View source for Jasonred79's Guide to sandbagging your tactical score

First off, why would you want to keep your tactical score low? Because the alien's tech level is controlled by your total tactical score. ... In fact, you would mainly want to keep your score low until you have equipped your team with toxiguns. Because dealing with shielded aliens before you have toxiguns can be painful, not to mention their disrupter guns.
After that point though, advancing the alien's tech levels is actually HELPFUL, because quite a number of the aliens you fight use natural weapons that do not depend on the tech level. You don't want to fight megaspawn without disrupter armor or shields...

Generally, you won't really mess up the difficulty progression unless you go wild with raiding factions.

Anyhow, choice is yours, this guide will teach some tricks to sandbag your tactical score.


1. When raiding, try to be aware of which items cost a lot of money but count for very little score, and vice versa. It makes a difference when you raid for profit!

2. Similiar for loot from aliens. Entropy and brainsucker launchers and their ammo are worth a pittance if you sell them, but they are worth a bucketload of tactical score. So, don't sell them. Load them onto a team of agents, do a friendly raid, toss all that junk on the floor, and retreat. You'll lose a bucketload of points.

3. You get -10 points if you lose a rookie in combat. But you lose an additional 10 points if he died from friendly fire.

4. Yeah, buy a bunch of rookies, buy a pile of cheap stuff that's worth points, load them up with it, bring them to a friendly raid, and execute them. ... the ridiculous thing is that the guy who shoots them will gain accuracy experience from it.