Tactical Exploits

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Tactical Exploits

Grenades: Pass the Experience Trick

(Or who gets the experience when you "drop" a grenade)

Some commanders may have noticed that a soldier that drops a primed grenade rather than throwing it will often not get credited for the damage or killed enemies.

There is a very odd explanation for this. In order to credit the right person with experience, the game assigns ownership to a grenade. However, ownership is assigned after the grenade has been thrown, but not when it's dropped or picked up.

So who gets the experience if its dropped? At the start of a mission, all X-COM owned grenades default to the very first soldier on the transport, or the very first HWP if present. This means that if a grenade is used but never thrown during its lifetime, the first soldier or tank gets the experience regardless of actually used it.

Can we move the ownership around and pass the experience to soldiers of our choice? Definitely! Just have the person you want to get the experience throw the grenade, then get someone else to pick it up and drop it where it can be useful. Just remember to not throw it again.

The method of deployment for these grenades will be left as a practical exercise to the commander. Be creative, or be heartless - it's all up to you!

The biggest advantage of this unusual pass-the-experience technique would be to provide training for frail soldiers that would prove to be more of a detriment in combat than out of it - yet another reason for commanders to not sieve troops based on poor combat statistics.

Fire

Just how does it work?

NKF quick notes: (I might be duplicating something here, but I'm just jotting these down quickly before I forget)

• Fire does two types of damage to units. Impact and damage over time.
  • Damage Over time: Standing in fire or actually being on fire. 6-10 damage per turn.
  • Impact damage: The weirdest and most unusual damage of all.
    • Any unit that is on fire or standing in fire: Receives incendiary impact damage every time an incendiary shell explodes
    • X-COM unit standing in smoke: Same as above, but take stun damage instead of hit-point damage.
• Fire does a fixed amount of damage. The damage of an incendiary weapon only determines how large the spread of the fire will be. So an autocannon incendiary shell is just as powerful as an incendiary rocket -- the only difference is the blast area.
• Fire and Smoke use the same object table, and being limited, can get used up very quickly and attempts at producing more fire or smoke will not work. Incendiary impact damage will still work on any units in fire/smoke.

JFG adds: Please see my Incendiary topic

Fog of War Scouting

The 3D cursor shows the terrain inside it, regardless of whether you have explored the tile or not. While the obscure shapes shown don't mean much to novice players, veterans will soon recognise tiles, and then the map segments they are native to. For example, you can easily find a UFO by looking for the destinctive wall patterns, and the power supply in the center. Or, you could use this to bombard locations such as command centers, or places you know aliens spawn at the beginning of play, with early Blaster Bombs.

Dead Man Switches

Grenades will only detonate when they are on the ground and when their timer has counted down. Timers will continue to count down regardless of location, but if the grenade is not on the ground, it will not explode. This means that you can set all the grenades to a time of "0" at the beginning of play, or at an earlier turn, and throw them when it's tactically feasible.

This is a double-edged sword, however, because should a unit fall dead or unconcious the grenade will hit the ground and promptly take out anything in the near vicinity... which may (or may not) work to your advantage. This tactic encourages keeping your troops far apart. If you anticipate the soldier will have a very high chance of being killed, it may be wise to use the "pass the experience" trick as described earlier before handing the soldier an armed grenade. However, it can be exploited against Tentaculats: give a soldier two armed grenades. If he/she is caught by a Tentaculat, the grenades will drop. The first will kill the zombie while the second kills the newly formed creature. Could also be used with proximity/PD grenades. (This will not work against Chryssalids because the second grenade will be destroyed before detonation, whereas in TFTD, explosives cannot be destroyed by other explosions.)

Proximity mines can be defused by saving, quitting the game, restarting it then reloading the game. You can still drop on top of them with a flying suit, or by dropping from a hole in the roof in order to safely pick them up.

Base Defence Mission Spawning Issues

If there are too many soldiers and/or aliens in too small a base, their initial spawning is unusual. Soldiers can spawn in the Access Lift and Hangars. Aliens can spawn outside the Access Lift and Hangars. Some lifeforms may not spawn at all.

Why does this happen? Each base facility has certain hardcoded spawn tiles. The Living Quarters, for example, have 8 spawn tiles, 7 on the lower level in an "H" pattern, and 1 on the upper level. Soldiers usually spawn at these spawn tiles, semi-randomly outside the Access Lift and Hangars. Aliens are assigned the spawn tiles within the Lift and Hangars.

But, if the number of soldiers exceeds the number of "friendly" spawn tiles, the excess soldiers will spawn at the "alien" spawn tiles inside the Access Lift and Hangars. Similarly, if the number of aliens exceeds the number of "alien" spawn tiles, the excess aliens will spawn at the "friendly" spawn tiles in the rest of the base. If there are not enough spawn tiles for the sum of soldiers and aliens, then some lifeforms will not spawn at all. Soldiers have higher spawning priority than aliens, so aliens will be the first to go (fail to spawn). All weapons and items will still be generated, though.

This can be exploited by garrisoning a base with so many soldiers that all spawn tiles are used up. Zero aliens will spawn (but their toys will still be generated), resulting in a bloodless victory and millions of dollars of loot!

A radar base with one Large Radar or HWD, an Access Lift, and one Living Quarters, can be filled up with 22 soldiers.

But if this is considered an exploit, then what is the "ethical" thing to do? To get all aliens to spawn properly at a radar base, you would have to go out of your way and build a hangar. This would in turn affect your defence tactics, and cost you money. If you don't build the hangar, you need to recruit at least 25 armed soldiers (with the accompanying Living Quarters and General Stores), or else a Sectopod or Chrysallid will probably spawn behind friendly lines. At that point, you could argue that the computer is the one doing the cheating, and 25 soldiers seems excessive for a radar base. On the other hand, you would be fighting a reduced number of aliens, since the Access Lift only has 8 spawn tiles.

Also, you can only have 40 "units" where a soldier is one unit and a HWP is 4.

Maybe you should just shoot down the scouts.

Base Facility	Spawn Tiles on Lower / Upper Floor
Access Lift	5 / 3
Hangar	15 / 0
Alien Containment	7 / 5
General Stores	7 / 4
HWD or Large Radar	5 / 1
Lab or Workshop	6 / 1
Living Quarters	7 / 1
Missile Defence	4 / 5
Defences (non-missile) or Shields	5 / 1
Psi Lab	7 / 3
Small Radar	0 / 2

Elevator Shielding

Due to questionable AI, aliens will not fire at you through an elevator (either up or down), even though they can see you and you can see them. When approaching elevators, have a soldier stand on it at the end of the turn, even if this leaves them with no TU. The aliens will not be able to come up/down through the elevator, keeping you safely shielded while you bring up rear troops and prepare for a floor breach. Additionally, soldiers may be able to see aliens standing at/near the elevator above or below them and can fire on them from the safety of their "elevator shield".

Milking Alien Bases

This experience training exploit relies on the "Elevator Shielding" exploit. When assaulting an alien base, your soldiers will be deployed at two staging areas with a 2x2 elevator in each one. Block all eight elevator squares with a soldier and wait for the fun to begin. Just keep skipping your turn and eventually, the aliens will find your soldiers and begin to congregate under the elevator. You can now shoot at them with complete impunity and can even pick out specific soldiers who need Accuracy training. When you see that no more aliens are appearing after a few turns, get your solders onto the evactuation area and leave. The alien base is intact for you to return for additional practice later. If you happened to kill everyone the base will be destroyed, so watch the timing of the alien movement phase and take care not to kill everyone. However, the alien leader or commander will almost always stay in the command center, so this is usually not a problem. For best results, arm your soldiers with pistols to maximize the number of shots they can take on each alien. Also, it is not recommended to attempt this tactic on a Sectoid or Ethereal base unless you are very confident of your soldiers' psi strength. As an extra bonus, you can collect alien weapons and equipment before evacuating. It is worth noting that this "shield" does not prevent aliens firing a Blaster Bomb up the lift shaft.

Panicking Alien Location Exploit

Whenever a soldier or alien panics or goes berserk from low Morale, there is a message given to the player stating what soldier or alien has done what. As well, the screen is centered on the unit that has failed it's morale check. At times, this will allow sharp-eyed players to locate aliens who have panicked in areas you have already fought, by displaying the location of the alien who has lost their cool.