NKF's X-COM Apocalypse: Starter's Guide

NKF's X-COM Apocalypse: Starters Guide

An article by NKF

Preface Preamble

NKF is aware that spelling/grammatical error are present in this article. They will be flattened out as they are come across, though the main content is the primary focus as this point in time.

Preface

Starting an X-COM Apocalypse game can sometimes be daunting for first time players, even if they are veterans of the first two X-COM games. So, where do we begin? Well, before we begin, I want to say what this guide is not.

It is not a complete start to end walkthrough. It is only a guide to get players up and running in a new game. It is not meant to be a replacement for the game manual. While this guide may list a few keyboard and mouse commands, players are assumed to know most of the essential interface commands. And even if you don't, well, I'm not going to stop you.

Also, this guide assumes that you can actually get the game to run. It will not include tips on how to get it running on your current OS version. There are better sources for this sort of information.

Baby Steps: Starting the game

Starting a new campaign is generally a simple task of picking the right difficulty level and jumping right into the action. Fair enough. But then there are some nutters out there that make a real deal about it. If you file yourself under this category, this chapter will be of some assistance. And even if you don't, it can probably give you some insights that'll help you along the way.

Choosing a Difficulty Level

If you have absolutely no qualms in actually starting the game, skip ahead to the next chapter, or read on.

The main reason to deliberate on what difficulty level to play is often an easy one to answer. You just want to have an easier time, or you want a challenge. In Apocalypse, the difficulty level is more than just a simple stat increase for your enemies. Here are some things to consider when deciding on a difficulty level:

• Score Progression: The main reason is to decide how toned down your opposition will be. On easier levels, the sheer size of the alien forces you'll encounter will be much smaller, and their stats will be weaker. However, this also means that your score progression will be slower. On the other hand, on harder levels, you get points faster because of larger alien forces. Score controls the release of alien technology, so you tend to obtain technology a lot faster on harder levels, assuming you don't take an overly passive approach and avoid all combat.
• The Map : Difficulty will ultimately influence the type of map you are to play on. On easier levels Mega Primus is a small scenic city that is easy enough to manage, but as the difficulty is ramped up, the city turns into a sprawling Megapolis. This is more for aesthetics than for practical purposes. But it does control the next point.
• Base Sites: The more difficult the level, the more base site locations you'll have open to you. On the easiest level, you can only build up to 6 bases, while the hardest level gives you 8 possible locations. Unfortunately, not all bases locations are equally distributed around the city. While not necessarily a problem, it does mean refuelling and rearming ships and soldiers and then redeploying them to the right locations can become a bit of a hassle.

Your first base

You cannot officially choose your starting base or the layout of the pre-built base modules because base selection and initial module layout is random.

Luckily, you can meddle with fate somewhat by doing a base scrum. Restart the game on the difficulty level of your choice over and over until you get the base configuration that best suits your needs.

Note: Don't spend too much time doing this if you don't get the results that are desired. While you can eventually get any one of the base sites in the city, the chance of actually getting most of them beyond the set of the first four or so common base sites is very slim indeed. Getting the perfect base site that you want along with the module configuration, and personnel will be very difficult to get. You cannot get everything, so pick one that is acceptable and get on with it. You'll have plenty of opportunities to redecorate and rearrange your base. But most important of all, have fun. If you're not having fun, then what's the point?

Real Estate

Bases are differentiated by corridor layout and the top-side building that the base is hidden under. The top-side portion of the base will also determine how many launch tubes your base will have. With a bit of pre-planning, the number of launch tubes are not particularly important, but we'll come to that later.

There are only two types of buildings that X-Com bases can be built in. Slums or warehouses.

Slum

A slum block can be huge, massive even on some maps. But they are very weak and any small section that is damaged can collapse other sections in a domino effect. In short, slums are very fragile. A section of slums can easily fall to even the lightest of mis-fired rockets, and if there are any other slum buildings that are connected, they too will fall. On the other hand, slum blocks often feature large building areas.

Warehouse

Warehouses are smaller, but they are tougher and can withstand more damage than a slum block. They are also more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. Unfortunately, not many warehouses offer specious building areas.

Corridors

The beauty of the various corridor layouts lies not just in how much expansion potential is available, but in how the layout can be utilised in base defence. Each one is better suited for one purpose than another.

Small layouts are the best for defence as you can force attackers into chokepoints. However they lack the space to allow for constructing a multi-purpose base that has a little of everything - forcing them into specialised roles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The main headache is deciding which facilities to decentralise and move to a new base.

Bases with large wide open layouts offer the opposite. With more space you get more room to build facilities, but your six teams of soldiers and technical staff will be spread all over the base. If the base has a repair bay, your defence modules will have to spread thin to cover both the repair bay and the grav-lift. As the game can only operate so many defence turrets at any given time, attackers will be able to break through the defence guns a lot easier and possibly infiltrate the base.

Grav-lift locations can also make or break your primary base as they are fixed. Take their locations into consideration as well when choosing a layout.

Weigh up your options and go for the base that you think would work best.

Getting into the thick of things

So you've bought your base, and you're happy with it. Good. You've taken the plunge and are now able to actually start playing the game. Hurrah!

Since Apocalypse is so open ended, I cannot possibly tell you what you must do next and where to go from there. This you must decide on your own.

Initial Housekeeping

The first thing you'll probably want to do after purchasing your new base is to inspect the goods. We'll start with the base screen. Bring it up and have a look at what's there.

A look at the base

In the base screen you'll have access to the various other key trading and management functions. For now, let's concentrate on the base. Look at how the existing modules are placed. It's a mess, isn't it? Initial module placement is pseudo-random, so it will not always end up in a very desireable layout.

You will have all the facilities that you need to get you through the first week or so at your disposal. You don't need to build any more at this stage, but you may want to plan ahead and think about what you would like to build. If you want to rearrange your base layout to something more manageable, such as moving the quarters and labs to a safer location, you can start building them now and then dismantle the old facilities when they are built. Defenses shouldn't be a major priority at the moment as long as you keep a low profile and not make too many enemies.

Tip: hovering your mouse over your facilities will bring up additional information about them, such as current capacity.

After you've done your tour of the base itself, let's head on to the garage and inspect the vehicles.

A look at your vehicles

You can inspect your vehicles from the vehicle inventory screen or any menu that lists all the vehicles and soldiers in the current building. The vehicle inventory screen provides the most in-depth view of your ships, and should be used for all vehicle inspection and modification, while the building vehicle lists are very general and are mainly used to allow access to the vehicle inventory screen for a specific vehicle.

You'll have a small fleet of starting vehicles to play with. A Valkyrie interceptor, curiously fitted with a different engine than the standard issue engine, a pair of Pheonix hovercars, a Stormdog and a Wolfhound APC.

All the vehicles are divided into two classes, ground and air vehicles.

Ground Vehicles

Ground vehicles are restricted to travelling on the road, and suffer from the limitations of the road, which means they cannot get to any off-road sites, like UFO crash sites. They are very limited for use in UFO combat and are severely outclassed by the air ships in this role. This is unfortunate as some of the ground vehicles come with very high class cheap cost weapons, such as the Anti Air Guard cannon standard issue mounts on Stormdogs and any one of the three turrets that can fit onto the tanks. This means pre-position of road vehicles is of great importance. Road cars are also susceptible to instant death when they go off the road, making them less than satisfactory as front line attackers as more often than not, the road under the car will be destroyed before any damage is done to the car. Road vehicles do excel at providing intercity transportation to and from terror sites, although a lot of players prefer to get an additional air ship to fill that role.

Air Vehicles

Air ships are the bread and butter of your Cityscape forces. Any ship you are assigned can provide multiple roles, from transport to interception. Air ships are not restricted to the road, but they can suffer almost instantaneous death if they are caught underneath any falling debris.

Here are some of the author's thoughts on your default starting vehicles. While these are mainly opinion, do not let this stop you from making up your own mind about the discussed vehicles.

Valkyrie Interceptor

The Valkyrie interceptor is built for intercepting UFOs. However, in actual practice, the Valkyrie starts off quite well, but in the long run is quite a poor interceptor due to its low expandability, weak hull, size and small weapon mounts. It does however have larger weapon hardpoints than a Pheonix Hovercar, allowing for larger weapons like the Lancer laser to be mounted. If used correctly, it makes for a great troop transporter or even a support fighter.

Pheonix Hovercar

The Phoenix hovercar is best thought of as a smaller variant of the Valkyrie. It may be smaller, but that's where its strength lies. Because it's a smaller target. it's able to dodge more incoming attacks than the Valkyrie and even if it's destroyed, it's easy to replace. Mixed with Hoverbikes, Hovercars can provide adequate air power for early UFO encounters.

Stormdog

The Stormdog, like most road vehicles, isn't particularly noteworthy except that it comes with a standard issue anti-airguard cannon, which provides fair firepower against most of the early UFOs. The Stormdog can be used as a transportation vehicle, but it cannot carry any storage modules. For actual transportation of soldiers and goods by road, the Wolfhound is far better suited to such a task.

Wolfhound APC

The Wolfhound suffers from the same fate as all road cars, so there's little to say about it except that it's designed to carry troops and haul equipment from alien drop sites. The Wolfhound provides superb intercity travel, making it a great secondary or tertiary troop transporter at the start of the game. Hey, it's free - you may as well use it until you can buy another Interceptor or a Hawk.

A Look at your Staff

The Grunts

Moving on, let's put on your human resources manager cap and head to the barracks to inspect the motley crew of ne'er do wells that'll be battling the greeblies, squigglies and squishy squashy aliens that threaten Mega Primus. This is best done after your purchase of new equipment and any new agents you've hired have arrived.

The agent equipment screen shows you your agent's vital statistics, combat history and the agent's inventory and whatever's in storage.

First you'll want a quick overview of your agent's stats. Take particular note of the agent's strength levels, as this will determine what sort of load the agent will be comfortable with. The actual levels of most of the other stats aren't particularly important at this stage of the game - they'll improve with combat.

You can now move onto kitting your agents. One suggestion is to remove the equip of all of your agents and then start building your kit up from scratch - all at the same time. To do this, select all of your agents by using ctrl+LMB on their portraits until all of the agents are selected. Start removing items from the visible agent's inventory. Since not all of the agents will be equipped the same way, you'll have to fill some gaps with a random item and then unload it to clear the slot for the other agents. You can check other inventories by using ctrl+LMB on the other agents.

Equip your troops as you see fit. At the very least kit your main team that'll be going out on the missions.

The weapons you can buy and use at the start are diverse. Pick your favourites, though do keep the high explosive munitions to a minimum. The company directors you are trying to please get ticked off easily if their buildings are damaged. A good mixture of weapons and supporting tools is always a good way to start out.

Stun grapples deserve a big mention as they are your first unlimited ammo weapon available. They do have a small initial charge, but they do allow you knock down an enemy 160 hitpoints earlier than you would without it, and tend to knock down a lot of enemies in a hit or two. Be sure to carry some in your squad and use them as an off-hand weapon

The Techs

The fighting forces dealt with, lets look at the brains of the operation. The support staff made up of quantum mechanics, bioengineers and engineers.

Since there's very little you can research and build at the start, your techs aren't going to be that busy. At least, not right way. Still, you do want to consider the quality of your techs that are available. Techs and engineers have skill levels that determine how fast they can research. Obviously you'll want the best skill your money can buy.

Review the tech levels and start hiring and firing your support staff and get the best techs that you can to fill all the available slots.

Hand pick your best techs, but remember that you're not going to get 10 perfect 100's for each specialized facility that easily. Hang onto as many highly skilled workers as you can to get the operation running. Even if there's a bunch of 64 skill workers, it's better to have the work flowing than to not have any workers at all. This is particularly important if you decide to have multiple large facilities, such as the large workshop. You can replace them with higher skilled worker at a later time.

But again, it's this early in the game, so even if you leave this off for later, it won't matter too much.

Your First Mission

After you've had your fill inspecting and setting up your operations, the only thing you can do next is wait since you have no idea where the aliens are at this point in time. Let time pass and you'll get a distress call alerting you to an alien presence somewhere in the city. You'll get to choose to launch your ships at this point.

Unless you save\reload, there's no way to avoid the first mission announcing itself with an alert siren. Later on you'll be able to go to alien infestation sites the moment the aliens are dropped into the buildings.

The very first mission itself is a doozy with little opposition beyond the dreaded brainsuckers. You'll meet a small number of anthropods that'll launch brainsuckers at you.

But don't get complacent. If you are careless and a brainsucker latches itself onto an agent's head, get if as quickly as you can otherwise your fellow agent will start shooting at you with live rounds.

As soon as all the anthropods and brainsuckers are either dead or have fled the combat zone, you'll have won the mission.

To completely confound the aliens on this mission, you could opt to send a lone android.

Your First Air Skirmish - or Not

After your first mission, there'll be no more alien sightings. You can then rest up and let time pass until the alien's make their next move.

The alien's next move will be to launch a small fleet of probes and scouts through the three dimension gates that you've probably noticed floating about the city.

Skip the next lot of pre-amble if you're already familiar with how the UFOs are organized.

Roles of the mushroom saucers

A typical UFO fleet can be classed into dropships and escorts. Either class of ship can have varying levels of supporting or offensive roles. Note that UFOs aren't officially classed into escort/dropships, but these roles are fairly apparent. Later there some ships can fall into an aggressor role where they just come into the city to attack it.

A dropship is a UFO that is able to carry and drop aliens into a building (Note, these ships you meet are unmanned ships, but they do carry live cargos). They are the ones that pop into the city and fly right towards their chosen target, drop their payload and make a mad dash for the nearest dimension gate. They payload is most often aliens. On rare occasions you will get a sparkly blue beam which is is known as Micronoid Rain, where no aliens are dropped but there's a chance the organization will get infiltrated instantly. Other rare occasions, the dropship, typically of capital ship class, will drop an Overspawn.

Escorts will just be standard fighter type UFOs that follow the dropships around. Escorts (the class of UFO, not necessarily the UFO Escort) typically consist of fairly heavily armed UFOs that tend to give your starting level vehicles and equipment a run for their money. They blast away anything that's in their path and fend off any attackers that get near their the dropship they are escorting. When the dropship flees to the gates, they'll follow it as well. Despite being the most dangerous of the pair, they are secondary in importance to the dropship. Fast Attack Ships are amongst the most common escorts, though you will later encounter ships like the Bomber, which is geared towards fighting Hoverbike swarms, or the Escort. The Escort has no direct damage offensive capability, but does launch stassis bombs and comes built-in with a cloaking field, which jams missile guidance systems.

Later in the game you will get the two capital ships. The Battleship and Mothership. They are fairly multipurpose in role. These typically fill the dropship role but also have some serious offensive capabilities to protect themselves. The battleship sometimes fills the escort role for a mothership. They will also sometimes enter the city in an aggressor role and start blasting away at a particular set of buildings.

The entry point of each UFO is unpredictable, as each time a UFO materializes, the game will call on the random number generator to decide on which gate to come through. No matter where they materialize, the escorts will attempt to link up with the dropship they're protecting.

As for the gates, though there are only three, they move about.

For Great Justice!

Well, you first bunch of UFOs have been spotted. Launch your ships and engage the UFOs in aerial combat. Like your very first mission, this should also be a doozy since the probes and scouts will fall to anything you can throw at them. Even a single hoverbike can take on a few of them on their own with the right armament. Just pick your favourite ships and send them out.

A few things that can be helpful prior to the actual event is to set the pause settings in the option menu to pause the game every time a UFO enters the city. This is useful for keeping track of the dropships as they enter the city. Scattering your forces at strategic points around the city is also fairly helpful at casting your net wide to catch most of the UFOs if you're not sure where they'll enter the city from.

While fighting, be absolutely sure to keep track of the three Probes, especially if you aren't able to go after all three of them at once. The scouts act as escorts, so just destroy them. The probes however intend to fly to a set location, drop alien troops in it and then flee back to the dimension gates.

If the transporter makes its drop, keep track of the building and send a team there to clean up the mess immediately. Whether the UFO escapes or is destroyed at this point is meaningless.

The I-Can't-Defeat-Them approach

Okay so you may not always have the resources or firepower to deal with the UFOs. Another way is to just leave the UFOs alone. Do keep track of the transports and keep an eye on where they deposit their troops. Just clear out the ground missions.

This will most definitely not by the case for your first encounter with the UFOs, but is included for future your air skirmishes.

Your Day Job: Bug Extermination

So you weren't successful at keeping the dropships from dropping some troops into a building. No matter - that's where your agents come in.

Load them up for any eventuality, pop them on the transport and send it to the mission site. Once the transport arrives, select the team and start the mission by investigating.

Note that the main drop-sites that you investigate will often be the hardest and have the most enemies. There are exceptions to the rule, but the main site will be the strongest source of alien infestation. It's imperative that you clear these out.

By now the aliens might be slightly better armed than before with the introduction of some non-humanoid enemies with built-in ranged attacks. Start using better tactics and make better strategic use of your weapons' various strengths.

End the mission by either clearing the map of enemies (either by killing them all, or letting them flee), getting all your agents killed, or have all your agents leave the site via the exit pads. Naturally the first option is the one you want most of the time.

Get used to this bit as you'll be doing this for the rest of the game.

After the mission: Monitoring Infiltration

Congratulations, you've cleared a site! Now go the others that you've marked off as well if there were more than one. Before you leave each site, be sure to remember where they are. This can be done easily by just parking an unmanned vehicle at the building.

After you've cleared them all, your job won't be over just yet. Now you have to monitor the infiltration levels. Even though you cleared the main sources of infiltration immediately, some infiltration will have already spread to surrounding areas. So keep your eyes peeled.

Let the day pass in short bursts of time. Pause and go to the graph screen and update the top-10 infiltrated organization chart. This will be your major source of information for the next few hours.

If you see any rise in infitlration levels, take note of the company. If the rise in infiltration is very gentle, then you can probably ignore it for the time being. If it's a very sharp rise, then you must do something about it. Graph lines with hardly any rapid increase will generally peak and drop off naturally after a few hours.

Time to sort them out! Go back to the cityscape view and open up the top-down display of the city. Open up the organization tab and select the icon of the company you wish to investigate. This will highlight all their owned buildings on the map. Locate the buildings belonging to this company that are close to the major drop sites that you cleared earlier that day.

Send your team there and investigate the site. If it wasn't a mistake, then you should start a mission. Clear out or chase off any aliens in this mission. Once you've cleared the site, go to any other sites that are having rising infiltration levels.

Repeat the process by letting time pass and checking the top-10 graph and then investigating any nearby spikes in activity.

Once the graph lines have all dropped off or are rising very slowly, then you can start relaxing a bit. Once all graph lines start to dip off, you've defeated the alien menace for the day!

Now, you might be wondering why you are doing all this active patrolling when you could just be waiting and let the authorities throw an alert at you to notify you of any threats. You could do this, however the alerts are sporadic and tend to occur late into the infestation, where it has become too widespread to the point of not being easily manageable. So getting alerts means you are neglecting your duties to the city. Ideally, apart from the first mission, you don't want to ever get an alert ever again.

Make sure you let your injured agents rest back home before the clock ticks over midnight. This is when they are healed. Any agents studying will also get the benefit of their training labs if they are at full health at this time.

Defeating the aliens, with bigger guns, and science

Well, probably not with bigger guns as the aliens haven't got any of the good stuff yet at this point. For that to happen, you need to do more missions against the aliens and build up your activity points. Or go and attack someone like the Cult of Sirius or any other organization of your choice and build up those activity points.

At this point there's little you can do as the only researchable project with immediate practical value will be for the Bio Transport module. This is needed to capture aliens, which are in turn required to nab you bigger and better labs where you can build bigger weapons to defeat and capture bigger and badder aliens. And so goes the cycle!

Start the research on the bio transport module. When that's done, tack one onto your transport and bring it in with you to the mission site. Capture some aliens, then bring them back to the lab for analysis. That will give the bioengineers something to work on - and hopefully lead to the upgrading of their work environment to the advanced bio-lab.

Quantum mechanics won't have too much to do, but whatever becomes available should be researched immediately. As the aliens start to bring new toys in, like the disrupter gun, your quantum mechanics will start to get very busy.

Engineers will probably be the worst off in terms of work at the start of the game apart from crank a few bio modules out to bolt onto your transports.

Further Air Skirmishes

Or getting more advanced with the air battles.

Beyond the first air battle, the aliens will gradually start sending bigger and more powerful UFOs in as you clear the technology hurdles.

From here on, you'll want to start putting more thought into preparing yourself for the future air battles.

One of the problems you might have found at this point is the limited coverage your base has over the city. You're stuck in one spot, yet the gates amble around all over the city.

How to solve this dilemma? Well, you can buy a new base. That has its fair share of problems, such as cost and its own positioning in the city.

The best way to clear your coverage problem is to make use of one of biggest perks X-COM gets: free parking. Your ships can fly to and land in any building in the city. They can stay docked at the building for as long as they like without burning any of their fuel. Send them out, park them where they're needed the most, and then launch and attack UFOs as they appear. When they need to be repaired, refueled and re-armed, send them back home for a few hours. Once repaired, redeploy the ships as necessary.

That solves one problem, but the next problem is the increasing strength of the visiting UFOs. You can't even think to shoot them down with what little you've got. This means you have to start increasing your air force size and start upgrading its firepower.

A most common practice is to buy Hoverbike and hovercars and arm them with lots of cheap weapons like Bolter lasers, miniguns, Janitor and prophet missiles. Or if you've got the cash to spare: Lineage Plasma Cannons, which are very powerful for their hardpoint size requirements. This is a cheap way to bulk up your forces fast and it's easy to replace each ship if they get destroyed. The large numbers allows you to spread them out into small squadrons all over the city.

Another practice is to buy a small number of heavy firepower ships like the Hawk Air Warrior, however their cost can be quite prohibitive in the first couple of weeks. Small wings of Hawk Air Warriors armed to the teeth with missiles, Lineage cannons, Lancer lasers and a missile evasion matrix can prove to be very formidable against a fair number of mid-level UFOs. Their limited numbers though limit their coverage of the city.

Yet another practice is a combination of the swarms and heavy hitters. A swarm is first sent in to distract a UFO, and then the heavy hitters swoop in with their heavy guns firing. This is even more costly to maintain, and a strategy that may be more viable towards that mid to late portion of the game.

No matter which method you use, increasing the strength of your airforce is imperative to winning the game by way of shooting down, capturing and then researching the UFOs.