Engaging the Enemy (Apocalypse)

When entering the battlescape, it is always best to use real time, except when going for a capture. The tactics you employ may vary widely depending on who you face, but are vastly different from those employed in the first two games. This is divided into early, middle, and late game vs. both aliens and other humans.

The Difference

The main difference is in the availability of armor in the early game. Megapol and even Marsec armor is nearly immune to early-game weaponry, a far cry from the instant death plasma of the first game. Only hyperworms can easily penetrate this armor until the boomeroid is deployed.

Early Game: Aliens

At first, your only real worries are multiworms/hyperworms and brainsuckers, though spitters are dangerous in large numbers. Multiworms themselves are not dangerous outside of very short range (their acid spit can take chunks out of an unlucky stun squadder's health though), but it's hard to kill them at range and hyperworms are death in melee. Use autocannons and machine guns, preferably two weapons per trooper, then upgrade to plasma guns as soon as you can. Grenades are only slightly effective, as they are often unable to kill in a single hit or noticeably weaken enemies, though a well-timed Megapol AP Grenade can kill the Hyperworms as they burst from their deceased parent. Stun gas, however, is pretty useful for captures and beating multiworms. Missile launchers have a large blast radius, making it easy to hit your troops at times and often inflicting a fair amount of collateral damage, so it's best to not rely on them.

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. Eventually 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.

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

Real Time Gameplay

Early game

To help conserve ammunition, equip a Stun Grapple as your secondary weapon. This serves two functions. First, it gives you a very strong weapon against those annoying close-combat aliens (hyperworms and poppers) and can quickly take down humanoid enemies. Second, it will significantly increase your chances of capturing live aliens, which is essential to developing toxiguns. When not fighting in close quarter combat, keep it stowed in your backpack until it is required so you do not suffer the accuracy penalty.

For general armament, a common practice in RT combat is to have agents arm two of the same weapon. At the cost of lowered accuracy, their rate of fire is increased. Adjusting the firing mode to snap or aimed balances the accuracy with the improved rate of fire. Dual M4000's on aim for example are nearly as rapid but more accurate than a single M4000 on auto. When accuracy is not required, use auto for optimum damage.

Launchers big and small Rockets of all types effectively have perfect accuracy even on auto shot. Even a blind rookie with horrible accuracy turns into a killing machine when armed with the marsec mini launcher.
Mini Launchers are useful for use (albeit controlled use) in city buildings. Heavy Launchers are good for UFO assaults or other situations where collateral damage is not your main concern. Their hefty punch can aid in softening up tightly packed UFO defenders and Megaspawn. All missiles in Real Time will track their targets. As missiles track their targets in Real Time, high accuracy is not a requirement.

stun grenades should be carried in plentiful supply. In addition to stunning aliens, they can be useful for quickly clearing unwanted smoke clouds. In RT, stun damage from stun grenades are administered in two ways. First a small dose of stun is dealt from the impact of the grenade exploding and then from the amount of time the alien spends in the cloud. Blanket an area or serially detonate stun grenades for maximum effect. Aliens in stun gas will always flee from the cloud, momentarily preventing them from shooting at you.

AP grenades are not powerful, but are useful general purpose explosives. They can quickly dispatch groups of small enemies like hyperworms and brainsuckers. In RT, AP grenades are lifesavers for lone agents that find a brainsucker suddenly latching on their head. To remedy this situation: grab an AP grenade and set it to .25 or detonate-on-impact and drop it. Note that you have to access this agents inventory by going through another agent as the soldier being brainsucked will have their open-inventory button temporarily locked.

M4000 Machine Guns are useful general purpose weapons that are effective against most early enemies. They are ideal accuracy trainers thanks to their high rate of fire and low damage, as accuracy improves by the number of successful hits. The Megapol Lawpistol is a stronger substitute, albeit does not have a large clip.

Dual Auto Cannons are exceptionally powerful in the hands of the right troopers. Auto Cannon AP rounds are the most damaging non-explosive rounds you can fire prior to Disrupter guns. High Explosive rounds are powerful and require little accuracy to use effectively. Lone agents can also use it to shoot brainsuckers off their own heads. the Incendiary rounds are useful to set fire to Multiworms to pre-empt hyperworms at the moment they hatch.

Laser sniper guns are weak, but with enough of them trained on the same target, they can deal a decent amount of damage to make it worthwhile. If you really must fight in close quarters with them, consider using dual rifles and switching to auto, or carry a sidearm.

Megapol Plasma Guns, once available or stolen, are great all-rounder weapons with decent accuracy, damage and a high capacity ammunition clip. They can easily fill in for the laser sniper rifle or Auto Cannon/AP roles. Their size make them excellent secondary sidearms before the Toxigun.

Mid-game

As soon as you have Toxiguns, carry them on any mission where you will encounter humanoid aliens. Particularly those armed with shields as toxiguns do not damage them. Toxiguns have a very high firing rate, so there is no benefit to using two at a time. Use the free hand for other equipment or weapons. Against agents and other humans, Toxigun ammo (all three types) deal damage comparable to M4000 rounds. They have the advantage of leaving your troops mostly unable to harm one another if under psionic control (apart from grenades). Sustained fire is still lethal.

Against aliens that do not carry disruptor shields, use Disruptor weapons to conserve Toxigun ammunition. Start with the rapid-fire Disruptor Gun and work up to the Devastator Cannon. Be aware that the Devastator Cannon can cause a lot of collateral damage in city buildings.

Late-game

Late game tactical combat is often straightforward. You should plenty of Personal Disruptor Shields, Devastator Cannons and/or Toxiguns, and X-COM Disruptor Armor that you need to take out the enemy easily. When all you want to do is cause a lot of damage, swap toxiguns out for more Devastator Cannons, Dimension Missile Launchers or even Entropy Launchers as required.

Bring the usual assortment of stun weapons to capture aliens you still need to research. Stun Grapples lose their edge as they have no effect against Personal Disrupter Shields, but will continue to work against unshielded aliens and are absolutely essential for capturing Micronoids. Stun Grenades and Mind Benders remain useful.

If you stuck with the game long enough, you can reward yourself with the use of the Personal Teleporter. Teleporters are practically a cheat in Real Time, since they work instantaneously while the game is paused. This means you can pause at the precise moment before a projectile hits, or even while an explosive is detonating, and teleport your agent out of the way. Useful for avoiding missiles, instantly-getting into close proximity with enemies for quick kills, and escaping from any number of tricky situations or to explore areas previously only accessibly by flight. Note that they need time to recharge, so carry multiples or build a stack of them in a safe spot for quick refills. Be prepared for a lot of teleporter juggling.

Turn-Based

Early Game

Although you can fire dual weapons (alternately) with shift-click attacks, there's little value in dual wielding in TB as you do not get any TU cost reductions. Two-handed weapons should be fired with nothing in the other hand to increase accuracy; since moving things in your inventory is free you can just keep any secondary weapon in your backpack. This also means you can feel free to bring a stun grapple and equip it as necessary, but be careful of weight.

Marsec M4000 Machine Guns and to a lesser extent the Lawpistol are very useful early game weapons thanks to their high rate of fire. Given an agent has a low enough max TU level, an auto shot will only cost 1TU for the M4000, or 2TU for the Lawpistol. Agents may often find it more effective to spend some TUS to run up to their enemy, switch to auto and fill enemies with bullets and not worry about accuracy. As accuracy is trained based on number of hits, machinegunners tend to train fast.

Auto-cannons are very effective weapons in the early game because their explosive ammo is still quite effective in the hands of agents with poor accuracy. Auto-cannons maintain their effectiveness right through the game against two important enemies - Brainsuckers and Poppers. Auto-cannons are the only weapon that can effectively give reaction fire with explosive rounds, making them good for taking out Brainsuckers, Poppers and Hyperworms as they charge. Near-misses will often result in a kill. Your starting armor is very effective, so shooting HE at point blank range won't hurt too much (though switching to AP ammo is free anyway). The downside is that throwing explosives around will cause property damage, destroy artifacts and kill stunned aliens.

AP, stun and smoke grenades should be standard issue for everyone. Grenades are great for low accuracy agents to get kills on Hyperworms and Brainsuckers. Stun grenades cause a lot more 1-hit KOs in TB mode, making them superior to AP grenades as a fallback. Drop smoke frequently to protect agents against return fire and to get closer with machine guns and stun grapples. A soldier can prime and drop a smoke grenade at their feet with 0 TUs, so an agent who finds himself in a vulnerable position at the end of a turn can give himself smoke cover.

Equipping some Laser Sniper Guns in the hands of your high accuracy soldiers can work well, allowing them to kill enemies at long range, especially small enemies like Brainsuckers and Hyperworms. The downside is that their accuracy training is poor and their damage is easily the lowest in the game. Most combat in Apocalypse is short-to-medium range, so it's difficult for snipers to get good vantage points unless they fly (this has an accuracy penalty). Replace your Laser Sniper Guns with Plasma Guns as they become available; they're not quite as accurate, but they pack more punch and more ammo, making them much more effective against tougher aliens.

Mid Game

Once you research Toxiguns they'll become an important weapon in your arsenal. They have a mediocre accuracy of 40,15 points lower than the plasma pistol, but their fire rate more than makes up for it, surpassing the M4000. They should replace any M4000 Machine Guns and some Auto Cannons. Consider keeping some ACs around for their HE and IN ammo capability, preferably on Androids so they can't be used against you through psionics or brainsucking, or use mini launchers if you can afford them. Provided you research and manufacture Toxiguns as soon as possible you will find the alien Disruptor Gun little more than a side show.

Heavy Launchers and Minilaunchers are useful weapons to pick up. A shot at a location can miss, but a shot at a unit will home and always hit. This makes Minilaunchers extremely useful for those shots you can't afford to miss like your last shot of the turn against a Popper, Brainsucker or Hyperworm swarm. Heavy launchers can fulfill the same role, but take more TUs to fire and are extremely bulky and heavy.

Use Proximity Mines and Boomeroids for Brainsucker and Popper defence when you're camping a corridor or UFO entrance.

Late Game

Disruptor armor will neatly solve your weight problems and allow even your lowest strength soldiers to be armed to the teeth. In TB your ability to charge up to a Megaspawn or Psimorph and toxigun it to death without it shooting back makes them considerably easier than in RT, such that even late game your most credible threats remain the lowly Brainsucker and Popper.

Toxigun agents equipped with Teleporters make the rest of the game a joke. Despite the heavy TU cost, agents can teleport to alien spawn points and kill them on turn 1.

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.

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.