Initial Deployment

Intent of Page

Stub. May be a redundant section - can be deleted later on if unnecessary.

This section is to include discussion of general battlescape strategies commonly used by players - and common goofs like the lemmings effect.

For example, the spotter-sniper stategy, the grenade/object relay, exponential mind control, leap frogging for deployment of flares or for general troop movement, suggestions on how to deploy from the Skyranger/Avenger and the Lightning, etc.

No explanations on sacrificial rookie strategies please. Sacrificial tanks are fine.

Other items to include could be discussion on behaviour of aliens in the battlescape to watch out for.

Oh, and pictograms. Plenty of pictures to show an example of the stategy in question. Most important.

Deploying from Transport

Rookies are often anxious to see (and take a shot at) aliens. This can result in them piling out of the Skyranger as soon as it touches down and charging right into an ambush. A more methodical exit from the Skyranger will maximize alien causalities while increasing the life expentancy of agents.

Tankless deployment

XCOM has shot down one of the first UFO's (crash-1 was in the ocean). Time to send a Skyranger full of rookies into action and see what these aliens are made of.

The soldier standing on the equipment pile tosses out a smoke grenade. End of turn 1.

The smoke grenade is right at the foot of the ramp to mask our troops deployment. Keep on eye on troops stun damage or they might pass out from smoke inhalation.

The smoke grenade goes off. Agent one jumps off the ramp and hunkers down behind the landing gear. Agent two does the same in the other direction. Agent 3, knowing the coast is more or less clear sprints out to get a good firing position with her AC-HE.

Each turn the scout agents only advance a few wary steps. If they spot an alien someone else will shoot at it. If it doesn't die the scout will retreat. This pictures shows the agents entire move for this turn.

Three turns into the battlescape and only a few agents are outside the Skyranger. Half the deployed troops are taking cover behind the sky ranger landing gear.

Once they have spread out a bit, more agents will debark. Keeping spread out is vital. Alien grenades can be brutal without armor.

(This game is with some custom maps from XcomUtil. It adds pyramids to the desert to give the aliens some cover) About 5 turns into the battle and the first group of agents has spread out into the field. An alien has popped out of the door at (1). The scouts (2) are moving cautiously and are carrying fast weapons (Pistols in this case). Troopers with heavier weapons are backing up the scouts (3). Their possible lines of fire are marked with the colored lines.

When a scout makes contact with an enemy, the scout retreats out of the line of fire and the back line troopers with HE weapons take some shots. In this case there were two troopers with a line of fire on the alien and one of them killed it.

Once contact was made with the enemy the scouts all froze for a turn, kneeling. Sure enough the first Sectoid had a buddy who came out the door on the next turn. The scouts got it with reaction fire. This battle ended then since the other Sectoids didn't survive the crash.

Don't try to deploy all your agents! Leave some reserves on the transport. The diagram actually shows a pretty aggressive deployment. The number of agents deployed should be able to handle most situations. Only bring agents off the sky ranger as replacements or to fill in gaps if the deployed forces get stretched too thin.

Deploying with tanks

Deploying with tanks is fairly similar to deploying without them. You can often skip the smoke grenade. Since tanks can't advance in skills, they are cheap to replace in relative terms. Most aliens (save Mutons and Ethereals) will prefer to attack tanks over agents. So you can use them to draw fire away from agents. There are two goals when deploying tanks in the first turns. First, locate and prioritize targets close to the transport. Second, set up a screen around the transport exit to protect agents. In most cases you won't want to use the tank to attack enemies directly in order to allow agents a chance to advance. However, don't hesitate to kill aliens with the tank if there isn't a safe way to get an agent into position. Keep the tanks TU's in mind. It's best to keep about 50 in reserve to lessen enemy reaction fire. If the landing zone is very hot, withdraw the tank back to the transport and toss smokers.

The first tanks comes just onto the ramp. Then it looks left and right before going on. This will show any aliens that are right around the transport door. It also conserves TU's to prevent as much reaction fire as possible. If your tanks get blasted before you can locate the aggressors, pop smoke and see the section on tankless deployments.

A Sectoid is spotted. The tank stops moving.

Tank number two exits the transport and checks the other direction to make sure no sneaky aliens are waiting to shoot agents in the back. It then moves out past the end of the ramp to screen agents should aliens come in range. Tank number one also withdraws out of range of the Sectoid it spotted.

The next turn tank number one re-aquires contact with the enemy. Since the alien can see any units disembarking from the Avenger and thus reaction fire on them, the movement of the HWP will make the alien spend its remaining TUs firing at him, preventing it from reacting to the agents.

Agents are deployed out of range of the spotted enemies if possible. In this case the HWP made the alien spend its remaining TUs so the agent will be safe from harm even though he debarked within sight of the alien. Tanks are better to lose than an experienced agent. Tank number one then clears the shooting lane.

The Sectoid is killed by the agent who just disembarked.

The area around the transport is secure. Two more agents sprint out of the transport and don't bother to save any TU's. They take cover behind the tanks and the craft landing gear. The rest of the deployment goes just like one without tanks. Use the tanks to scout and move one to three agents out of the transport a turn until you are ready to move out.

See Field Manual: Deployment for a supplemental set of tactics relating to deployment from the transport.

Spotter/Sniper strategy

See Scouting

Sweeping the Battlescape

See Sweeping the Battlescape

Bounding Overwatch ("Leapfrog")

This is a common tactic used by modern armies for advancing (or retreating) ground troops and vehicles. One part of the unit advances while being covered by another part of the unit. In X-Com, this translates to part of a fire team saving time units while the other part attempts to move forward and/or find cover. The scout or forward element moves forward slowly, using about half its time units to establish firing positions. The rear element may not move at all if the scouts don't see any enemies to engage or cover to move to, or they may move up to cover or firing positions located by the scouts. If enemies are spotted, the rear element can fire with less risk (on the player turn) than the scouts. The scouts then have time to move to the next cover and repeat the process. The rear element may, in some cases, move forward and become the scout element on the next turn; hence the nickname "leapfrog." On open terrain, the rear element can move nearly as far forward as the scout's position, and the scout may move back slightly to keep any unseen enemies at maximum range. This keeps the team ready for Reactions (on the enemy turn) in the absence of cover.

Grenade Relay

The Grenade Relay is also known as the hot potato. The grenade relay is best thought of in the same manner as a baton relay race where runners pass a baton to another until the last runner crosses the finish line with it.

In the grenade relay, a live grenade is passed between soldiers from one point on the map to another until it reaches its target destination.

The advantage of this strategy is that a front line soldier will not have to prime and throw the grenade.

The priming and throwing action alone costs 75% of your total TUs in addition to the inventory movement costs. This will often mean the death of a front line soldier where keeping a high Reactions level by way of high Time Units is paramount for avoiding reaction shots.

By being passed a pre-primed grenade, the scout will only need to pay the 25% total TUs for the throw and the TUs for picking up the grenade. Since this reduces the overall TU usage, the scout has the freedom of taking a few steps back out of the alien's visible range before throwing, or throwing the grenade and then running for cover.

While this strategy uses a lot more time units overall, the TUs are spent across a number of soldiers, keeping the reaction levels of all but the soldier that primed the grenade at a relatively high level. Soldiers at the rear are also less prone to being attacked by reaction shots.

A Short Example

File:Grelshot1.jpg

The soldier at location A starts the turn by spoting an alien at location B . The soldiers at location C cannot see the alien. The soldier at A has a laser pistol and isn't a particularly good shot with it, so there's no hope of acquiring a reasonable hit from this distance. A soldier at location C primes and throws a grenade to the soldier at A, who promptly picks it up, throws it to B and then backs up to get out of range.

Note that this strategy is not necessarily limited for the use of grenades. It can also be used to rapidly transfer weapons, ammunition, medikits, or other objects such as flares from one end of the map or to the other.

Flares vs. Incendiaries for night-time illumination

Flares

Flares are very handy in general:

• They never "burn out" -- although they can be destroyed by explosives (such as a grenade)
• They do not cause fires like IC ammo, allowing you more use of smoke as cover (only about 400 squares on the map can be covered by smoke or fire at any given time -- see Smoke Grenade#Map Limitations)
• They can be picked up and reused, including as part of a grenade relay
• They weigh less than an Auto Cannon with IC ammo

Flares are most useful when carried by the soldiers deployed at the front of transport.

Incendiary weapons

Fires caused by IC weapons will illuminate nearby squares. An Auto Cannon with IC ammo is the most commonly-used option.

• The fire can serve as a supplemental, if weak, weapon (but keep it away from your soldiers unless they have Personal Armor or better)
• Fire is good for clearing out terrain and flushing out alien units
• Fire will burn out after a while, although it will not be extinguished by explosions (but it can be by Smoke Grenades).

See Also

• Battlescape