Common Mistakes

This article covers a variety of common mistakes that can be done in the game, and will attempt to offer suggestions on how to avoid, resolve or work around them.

Geoscape

Saving over a save you do not want to overwrite

Occasionally you may find yourself mis-clicking on a save slot that you did not want to save over. If it's empty, then it's fine. If it's a save you do not want to overwrite, then this poses quite a problem as you cannot back out of the save once you get to the text entry for the file name.

Note that at this stage the file has not yet been saved. Once you hit enter, then the files will be overwritten. You can quickly recover your previous save by tabbing to your operating system and manually making a backup of the files or copying the contents into an empty slot. Once done, you can go back into the game and over-write the save.

This problem only affects the PC version of X-COM.

Battlescape

Lemmings Syndrome

An effect that often occurs through UFO doors or around corners with large number of aliens on the other side.

The common setup includes trying to breach a doorway with several soldiers. The first soldier is sent through the door, and is promptly killed. The next soldier is sent through the door, and is also executed in a similar fashion. Yet another soldier is sent through the door and meets the exact same fate. This process repeats until either the hapless soldiers are exhausted or the aliens are unable to react.

The root of this problem is lack of patience, and is easily solved by being patient and using the time to assess the situation.