Video Game / The XCOM Files

The X-Com Files is a total conversion mod for OpenXcom, greatly inspired by Piratez, and utilising the same engine fork.

The story starts in mid-1990s, a few years before the UFO Enemy Unknown canon. X-Com is created by the same Council of Nations as an international paranormal investigation agency. With 5 scientists monitoring the news and 2 field agents travelling all over the world by public transport. Prepare to fight Obstructive Bureaucrats at every step.

The investigations would eventually conclude there is a common malicious force behind the monsters, zombies, UFOs and cults, and the organisation would be expanded to become the X-Com we know. Except that Cydonian aliens aren't the only threat. Far from it.

The mod is available for free here. You'll need the original files from UFO: Enemy Unknown. The development goes in "arcs" — more or less independent subplots that can be played through separately. As of version 0.9.2 (June of 2018) the author stated the game is 90% finished with 11 arcs winnable out of 17 planned (counting the main plot to defeat Martian base).

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The mod provides examples of the following:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Cyberweb hideouts. Wide enough to drive several X-COM vans. Judging from occasional large halls with pools and non-Cyberweb machinery, they are located in some kind of processing facilities.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: That was the case in X Com UFO Defense. With the new tilesets only half of them do. Now all deserts have either cactuses or Hellenistic ruins (as in TFTD). In addition, now all deserts have Bedouins. Regardless of the continent.
  • There are even the same cacti in Dimension X... Except they're purple.
  • Cactus-free tileset for non-American deserts was added in version 0.8.6.
• All Myths Are True: UFOEU was based off then-current ufology theories. X-Com Files adds more urban legends and conspiracy theories: chemtrails, cryptids (like snowman or chupacabra), crop circles, reptilians, men in black... In addition, we get a closer look at things only mentioned in passing, like alien abduction and cattle mutilation.
  • Ever heard of porcupines shooting their quills? Meet spineboar — a car-sized porcupine that can kill a civilian or a rookie with a single shot. And shrugs off buckshot.
  • Ghosts prove to be real.
  • There's some truth behind the legend of Nephilim. Some of them may still be alive.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: Surprisingly subverted. One of the members of the Council, the Cult of Eris, promotes anarchy, but only out of belief that universal self-determination of all human beings is the best way to better humanity. They also promote open distribution of knowledge and technology.
• Ancient Astronauts: One researchable topic is an ancient Assyrian text on gene splicing. Another topic is called "Ancient Aliens".
• Ancient Conspiracy: "Syndicate Testament" message implies that X-COM is being run by an agent of some secret organization that keeps the world in the dark. The author stated that some backers do know more than they reveal, but telling more would be a major spoiler for upcoming arcs.
  • Recent additions to the lore practically confirms this fact: the Council of Earth that formed the X-Com organisation consists of factions that are trying to influence the world in their own ways. Notable members include The Illuminati (literally) and the Majestic 12, a.k.a. The Brotherhood.
• Anti-Frustration Features: One of the key points of the OpenXcom remake (together with being cross-platform and moddable), and The X-COM Files takes full advantage of it.
  • Unlimited number of savegames, quick save, quick load, auto saves.
  • Selling the trophies immediately after the mission, before returning to the base.
  • Auto-selecting the same trophies for sale in subsequent missions.
  • Ufopedia references available from shop and inventory.
  • Soldier inventory can display key stats for the soldier and equipment.
  • Sorting and filtering objects in inventory, shops, workshop.
  • Tech tree viewer with optional spoilers.
  • Setting and memorizing soldier's inventory for subsequent missions.
  • Setting and memorizing soldiers order in the craft.
  • Viewing enemy information in battle: portrait, species/affiliation, weapons in hands. Used to show rank too.
  • Unconscious bodies are clearly marked to distinguish them from dead. The mark is different if the body has lethal wounds.
  • Better pathfinding algorithm. A player can view the plotted path before sending the agent.
  • Agents can run (spending more energy, but less time units) and strafe (losing less time units for turning and better reactions management).
  • For cheaters: text savegames editable by hand.
  • For hardcore players: "ironman" mode without manual saving; disabling save scumming by saving the random seed.
  • Once you get your second promotion to XCOM: Paranormal Security Agency, you can order Land Surveys, at the cost of $50,000 per unit. They take 7 days to arrive, and 5 man-hours in the workshop to unpack, but they give you a random assortment of corpses and items from things like monster hunts. This can greatly advance your research if you're having trouble encountering a certain enemy, or help your manufacturing if you need more of the energetic blood plasma.
  • The appropriate research, some of the more exotic weapons and devices made from creature parts can be purchased instead of requiring manufacturing.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Melee weapons range from Elerium-115 powered devices through combat knives and katanas to stone-age bone clubs. Makes sense in context.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Same as in the original games. High-ranking enemies have better weapons and stats. With a few exceptions — for example, EXALT Masters are slow and weak, since they effectively bought their positions. Don't assume the same thing about the EXALT CEO.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Given the massive amount of weapons available in the game, there's bound to be some that are not great.
  • Extremely heavy weapons are always incredibly powerful for when you unlock them, but their weight makes it all but impossible to use them without powered armor. Any weapon with a weight greater than 50 qualifies.
  • Stun Spears are your first dedicated stunning weapons^note The electric club is also a stunning weapon, but does inflict lethal damage, while the Stun Spear does not, but it's inaccurate, slow and requires two hands to use, in addition to taking up six inventory spots. The Stun Rod, available relatively quickly afterwards, is one-handed, fast, takes up 3 inventory spots and much more accurate while doing the same damage.
  • The Staff of Heart Grip. It's a psychic weapon that can "Crush Their Hearts!" Which sounds awesome until you realize that it's horribly inaccurate, has limited range (though it can go through walls) and it drains a lot of sanity with each use. As sanity takes a lot time to recover until you research and build the Sensorium, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.
  • Any of the "unique" interceptor craft, such as the Kitsune-106, the CF-105 Arrow, or the Starfighter, are generally better than any other craft you can get at the same time, but end up being too unique to be really useful. In addition, if they get shot down, you lose more points than losing a normal craft, and either you have to rebuild the craft again, or it's just gone forever.
    • The Kitsune-106 interceptor/transport craft. It can mount a missile weapon and a cannon, has better damage resistance than the Interceptor, and can bring up to 12 agents to a tactical mission. However, it's slow and has the horrible "landing ramp" egress that will likely result in a lot of your troops getting ambushed as they get off the ship.
    • The CF-105 Arrow is an extremely fast interceptor available when you first start detecting enemy craft, but it has a limited loadout of 1 light missile mount and 1 cannon mount, and more importantly, it cannot take a shot to save its life^note It has 22 health, and most enemy weapons do at least 15 points of damage. Alien UFO weapons do a minimum of 25 points of damage.
    • The Starfighter is a blindingly fast interceptor, able to catch up to all but the faster UFOs, and mounts two beam weapons at a time when you're still using missiles and cannons. It also runs on standard fuel (somehow), and is capable of space flight. And for all of that, it still can't take a hit, getting absolutely wrecked by anything stronger than a Supply Ship UFO. It will supplement your existing interceptors very well, but it will absolutely not replace them.
• Ax-Crazy / Mad Bomber: Some people who Go Mad from the Revelation end up like this — in "Homicidal Maniac/Soldier/Madman" mission. Some of them even carry an axe. You have to arrest or kill them. To a lesser extent applies to armed abduction victims.
• Badass Cape: Vampire Knights.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • X-COM leather coat. The first armor you research (second worst protection after business suit), but the best you can wear to undercover missions. Looks cool, at least.
  • Its more advanced counterpart, the bulletproof coat.
  • Red Dawn Coordinators. Best weapons, best stats, but not the best camouflage.
  • Syndicate CEO when in his human form.
  • Black Lotus Mandarins. Same as above. And their coats are purple.
  • Osiron Goons. Petty criminals want to look cool too.
  • Zombie Troopers. More of a joke. They lose their gun arms when wounded and become regular biting zombies, but in cool coats covered with green ichor.
  • Cyberweb members wear Badass Labcoats. Together with Sinister Goggles.
• Balance Buff: Sectoids went through several over the course of development. Earlier versions made psionic attacks much more frequent than in UFO. As of 0.9.1 the psionics seem to be back to normal, but now they have force field shields. Killing them now requires piercing the shield first on the same turn, since those partially regenerate. Still, not much of a problem, even with the starting Glock.
• Beach Episode: "Surf Time" missions. Agents posing as surfers have to neutralize Osiron smugglers operating at a beach resort. Agents can only wear swimming trunks and carry melee weapons and dart guns. And surfboards, which make decent stun weapons. The penalty for skipping the mission is low, but retreat is not an option, once you start it.
• The Beastmaster:
  • You can use dogs, and so can some of your enemies. You can also tame any Shadowbats or Giant Rats you capture, after a little research, and even breed the rats to get more.
  • There's some malicious force behind various strange animals that attack people all over the globe. Probably aliens, but The Syndicate is somehow involved.
  • If zombies count as beasts, M.A.G.M.A. experiments qualify.
  • "Beastmaster" rank of some aliens seems to imply their job is controlling living terror weapons like Cryssalids for Snakemen or Spitters for Anthropods. Otherwise beastmasters are like medics.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Earth is threatened from the outer space (Cydonia), from the oceans (T'Leth) and from the underground (Shogg). Not to mention all the criminals within the human society.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Giant Beetles. Appear from the start in monster hunt or monster attack missions. Some of them can spit explosive liquid. Eliminated when the arc is resolved.
  • Megascorpion. Same as above, sans exploding.
  • Giant Spiders. Same as above, but prove to have an underground civilization.
  • Swarmids. Look like a swarm of large bees, but prove far more alien. Appear in Dimension X missions.
  • Megaworms. Another Dimension X life form.
  • Waspites. Insectoid Aliens and Cyborgs.
  • Antmen. Bee People that live Beneath the Earth.
  • Lobstermen. Unlike TFTD there also exist feral ones that only fight with pincers.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Besides werebeasts at least 2 upright-walking monsters qualify. Mongorns are giant apes and shamblers are white giant sloths. Both attack humans aggressively.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Beside the established aliens from UFO, TFTD and Apocalypse and fairly mundane Chtonites there are:
  • Cerebreals, who are just psionic brains with tentacles.
  • Waspites, who beat Floaters at body modification. Original head plus life support system, plus mechanical arms, plus a bioengineered symbiotic plant.
  • Zombies, who get progressively weirder with every step of evolution.
  • "Abominations" that seem so bizzare, they shouldn't live. Possibly inspired by The Thing.
  • Metamorphs, which are directly inspired by The Thing.
• Black Comedy: Less than in Piratez, but still occasionally appears in Ufopaedia entries. Mainly as "Staff Input".
  Wha... what do you mean by 'the interrogation', Commander? I-I wasn't interrogating a thing!
  It's true! I swear I wasn't spending time with the Chief Medic, and she totally didn't leave a lit cigarette on the desk, and I assure you there was no unauthorized, inflammable stuff in my office. So as you can see, there's no way a prisoner burned alive while we were... busy! See, see what I mean?
• Black Market: Where alien technology is sold. Also some weapons can be bought from your enemies' suppliers, if you can't purchase them legally.
• Boring, but Practical: There's a lot of weapons and tactics in the game that are not guaranteed to work, but are guaranteed to work most of the time.
  • Once you actually get it, the BlackOps SmartRifle is one of the best ballistic weapons in the game. It has good damage, which only gets better once you get Tritanium ammunition, excellent weight for the class, a 50-round magazine, an inherent accuracy bonus from the smart technology, and a five-round autofire. Every single other ballistic weapon is either strictly worse, or has a specific purpose^note Shotguns are better at close range and against unarmored enemies; MAGMA Pulse Weapons are better against shielded but unarmored enemies but have lower range, ammunition and accuracy; explosives are dangerous; heavy weapons are impractically heavy but occasionally necessary. It can take a while to get the contacts needed to be able to purchase the weapon, but there's almost no reason to bother with anything else until you're able to reliably^note as in, with laser weapons you make rather than ones you scavenge replace it with laser weapons or magnetic/Gauss weapons.
  • The humble Interceptor can only be armed with a light missile weapon and a cannon, but that's all it needs to take down most small UFOs, especially when armed with either a Tritanium Cannon or a Mass Driver Cannon. It also doesn't require any special materials to make, which is a godsend when you're constantly scrabbling for Alien Alloys and Tritanium for your many projects.
  • XCOM Interceptor Armor is easily purchased once unlocked, and represents the best armor you can buy, full stop. It doesn't do well against exotic weaponry like lasers and plasma, but it has a hefty bonus against kinetic rounds and is the first armor you get that has built-in night vision, negating one of the most dangerous aspects of night missions (limited vision).
  • The Baretta pistol at the beginning of the game is just as powerful as any other pistol, but has the advantage of requiring the same (low) amount of time units for both a snap shot and an aimed shot, meaning there's no reason to ever use the snap shot. It lacks burst fire, but is nonetheless a very capable early game weapon.
  • Knockout Grenades are slow to manufacture and cumbersome to use, requiring that you prime and then throw the grenade, which will likely take most of your turn. But with every non-alien enemy in the game taking 400% damage from choke sources, and the Knockout Grenade doing 80 points of choke damage, even a low damage roll^note Grenades can do a minimum of 50% damage, which means that a low roll is 40 points of choke damage, which increases to 160 points of choke damage from targets that are weak to it will knock out your opponents for a long time. Until enemies start resisting choke damage, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better way of dealing with your enemies.
  • The Taser Pistol: it's available at the beginning of the game, it has a range of 5 tiles maximum, it only holds 2 rounds, and it's inaccurate as all hell. It's also capable of doing significant electric damage that is not lethal, and it's your only ranged capture weapon until you get Knockout Grenades. It's still useful even when you have the KO Grenades, because enemies that resist choke damage are usually still vulnerable to electric damage. It even gets an upgrade in the form of Bioelectric Taser Clips, which do significantly more stun damage and increase the ammunition capacity by 50% (to 3). There's rarely a situation in which you won't want to stuff your transport craft with Taser Pistols.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Subverted for laser weapons — otherwise similar to UFOEU, they now have finite magazines, albeit large.
  • Subverted for Cyberweb prototypes. Their batteries pump energy from another dimension, like disruptors in Apocalypse, but not for long.
  • Played straight for new line of antimatter-powered turbolaser weapons. They are stated to be limited, but very large.
  • Craft ray cannons didn't change — large number of shots, restored at the base, no ammo required.
• Bound and Gagged: Victims captured by Deep Ones to be sacrificed to the dark gods of the depths.
• Brain in a Jar:
  • Jarhead cyborg.
  • Cerebreal larva for a broader definition of "jar".
  • Waspites are living heads on artificial bodies.
• Breast Plate: Female tomb guardians wear those.
• Breather Episode: "Crop Circles", "Cattle Mutilation" and "Alien Abduction" missions. Many players use them to train rookies — capturing an unarmed farmer can give as much experience and score as killing an Ethereal. Occasionally subverted, when you are ambushed by zombies or Men in Black. You are warned of the ambush only by the briefing after landing.
  • There's also the inherent danger of the turn limit: these missions have a maximum duration of 10 turns. In the earlier versions of the mod, after 10 turns, the mission ended and everyone and everything on the mission was lost. Later versions replaced that with arrival of a large wave of Men in Black forces on turn 10. And if you cannot handle them or leave you will face another, harder wave at turn 13. Rookies tend to have far less Time Units than veterans, and the maps aren't all that small. Be quick.
• Briefcase Full of Money: Part of the loot in some missions. Worth $100 000 each. There are also money bags worth $500 000. And later a scaled-down version "wad of cash" was added (worth $5000). Unfortunately, grabbing money and escaping is rarely an option, since reaching it usually requires neutralizing most enemies on the map.
• Character Exaggeration: Alien races reveal Hidden Depths.
  • Sectoids surrendered to Ethereals for the promise to perfect their genetic design.
  • Floaters almost killed their homeworld with pollution and only Ethereals' cybernetic enhancement saved them. Becoming a soldier race that feels few pleasures of flesh was a small price.
  • Snakemen were primitive hunters from an arid world, whom "gods" invited to join "great hunting among the stars". Most were born off-world, but the few who remember their homeworld miss it.
  • Mutons are Proud Warrior Race Guys telepathically linked to Ethereals. They see this connection as holy.
  • Ethereals have horrifying legends about super-powerful psionic aliens similar to The Great Race of Yith.
• Church Militant: Church of Dagon and Black Lotus. Probably Cult of Apocalypse too, but this arc isn't finished yet. EXALT and Red Dawn are also called "cults", but seem to have nothing religious about them.
• Clown-Car Base: Some cult outposts are defended by a disproportionately large number of cultists, especially on higher difficulties.
• Commonplace Rare: Despite the name, Alien Electronics don't appear on every UFO or underground base. To get some, the player needs to disassemble certain dead enemies: Cyberdisk, Cybermite, Obliterator.
• Crossover: The game mixes elements from the original trilogy as well as the official and unofficial remakes. All in 1990s. As well as some other stories:
  • UFOEU aliens with some additions: Sectoids, Chtonites, Floaters, Snakemen, Mutons and more — all ruled by Ethereals. Based on Mars. Kiryu-Kai — the Japanese alien-fighting force — is also mentioned.
  • TFTD aliens: Deep Ones (Gill Men brought closer to their roots), Aquatoids, Tasoths — all ruled by the thing that inspired Cthulhu Mythos. Based underwater.
  • Apocalypse elements:
    • Cyberweb. In the 20th century they are a loose band of Obliviously Evil Mad Scientists investigating alien technology.
    • Osiron. In the 20th century they are a criminal organisation dealing in alien technology.
    • Hybrid Network — what would become Mutant Alliance. Fully controlled by Sectoids.
    • Dimensional portals. Cyberweb is hiding them.
    • And of course the aliens — Megaworms, Oozes (Micronoid colonies), Spitters, Anthropods. The latter two are said to be artificial soldiers entirely under Cydonians' control.
  • EXALT. They do look like in Enemy Within, but also resemble Psyke of Apocalypse.
  • At least some of the events of Xenonauts did happen in the 1970s, and you can benefit from their data once you get the access.
  • Ditto The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but it doesn't give you much. Unless this is planned for an unfinished arc.
  • UNIT (as in Doctor Who) did exist in this universe in the middle of the 20th century. Later it got disbanded, with remnants ending up in the Bureau, then in Xenonauts, which were eventually disbanded too.
    • Cerebreals are totally not psionically-overpowered Daleks.
  • The Syndicate is at least called like one in The X-Files. Ditto Hybrids.
  • Mrrshan (as in Master of Orion) weapons appeared in version 0.6.8. Also, a special craft given to the player (Kitsune-106) is told to initially contain "...visual representations of humanoid forms with cat-like or bat-like ears.", which is another nod to the race.
  • Then the authour jokingly mentioned that only the Governor of the Solar System (as in Piratez) protects us from Sakkras, another MoO race.
  • Muckstar monsters are from UFO After Blank.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The author once stated that he plans to make all enemies' ranks visible. As of version 0.6.7:
  • Sectoid commanders wear a golden circlet on their heads.
  • Floaters wear capes of different colours:
    • deep orange for soldiers;
    • dark blue for commanders;
    • green for engineers;
    • red for leaders;
    • grey for medics;
    • light blue for navigators.
  • Snakemen wear rucksacks of different colours:
    • light blue for soldiers;
    • red for commanders;
    • green for engineers;
    • grey for leaders;
    • black for beasmasters (medic equivalent);
    • dark blue for navigators.
  • Low-ranking Ethereals wear orange robes, members of their Order wear white (with the Grand Matsters sporting a red banner on the front), Keepers wear green, and the dreaded Eliminators wear black. Servitors wear red, but it's unclear if they should even be considered to be living things.
  • Mutons wear differently-coloured jumpsuits and different headgear. Yes, there are red mutons in this game, the commanders.
  • Syndicate security have green visors, security captains have red visors.
• Darkened Building Shootout: Every night or underground mission. Except that many enemies see in the dark better than you. Notably, this game makes nights much darker and vision range much shorter than OpenXcom default. Unfortunately, sound clues aren't implemented even on par with Apocalypse.
  • There is an option in OpenXCOM to turn on night vision by pushing the Scroll Lock button, which makes everything (including your agents vision radii) much easier to see. But whatever you do, do NOT push it while you're in Dimension X.
• Delinquent Hair: Agents' hair styles vary greatly. Some of them obviously won't be welcome in any military or police force, but Ragtag Bunch of Misfits called X-Com can't be picky.
• Defeat Means Friendship: If you capture an enemy dog alive, it's added to your animal pen as a soldier. You can also capture and befriend rats and bats.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Kyberization. The ability to turn a soldier into a cyborg that retains most of their skills (at the cost of sanity) is already pretty awesome. However, if you invest in research and manufacturing, you can give Kyberized soldiers additional implants that make them extremely powerful, including eye implants for natural night vision and better accuracy, armor implants for natural damage resistance (on top of what they get for wearing armor!), and more. Kyberization is difficult specifically because every procedure, including implants, costs sanity, so a soldier needs to have a lot of it to survive the process.
• Do-Anything Soldier: As per X-Com tradition. Moreso, this game answers a long-standing fan question of who pilots the craft — same agents that fight ground battles. Which means that any VTOL interceptor doubles as a one-man troop transport — as long as you get missions a single agent can win.
• Doing Research: With the massively expanded tech tree (there's over *1000* things to research!), a great deal of the strategic layer is identifying what projects are worthwhile and getting enough scientists to investigate things in a timely fashion. It also plays with the formula at times, and deviates from the original game in significant aspects.
  • At the beginning of the game, you're "researching" things like kevlar body armor and van rentals. It's explicitly made clear that you're not researching how these things work, but rather putting your scientists on the task of dealing with the bureaucratic red tape that comes with getting access to these resources.
  • Advanced technologies are available quickly, with enemies showing up with lasers and plasma weapons as early as a year into the campaign. However, while you can use any of the tech^note as long as it's been developed by humans; alien tech is much more complicated, replicating it requires understanding the underlying principles, which is a whole separate projects, and in some cases a series of projects.
  • Alien technology is mind-bogglingly difficult to figure out. In the original game, laser weapons are one of the first projects you can complete. In XCOM Files, understanding laser weapons requires learning how to power them, which requires learning about Elerium batteries, which requires learning Alien Language, which requires a series of projects in and of itself. It's not enough to know that a weapon has a trigger and a power pack: you need to figure out how to talk to aliens in a language you can both understand, in order to figure out how to ask the questions you don't know to figure out the things you don't understand. To say that the process is involved is understating the problem.
• Don't Ask: "If some terminology you find in the entries of this Ufopedia does not mean anything to you, it means you do not need to have access to this knowledge yet."
• Early-Bird Cameo: Reapers are the terror weapon of Floaters, who normally appear by spring of 1999. But a monster hunt with Reaper(s) may appear as early as December 1997.
• Elaborate Underground Base: You build several, same as in the original games. Cydonian aliens occasionally build bases on Earth, which you have to capture, same as in the original. In addition, many of your enemies have similar bases, which serve as the final dungeons for their respective arcs. This includes Black Lotus, Red Dawn, post-cult Dagon, Syndicate. Zombie and Shogg cave dwellings also qualify. Ditto less elaborate Cyberweb sewer hideouts.
• Emergency Weapon: Good Old Fisticuffs became available since version 0.9.0. Civilians suddenly became quite capable of beating early enemies. Using ranged weapons as clubs is still impossible, unlike some other mods, with a notable exception of bayoneted SKS rifle.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: Ufopaedia. Also contains a lot of hints for new players, highlighting the differences from the original games.
• Enemy Civil War: Downplayed. Early on your research indicates you are fighting several groups of aliens, who seem non-hostile to each other, but pursue different goals. Later you find that The Bureau and UNIT won against an entirely different enemy and there may be yet another side that once helped humans.
• Everyone Is Armed: Civilians in terror and monster missions are not completely defenseless. More so for police. Even unarmed ones can use their fists. Hunters and warriors in "Strange Life Form" missions may kill a lone spineboar before you find it. 2018 changes to the engine AI made them more aggressive, and letting them pick up weapons from defeated enemies (or your agents). They still die en masse.
• Evil Minions: Syndicate scientists and office employees.
• Faceless Mooks: Considering the sprite size and resolution, there's not much face to see, but some cover even that. Plus, there are full-length portraits in the inventory screen.
  • Ethereals' faces are invisible under the overly large hoods.
  • EXALT infiltrators and goons wear some sort of black respirators.
  • Disciples of Dagon wear green KKK-like hoods. Chosen of Dagon dress like Ethereals, but green.
  • Black Lotus warriors and assassins dress like ninjas.
  • Tomb Guardians wear face-covering helmets.
  • Syndicate security wear face-covering helmets.
  • Muton Engineers wear protective visors.
  • Averted for X-COM agents. Unlike the original games, when agents wear armour, they hold helmets in their hands on the inventory screen, unless the outfit in question does not allow helmet removal.
• Fantastic Drug: Storm. Psiclone, although it's a device, not a substance. Both are also Psycho Serum.
  • You can develop your own, as well. They're generally not very good for you, damaging health to restore other stats, but can be useful in a pinch.
• Fish People: Deep Ones are the Gillmen from TFTD. "Carcharodons" are part-shark Half-Human Hybrids.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: After certain researches you get a report that X-COM is going to concentrate on important targets and would no longer react to minor events like sightings of individual members of a criminal organization, small safehouses and such. Similarly, when you finish the operation that ends an arc, you get a report that this threat has been neutralized. Yet you may still get several more missions against this enemy. The engine generates a set of missions at the start of each month, and they all happen regardless. The enemies may become weaker, though.
  • Later in the game, some organizations that you have successfully defeated will still spawn missions. For example, after defeating the Black Lotus, you will still occasionally get missions in which Black Lotus ninjas and their mechanical ninjas try to rob a bank, and XCOM is expected to stop them. In addition to providing a source of cash, these types of missions spawn to provide the player with access to certain limited resources, such as Ninja Scrolls, that are otherwise completely unavailable.
• Glamour: Bug-eyed grey-skinned Hybrids use "impersonatron" (combining holoprojector and psi waves emitter) to pass as humans. Their "infiltrators" are the real deal, though.
  • Later you use this technology to infiltrate and storm The Syndicate HQ.
• Gotta Catch Them All: A number of plot-advancing researches are unlocked by gathering and studying all objects in a certain category. For example, all "strange life forms", both living and dead. Later updates have made it so that you only need to research some of them, as the type of strange life form that can show up is still random.
• Green Rocks: Elerium-115 here is not only used to power alien machinery, but also a critical part of physiology of many creatures (the "energetic blood plasma" component). It can also be weaponized.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: The Ufopaedia picture for "Subculture: Luchadores" (zombie-eaters).
• Guide Dang It!:
  • "Asylum Apparitions" mission usually appears before you get weapons that can kill or stun ghosts reasonably quickly. But disabling all enemies is not necessary to win, if you pay attention to the briefing. You need to find and destroy the seal that summoned them, instead.
  • Speaking of, ghost missions can be extraordinarily frustrating, as all of your weapons are ineffective against them^note As with most things in XCOM, which is not strictly true: it is possible to shoot a ghost to death, but they only take about 10-15% damage from ballistic weapons and explosions, your main sources of damage when ghosts start becoming a problem. Until you realize that they have a crippling weakness to electricity, which turns things around. Ghosts take full damage from electricity, but they are actually weak against Psi weapons, which do a lot more damage to them. You just won't have any good Psi weapons for a long time, unless you're able to reverse-engineer some ghost weapons.
  • When you capture an UFO, you immediately get elerium. When you capture an USO, you need to process certain captured devices in a workshop to get zrbite.
• Gun Struggle: If the shooter stands next to the target and the target has time units left, he'll try to push the gun aside. The outcome depends on their respective melee skills, the gun used (pistols are harder to stop than a minigun) and random chance. If the shooter fails, he spends extra TUs turning in random direction and shoots there. Good news: your agents can defend themselves this way too, and after months of training their melee stat gets high enough to shoot most enemies point blank.
  • This can result in the absolutely ridiculous tactic of charging a heavy gun. Because heavy weapons tend to impede melee skill, if you shoot at an enemy and fail to take them down, the next best thing might actually be to just run up to them and stand next to them. Most of the time, the AI will try to fire instead of moving away first, and if you win the Gun Struggle, they'll miss entirely. It's a very dangerous tactic, but can save lives.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • "Hybrids" are of human and Sectoid origin. Most of them are covertly preparing the invasion. One of them runs EXALT.
  • Biblical Nephilim — offspring of humans and fallen angels, usually translated as "giants" or "fallen ones" — were an earlier experiment that used Ethereal rather than Sectoid DNA. Some of them may have survived the purge.
  • Werewolves and werecats are artificial creatures combining human and animal genes. They are bipedal, covered with fur, smart (but no longer sapient as of 0.9.3), carnivorous and can eat humans. Some can possess rudimentary Psychic Powers.
  • "Carcharodons" are part-human part-shark artificial soldiers.
• Hazmat Suit: By default, your agents don't have access to these, but don't actually need them. As threats are uncovered, however, Hazmat Suits become available, offering excellent protection against chemical, electrical, fire and choke (smoke) damage, but no protection at all against weapons like kinetic, laser or plasma damage, making them highly specialized. They're also the minimum requirement for an expedition to Dimension X, making those missions even more of a hassle due to the bulk of the suit^note Hazmat suits reduce maximum Time Units and Energy, as well as Reaction. There's an upgraded version known as the Bio-Exo Suit, which provides even better protection than the Hazmat Suit at the cost of needing to be be manufactured rather than purchased. However, it turns out that any self-contained suit can double as a Hazmat Suit, meaning that once you have access to Aqua Plastic Suits, you'll never need to use Hazmat Suits again.
• Humans Are Bastards: In the majority of arcs your enemies are humans working for aliens. Directly or indirectly.
• Immune to Bullets:
  • Swarmids — swarms of, well, some small and very alien things from the world of Spitters and Megaworms. Not exactly immune, but can't be realistically killed by Earth pistols or rifles. Fortunately, tasers and flares work fine.
  • Some big monsters have hides so thick, they are immune to small pistols and buckshot.
  • Ghosts require several dozens of bullets to kill. The Asylum Apparitions mission requires a different solution. Energy weapons being a ways away, it's important to remember that electricity is a type of energy.
  • Red Dawn enemies above the rank-and-file (Pioneers and up) are surprisingly resistant to bullets as a consequence of their genetic modification, taking only 70% damage from bullets. Fortunately, they don't have very high hit points. Coordinators, on the other hand, will mess you up. The best option for taking them down is copious amounts of fire.
  • EXALT high level enemies have the same resistance to bullets as Red Dawn, but lower armor.
  • The biggest advantage that Tritanium Vest (and later, Cyber Armor) provides is that the armor rating is higher than 200% of most normal ballistic weapons. As a result, unless an enemy gets really lucky, XCOM agents wearing such armor are immune to bullets. Of course, then the enemies will bring out lasers, plasma weapons, extremely powerful kinetic weapons, bio and chemical weapons, and psi weapons, which are much harder to defend against.
• Implacable Man: Syndicate Soldiers have exceedingly good armor, and when you fight them, your primary weapons will be kinetic, which they take reduced damage from (70%), meaning they can walk through a hail of fire with no or minimal damage and gun down your agents. The best option for taking them down is chemical weapons (if you have them), electrical weapons, stun weapons or fire (and to a lesser extent, grenades or explosives). Once you have a reliable source of usable energy weapons, they are much more manageable, taking 130% damage from those weapons. And then the Syndicate fields their Supersoldiers and Minotaurs, which are just as hard to hurt and have huge health pools.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: If your agents survive, and you manage to get them good weapons, hit chances in excess of 100% are not only possible, but likely, especially with advanced Smart weaponry or sniper rifles in aimed shot mode. The Arasaka 3000 is especially notable: it's decently powerful and has a very high snap shot accuracy, even at long ranges, making it very useful from about mid-1997 to late 1998 (when most enemies have high kinetic resistance). Unfortunately, higher level enemies also have exceptional aiming skill, and are usually armed with weapons that have high inherent accuracy as well, meaning your agents will get shot. Constantly.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Strix. With Hartman Hips and large Non-Mammal Mammaries (since they give "energetic blood plasma" and substances that control lesser zombies).
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • Prior to version 0.9.3, the Thunderstorm interceptor with tritanium cannon. The best fighter that needs no elerium. Enough speed to catch all UFO types, but two. Enough hit points, agility and firepower to fight battleships one-on-one and survive (more often than not). And best of all, you can get it before 1999. Still, it cannot help against infiltrations^note According to developers' notes, the country is successfully infiltrated the moment the second battleship arrives, shooting down earlier UFOs only delays the inevitable. or enemies that don't use flying craft. Version 0.9.3 nerfed it by replacing the cannon mount with a second heavy missile mount, making the Thunderstorm much more specialized.
  • A Raven interceptor with a Tritanium Cannon and a Mass Driver Cannon. The Raven is very fast, reasonably durable, and has an excellent range, letting it go halfway around the world with little trouble while still using normal fuel. The Tritanium Cannon can shoot down any Small UFO due to damage and accuracy, and the Mass Driver Cannon can shoot down Medium and a few less tanky Large UFOs. It will struggle mightily against anything that outranges it, but given the constant spawning of Small UFOs, the Raven will likely be your main interceptor for a significant portion of your aerial battles.
  • The Skymarshall transport craft: an upgrade of the Skyranger, it can hold two more agents, and avoids some of the very serious drawbacks of the Skyranger. The Skymarshall "sits" on the ground in combat missions, meaning that there's no exit ramp to descend at the beginning of the mission, and the "tail" provides some cover against being immediately shot by ambushing enemies. It also has two "front" exit doors in case the rear exit is too dangerous, or just for getting people at the front of the loading bay into combat. It's slightly faster than the Skyranger and only costs a pittance more Alien Alloy to manufacture. There's absolutely no reason to ever bother with the Skyranger if you can rush the Skymarshall (which becomes available for research immediately after the Skyranger project is completed). It does, however, require quite a bit more manufacturing time than the Skyranger.
  • Smart Rifles loaded with Tritanium rounds. An extremely accurate weapon with excellent aimed shot range, good snap shot accuracy, and a five round auto shot (that's also reasonably accurate) while also sporting a 50 round magazine. Loaded with regular ammunition, it's good. With Tritanium rounds, it will punch through the armor of almost anything terrestrial ( Syndicate Supersoldiers and Minotaurs, as well as higher-ranking MiB soldiers will resist it more often than not), and aliens, who generally don't use armor, will be torn apart by the auto shot dispersing their energy shields. It will struggle against heavily armored enemies and is completely worthless against vehicles, but for the weight and cost, there's nothing better until you get post-ballistic weapons.
• Infinity +1 Sword: An actual sword, even: the Ancient Katana. It does 50 cutting damage (already difficult for most enemies to resist), and it adds 30% of the user's psi strength, and 70% of the user's melee skill to damage, on top of an exceptionally high accuracy (base of 100%). Agents can have up to 100 psi strength, and up to 150 melee accuracy^note realistically, they'll top out at 120, which means putting the sword in the right hands can do upwards of 185 damage in a single strike, which is enough to bypass any armor in the game. The disadvantage of having to get close to the target is massively offset by the sheer damage output of one 12-time-unit, 100% accurate attack. It also works underwater, and in space, and even in the Dreamscape! Getting it does, however, requiring defeating Lo Wo, which is incredibly dangerous.
• Instant Sedation: Dart pistols and rifles, gas grenades. Targets suffer no ill effects.
• Jumped at the Call: Most (if not all) of X-Com staff, but most prominently Chief Engineer. Though in his own words, he's in it solely for the gadgets.
• Kill It with Fire: Represented by flare pistols, flamethrowers and incendiary grenades. Like Reapers in the original UFO, many monsters are vulnerable to fire. Some enemies, like swarmids, are near-immune to everything else.
  • The ultimate solution to the monster problem is a chemical that makes them ignite spontaneously.
  • On an unrelated note, since version 0.9.1 good old alien plasma weapons started to set everything on fire. Fortunately, you can buy fire extinguishers from the start.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Men in Black use it on their agents. The interrogated captives don't tell much.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The UAC Stapler. It's a, well, stapler, that has a truly pathetic range of 4 tiles, and does zero damage beyond that. However, it's surprisingly accurate within those 4 tiles, very fast to fire in aimed shot mode, and does cutting damage, which most enemies in the game do not resist. It doesn't do a lot of cutting damage (10 points, with a bonus of 10% of the firing unit's Bravery for being stupid enough to use it), but it's a ranged weapon that can output a surprising amount of unresisted damage if you can get close enough to use it. Once you get Tritanium melee weapons, it becomes useless, but it does have its niche.
  • The Noose. It's a melee weapon with a terrible hit chance, but it does choke damage. The only things that resist choke damage don't breathe, and everything else is incredibly vulnerable to it (humans take 400%' damage from choke sources). Using one is a terrible idea, of course...unless...
• Left Hanging: The game is still being updated, but not all plotlines are necessarily resolved (by design).
  • Defeating Cyberweb involves taking control of their battleship in Dimension X. It's mentioned that there's an entire alien civilization there that has proven hostile to humanity, but the final mission briefing decides that it's not worth provoking anything with all the other stuff you have going on.
  • Defeating any of the main cults (EXALT, Red Dawn, Black Lotus and Church of Dagon) notes that the cults themselves haven't been shut down, but as you've taken out the leader of the organization or in the case of Black Lotus, cut off their link to their leader, the remnants aren't going to be a world-endangering threat anymore, so you can ignore them.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • To unlock a certain storyline you need to study a certain weapon (one of several). Those weapons appear in few missions and may never appear at all.
  • On a related note — there's a chance to never encounter some non-crucial, but useful weapons.
  • The ability to study the majority of the artefacts and much of your own research depend on discoveries you get from interrogations. But each prisoner reveals a random piece of information from around 10-20, and most of it is "fluff", i.e. flavour texts that help to immerse you in the game world, but do little to advance the plot. In other words, you may get the necessary information immediately, or next year.
• Magnetic Weapons: Represented by Gauss weapons (used by Reptoids) and their less advanced cousins, human-made Mass Drivers.
• The Man Behind the Man: Of the first four well-defined enemies three unlock next enemy.
  • The Church of Dagon is controlled by, well, "sea god" Dagon. He lives in T'leth, the alien city from Terror from the Deep.
  • EXALT is secretly run by Hybrids, who do the bidding of Cydonian aliens.
  • Red Dawn isn't directly run by any outside force, but they pick the scraps from Cyberweb, who has connections in another dimension.
  • As of version 1.8 the Black Lotus handlers haven't been implemented yet. It's known that they're being psionically dominated by a being from space, but beyond cutting that control, you can't confront her.
• Masquerade: Modus operandi of the entire conspiracy setting. The Earth is ruled by a mysterious assembly of influential people (even the X-Com Commander only knows a few of them at best), working in various groups who are constantly struggling for power and control over one another. Ordinary citizens have no idea that these groups even exist.
  • The alien invasion threatens to expose all of this, which upsets the Council. In turn, they demand XCOM deal with the problem.
  • The Council is also working at cross purposes. At the beginning of the game, you don't even know anything about the Council beyond the fact that they're bankrolling you. There's entire research lines about the Council and the various factions within it. But most importantly, one of the most dangerous non-alien groups, the Men in Black, was established at the same time as X-COM, with the opposite mandate: ensure humanity's survival by cooperating with the aliens. The Council sees no hypocrisy in having two groups naturally opposed to each other, and instead views it as a Darwinian struggle: if X-COM wins, the MIB weren't pursuing their agenda successfully. If MIB wins, X-COM had no chance to stop the invasion anyway.
• MegaCorp:
  • The Syndicate.
  • BlackOps Industries, which proves to be its subsidiary.
  • M.A.G.M.A. They're your allies for the most part, offering advanced technology in exchange for your advanced technology. But the fact that one of your first missions to help them involves taking out experimental zombie troopers that had their implants hacked implies that the corporation is not on the up-and-up. Interestingly enough, while M.A.G.M.A. won't actively work against you, giving them access to advanced technology isn't considered a good thing. It will lose you a lot of score points (-500 points, when ignoring a Terror Site is -1000 points), and any technology you give you M.A.G.M.A. has a chance of being used against you by other factions.
• The Men in Black: Early on your organization seems to be the Men in Black. The black suits are your default outfit, you are a mysterious organization with some SF gear. Quickly subverted when you end up having to fight the real Men in Black during a crop circles, alien abduction or cattle mutilation mission. They are a mysterious organisation dealing with Hybrid Network and covering up stuff like abductions. Turns out the Council decided to hedge their bets: XCOM is trying to stop the alien invasion, the Men in Black are trying to work with the aliens to make sure the Council stays on top of humanity while serving under the aliens.
• Mind-Control Device: Psi-Amp, Psiclone, Skulljack holy statues.
• Mordor / Hostile Terraforming: What the Reptoids plan to do with the planet Earth.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Mission names like "Blood Moon" or "Soul Harvest".
• Nerf:
  • The fan-named "lethal injection" — shooting from an adjacent tile — no longer works as before. A target with time units will start Gun Struggle, see above.
  • Interceptors no longer can carry ray guns or Magnetic Weapons, because anything advanced is powered by an elerium reactor. Even the previously existing Infinity -1 Sword got removed by making the craft unable to carry the needed weapon.
  • Each base can have no more than 1 laboratory of each kind.
  • Workshops are no longer profitable. The most profitable goods can pay the engineers' wage, but nothing beyond that, not even the workshops' upkeep.
  • Middle click no longer reveals enemies' ranks (which was kinda programmer's oversight). Go figure if this Black Lotus Warrior is actually an Assassin (requiring extreme caution and firepower). Or which of Sectoids is the engineer you desperately need to question.
• Ninja: Black Lotus warriors and assassins. They even have psionic invisibility. They can use guns, but prefer silent crossbows and thrown stars.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: So far, there are only ninja cyborgs in the Assassin Clans Bank Robbery missions. Those are the remnants of the Black Lotus assassins turned cyborg by the Cyberweb.
• Nintendo Hard: Mainly by limiting team sizes and rising the research cost. You start with a car that carries only 2 agents. A few weeks later you can research a van for 4. Anything significantly bigger has ridiculously short range — until you research Skyranger years later. Weapon choice is limited to a weak pistol and a shotgun, too heavy for some of your agents. Nearly every weapon has to be picked on the battlefield and researched to pass around the red tape or find a black market dealer. You do get a few decent weapons with promotions — many months later. Every base building beside hangar, storehouse, living quarters, gym and holding cells has to be researched. In addition, you need special buildings for interrogation and biology research. But if you keep an agent alive several months, he will have no trouble surviving most missions.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted. Also applies to grenades and some projectiles, like flares. You can even shoot over obstacles and hit enemies with no line of sight as long as you have a spotter.
• Not Enough to Bury: Some powerful weapons have a chance to destroy the target's body leaving no corpse and no loot if they hit the target hard enough. Hitting an enemy with a flame weapon will incinerate the remains.
• Not the Intended Use: Various clandestine missions require that you show up without your fancy armor and big guns, in an inconspicuous vehicle, so as to not draw too much attention to your alien war. The best inconspicuous vehicle you can use? The Dragonfly, a VTOL jet that transports up to 8 agents. Showing up to meet an informant at a seedy dive bar in a black painted hovering jet is apparently considered low-key.
• Nubile Savage: Ufopaedia picture for "Subculture: Cavemen".
• Older Than They Look: Some dossiers. Those women use alien technology to look young.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolves and werecats are genetically engineered from human and animal DNA. They can't shapeshift, but their pack leaders are powerful psionics.
• Our Zombies Are Different: There are 2 different kinds:
  • Same as in UFOEU, the victims of Cryssalids. Quickly turn into Cryssalids. Appear in late 1999 or later.
  • Entirely new type, the victims of alien-introduced zombie parasite. Appear from the start as yet another kind of "strange life form". They share biochemistry with other monsters, but later prove able to evolve into tougher, faster and smarter forms: fat zombies, infectors, strixes, tomb guardians, vampires — by eating other zombies and concentrating enough energy to rebuild their nervous systems.
  • Additionally, unscrupulous scientists create militarized forms of the latter: zombie troopers and megazombies.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Flying saucers before 1999 probably qualify. Several UFOs on "research" mission may appear randomly in 1997-1998, but not necessarily within your reach. They are crewed by Sectoids armed with plasma, shields and often psionics. If you win (hint: use cover), the spoils are worth a lot, though you won't be able to research most artefacts until much later.
• Permanently Missable Content: Once an arc is finished, there is no way to get certain artefacts. Hint: don't destroy Red Dawn until you get a piece of durathread, or you won't invent any decent aircraft. This may happen if you stun all your enemies rather than kill. Though Word of God says, that those artefacts will randomly appear in Osiron missions.
• The Prophecy:

The most important piece of information we have received from the Kiryu-Kai is: "The invasion will begin on the 1st of January 1999, 12:00 GMT." ^note Flying saucer activity does increase notably on January 1, 1999, but if you don't have radar detection in place, you might not notice. If you don't, the Council will alert you to the fact, by pointing out that it's getting increasingly impossible to control information with all the UFO sightings happpening, usually in February.

• Putting on the Reich: Syndicate CEOs wear authentic SS rings. And call Earthlings "subhumans".
• Red Shirt Army:
  • In terror and monster missions police and soldiers tend to attack the enemies head-on, regardless of danger. This may work against spiders, beetles or scorpions, but not when an enemy has couple hundred HPs, is immune to bullets or carries a heavy plasma gun. To add insult to injury, neither wear any body armour and police are issued the weakest pistol in the game.
  • Same goes for security in mansion defense missions. Even when they have half-decent guns, they are unarmoured, and outgunned.
• Research, Inc.: See MegaCorp above.
• Sanity Slippage: While not a problem at first, eventually, most missions will have an "eerie atmosphere" or worse, an "oppressive atmosphere". These moods represent the amount of sanity damage your agents will take each turn. At high Sanity, agents get a boost to Energy and Morale regeneration, but at low Sanity, regeneration is penalized, and at very low levels, even Time Unit regeneration (normally 100% every turn) can be penalized. Extremely high Bravery (100+, which rarely occur naturally) can mitigate Sanity loss, but it won't remove the issue. Sanity also doesn't automatically get restored at the end of combat either: agents will normally only get 3 points back per day.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: This mod has many more missions that penalize letting them expire than the vanilla game, but it's still possible to arrive, see the situation is unwinnable and leave. Of course, if there are any civilians or crucial installations, you are penalized for leaving them to die or be destroyed. But sometimes coming and leaving is preferrable to skipping the mission outright.
  • Undercover missions have no exit grid. You can only win or die. At least it's not that hard and the penalty for skipping isn't too high.
  • In the Black Lotus Party mission you need to fight your way from the first floor to the exit grid on the roof. Killing all the enemies instead isn't much harder.
  • It's expected that some missions will be too difficult to actually complete. Being completely surrounded at your arrival point will happen more often than not, and since you move first, the enemies will have full Time Units and will get reaction fire if you don't down them immediately. In those cases, it's usually better to hit the Abort Mission button and take the penalty: there will be other opportunities to succeed.
• Sequence Breaking: Normally you start researching and making high-tech alien devices — such as ray guns or anti-gravity — only in 1999. It is possible to research alien alloys and Reaper and Sectoid autopsies (and alien containment) before mid-1997, but that's all. Unless you are Crazy-Prepared enough to have an alien containment at every base, lucky enough to catch several landed UFOs between 1997-02 and 1998-12, good enough to capture several engineers and navigators, and lucky enough to get important technologies from interrogated aliens. The trickiest part is detecting the UFOs in time — headquarters and intelligence centers have unlimited range, but low probability of detection; radars (researchable from mid-1997 or later) have short range, but higher probability; all of the above have prohibitively high costs, especially the HQ.
  • As of 1.9, it's possible to get a lot of alien gear before the actual alien invasion begins. Random events might give you a Muton corpse, for example, and a lot of the cults have low-end alien gear, like lasers and plasma weapons. It's still not a guarantee, but by the time the aliens hit the ground, you could be walking around in advanced armor and blasting them with energy weapons almost immediately.
• Shock and Awe:
  • Stunning weapons use electroshock: electric club, taser pistol, stun rod...
  • Some Cyberweb prototype weapons.
  • Janissary attack.
  • Storm Rose.
  • Muckstar attack.
• Shoot the Fuel Tank: Game mechanics-wise transport aircraft are destroyable buildings, while cars and interceptors are large pieces of furniture (you can't enter them and start outside). Each tile can be destroyed (cars are the weakest), and some of them explode, even from melee weapons. Outside "convoy" missions you are the only one with transport. Furthermore, often the car is your only cover.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Typical, as most weapons in the game have shorter ranges than in real life, and even other games. Shotguns are affected harder than most.
• Shout-Out:
  • One dossier entry describes an alien mercenary Meridian. Meridian is the programmer developing OXCE+ engine fork the game uses.
  • See "Crossovers" above.
  • Also Xenonauts description calls them Psychonauts.
• Smart Gun: Smart Magnum. Upgrade to standard Magnum revolvers gained from Cyberweb. Same power (approaching shotgun slugs and heavy machineguns, above most other Earth guns), but with range and precision of a sniper rifle.
  • There are also Smart Shotguns, Smart Rifles, Smart Sniper Rifles, and Smart Machineguns. Smart Magnums and Smart Shotguns are unique in that you have to make them yourself. The others, you can purchase from M.A.G.M.A.
• Snake People: Snakemen, like in the original game.
• Spider Swarm: Complete with the queen, several types of drones, and an additional twist with the Spider Kings.
• Spies In a Van: X-Com, of course.
• Spread Shot: Shotguns work that way.
• Spy Catsuit: Man in Black Psi Ops.
• Staging an Intervention: Parodied by some "Staff Input" articles, where a named member of the cast complains about other residents of the base or living conditions in general.
• Stalked by the Bell: After you discover a way to defeat a particular organization, you may decide to Take Your Time. Maybe rob their HQ once or twice more. Maybe wait for that special mission that unlocks the next stage much earlier. Maybe try to get that useful artefact. Well, be careful. Not dealing with them swiftly leaves your reputation vulnerable. Starting next month you may get "slander" missions, when you have 2-3 hours to reach the site or face 500 score penalty (for comparison: each dead civilian is 30 and ignoring a terror site is 1000).
• Super-Soldier: Many organisations try to create one, with varying success. To name a few: Red Dawn, Syndicate, Men in Black.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Infiltration missions generally don't cover the part of how exactly the agents got inside, as long as they don't stand out too much ( like carrying around rifles).
• Tap on the Head: Some blunt melee weapons, shields (that come with some armours). Also electroshock stunners: electric club, taser pistol, stun rod. Targets usually suffer no ill effects, although some blunt weapons have "lethal" chance — up to 75% for a baseball bat.
• Tech Tree: Like in the original games, only much bigger and without the infamous TFTD quirks. Furthemore, the engine allows to browse the tree entries (press "q" in Geoscape), because even some mod authors occasionally get lost.
• This Was His True Form: The body of The Syndicate CEO.
• Timed Mission: Crop circles, alien abduction and cattle mutilation. If you don't kill or stun everybody in 10 turns, you will have to face a large wave of Men in Black reinforcements. And an even larger one if you're still there by turn 13. Usually it's pretty simple: find and stun the unlucky farmer. But occasionally you'll meet zombies or Men in Black.
• Transhuman:
  • Cyberweb members claim to be ones. Their version of transhumanism includes Transhuman Treachery.
  • X-Com agents also get upgrades eventually, either cybernetic, biological, or psionic.
• Too Awesome to Use: Pretty much any decent weapon for which you can neither buy nor manufacture ammo.
• Under the Sea: Underwater missions against Deep Ones and their masters. The problem: you can't see underwater anywhere as well as actual underwater races, and the choice of weapon and armor is greatly reduced. Advanced underwater armor, starting with Plastic Aqua-Armor, increases your sight range and reduces the penalties you take.
• The Unfought:
  • The research during the Dagon arc leads you to believe this enemy is going to be far more challenging than your previous enemies, with him being the expy of Cthulhu and "The Ultimate Alien" from TFTD and difficulty scaled accordingly. But actually he won't wake up until 2040s and started to build an army only recently. His arc ends with the destruction of the Tasoth factory.
  • The Cyberweb arc eventually develops into a 1990s version of XCOM Apocalypse and you end up fighting Spitters, Anthropods, Hyperworms and Micronoids in their home dimension. This new enemy is quite hostile and their city keeps shooting your scouting drones. This can only mean that you'll have to storm the alien city, right? Wrong. You leave this side goal for later and focus on your immediate enemy — Cyberweb.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: In version 0.8.2, the game could not be completed, since a crucial artifact didn't spawn. It was fixed in 0.8.3.
• Unobtainium: Elerium-115 as in UFOEU. Can be picked from intact UFO engines, as in the original game. The mod adds a twist that it can be extracted from alien ammunition, some other devices and even fuel traces from landed UFOs. Zrbite as in TFTD, but it has fewer uses.
• Van in Black: Your cars and vans (except the jeep) double as one. You don't get to do any spying missions, but you have to use an inconspicious vehicle to quietly approach some enemy hideouts before they can evacuate. Sure, a black van with a big "X" on each side is totally harmless.
• Was Once a Man: Zombies, janissaries and jarheads.
  • You can do this to your own agents: Dagonization is the process of turning an agent into a squidhead, and Kyberism does away with all that useless meat and replaces it with metal. There are drawback and advantages to both.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Human enemies always, always, have a massive vulnerability to choke damage, making knockout grenades, with their measly 20 damage, actually much stronger than they appear to be. The only reason knockout grenades aren't more powerful is because they have to be manufactured, and are prohibitively time-consuming to create.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Justified by variety of your enemies. Actually, assembled from whatever mods fans make for OpenXcom.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • Men in Black are your enemy. But they turn out to be backed by the same countries that founded X-COM. While X-COM fights, they seem to be negotiating surrender.
  • The UN created XCOM as a bureaucracy agency, but early research quickly reveals that the UN is under the control of the Council of Earth, a shadowy cabal that consists of every nation that's funding your efforts. As it turns out, the Council of Earth is a Deadly Decadent Court, comprised of multiple factions with competing agendas. While the cults are a threat to everyone, the backers of the cults (for example, the Syndicate or Cyberweb) are generally either under the control of, or supported by, factions within the Council. In order to take down those organizations, you need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are dangerous to humanity as a whole, at which point the Council (through the UN) will give you authorization to destroy them.
• We Can Rule Together: The "Syndicate Testament" message. Given that you just disrupted their plans to the nth degree, such that they're no longer a threat, it comes off as sour grapes.
• We Have Reserves: While hiring replacements is no bigger problem than in the vanilla game, losing half of a 2-man team is problematic. Many players remark that smaller teams force them to care more about agents. Besides, training in the gym means that an agent with several months of experience is far superior to any new hire.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Investigating the Cult of Apocalypse you eventually conclude that those people are stirring trouble to ultimately make Earth people stronger. None of the involved laymen, Brothers or Clerics know of this goal. This arc isn't finished yet.
• You Have Researched Breathing: You need to research everything, including the stuff an investigating agency should have from the start, like armoured vests. Every time you pick an Earth weapon on the battlefield, you need to research it twice — once to determine its parameters, once to find a way to purchase it. Justified by being run by Obstructive Bureaucrats that require paperwork for every step. This also explains on one hand why did X-COM in the original game have no armoured vests, no riot shields and such lousy weapons, on the other hand why did it have UFO-specific radars, designs for alien containment and ability to quickly invent bottomless laser weapons, medkits and stun rods.
  • In every case where it seems like you're just getting access to basic tech, it's justified that it's being customized to work against your adversaries. The most prominent example is radar technology: there's no need for it at the start of the game, as you're not intercepting UFOs yet. In order to unlock basic radars you need to determine what the alien ships are made of (and get authorization to shoot them down), so that the radars can actually find the dang things.

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