The Firaxis XCOM Series

Press Y and then press A

Other than that.

Just relax, Commander. It's the start of the campaign, everyone's still trying to figure out what the aliens' plan is. So right now you're just reacting to what they're doing. But eventually your subordinates are going to come up with objectives for you, and then you'll have concrete goals to work toward.

And then I choose something so horribly wrong that I might as well start from scratch.

That is impossible even on... Impossible.

Like the worst thing you could do at this point would be to get your guys killed, except it's the start of the campaign so they're not going to be much better than the other Rookies sitting on the bench, and you're not playing in Ironman mode so you can just reload and retry missions if it all goes horribly wrong.

You could also blow all your money digging holes in the base, I guess, but that just means you'd have to wait a few weeks for your next paycheck from the Council, or sell some junk on the Gray Market. So not a huge deal either. If you're not sure what to build - like, you don't have an objective to build a specific structure you need to progress the game's storyline - it's perfectly acceptable to bide your time, save your money until you decide to go for a Thermal Generator or something.

Heck, you've even got a good window still before any country's panic level is going to end up high enough that you're at risk of them dropping out of XCOM. And even that isn't a campaign-ending setback, more like expected. You're at least another playthrough away from looking at a perfect run campaign where no nations capitulate to the aliens.

Then what should I do? What's the right thing? I was told to build more facilites such as satellite uplinks.

Yeah, Uplinks are good. Putting satellites over a country reduces its panic level (which is why you wait to launch them until close to the end of the month), keeps the aliens from running Abduction missions in them, gives you another theater in which to detect and shoot down UFOs, gives you a bonus if you cover all the countries in a continent, and you'll receive additional income and personnel at the end of the month from the countries you have covered.

Of course, Uplinks also need power, and the most efficient source of that early on will be a Thermo Generator, so if there's any naturally-occurring steam vents close to your base's access lifts, you might want to start excavating towards one. And Uplinks also require an increasing number of Engineers to build, so you could consider constructing a Workshop for more of those.

I think you also had to build an Officer Training School as a tutorial objective (and if you didn't, build one right away!), and there are also special facilities your science and engineering NPCs will ask you to build soon, so there's that to look forward to.

The important thing is to pace yourself. It'll be several months before you'll have the resources - cash and Engineers and total power supply - needed to build enough Satellite Uplinks/Nexuses to completely cover the planet, so you don't need to rush to try to do that. Especially since you'll still need a lot of money on hand to build those satellites they'll be connecting to, and planes to defend other continents.

So yeah, build an Uplink, a pair of satellites for it, and see what happens next.

edited 21st Apr '17 6:45:20 PM by Tacitus

AND HOW WOULD I KNOW ANY OF THAT WOULD HELP ME?!?!?

Well, we're dealing with a panicking rookie here.

And? How does that help me, the player, any, in deciding what to do?

I'd say something flippant about checking the instruction manual, except in this era of digital downloads I don't think that's really an option.

There's always wikis, though. The XCOM Wiki has a strategy guide of sorts, though it's kind of sparse. The UFOpaedia's guide is a bit more barebones presentation-wise, but might actually have too much information on it.

If that first link is sparse, then holy shitballs. This game has eleventy billion fucking things to do. HOW DO I EVEN PICK ANY OF THIS?!?!?! HOW DOES ANYONE EVER KEEP TRACK OF ELEVENTY BILLION GODDAMN FUCKING CHOICES??!?

Its like a 4X game... pick a path and adapt as your needs demand

Huh?

Like, you can do a lot of things, and you might want to do something to fit your overall strategy, but what you need to do depends on the current situation.

So you might really want to get a Thermo Generator going in anticipation of upcoming base construction, but you had bad luck and the Random Number God put all the steam vents on the bottom levels of your base, so you sigh and settle for a regular generator as a stopgap measure.

Or it might work the other way, and maybe a Council mission popped up that gave you a nice fat cash bonus, so instead of biding your time and saving your money for a little bit, you splurge and go ahead and build that second Satellite Uplink a few weeks early.

Which leaves me back at the base, right after the UFO crash site, with no direction and no idea what to do.

Ok uh, how about some guidelines from here? It's for a harder difficulty, but the stuff certainly will work for an easier one.

If you haven't gone for lasers yet, have your scientists do that. It's called the "Beam Weapons" research project which will unlock two other related laser projects, and you'll see Beam Weapons become available after completing the "Weapon Fragments" project.

If you want more spoilers to help you conceive something of a plan, here's the entire tech tree.

Keep on the scanning and alien murdering. The priority missions will pop up in time - which you do not have to do the moment they appear, just when you are comfortable trying to.

edited 21st Apr '17 9:20:08 PM by VutherA

... could you have picked a smaller picture XD

Sunova

Ok, linking the last one seems to be pretty fucky, so THIS◊ instead should be good.

edited 21st Apr '17 10:00:24 PM by VutherA

Just asking, what are the priority missions in the vanilla version?

#7993: None of that tells me what to do at this exact point.

Describe the exact point you are in.

Twentington, sir, you must chill out. Please.

We're trying to help you, but it feels like you need us to give a complete walk-through of the game for you and like you have absolutely no idea what the vaguest objective of the game might be

I think the best advice for you right now is to just play the game. You can save whenever you like on as many files as you like. If you don't know where to go on a mission, save the game, then sprint across the map until you know where the enemies are. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

There's a certain degree of failure expected in this game. You'll get your best soldiers killed and your squad wiped out because "That's XCOM, baby!"—and you don't have to accept it if you don't want to. Save Scum away, I do it; I only let my good soldiers die if it's Worth It or Yet Another Stupid Death-enough to be amusing. You don't have to play a perfect Ironman/Impossible run on your first play-through.

I am a veteran of the original game, though I've only played a few hours of it, never beaten it or mastered it. That said, I think the tutorial in this game should do a decent job of teaching you how to play and what you should be doing. I guess I don't understand how you seem to be so utterly confused on what to do at any given moment. The game doesn't explain absolutely everything but I'm just not sure on how you can be so lost.

I guess if you have no idea what the absolute basic goals are:

• Defeat the aliens. To do that—
  • Research. I suppose we can give you a strict research order, you don't need one. Just keep those eggheads working.
  • Expand the base. You basically want more of everything. It's up to you what you want right now. I don't think there's really a wrong answer here, I guess unless you completely ignore the adjacency bonuses.
  • Protect your sponsors. You want more satellite coverage because it increases your monthly payments and grants you a continent bonus. Then you need to kick alien ass in the field. You can lose countries but it shouldn't be an uncontrollable death-spiral. We can't give you exact instructions on what missions to take; the maps and the rewards vary, it's your call to make. We also can't give you a blow by blow "Move Rk. Jenkins behind the mailbox, move Cpl. Smith behind the bus stop and throw a grenade at the thin man behind the dumpster"—we don't know what you're up against in any given mission.
  • Figure out the alien's plans. This is the main storyline. You should be given specific objectives like "capture an alien" when the time comes. I think you're still in the tutorial and if you don't have an objective already you should be getting one soon enough. Just have the nerds study alien shit, have Shen build a new building, and scan the globe until something needs a friendly "Welcome ta Earf".

Just got back from the UFO crash site and am back at base. Was told nothing.

Yeah, I totally don't know what my objectives are. When was any of this told to me?