The Firaxis XCOM Series

In the tutorial you've viewed before.

Again. I just took everyone down at the UFO crash site. Guy whose name I can't remember told me something about building more satellites.

Satellites are source of money, therefore satellite spam is good. But remember, satellites don't work without a Satellite Uplink or Satellite Nexus to handle them. Remember to build them next to one another, for the adjacency bonuses: One uplink handles two satellites, but two adjacent uplinks handle five instead of just four.

Covering a continent in satellites has two positive effects:

1. The continental bonus for that continent
2. No alien abductions on that continent, so aliens can no longer raise panic on the whole continent by attacking just one country (well, outside of Terror missions).

But. How. Would. I. Know. That.

I'm kinda with you here. The game only has vague lines like "every nation wants a satellite on their head." I only knew those on the net.

For the most part, you wouldn't know the fine details. XCOM is one of those games that expects you to explore it and figure things out for yourself. The tutorial gives very vague, general instructions, but for the most part, every choice you can make boils down to "get bigger guns or more money to kill more aliens with". Which choice you go with in what order is up to you and on Easy, there's pretty much no way to get it wrong.

Which is why I'm still so fucking lost.

Seriously. UFO site (Operation First King) cleared. Back to base. What. Do. I. Do. Next.

... Hit the fast forward button and wait for the next available mission

Whatever you feel like. Pick something that looks or sounds cool and do it. See what happens from there.

Uh...

What are my options?

You could go to Engineering, ask Shen to build something for you. Or you could excavate and expand your base so you can build an additional facility. And if neither of those options seem good right now, go back to Mission Control, scan for a bit, and see what the aliens do next.

As long as your scientists are actively researching something instead of twiddling their thumbs, it's perfectly fine to just pass time in Mission Control until something comes up.

Though again, it is a good idea to work towards putting up more satellites.

And how do I know those are even options?

How would I know?

How would I know that?

1. You'd have to start clicking things on the base management screen.
2. Read the item/facility descriptions, make a judgment call? Or look them up on a wiki, I suppose.
3. While the game itself may not do the best job of explaining why you need to increase your satellite coverage, I'm fairly certain several people in this thread have spoken of the value and importance of satellites.

I'm sorry to say, the tutorial is over, and the game isn't going to tell you to "Click Here" or "Build This" anymore. Even when it gives you objectives to build certain pieces of equipment or facilities, it's not going to force you to do so, and you can delay them as long as you choose to. So you're going to have to experiment, try things, mess around, see what's possible. And you'll probably make a mistake and have to reload at some point because you didn't know something important.

Worst case scenario and your first game turns out to be the lead-in to XCOM 2, but at least you won't make the same mistakes in your second campaign.

edited 23rd Apr '17 8:47:45 PM by Tacitus

Oh yeah, canonically you lost the war.

Has anyone got a game over on easy?

edited 23rd Apr '17 8:51:13 PM by RAlexa21th

I beat Enemy Unknown on Classic Ironman.

Now I'm doing 2 on Rookie Ironman because I couldn't do anything past that and I swear I can count all the times things work out but certainly would have been a disaster on any other difficulty ;_;

I'm afraid to do Ironman because my game tend to glitch out and ruin a playthrough. I had that problem thrice in a row.

I'm still not sure what to pick. How hard is it to just TELL ME "pick this to continue game"?

Because then it wouldn't be a game?

Just build generators and uplinks for your satellites, and build satellites, that's a good start. Build the Foundry when you can too, it contains the best upgrades in the game ("tactical rigging" and "ammo conservation"). Build new guns when you discover them. Etc.

Really, You're gonna play that card!.... We've told you, you have options to pick from and on EASY it doesn't really matter if you go for weapons and armor or infrastructure first... just pick something and Get the **** moving.

Someone even put a video tutorial up

Here is Base management guide

Oh and I forgot: Like Dr. Vahlen says, build an Alien Containment and kidnap yourself some aliens; alien interrogation speeds up research. Note that, just like in Pokémon, you need to weaken them first.

You can find an actual instruction manual online for Enemy Unknown, with specific iterations depending on platform. https://www.2k.com/manual/xcomeu/

My PS 3 version came with one, though I can't recall ever checking it out much. But its there, and it does detail the basics.

A friend walked me through some things I can do until I get my next mission.

I still don't see how I'm supposed to know any of this can help me. I can expand the base. I can add satellites. I can have my people build things. But how do I know any of it will help me?

More satellites (with uplinks) means more money and less panic, which means more money.

You're going to need money to make better guns & armor, purchase Officer Training School upgrades, purchase Foundry upgrades, etc.

All of this will allow your soldiers to survive in the field by killing aliens before the aliens can kill them.

If a country reaches level 5 panic, it will pull out from the Council. If 8 of them pull out, you get the canon ending.