The Firaxis XCOM Series

I played X Com for the PS 3 a lot when it first came out, eventually got bored of it and put it down.

Recently got X Com Enemy Within for my laptop (it helps that I have much faster internet than ever before so I can download a game from Steam in a few hours and not a few days) and I fell in love all over again.

The base mission was awesome but you should be able to take base personnel as regular soldiers afterwards. The only reason I say that was one blueshirt did so well he lived through the whole mission and scored enough kills to get a promotion-something that shouldn't even be possible given you can't take them with you afterwards.

The absolute best part of it all was that soldier's name was Owen Wilson. In a word, "Wow."

AFAIK, in Long War you can.

x3

I've observed similar issues in LW 2 as well, even though I'm just playing on Veteran. The strategic game with infiltration is fun but pass a certain point in the game, the tactical game turns into either small squad stealth or large squad multi-hour firefights. Even when I'm sending in 5-6 men (coz mid-size squads are fun), I'm sneaking to the objective before fighting anything. Trying to fight your way across the map on a timed mission like you would in Vanilla is very risky with constant reinforcements and enemy pods being attracted to the sound of fighting. They took away a lot of the early game tools which allows you to end fights quickly but the enemies has become even more dangerous, so control tools like flashbangs and suppression has become extremely important. Those don't allow you to kill quickly though, so timed missions are still dicey.

Master Sergeant ranked soldiers are still super powerful though, if you can get there.

On the other hand, Psi Ops sucks now.

edited 24th Mar '17 5:53:47 AM by nightwyrm_zero

I have literally no idea what to do.

Youuuuuuuuu...might need to elaborate.

I got the Germany mission done, because it railroaded you into doing anything.

But now that I'm out on my own mission (I chose North America), I have my soldiers out on the grid, and I don't know what to do or where to go.

By "grid" do you mean a mission, or the ant farm-like base management screen?

The missions. I get that I move my guys SOMEWHERE, but where? What do I do that's not moving? How do I know where to go?

The simple answer is "move into cover," because a soldier out in the open is a soldier with a death wish. The more complicated answer...

Well, I think the most important idea to hold onto in XCOM - on the tactical map anyway - is that you want to maximize the number of shots you can take before the enemy starts shooting back. And that means being very careful with your movement, and what you do with your guys.

Basically, your dudes can either move and do something, if they keep within the blue part of their movement radius, or spend their entire turn running up to the orange limits of their movement radius. If a soldier makes an orange move to run down the street, and activates an alien pod by coming within sight of it, he's not going to be able to react until his next turn, after the aliens get a chance to shoot at him. So he either has to hope that the rest of the squad has actions remaining to try to deal with the aliens, or that the aliens are bad shots.

What I like to do is make everyone's blue moves first, then decide if I want to make any orange moves. Move one guy into decent cover with good lines of sight, press Tab to switch to another soldier, and repeat. If nobody's found anything to shoot at, and I want to play it safe or think there's a group of aliens close by, I can tell everyone to go on Overwatch so they'll get a free shot if any aliens wander into sight. if I'm feeling aggressive, I can have someone make an orange move (again, into as good as cover as I can find), then if there's no danger in sight I can run the rest of the squad to follow. If my point man found trouble instead, the rest of the squad is hopefully already in position to take some shots.

Once a firefight is on, what you do is gong to depend on what you're fighting and what items and soldier abilities you have available, but it's always important to, once again, not leave anyone out in the open unless they absolutely have to take an action that turn, or you're confident that you can deal with the current threat without bringing in more trouble. If you see an opportunity to move up and flank the enemy, take it, while if you're not in a good position, don't be too proud to fall back and see if the aliens are willing to run into an Overwatch trap. And if you're fighting something like grenade-flinging Mutons or poison-spitting Thin Men, try not to bunch your guys up too tight. At the same time, you want to keep your team together so they can support each other, and not activate too many alien pods at once.

Oh, and unless the mission tells you that you need to rescue NPCs or defuse a bomb, they all basically boil down to wandering around and shooting anything that isn't native to the planet.

Why not play on lower difficulties first.

THIS. No shame playing on normal or even easy, until you get your war legs.

It kinda sounds like Twentington is, since Germany is the tutorial mission, isn't it (been a real long time since I did it)? Now that the tutorial's over and the first real mission is underway, things might seem a bit overwhelming.

As stated above, though, if there's nothing else stated, you basically want to safely explore the map, sweeping for aliens and then murder them when you come across them. Once you're out of aliens to kill, mission's over.

For base management, build at least 3 satellites in 2 months, cover the entirety of a continent as soon as possible, preferrably North or South America or Africa, but only launch satellites a few days before the month ends. ME Cs are handy to get as soon as possible (with Rocket Punch) since they can KO many early game enemies.

Yes, I am playing on easy.

Then you have nothing to fear. Just turn on Save Scum and voila.

How do I know where to go?!?

You must believe in things. What, I have no idea. Things, damn you!

It's something you'll just have to learn in time. The key thing is take cover. Remember that cover is all or nothing—it's a line drawn across the map along the edge of the tile, it doesn't matter what angle the enemy is shooting from or if it looks like your soldier is exposed. If the enemy is on the other side of that barricade then you get a cover bonus.

Make sure your soldiers can cover each other, so if the enemy tries to get around that barricade then they risk being gunned down.

Just take it slow and be patient. The game is hardest early on when you have no gear and no abilities.

In most missions, you don't know where to go. It'll tell you about an objective, and the rest is stuff that happens between that. Keep your soldiers together because of that, so they will not be overwhelmed from finding the enemy on their lonesome.

Do not attack immediately. Your soldiers are free to shoot in whatever order you want, and this should be used to go for surer attacks and help guarantee kills, because the less that can shoot at you, the better.

If none of your soldiers seem likely to hit (say like, +65% odds), consider moving them closer while being mindful that their movement may reveal them to be even more more vulnerable there due to an alien being out of sight - but you should generally avoid doing this with a "yellow" move dash (for the aforementioned aliens being out of sight possibility), it will usually be better to move a bit closer and then Hunker Down. At the same time, however, you must be aware that the enemy may also move closer to you, and so you should try to get a general idea of how far individual aliens can move while still attacking (which you will only be able to do after seeing them in action a bit) to avoid being flanked on the enemy's turn.

edited 13th Apr '17 12:27:50 PM by VutherA

"Take cover" and "move" seem like mutually exclusive objectives.

They totally are. People tend to hate the non-"KILL THEM ALL" missions for that reason.

That's why I'm confused. I'm moving, but I'm staying in cover? How does that even work? Where do I go?!?

Keeping to the edge of the map (assuming it's not a crappily-coverless edge) can help in some regard there because there will be a side that the aliens can't be flanking you on.

You'll know where to move when your troops hear the sound waves signal should you take too long to find an Alien.

x3 Later in the game you'll get MEC/SHIV with high movement. use the blue movements first. If you don't see enemies, then overwatch and have everyone else move just behind them. That way you can move at a reasonable pace.

Move to cover.

edited 13th Apr '17 12:37:41 PM by RAlexa21th

Yes. Just wait until bomb or terror missions—or XCOM 2 with its time limits. But hell, at least those will give you actual direction—go here now.

But really, move from cover to cover. Pick a destination, the front window of the restaurant, the warehouse doors, whatever—then leap-frog your men from cover to cover. Move as if you are planning on getting into a shoot-out with aliens at any moment—line your guys up alongside the front of the restaurant to shoot at aliens inside, have two dudes shooting inside the warehouse doors while another pair covers the corners of the building.

Most cover is within 1 AP (your soldiers all have 2 every phase) of another piece of cover. The simplest way to approach things is to move cover to cover, regardless of if enemies are revealed or not (you're technically safe to just wander in the open if a pod hasn't been activated yet). While partial cover is kinda shitty for Def bonus, if you have no cover at all, the enemy gets a big crit bonus. Oh, and if a soldier gets into a really bad position with lots of enemies in range, use Hunker Down. It doubles the cover's Def bonus and stops crits unless your soldier gets flanked. Used in high cover, this is 80 Def, which will reduce the greater majority of the aliens' hit chance to 1% (even on highest difficulty! Seriously, Hunker's pretty overpowered in the first game).

No one knows for sure where to go on most normal "kill everything" missions (aside from "this is a spot I want because it has good cover" or "I need to get to the UFO's cockpit sooner or later"), as spawn placements and patrols have some level of randomization to them. Council Missions have fixed spawn points with semi-dynamic (but also predictable) reinforcements, but seeing as how you're new to the game, you won't have the knowledge to take advantage of that yet (plus it really isn't necessary on Easy).