X-Com alien bodies

[Qbah]

The first armor is a joke. Though better than nothing I guess - maybe you can take a hit or two from a Plasma Pistol. And I hope you're using the Laser Rifle tops (always keep a few on the ship/backpacks)? The Heavy Laser was such a joke, not Auto Fire = fail. And get Plasma Weapons researched ASAP. At least the Rifles, Heavy Plasma obviously being the best option.

Once you get the best armor, PSI and run around with Heavy Plasmas, the game becomes a fragfest

 

[nanobreath]

Originally posted by: lupi
Whoever said the first alien type isn't around for long is correct. I'm only about 4-5 months into my game and already dealing mostly with floaters and just got my first snakes.

I'm assuming that the stun grenades are the result of some research item? Still only have stun stucks so far.

Hoping that lack of psi ability till later in the game won't hurt, but as it is I'm losing so many troopers not sure how much bloodier it could get. I'm going in with 2 tanks and 6 troopers and normally have 2 deaths and one wounded each trip. What really sucks is I had all my guys fully decked out with laser weaspons and half in armor and still taking numerous casualties. I can tell a difference when playing with high ranking troops as they act like rambo on the field, but the bastards go down so easy everytime I get some at sarge and above it's morgue time for them.

Personel armor blows. Power armor and flying suit however when you get the upgrade are 10x better.

Heavy plasma is a MUST. You should have gotten some from even your first mission, always research it the second you can as it makes killing aliens soooooooooo much easier. Blaster bombs come from the aliens. Untill you meet an alien with it and bring it back to base to research you won't have them.

Hire a lot of soldiers, evaluate them, then sack the ones that suck. Don't keep low accuracy, low will (if they see somebody die, they go into a panic and shoot all your guys), low movement points. Endurance isn't as big of a deal because you shouldn't be moving all your turn units in a turn. Alsmot always leave time for at least a snap shot.

Another tip, if you can, try to land during the day. On crashes you can hover over them until it is daytime then land. On landed ships and terror missions though you don't really have the option. As such buy electro-flares. They will save your ass. I usually give one to each guy on a mission and equip the first 4 or so guys in the ship with one in hand to throw soon as they walk out. Seeing the enemy in a deep dark jungle really helps.

Have you built new bases yet? Really you should build a second base almost as soon as the game starts in order to start building it up so that it is ready by the time you need it. I build new bases in such a way that there is only one way in and out of each room. This makes sweeping your base during alien retaliation a lot easier. Doing this however makes building a new base take many months before you can land a ship there.

Another tip, never put all your soldiers into your ship to go on a mission. If the aliens attack while you are out on the mission....bye bye base. You have to keep supplies and soldiers in base to defend it. As long as you have one soldier in base you can use your tanks, so keeping a few of them in base really helps too.

Wow, it's been two years since I've played, I don't know how I remember all this. Only played about 30 minutes into my new game.

 

[ModerateRepZero]

apparently stun grenades are in a later x-com game; so I guess you'll have to use the stun launcher.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: nanobreath
Hire a lot of soldiers, evaluate them, then sack the ones that suck. Don't keep low accuracy, low will (if they see somebody die, they go into a panic and shoot all your guys), low movement points. Endurance isn't as big of a deal because you shouldn't be moving all your turn units in a turn. Alsmot always leave time for at least a snap shot.

Or use your worst soldiers on point. They scout first, spot the enemy, and draw fire while your good soldiers do the killing from further back.

Another tip, if you can, try to land during the day. On crashes you can hover over them until it is daytime then land. On landed ships and terror missions though you don't really have the option. As such buy electro-flares. They will save your ass. I usually give one to each guy on a mission and equip the first 4 or so guys in the ship with one in hand to throw soon as they walk out. Seeing the enemy in a deep dark jungle really helps.

I used incendiary rounds to provide light. No matter how good advanced weapons were, I always kept a couple of auto cannons with incendiary rounds to provide light. Also useful for driving aliens out of cover.

 

[lupi]

Think I may need to start over. I didn't hit research hard till a couple months into the game and just having laser rifles against the third alien type isn't working out so well.

This was much earlier, but I had one mission that I had to end after turn 2. I sent out my tanks whom immediately started an engagement and moved my trooped near the ramp of the plane. Next turn my tank finished up the nearest alien they saw. Before I moved my guys out on turn 3 some bastard managed to toss an explosive into my plane wiping out my entire crew.

 

[nanobreath]

Originally posted by: lupi
Think I may need to start over. I didn't hit research hard till a couple months into the game and just having laser rifles against the third alien type isn't working out so well.

This was much earlier, but I had one mission that I had to end after turn 2. I sent out my tanks whom immediately started an engagement and moved my trooped near the ramp of the plane. Next turn my tank finished up the nearest alien they saw. Before I moved my guys out on turn 3 some bastard managed to toss an explosive into my plane wiping out my entire crew.

Hahahah, that is awesome. I dont' think I have ever had that happen. I typically saved before landing for a missions just in case something happaned. Anywhere from crashing the game, to every person dieing and losing my craft

Dont be ashamed to restart, I know my first game was not the one I finished. Once you learn how the game works restarting can be wise.

I never thought about using incendiary round, but makes sense, only thing there is that flares are lightweight, where as carring around a cannon slows your movement.

If I needed more cannon fodder I usually used tanks simply because they take more damage usually, and repair after every mission. Also if a tank gets blown up it doesn't hurt morale, see 3 soldiers die in front of you and somebody panics and youre screwed. Weak soldiers panicing in the middle of your squad and getting off multiple auto-shots can eff things up. Unless of course you just don't give them a gun. hahaha that would be cruel.

 

[microAmp]

Spoilers:
http://www.xcomufo.com/usg.html

 

[Daverino]

I think a lot matters as to what difficulty level you're playing on. I know in the harder difficulties, the first few missions are a real dog. You have to pick and choose to some extent, although the consequences of failing a mission are pretty bad. But there's almost no way you can survive a night terror mission at the beginning of the game. Your soldiers will all be dead before you even see the first alien. Researching plasma weapons is the key at the start though, along with alien grenades which are both plentiful and do great damage. If you aren't packing heavy firepower by the time the disks show up, forget it. In the early missions, rely heavily on your tanks for scouting and killing. Your soldiers can use your tank for cover too. And most importantly, remember that if any member in your squad can see an alien any other member can shoot at them if the have line-of-sight. If you have your troopers on an elevated position and a tank out in front spotting, your soldiers can take pot-shots from long range without much fear. This is critical to winning the game. If one of your soldiers spots an alien, do NOT use him to shoot at first. Use those soldiers following behind to use aimed shots and snipe the alien. If the spotter shoots, then the alien can shoot back. If you use snipers, the alien will not. Done well, you can use your tank to spot out aliens, snipe them with your soldiers and still have TUs left to pull your tank back to cover.

Once Mind Control starts up, ditch any soldier that is effected by it You won't be able to see your soldier's ability until after you have mind control labs, but if they get taken over in a single hit, you can bet their score is pretty lousy. It sucks to find out that your best soldier is mind control weak and you have to ditch him, but it's better than having him wipe out your whole squad.

I forget what you need to research to get alien armor but I remember it being difficult to find. Once you get decent armor and mind control for your own soldiers, the game becomes significantly easier, even on the hardest difficulty levels.

 

[Atreus21]

Originally posted by: lupi
Is there any use for the dead alien bodies you collect? do you just sell them or are those the ones you use somehow later for autopsies?

Some are of critical importance.

In X-Com 2 at least. Deep One corpses yield you Aqua Plastics, and then Plastic Aqua armor. Calcinite Corpses yield Vibro Blades, which will then yield Thermic and Heavy Thermic Lances if you've researched a Gill Man corpse.

X-Com 2 is my favorite.

 

[Atreus21]

Originally posted by: brownzilla786
I have the alien containment and I stunned the crap out of a few aliens but how do they help me at all? I read something about having to capture a higher up alien and interrogate him about something...

In XCOM 1, you'll need a live ethereal, a live muton navigator, and a live muton commander.

 

[lupi]

Yeah, it was real funny. Right up to the point where while watching the giant smoke cloud graphic in and around my ship I hit the next unit button while my tank is selected and it stays selected to the tank.

 

[Itchrelief]

Did they ever fix that 80 item limit? It got very annoying when you were using items that used individual reloads instead of magazine clips. Especially if you decided to leave the tanks behind and go infantry-heavy.

 

[MH2007]

Originally posted by: lupi
Whoever said the first alien type isn't around for long is correct. I'm only about 4-5 months into my game and already dealing mostly with floaters and just got my first snakes.

I'm assuming that the stun grenades are the result of some research item? Still only have stun stucks so far.

Hoping that lack of psi ability till later in the game won't hurt, but as it is I'm losing so many troopers not sure how much bloodier it could get. I'm going in with 2 tanks and 6 troopers and normally have 2 deaths and one wounded each trip. What really sucks is I had all my guys fully decked out with laser weaspons and half in armor and still taking numerous casualties. I can tell a difference when playing with high ranking troops as they act like rambo on the field, but the bastards go down so easy everytime I get some at sarge and above it's morgue time for them.

Yeah, I wasn't sure about the actual length of time but I remembered how frustrating missing the time window oculd be.

I said stun grenades but I might have been mistaken about that, it might be something you can't get for a long time. I seem to remember just going kamikaze with the stun rods and losing a lot of soldiers. Getting psi early is such a boon it is definitely worth it.

One other thing that might be worth trying is smoke grenades. I remember that smoke (e.g., from the crashes) fill up your health bar with white. This indicates how close you are to being unconscious; the stun rods basically put a good chunk of that on your health bar.

Getting laser researched ASAP is definitely good. I found that laser rifles are great and hold you over until you just straight to heavy plasmas. (I think some of the aliens have vulnerability to lasers as well.)

I've heard some people say that heavy plasmas actually make the game too easy, I personally don't use them and stick with laser rifles. (I remember there also being some kind of bug with weapons that use clips.)

Other people say that psi makes the game to easy. To be honest, I probably use it too much, but it's just my play style, heh.

As far as armor goes, it is definitely a pain to build and suit up your soldiers. I seem to remember the engineering time on those in particular to be annoying.

 

[Pepsei]

damn, i'm digging up my copy now ....

 

[nanobreath]

I have never actually used psi. I guess because I never got the psi-ops till late in the game when i finally captured an etheral. By that time your soldiers are so weak that youre better off just sticking to guns.

I usually have heavy plasma so quickly that I never really use anything but them.

And yes power suits and flying suits take FOREVER to manufacture for your entire squad.

In my game yesterday, I got to experience what you did lupi...except mine went slightly better. After stepping my first guy off the craft...an alien shoots a bomb right smack into my ship. All but 6 of my guys fell down. When I stepped one of them off though, I saw that it was a stun launcher the alien had, so I knew my guys were only unconcious. I couldn't shoot the bastard before the aliens turn though. So I then lost 2 more guys to the stun. Ended up finishing the mission with just 4 guys from practically beg to end. Even managed to stun and capture the leader!!

 

[Pepsei]

just found out there's a remake call UFO: Extraterrestrials , anyone played it?

i'm going to try to get my hands on a copy somewhere.....

 

[Atreus21]

Originally posted by: Pepsei
damn, i'm digging up my copy now ....

Game never gets old, huh?

I was unlucky enough to play TFTD first, so that is my addiction. Playing UFODefense was like playing a sequel to the best. The irony is terrible.

 

[Ganeedi]

Originally posted by: Pepsei
just found out there's a remake call UFO: Extraterrestrials , anyone played it?

i'm going to try to get my hands on a copy somewhere.....

I bought it back when. Its worth $10 as i've found at the link below. Be sure to google the mods on this as they make it playable and fun. Its a nice graphical upgrade to the original, albeight lacking the original 'mojo' for lack of a better term.

UFO Extraterrestrials @ GamersGate

 

[MH2007]

Originally posted by: nanobreath
I have never actually used psi. I guess because I never got the psi-ops till late in the game when i finally captured an etheral. By that time your soldiers are so weak that youre better off just sticking to guns.

I usually have heavy plasma so quickly that I never really use anything but them.

And yes power suits and flying suits take FOREVER to manufacture for your entire squad.

In my game yesterday, I got to experience what you did lupi...except mine went slightly better. After stepping my first guy off the craft...an alien shoots a bomb right smack into my ship. All but 6 of my guys fell down. When I stepped one of them off though, I saw that it was a stun launcher the alien had, so I knew my guys were only unconcious. I couldn't shoot the bastard before the aliens turn though. So I then lost 2 more guys to the stun. Ended up finishing the mission with just 4 guys from practically beg to end. Even managed to stun and capture the leader!!

Yeah, that reminds me, you had to find the stun launcher and research it before you can use it.

The stud rods are purchaseable right from the start ... so those and a kamikaze rush when you get the opportunity are probably your best bet if you want a shot at early psi.

Heavy plasma are good, really good. Kind of odd considering how badly heavy laser suck while laser rifles are actually pretty decent.

 

[MH2007]

Originally posted by: Ganeedi

Originally posted by: Pepsei
just found out there's a remake call UFO: Extraterrestrials , anyone played it?

i'm going to try to get my hands on a copy somewhere.....

I bought it back when. Its worth $10 as i've found at the link below. Be sure to google the mods on this as they make it playable and fun. Its a nice graphical upgrade to the original, albeight lacking the original 'mojo' for lack of a better term.

UFO Extraterrestrials @ GamersGate

I've heard that the mods made for it make it pretty similar in play to XCOM, probably worth checking out for $10 ... I've only heard bad things about the game as it is out-of-the-box

 

[Pepsei]

Originally posted by: MH2007

Originally posted by: Ganeedi

Originally posted by: Pepsei
just found out there's a remake call UFO: Extraterrestrials , anyone played it?

i'm going to try to get my hands on a copy somewhere.....

I bought it back when. Its worth $10 as i've found at the link below. Be sure to google the mods on this as they make it playable and fun. Its a nice graphical upgrade to the original, albeight lacking the original 'mojo' for lack of a better term.

UFO Extraterrestrials @ GamersGate

I've heard that the mods made for it make it pretty similar in play to XCOM, probably worth checking out for $10 ... I've only heard bad things about the game as it is out-of-the-box

i've install it just now after tracking down a copy from a friend. it is amazing out of the box, just like playing xcom. however, i haven't got into combat yet. so maybe i'll try it out before i put the 'xcom mod' on it.

and yes, i recommand rest of you go out and get it as it is a graphical upgrade (although you won't be on earth, but some fictional planet) , the music is pretty cool so far. will report back later.

edit: also, after reading a few more posts on ufo extrat. site, i think grayfiend's unimod is the best one to use to convert to xcom like..... i'll report back later