Making the Game Harder

Rewrite Needed The contents of this article are outdated, confusing or constructed in a discussion format. Possibly due to alien mind control. Please help fight the alien menace by updating or correcting the information on this page.

This page is intended for players who finish the game frequently on the highest difficulty and would like to keep the challenge alive.

Making the game harder is done in two ways: one can accept handicaps (not use some of the options the game puts at your disposal, or use them only under certain circumstances), or modify the game files via utilities or direct editing to make things harder.

This page contains a list of simple handicaps to get you started. It may be worth also examining these sub-pages:

• Making the Game Harder/Scenarios - More complex scenarios, by assorted UFOpaedians.
• Making the Game Harder/Modding - Scenarios that require third-party tools or direct hacking of game files to set up.

Refrain from using exploits

The most obvious way to make the game harder is to avoid "cheating" by using the various exploits discovered over the years. A full list, and instructions on how to use the various exploits, are in the link above, but the most egregious and game-breaking are listed here for convenience.

• Free Wages and Engineer/Scientist overflow - The majority of X-Com's Geoscape expenditure consists of salaries and hiring engineers and scientists; removing these expenses trivialises financing.

• Free Manufacturing - Building items for free makes Elerium management trivial (as you only ever need it to fuel advanced craft) as well as making manufacturing about 7 times as profitable.

• UFO Redux - Multiplies the score and most of the loot (including Elerium) from a given UFO by a factor of 2 (or potentially even more).

• Collision Detection exploits - Turns breaching UFOs from a nightmare into cake and allows risk-free extermination of aliens on higher levels than your troops.

• Avoiding night missions - Dextroys one of the advantages aliens have on the Battlescape.

Psionics

No Offensive Psionics

Psionics and Psi-Amps can completely imbalance the game in favor of the human player. Even one Psi-Amp is bad news for aliens, and with training and screening, a squad full of psionic troops can eventually mind-control all the aliens during the first turn (even Cyberdiscs and Sectopods). This turns combat into a cakewalk, which is not nearly as much fun as sweating your way around every single corner. Therefore, one of the most important things you can do to make the game more challenging is to avoid using Psi-Amps.

No Psionic Screening

Significantly less unbalancing is the use of Psi Labs to screen troops (and perhaps also increase their Psionic Defense). However, for an even greater challenge, you can avoid using Psi Labs altogether, which forces you to rely on combat trauma to find out which of your troops are psi weaklings.

No Mind Probes

Much less powerful than Psionics is the advantage from using Mind Probes since those devices can be used to screen aliens for their rank (for capture or to identify the threat they pose), or to check if they are able to reaction fire. Mind control can also provide most of this information, so restricting use of Mind Probes is most significant when combined with a ban on Psi-Amps.

Firepower Adjustment

Despites what it feels like in the early game, X-COM eventually gets access to extremely powerful weaponry that make both ground and air battles too easy.

Avoid Heavy Plasmas

Don't equip the majority of your squad with Heavy Plasmas. If that sounds too easy, then don't use alien weapons at all.

Alternatively using UFO Extender the weight of the heavy plasma can be increased to 21 and the clip to 6. This naturally restricts the usage without affecting the aliens.

Avoid Blaster Launchers

To put it simply: the weapons are too powerful and thus the temptation to overuse them too great. Completely destroying a map is fun at start but butchering the aliens gets boring after a while. Either do not use the weapons, only bring 1 on each mission or restrict yourself to a low number of waypoints (e.g. a single course alteration).

Tech levels

Limit yourself to certain "tech levels". Here's an example:

• Level 1: Coverall, genuine Earth equipment
• Level 2: Personal Armor, Laser weapons
• Level 3: Power Suit, light alien weaponry
• Level 4: Flying Suit, heavy alien weaponry

How does it work? Simply limit yourself to stopping at a certain level. Or limit yourself in the speed of advancement, i.e. one level per a half year, etc. The latter example would mean you won't get to use the best equipment for two years!!!

Alternatively, allow yourself access to only a few high-power research topics, under the grounds that they're so complex that understanding them fully takes years. (Exceptions are made for end-game requirements, of course). Research topics that are high-power (AKA game-breaking) would include anything associated with Psionics, Plasma Rifle, Heavy Plasma, Blaster Bomb, the advanced aircraft (in particular the Avenger), the Plasma Beam/FBL, Hovertanks, and the Power and Flying Suits.

Use Unfamiliar Weapons

Use weapons that you are not generally fond of using or are not comfortable using. Use them in greater quantities or outfit your entire team with them. This has the potential to not only make the game harder, but it may get you accustomed to how these weapons are best handled. Combine it with restrictions on plasma weapons for best results.

One excellent example is the standard Heavy Laser - not the XCOMUtil variant. It's a weapon that is often branded "useless" because it's not an ammo-less parallel of the Heavy Plasma.

Other examples include Heavy Cannons and tanks. In particular, unmodified tanks.

Extreme Weapon Scenarios

Test your machismo by going to ridiculous lengths and see how far you can get before combat is no longer viable with a uniform weapon set whereby you limit yourself to only one type or class of weapon. In addition to making the game harder, it you may find yourself appreciating the benefits and understanding the limitations of these weapons.

Some ideas to get you started: Heavy Cannon, Autocannon or a combination of both. Basic Rifles only. Pistol sized weapons only. Rocket Launchers only. Grenade type weapons only (note, may need an emergency ranged weapons for flyers). Consider also a pistol and grenade scenario.

A Rocket Launcher or Grenade campaign for example will have several effects. While it does make defeating enemies easy, it introduces several management twists to combat that you would not normally subject yourself to in great frequency. Like collateral damage management will be needed for each and every shot taken. Ammunition has to be strictly managed, from the item limit to its actual expenditure and portage. Loot recovery is more difficult. Some blast zone management is required to prevent loot destruction. Mind control and reaction fire become extremely hazardous.

If combined with several other challenges such as no-psi and no alien weapons, you may even have to abandon some battle if all ammunition is depleted. Even if it was going entirely in your favour.

If you plan to play through to the final mission, allow yourself the use of stun weapons for capture of all the necessary aliens.

Human Fighter Craft Adjustments

Avenger unarmed

The Avenger as a fighter is simply too powerful. Without the Avenger, taking down a Battleship is tough! As it should be, it requires many fighters and is still difficult to pull off. This also creates a niche for base defenses.

Alternatively the Avenger can be restricted to the Cydonia mission.

Only interceptors

To fully experience the helplessness of seeing Battleships flying unopposed through Earth's atmosphere, don't build any Firestorms or Lightnings.

Squad Management

Avoid Large Squads

Restrict your squad regarding soldiers and tanks. Never use more than 14 plane slots to bring units into a battlefield (the capacity of a Skyranger). The logic behind this is that you can easily outnumber the aliens, especially if you are facing small UFOs thus assuring victory. Also, smaller squads allow for quicker play (you don't have to move 26 units each turn) and they make your soldiers more memorable, since you'll remember more their heroic achievements (or stupid deaths).

Load up your Skyrangers with maximum HWPs

A variant of the preceding scenario, not quite so hard. Instead of bringing 14 units into a battle you'll get just 5 (3 HWPs + 2 Soldiers) or 8 (2 HWPs + 6 soldiers).

Commando Missions

Use as few men to complete ground missions as possible-without HWPs, of course. Stealth, patience, care and caution become the priority. Even two or three-man teams can be effective if used properly. The logic behind this is that either way, aliens are probably too busy carrying out their mission or repairing the UFO to notice the dropship approaching (as evidenced by the fact that if you go against psionic aliens, you are safe from psionic attacks as long as none of them sees you, adding an extra difficulty: you have to kill every alien from behind and with one shot so they won't turn around and see you). Plus, micromanaging a three-man team is easier than managing a fully loaded Avenger. You have the advantage of surprise, use it! Just make sure you try to get at least most of the aliens before Turn 20 comes around (when they automatically spot you).

Large Squads

For those that are content with small squads between 4 - 8 soldiers, break the habit and take the opposite approach. Start using large squads. Hire a large quantity of soldiers and fill the all available spaces on the transport. Rotate the entire team regularly so that there are no outstanding individuals or superstars amongst the tea.

During the battle, keep the slogan "There's no I in Team" in mind all the time. Make every effort to send out the whole squad into the battlefield and that everyone gets some piece of the action. No more than 1 rear commanders if at all possible.

The difficulties introduced here include longer turns due to the increased coordination of the larger squad. Larger squads make bigger targets and increases the danger of friendly fire. When things do go wrong, the level of severity tends to be great, with the possibility of mass hysteria. Weapon by stat assignment may also be a problem with so many troops to handle and if you are in the regular habit of rotating the team.

If you find that this makes it too easy, consider dropping your weapon technology down a few notches.

Harder Economics

First of all, don't use any of the economics-related Exploits (see above). That really is cheating. For greater challenge in the strategic aspect of the game, try these scenarios:

Funding Council Income

Rely entirely on the Funding Nations to run your war. Details here.

Do not sell any alien equipment, corpses or UFO components. Do not sell manufactured items. Only genuine starting Earth technology (like Rifles or Avalanche Launchers) or researched aircraft (since they don't bring in money) may be sold. This makes it significantly harder. In February for example you have around $6,000,000 to cover base maintenance, wages, crafts, manufacturing and losses on the battlefield. This leaves not very much! Building new bases, hiring more engineers or just building a second laboratory is almost impossible. But it is definitely more fun than having worldwide radar coverage and 16 interceptors by the end of march.

Funding Council Counterintelligence

Expanding the Funding Council Income Only scenario, don't let even a single Infiltration mission succeed! If one country defects, it will start a series of events that result in X-COM being disbanded (ie. you have to start over the game). Confirmed (?) to be actually impossible on Superhuman.

Self-raised Funds Only

An inversion of the above. When starting a new game, use a game editor (or hex edit DIPLOM.DAT) to hack all funding countries into NOT providing ANY money. That is, all countries set to successfully infiltrated so you receive your starting funds, your starting base - and that's all the monetary support you can look forward to! You can still hire personnel, requisition equipment, build bases or base facilities, etc. but from where you get the money for it is up to you.

This way, you will be forced to live off of what you can scavenge from the battlefield and as it can barely (if even) cover your expenses, building another base or expanding your research division into even one fully staffed lab will be nigh impossible. You'll really need to watch your losses in the early months. Eventually you will probably make up for the missing money by selling Laser Cannons but setting up a large-scale manufacturing operation will still remain impossible and losing even one base will deal a near-crippling blow to your operations.

No Commercial Manufacturing

Slightly less strict than Funding Council Income Only: don't manufacture anything for profit, as it's too easy to become largely independent of both the Funding Nations and the need to capture alien loot for cash. If you have any surplus manufactured material you don't want laying around, you have to build a warehouse for it somewhere.

No Laser Cannon Sales

An easier option than the previous scenario, but still quite a challenge if you are used to relying on Laser Cannon income. This will cut your income signficantly. Alternatively, play the XComUtil variant (see below) that makes Laser Cannons unprofitable (then you don't have to resist the temptation to cheat).

Base Limitations

Base Defense

Don't play base defense missions. If your Base Defence weapons can't stop the Battleship, you have to abandon the base. This is because, actually, Base Defence is too easy and just an excuse to take lots of valuables off the Aliens, and maybe capture yourself a high ranking Alien to interrogate.

One Base

Build only a single base. This severely limits your efficiency, as you can only build a maximum of 35 base modules. Aircraft and radar coverage will be quite limited. Particularly challenging if combined with the scenario above!

For a real challenge...

Build that single base in Hawaii. See below under Scott Jones' scenarios.

Limit Base Size

You can build as many bases as you like but each base can only be 4x4 (or for the hard version 3x3, yes it is do able just very hard) instead of the normal 6x6. This version you will have to start a game and then edit you save game to make you first base smaller. Feel free to refund the cost of any modules and crafts you don’t have room for also if you don’t have room for a lab or workshop you might want to remove your Scientist or Engineer and refund there cost as well.

3x3 notes: No using XcomUtil to let you place troops in an intercepter, just because you dont have room for 2 hangers in any one base is no reson for making it easyer, This is ment to be hard if you want 2 crafts make 2 bases you start with more money then normal you should be able to build a second base right a way only 25 days till your hanger is built.

Earth Tech Modules Only

Don't build modules requiring alien tech, ie. Psi Lab, Hyperwave Decoder, Plasma/Fusion Defence, Grav Shield, Mind Shield. Laser Defence is OK.

Starting from Scratch - the No-Base Start

This scenario starts you off with no base, but with an ample amount of starting funds to get a minimal intercept/recovery base up and running. The goal is to obviously get the organization up and running from scratch with your starting funds and then attaining self sufficiency through selling captured equipment until you're back to playing to what you may consider to be a normal game.

To create this scenario, start a brand new game and sell everything, sack all staff and remove all base modules right down to the access lift. This will net only $300K - $350K . You will no longer have a base on the Geoscape, but the game will not think you've lost. From here, save the game. You will then need to edit your funds accordingly to how difficult you would like to make the scenario.

The initial starting base, inclusive of all facilities, personnel and equipment, has a replacement cost of $7.345 to $7.795 million, typically $7.795 million. In addition, starting cash is typically around $4 million. So anything less than $12 million in starting cash will make for a tougher than normal game.

For a player looking to play this type of scenario, a starting kitty of $5 million, or even less, should be sufficient to build XCom up from nothing. It won't be easy but it's possible. You could even play with just the roughly $4.4 million in funds that are left after fully dismantling the starting base.

Assuming you want a bigger kitty, once you've edited your funds, the scenario is ready to play. Before you start playing, consider making a backup of the save so that you can start a new no-base scenario again in the future. Or you can download this Superhuman savegame with $4.45M starting funds: File:NoBaseSuperH.zip.

The only slight downside to the No Base scenario is that your first Skyranger and Interceptor will be numbered 2 and 3 respectively.

As an added challenge, you can also chose to combine this with the no-funding-country scenario by editing all the countries so that they've all withdrawn from funding X-COM. With this, you'll truly have to live off the spoils of war to survive.

One Mission X-COM

A more hardline version of Funding Council Income Only, detailed here. In short, one Battleship mission, properly executed, can provide all the research needed to complete the game. The focus is on intercepting that Battleship and completing the game with only the spoils from that mission.

Speed Run

See how fast you can complete the game! For a very strict challenge, the clock starts when you choose a difficulty, and ends when you shoot the Brain on Cydonia.

The current record seems to be 62:21 minutes, not including save/load time, by tbgox. Yes, that's JUST over an hour of playing. He's got the videos up on youtube showing how he did it too. Good lord. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wo71zOr5aU

Limited save/Reload

Depending on how strict you want to be with yourself, you can ban in-battle saves, save only when you want to quit the game and get on with real life, or for the really hard core, no save/reload at all: finish the game in one sitting, possibly combining this with a Speed Run. For a smaller challenge, try to keep a tally of how many times you save and reload, and see if you can minimise this number.