Engaging the Enemy (Apocalypse)

Battlescape Tactics against Alien lifeforms. For tactics when fighting within buildings and UFOs, see here.

• Relevant mainly for real-time game mode. Turn Based Tactics are also available.
  

As progress is made by slowly fighting, understanding, and defeating the alien menace after each mission, each new alien encountered may need a new method of battle tactics developed from the experiences in the earlier parts of the game; fine tuning those that worked and disregarding ones that got your agents killed.

Understanding the aliens is not as important as understanding the weapons and devices available to X-Com. Know your tools.

In General

Note: All alien lifeforms mentioned in Common are the usual types used throughout the whole game. The aliens mentioned in Uncommon only start to appear after Week 4 and are used mostly in a supporting role.

• Listen to the aliens! The sounds they make identifies who and where they are on the battlescape, what tactics to use, what weapon is needed, and if it is safe to be on the ground.
• A single X-Com unit moved to a location may not be facing the desired direction. To allow an agent to face the enemy without having to micro-manage their actions, a movement action of single agent should be performed by using Ctrl-LMB to give a destination, then click on another tile one cell towards the areas of interest that the agent should face. When the agent completes such an action, they are facing the enemy. This tactics is best used for an agent that needs to move far. You don't have to wait for them to arrive just so that you can manually turn them via RMB.
• Flying agents are better to suited to combat since they have more freedom to move, can fly up to avoid melee units, avoid ground explosions if high enough, infiltrate buildings by unconventional access, can drop explosives onto hostiles instead of trying to throw them, are able to hide in more areas, can quickly reach the best sniper positions, can do alot more things than an agent limited to the ground.
• Moving flying agents to new locations when in overhead battlescape view, will give a location as normal but it will end at ground level (destination icon will be a circle instead of a cross). eg: an agent airbourne at level nine is moved to a new location in flat terrain (in overhead view), they will finish the move at level one.
• Stun gas clouds make units run in all directions, will knock out entities easily, briefly negates their offense and should be used often
  against anything hostile everyone. (even when stun-capture-recovery is not possible ie: building security)
• If an agent can see an unconsicous unit and you want that agent to stand on the body (in overhead view) Alt-LMB in the body since just clicking LMB will attempt to select that unit.
• Standing on an unconsicous unit will prevent them from becoming active.
• Any unconscious unit can be shot at via forced fire to kill them before they wake up (or, explosives and fire will inflict damage quickly. Stun gas and, if vunerable, smoke will prolong their sleep).
  

Note: when manually shooting with direct fire at a knocked-out entity, if the ammunition impact makes a ricohet sound, the ground was shot; your agent missed! Any fleshy impacts will not make a sound when the body is hit (once dead, message bar: "Hostile Unit has died). Your agent's position and posture should be changed to get a better shot if it is difficult to hit a oddly positioned entity. When prone, shooting 'past' the alive body will cause the 'thing in the way' to be hit instead. Caution with Poppers, however.

Fighting: Common Aliens

Common alien threats are brainsuckers, poppers, anthropods, spitters, multiworms and hyperworms, alien eggs, and (appearing later) skeletoids.

Aliens With Grown-In Weapons

• Brainsuckers are the most serious of threats on the battlescape, but are a zero threat if only using Android agents. Brainsuckers must be killed immediately and without much thought into how. A lone or isolated agent can only use three certain actions, besides weaponry, when faced with a brainsucker: go prone (need space) and don't turn until it is too tired to keep trying, fly upwards (need marsec armor) five or higher levels from the terrain below and side features (not at level five), standing under (not crouch) or flying directly under any ceiling/roof/structure/doorway (need a building) so that your agent's head "touches" the top and will not give enough room for the brainsucker to attach. If an X-com unit does not have any other option and is fast (drop heavy items), moving them quickly and randomly may cause the brainsucker to get too tired from constantly missing the agents head. Stand on the alien and don't move until your agent has armed back up... or just don't move! (if your trooper is alone on the battlescape, good luck!)
  
• A brainsucker has low health and is easily stunned with a grapple. The trade off being reduced accuracy of a two-handed weapon until all brainsuckers are gone.
• An agent mid-suck cannot be selected (inventory access is blocked for the agent, but this can be circumvented). Using others to shoot at or near the victim with explosives may kill it quickly. If possible via inventory access, a 0.25 second grenade (stun or explosive) on the ground may remove the brainsucker threat and possibly injure the agent.
  
• If an agent is lost via a 'brainsuck', the 'alien' is now the most severe threat since Megapol or Marsec Armor is resistant to damage from early weapons, and those very same weapons and explosives are now pointed at your troops! A stun grapple hit or sustained auto-shot fire from stronger weapons (autocannon with armor piercing rounds, or plasma gun etc.) will eventually kill the contaminated agent. Beware of ammunition/explosives cooking-off.
  
• Brainsuckers come from pods, pods come from launchers, launchers are carried by foot soldiers (Anthropod and Skeletoid lifeforms). If a pod is heard to have cracked open but the brainsucker is not sighted, turn your agents (RMB) in all directions until found, which being so dangerous, agents could (should?) ignore other aliens types until the brainsucker is dead. Pods under an agent will not hatch, pick them up.
  
• Poppers are the very close second (or first if inside enclosed areas), serious threat to your troops. A popper is the fastest alien encountered for its only tactic is to find the nearest hostile, get as close as possible at full speed, then pop (explode)! Choosing between a brainsucker or popper as the immediate threat to be dealt with is a matter of how close the popper is to your troops. A popper hit with armor piercing, explosions, or incendiaries will explode when its health reaches zero. The explosion being powerful enough to detonate other poppers nearby, often resulting in a chain-reaction of explosions, heavily wounding others caught in the blasts. If this opportunitistic tactic can be used when a crash recovery is in progress and within a corridor, the aliens may be too injured and demoralised to fight and all may start to panic. This one action of chained explosions may turn the battle quickly against the alien horde.
• A popper leaves a trail of smoke whenever moving. This many conceal others behind it. A popper on motion scanner is easily picked out since the speed it moves at leaves a strong signature on the scanner minimap. Any of them are seen running on open ground, it may be possible to lead-the traget with an explosive thrown or shot.
• Any aliens grouped together with a popper: throw an explosive into the group or aim for the popper with weaponry that causes it to pop. A wounded and unconscious popper is best avoided since it may explode at anytime. It is unknown if the wounds are bleeding so it may be wise to blow it up with a weak explosive but only if it is an obstruction or too close to proceed past safely.
• The threat of the large explosion when a popper 'pops' is entirely avoided by flight. Flying above the ground (same method as with Brainsuckers) completely negates any threat from this creature if the environment allows flying so high.
• Spitters have inaccurate aim but when it impacts, the enzymes eat armor and flesh only weakly, posing a minimal danger unless a group has targeted a single agent, thus, any groups of these should be broken up with explosives. They usually don't attack first when a battle starts and prefer to wait until others have 'had a go', hence, they may be already panicking by that time which a lone agent can rush them to kill them easily.
  
• Multiworms will burst open when killed. birthing four Hyperworms. The multiworm is has high health but a short range enzyme spit. Use the environment to be at an elevated level, if possible, and engage it with hard-hiting weapons such as the laser, plasma gun, or heavy launcher with explosives from a medium distance to avoid the spit and its melee babies. If in close with a multiworm, retreating further away is the best tactic since they are slow moving. Explosives (autocannon) from multiple agents will wear down the creature until it 'bursts', with continued fire (or a stronger AP-grenade explosion) to also kill the babies. An injured multiworm can be bombarded with stun (grapple or gas) until unconscious which will not cause the creature to 'birth'. Standing on (until mission end?) any part of the worm will keep it subdued.
  
• Hyperworm is a fast 'snake' and quickly needs to get close to eat (melee combat). Its high speed makes a hyperworm the last threat which needs urgent attention. Shooting at the hyperworm with autocannon high explosive rounds is the best tactic since, where there is one...
  If an agent can fly and is out of the hyperworms melee range, the worm now is just a nothing but a mere annoyance that needs to be silenced. If face-to-face with a hyperworm, use the brainsuck-in-action tactic of dropping a live grenade, or run!
  
• Alien Eggs are easily avoided since they cannot move, have a weak enzyme projectile and pose a minimal threat. Distance is the only problem with eggs since an agent turning a corner may come in close range to its weapon. A motion scanner should be used to limit any surprises.
• Chrysalis is no threat whatsoever. A chrysalis is a coccoon like alien usually found together with alien eggs, located in less travelled areas of a building or UFO. It has no offensive capabilties, does not move, and does not 'hatch'.
  

These two alien lifeforms (egg and coccoon) may block corridors which may prevent other aliens from proceeding into battle. Shoot the others first. The egg and coccoon do not need to be killed for a mission to end successfully (ie: eliminate all aliens) since they are both recovered (when possible) alive at mission completion, if not dead.

Aliens Who Carry Weapons

There are only two alien lifeforms in the whole game which can carry any (alien or earth-based) weapons, grenades and devices. The blue Anthropod and the yellow Skeletoid. Tactics against these two types are the same with the only difference is that the skeletoid can fly.

• Anthropods and Skeletoids are the foot soldiers of the alien menace. They can use any weapon available on the battlescape since they can pick up anything dropped when needed (some weapons they won't bother with because they don't cause death). When these two use the inaccurate brainsucker launcher, they will shoot the pods only in the general direction of your troopers. With this one weapon, they may be briefly the second most dangerous alien ...until all pods have been fired! Anthropod and Skeletoids themselves, are completely harmless without a weapon or grenade. They have no in-grown weapons! Concentrate on the brainsuckers instead when they are about (careful with those poppers, too). Kill the foot soldiers before they can launch more pods. If they are in a corridor, they may be unable to aim high to shoot over your agents' heads. Approaching an alien body which used a brainsucker launcher may cause the dropped pods to break open and then you'll have a brainsucker face-to-face!
  
• As the game progress these two aliens will acquire better weaponry and eventually start using exotic devices also. Concentrate fire onto the one with the 'biggest gun' since most other common aliens will appear to be minor threats - brainsuckers and poppers are always highest priority, however. The anthropod, being limited to the ground, can be out-manouvered against flying agents by deformed terrain, broken walkways... anything that can limit your own agents when ground-based, applies to the anthropod as well. The skeletoids suffer no such penalties. Where your agents can fly, the skeletoids can follow!

Fighting: Uncommon Aliens

• Megaspawn is the large tank of the alien forces. Its grown-in weapons being the disruptor beam and a dimension missile launcher makes this slow mass of flesh extremely dangerous. Avoid the missile inflight by using cover with hide-and-seek tactics (you hide when the missile seeks). The megaspawn itself is too slow to chase troops and is usually stuck inside the UFO. Any of these tanks outside, however, should be attacked with the strongest weapons available en-masse from different directions all at once. Depending on the weaponry available to X-Com, the multiworm injure-and-stun tactic works, and followed up by standing on the corpse (overhead view, large red circle, stand one agent on any part of the circle). The missile may be avoided by a fast agent running perpendicular to the incoming warhead. The turning rate is too loose to track such fast movement and it usually ends up over shooting and exploding nearby. ...nearby being better than in their face!
• Micronoid and Psimorph lifeforms use psionic powers as their only method of combat. They both have no offensive weaponry, are slow moving and they avoid the main battle, if possible. The only difference between the two, the Psimorph can fly, is larger and has slightly better psionic skills and much more health. These two very similiar lifeforms will use panic and stun psi powers on X-Com agents often with the psimorph using mind control against psi-weak X-Com agents, from medium distance to assist other aliens in battle. Battlescape tactics to fight these lifeform is easy and simple ...like shooting a slow moving chrysalid. Stunning the psimorph uses the same tactics as for the megaspawn, with the micronoid immune to stun gas but not to stun grapples. Androids are the prefered troop to use.

Fighting: Unique Aliens

• Queenspawn don't make mumma angry!

Fighting: Humans

The four human types in the game which can become threat:

• Cultists
• Gangsters
• Police
• Guards

and the special version of guards: Base Invaders

WIP

TB

The multiworm death spawn is significantly more dangerous in TB than in RT mode, because spawned hyperworms in TB will pop up with a large amount of TU. I have had multiple instances where I was killing a multiworm with autoshot machinegun, holding down the RMB, and when the multiworm popped, my agent fired one last round into the corpse for 1 TU, and the birthed multiworms immediately spent their TUs on reaction by rushing up to my (fully megapol armored) agent and killing him before he could fire another shot. STUNNING a hyperworm will bypass the spawning of hyperworms, which can be VERY helpful!

excess

• When faced with advanced alien weaponry, using cover effectively, explosive hit-and-run skirmishes, five-on-one ambushes, distract-and-attract, destroying explosive structures etc. will start to be the prefered method to when fighting inside the buildings of Mega-Primus.

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