Spring Cleaning Tips

Spring Cleaning

While your bases' storage space is for all practical purposes infinite, the number of General Stores modules do serve a purpose. Once your stores fill up, you will only be able to move items into the base by acquiring them on tactical missions or manufacturing them on site. You will not be able to purchase new items, transfer items from another base or off a craft. More importantly, when the aliens attack your base, the items stored in the base will determine what you will have available to use. Therefore, it is to your best interest to keep at least a little free space in Stores. In addition, selling those corpses, weapons, etc. is a good source of money.

What to keep and what not to?

De-cluttering your stores is as simple as selling or moving unnecessary/redundant equipment. You should make it a point to spring clean once every few months or after playing a series of missions with a high amount of recovered loot.

But that's simple common sense. What's more difficult is deciding on what to keep. If you have a clear idea of what you need and how much you need, then your job will be much easier. But if you're new to the game, or you aren't too sure but want to keep your stores as bare bones but still functional as possible, read on for a few tips to get you started.

Exotics

Exotic items include alien UFO components and raw material. These items are usually acquired by capturing downed or landed UFOs, though navigation, power units, and alloys can be manufactured.

Minimum Recommendations for UFO Components:

• navigation × 1
• power sources × 2

Though you will probably want more as you play, this amount will be enough to construct one of any hybrid craft. There is little reason to keep too many spares once your fleet is complete. These should only be stored at your 'shipyard' base(s).

• Elerium

Keep all of it unless you're lucky enough to have so much of it that it's spilling out your ears or you really need the space. It's probably a better idea to just transfer it to another base.

• Alloys

Keep enough to produce what you want, otherwise sell it or use it up by producing items that use alloys, such as Personal Armour. You obtain a sizable amount from most UFO recoveries, and will almost never have to produce any.

Weapons

At minimum, each base should have one weapon per soldier with one clip per weapon. Most commanders will wish to keep at least one or two reloads on hand per soldier, but don't go overboard with this.

Rarely used Weapons

Sell off excess weapons and ammunition, especially weapons you rarely or never use. For example, once you have completed the research that requires live aliens, you may find that your use of the Stun Rods or Small Launchers will decrease. You may want to reduce or sell these weapons.

Laser Weapons

Laser weapons do not require ammunition and are fairly effective against most enemies. If you are willing to sacrifice a little firepower, they are great space-savers compared to plasma weapons that require clips.

Alien Weapons

Aliens will have plasma weapons in abundance. You will easily capture a large amount of plasma weapons through the missions. Often you will end up with more plasma weapons than you'll ever need. Keep only as many as you need, with perhaps a few spares and sell the rest.

Plasma weapon ammunition will have to take a slightly different approach. As the Plasma Pistol and Plasma Rifle are limited once the Heavy Plasma becomes the aliens' mainstay weapon, their ammunition will become very scarce. You may want to stockpile them if you intend to use them. Heavy Plasma ammunition on the other hand will be highly abundant, so you can easily make do with one clip per heavy plasma.

Heavy Weapons Platforms

Don't stock too many HWPs as they take up 6 Stores units apiece. Also, they might start to take up soldier spawn points on base defense missions.

If used in the field, buy enough ammunition to last two or more missions. Tank ammo do not count as battlescape items and won't clog your stores in the event of a base defence mission. They will take up store space. Alternately use ammo-less tanks such as the Tank/Laser Cannon or Hovertank/Plasma.

If used strictly for base defence, you don't need to buy ammunition for the HWPs, as they will be fully armed at the start of the battle.

Miscellaneous Equipment

Psi-Amps, Medi-kits, Electro-flares, and other items also take up Stores space. Stock enough Psi-Amps for your psi-capable troopers.

Motion Scanners, Medi-Kits, and Flares should all be stored on craft since tactical missions are the only times you will use them. Due to the random nature of Base Defense mission spawning, your medics are likely to be too far from the main action to be useful and your bases are well-lit.

Mind Probes are useful for locating specific aliens and for analysing their current state. However, you will often pick up more probes than you'll ever reasonably need. Keep one or two probes and sell the excess.

Troop Transport Storage

Remember that weapons stored in a troop transport are unloaded for use in a base defence mission. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to have some spare weapons in the base itself in the event that the Skyranger is out on a mission when the aliens come calling.

Storage Base

If you really want to hang on to a very large amount of stuff, build a storage facility somewhere and garrison it with a small squad. This base can also serve non-combat roles such as psi screening, UFO detection, etc. It should be constructed in an area with low UFO activity and protected with a Mind Shield. It should also keep a few HWPs on hand so the soldiers don't get completely shafted by the 80 item limit

Waste not Want Not

IMHO you should never sell anything that needs to be Manufactured and cannot be bought. You might need that stuff in a hurry if you are expanding unexpectedly, or suffer a setback, or a change in tactics is forced. Your main assault force might not need those 14 Laser Rifles but they could be great for a defence force for that new base you just built. You can't afford to stop building your new Avenger in order to produce more Heavy Plasmas and Power Suits, so get the Laser Rifles and Personal Armour out of storage. Don't leave them at your main base cluttering your 80 item limit, send them off to a research base or radar base somewhere. But DO NOT SELL THEM! At least not until you have maxed out the research tree and produced more top-end equipment than will physically fit on 250 soldiers. --Spike 18:25, 3 June 2006 (PDT)