Zaimoni's Apocalypse Checklists

Noon, Day 1

Decide on editor and savegame policy. Breaking this policy is game over.
Start game with intended difficulty and base location. Let Captain Midnight ensure a Real Base, and any ego-trip characters of use.
De-equip all agents
Go shopping for equipment and vehicles. Don't buy too many vehicles: 3 Hovercars and 6 Hoverbikes is almost overkill for Week 1.
Re-equip all agents with appropriate gear. (Mostly Marsec rifles and autocannons.)
Start research on the BioTransport Module and Dimension Gates.

No BioTransport module yet, so don't bother with stunners. Take Stun gas grenades per usual loadout.
TB: don't let TUs go above 66 for riflemen. Add grenades as needed. Reaction autofire is particularly important for this mission.
If have androids and do not have plot, send in only androids.

If you shoot down everything and have no infiltrations, plan on running out of research ~Friday.
- if you want to shoot everything down, you're going to have to park craft in the air rather than in launch tubes. This doesn't work that well in non-scummy games.
There is little point in not qualifying for a better funding increase, but it's not worth dramatically increasing alien tech the next week. Interesting breakpoints are 1,600 (optimax Senate funding increase) and 2,200 (for easier alien loadout compared to lower scores).
Do not raid excessively. It moves UFO strikes earlier (think breakpoint is 200 pts in a raid or ground mission), and causing a 4th UFO strike in Week 1 is a really bad idea according to Apoc'd.

Practical starting weapons for disposing of the enemy: M4000 point-blank autofire, Lawpistol if slow enough for 1MP autofire, AP autocannon point-blank autofire. Unfortunately, the first two do too little damage/shot -- the helmet is unlikely to survive.

You should have already decided on an appropriate cumulative score target range (balancing the Senate pay raise [from weekly score] against alien technology levels (from Apoc'd) and the "move UFO strikes earlier" effect). Raid already-hostile organizations for Psiclone until in said score range. Think twice before taking a negative weekly score.
Buy up all critical consumables.
Decide whether having Senate funding cut off is a real risk. This controls how much of a funding buffer you need.
Without compromising the funding buffer:
- Buy up anything you might actually want to use in the upcoming week.
- While there still is money left over above the funding buffer, choose something that both costs at least 34(?) per unit, and you can corner the market on. These investment items are to be sold on Monday, immediately. Truly useless items not being used for investment may be sold off at this time.
  - Autocannon rounds are a special case, since you should have a surfeit of them. Their price never goes up, but will likely go down the week after you sell off (impairing the future value of autocannon rounds). It's probably better to do this selloff when trying to lock down an expensive item otherwise out of reach.

Captain Midnight automatically unassigns all scientists when editing. Reassign them.
Captain Midnight doesn't like Apoc'd . Think twice before using Apoc'd to actually write changes.
- No longer true; the latest version of Apoc'd (3.00 or very recent beta) plays nice with Captain Midnight.