Engaging the Enemy (Apocalypse)
Battlescape Tactics as the Game Progresses
- relevant for real-time game mode. Turn Based Tactics are also available
In General
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 tactical battle 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.
- standing on an unconsicous unit will prevent them from becoming active (see Popper).
- flying at least one level above an enemy which only attacks with melee, makes the hostile impotent.
Aliens: Early
Early game alien threats are brainsuckers, anthropods, spitters, multiworms and hyperworms ...and if careless enough, multiworm eggs.
The most serious problem are brainsuckers! There are 2 solutions: Androids and overwhelming firepower. A brainsucked agent is a severe threat since Megapol Armor is so resistant to damage from early weapons. A stun grapple stun or sustained autocannon fire with armor piercing rounds will eventually kill the contaminated agent. A more desperate tactic is to drop (throwing takes too long) a short-time stun grenade (by the soon-to-be-turned) agent, or use an explosive grenade instead! If an autocannon is available, high explosive rounds shot at the ground may kill a brainsucker mid-suck (Note: inventory access is blocked for the agent mid-suck, but can be circumvented). Brainsuckers come from pods, pods come from launchers, launchers are carried by anthropods. If a pod is heard to have cracked open but the brainsucker is not sighted, turn your agents in all directions until found, which being so dangerous, agents should ignore other aliens types until the brainsucker is dead.
Anthropods use brainsucker launchers to shoot pods randomly, but in the direction of your troopers. This is typically the second most dangerous alien for this specific reason, however, once all pods have been fired, they themselves are completely harmless with their empty brainsucker launchers. Concentrate on the brainsuckers. Kill the anthropods 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 a dead anthropod may cause the dropped pods to break open and then you'll have a brainsucker face-to-face.
Spitters, Multiworms, and Hyperworms each have built-in weapons, with spitters having the longest range and hyperworms being close combat only.
Spitters have inaccurate aim but when it impacts, the enzymes eat armor (weakly), but pose no real danger unless a group has targeted a single agent. 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 without using a lot of ammo.
Multiworms will burst open when killed. birthing four Hyperworms. The multiworm is has high health but a short range spit. Use the environment to be at a higher level than it and engage it with harder hiting weapons such as the laser, plasma gun, or heavy launcher from a medium distance to limit the spit and from its melee babies. Retreat further away if the multiworm gets too close since it is slow moving. Sustained explosive fire from multiple agents will wear down the creature until it 'pops' and the contiuned fire with autocannons will kill the babies also. An injured multiworm can be bombarded with stun gas grenades until unconscious. The will not cause the creature to 'pop'. If a hyperworm is incoming an autocannon and high explosive rounds with auto-shot will usually kill the worm if the ground is shot at, slightly in front of its direction. An AP grenade will immediately kill the Hyperworms, but if any start getting close, throw (RMB) a grenade (if autocannon is not available) in front of the incoming worm so that is gets caught in the middle of the blast when the grenade hit the ground. The agent the hyperworm wants to eat should run away (dropping heavy stuff if needed) whilst other troops target the hostile. A flying agent at least one level above and cannot be attacked by a hyperworm.
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! Multiworm eggs should be avoided since they cannot move, have a weak enzyme projectile and are a minimal threat. They are recovered alive at mission completion. A chrysalis is a common alien found, but has no offensive capabilties.
Early Game: Humans
This varies widely, as the different groups are armed differently, but what you really have to worry about are cultists, gang members, Marsec troops, and Megapol, as these are the most dangerous.
Cultists wear Megapol armor, and have autocannons, grenades, plasma guns, rocket launchers, and basically everything Megapol sells.
Gang members are equipped with a wide array of guns, though plasma guns are somewhat rare. Diablo members are equipped with incendiary grenades on occasion.
Marsec troops have Marsec gear.
Megapol troops have Megapol's inventory of lethal weaponry.
In all cases your main advantage is that you can employ grenades frequently. Explosive autocannon fire is also of great value, as your enemies tend to clump. Target rocket launchers first, then shoot whoever is shooting at you. Inflict maximum collateral damage, as a bankrupted foe can't counterattack.
Mid Game: Aliens
When you pass 1000 points, things take a change for the lethal. The anthropods are now the prime target, behind only charging brainsuckers and poppers in threat. Claiming disruptor guns slightly evens the odds, but your armor advantage is long gone. Skeletoids start to appear, and the nightmare of storming UFOs is not much changed from the other two games; if anything, it is now even more dangerous. When boomeroids appear, things get even worse, though the non-armed aliens are now easy meat for disruptor guns. At 4000 points, the devastator cannon is deployed, proving lethal to even armored androids in as few as two shots at times. Begin phasing out human weaponry as fast as possible and keep your troops far apart when you can. If you already have toxiguns (and you SHOULD!), it is advisable to farm COS for tactical points to hit the next tier of alien weaponry, which will bring about Personal Disruptor Shields. which (once captured and researched) will make missions MUCH easier.
Mid Game: Humans
This is much easier, as you are now equipped with the most lethal weaponry. In almost any battle, X-COM troops should shred any resistance, though you must still be wary of rocket launchers and plasma guns.
Late Game: Humans
By this point, humans will usually be complete pushovers. Protected by X-Com disruptor armor and personal shields, even taking direct hits from rocket launchers will do little to slow your agents down, and with devastator cannons and dimension missile launchers, you'll make short work of whatever human enemies try to take you out.
Storming UFOs
This can be tough, even early on. Early in the game, you'll start facing your first manned alien craft: transports and fast attack ships. Most of these follow the same basic design, a central gravity lift with the ship's control center on the upper floor. Ship entrances can vary significantly; transports have two exits on opposite sides of the craft for example, whilst others have only a single exit. Agent positioning at the start of the battle can mean the difference between a turkey shoot and a chaotic fight on open terrain.
A good - though slow - tactic is to position your agents in a rough half-circle or quarter-circle around the exit door(s) at around a dozen squares away as terrain permits and wait for the aliens to come to you, rather than wading into a deathtrap. Snipers can be further; less accurate troops or those using grenades should be closer. Do not bunch up - grenades ruin your day as much as they ruin the alien's', and the monstrous Megaspawn has a very powerful missile launcher you do not want to be hit by.
Cover outside tends to be sparse so make the most of dips or rises in the terrain for height advantage/hard cover, and use trees/bushes as 'soft' cover. Only if the aliens refuse to leave their camping spots should you risk venturing inside - if the aliens haven't left the craft yet, you'll run into a few of them as soon as you enter the ship's hallway. Be careful not to get bunched up entering or a well-placed boomeroid can cause some serious harm to your troops.
Eventually, you'll want to secure the bottom of the lift, then move upward to the control center. One useful technique, if you can pull off the throw, is to lob a smoke or gas grenade up onto the upper floor from below. Smoke will help you move your agents into position without coming under fire, while gas grenades will ensure that there are no aliens (especially brainsuckers) lying in wait right at the top of the lift.
Once you enter the control room, be prepared for a real fight. Unless you were met by a large number of alien attackers in the entryway, the bulk of the ship's crew is likely to be up on this level, and most of the time they're entrenched behind barricades or up on elevated catwalks, giving them a tactical advantage. Making use of gas grenades here to flush aliens out of their cover can greatly improve your odds of coming away without casualties.
It's important not to get complacent. Even late in the game, when you're wearing the best armor and toting devastators and shields, alien incursions in buildings can seem like cake, but UFO crews will almost always be as well-armed as you are and will have the tactical advantage in many cases.
Tactics for human buildings
X-COM Base
See Base Defense (Apocalypse) for more info.
The layout is of course dependent on how you've designed your base, so make sure you use Security Stations! Pull your civilian personnel into a safer part of the installation with a squad to guard them, then start sweeping for any intruders that might have escaped your security net.
Temples of Sirius
All indoors, with fairly large open rooms split apart by thin walls with double doors at the corners, and small, tunnel-filled basements or small offices on the lowest level. Unpleasant to fight in but far from the worst terrain. Rows of pews and low walls offer plenty of 'soft' cover from small arms fire, while many pillars and the occasional altar present harder full cover that can absorb one or more Devastator shots.
Walls are thin and easily breached if you want to make your own doors.
Corporate Headquarters
The corporate headquarters are almost the closest thing you'll get to an open-field battle in any of the maps in Mega-Primus. Be glad, because they're also the alien's preferred target. There are three major layouts.
First and most common is a single solid building with a large lobby, with a gravlift and a horde of aliens in it. Enter the lobby with all your troops at once and gun down the aliens inside. Other aliens will swarm down the gravlift and out the nearby doors, so most aliens will be involved.
After that, hunt the rest down with squads of troops; they prefer hiding upstairs.
Second, there's a pathway with small towers lining it. Most aliens will emerge onto the pathway and can be cut down by mass fire. Again, hunt down the survivors in the towers afterwards.
Last but not least there is a sprawling building with numerous entry points. Sadly, there is no area that the aliens will reliably swarm towards when you open fire.
Slum
The slum is either an obstructed field, a brutal room to room hunt for aliens in some large buildings, another obstructed field with small buildings, or a building wrapped around a clear area, which you need to get cleared of enemies while dealing with enemies on the balconies. The building missions tend to have some mostly empty levels and some levels filled with enemies. The field missions... you remember the farm and forest terrain from X-com1? kinda like that, with more trees.
Be on the lookout for supported structures like the water tanks. They are fairly lightly supported and stray fire could easily bring them down on top of your men.
Apartments
These are all small rooms with open common areas and fairly long hallways, ideal for being ambushed and separated... in other words, these suck. On the other hand they offer decent flanking opportunities to offset their many bottlenecks; if an enemy has you pinned down in a corridor (or vice versa) there is generally a good way to flank them nearby, and smoke grenades can be used to make things a little easier.
Cover is pretty sparse, but columns here and there offer fairly good protection from small arms and you only ever need to cover a single floor. Agents can also duck into the apartments if you're setting up an ambush, or to recover from their injuries using a Medi-Kit. Eggs and Chrysalis' may often be found tucked in bathrooms.
Megapol Stations
If you thought Apartments were bad, these are a hundred times worse. Extremely tight corridors with many small rooms and an abundance of doorways. Do not go into battle in one of these unless you are exceptionally well-prepared and armed with end-game tier equipment like shields, alien weapons, and manufactured armour, unless it is the early game and aliens are not packing lethal ranged weapons. Motion sensors are useful.
Game Modes In-Depth
Androids and Hybrids
Two opposites, androids are physically strong, while hybrids are physically weak but are the only race that can effectively use psionics. Ideally, androids will have lots of extra equipment to either demolish everything or to replenish teammates supplies, while hybrids travel as light as possible but with a Mind Bender even if they haven't received adequate psionic training.
At the start of the game androids will have the best aim of your troops, so should be given the best weapons. With some training and experience your human soldiers will surpass them. Androids' high HP and immunity to brainsuckers and psionics makes them good scouts and shock troops, since turning a corner in to something unpleasant is less likely to result in their death than a human. Also, while by no means expendable, androids are more easily replaced than an experienced human. As such, once you have humans with good accuracy that can take over fire support, equip your androids for short range combat and/or demolition and use them in the front line. Another advantage of androids' immunity to psionics and brainsuckers is that they can safely be given heavy weapons like launchers, since there is no way for the aliens to take control of them. You can sometimes use androids as "bait" for brainsucker launchers, as brainsuckers will not attempt to brainsuck them, but anthropods and skeletoids will still fire brainsucker pods at androids (I think)
In the late game once you have disruptor armor and advanced, lighter weaponry hybrids really come in to their own. The lighter equipment makes a hybrid's strength disadvantage less of a problem, and the toughness of disruptor armor and shields makes their lack of HP less of an issue as well. Meanwhile, a hybrid's high psionic defence is an asset even if you don't use offensive psionics much, and their proficiency with weapons is comparable to a human.