspiring, too. Some of the ones in later attempts have looked like scoops of mashed potatoes.

[astroglide]

yeah i wonder why they haven't done JUST a new engine, and release the same exact game. it sounds like it would be a great fit for a game boy game.

[MrWookie47]

Oh, and on squad selection. Just insta-sack anyone who has a firing accuracy less than 55. If they can't kill aliens, they don't even get an opportunity to improve their stats (you have to get kills to improve), and you can't kill what you can't hit. I guess you can give them grenades, but you're better off just cycling through a few guys to get good ones rather that trying to build up crappy troops. The only other stats that really matter are reactions and strength. Killing the aliens during their turn is huge, and it's often great to leave your guys with enough time to light off a snap shot during the alien turn. Strength - don't give the scrawny guy the rocket launcher. Easy. Time units are good, but they improve rapidly. Throwing accuracy isn't all that important, since you don't have to hit the aliens on the head with grenades. Health isn't all that big, either, because if your guys get shot, they're probably just dead. I've had stamina come into play exactly once in all of my playing experience. If bravery is coming into play, you're probably already [censored] because you've lost half your squad. Oh, wait, there is another stat that matters. Psi strength is huge later, and you can't improve it. You can increase skill, but in everything psi, strength is more important in the equation than skill. Unfortunately, it takes a month to figure out how much strength a new guy has. Oh well.

[Blarg]

Couple quick follow ups re your response, and different points of view.

Laser ammo doesn't run out like plasma does, and doesn't cost like plasma does. It's also less of a danger in a psi-weak soldier's hands. It also fires extremely quickly, so much so that a soldier with nothing in his hands can get a laser pistol in his hands and fire it within the same turn. Firing first is pretty huge. It's also a cheap way to blast down walls/haystacks without wasting ammo. And it can get an alien almost killed but not quite, so you can capture it live easier. Finally, if you have to throw it away to pick up a more sellable plasma or other item from the aliens, it's not that big a deal and you've come out with a profit.

Picking up things on the run is how you replenish ammo and sometimes get your guys weapons they haven't got. Picking stuff up is good!

As to the artic not being a good spot, it overlaps a ton of wealthy areas(Europe and North America) and so can hit aliens in either. It is a pretty good place, but of course doesn't provide funding.

Giving a guy an unloaded rocket launcher means he probably won't get the rocket in in time to do anything aimed. That doesn't sound like a good solution. Giving a psi-weak guy a rocket launcher is just asking for trouble.

I'm also not as keen on blasting stuff or ignoring civilians. You can pay a high price for dead civilians, and blasting everything means you can lose vital weapons, and live aliens, you could have recovered.

I'll confirm that you can need more than one alien containment device. If you get back to the base without capacity for an additional live alien, the game will kill it. It doesn't come up that often, and so it's questionable whether money should be spent on a second one, but it's a pretty big loss when you lose a live alien, especially one of the rarer ones. It can push your research back quite a way.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
yeah i wonder why they haven't done JUST a new engine, and release the same exact game. it sounds like it would be a great fit for a game boy game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wonder that too, and so do lots of fans. Instead we always get improvements, like turning it into a flight sim or something.

[Blarg]

Wookie, you don't need kills to get accuracy increases.

[bobman0330]

I think I disagree with pretty much everything you have to say here.

Blarg's point about smoke (I assume), is that it's super useful for concealment. If your landing zone ends up being an open field surrounded by aliens with cover, you can lose half your squad just getting out of the plane (unless you do something lame like reloading a bunch). You need to keep in mind that the aliens always see as far or farther than you (especially at night), and cover your movements with smoke.

Tanks are sweet. Their weapons aren't that hot (particularly the rocket tank) compared to what soldiers carry, but they're invaluable as scouts, and for not dying after one shot.

Ditto on blowing the hell out of the terrain. Ironically, I usually find this most necessary on farmland maps where there's no cover to approach aliens camped in buildings.

Base placement: Ugh. Put it in Europe where all the countries are. Russia can't even be infiltrated.