Tactics (Apocalypse)

TACTICS (no particular order)

STUN GRAPPLE RAIDS

What is it?

A stun grapple raid is where your agents are armed ONLY with stun grapples (purchased from Megapol) for the intent of looting (raiding) an organisation of all available personal armaments WITHOUT KILLING ANYONE.

How?

• Remove all armour (yes, that's correct) and equipment from (approximately) 12 of your agents and then equip them with only a stun grapple each. Equip a Valkyrie Inceptor craft with a passenger module (so the craft can hold 12 agents) and one cargo module (you don't need two). If the corporation is under alien control, you'll find that aliens sometimes are present on the raid. You will need a biotransport module if you want alien corpses recovered. Assign your 12 agents to the craft as you would normally do.
• IMPORTANT: Look at your corporation list and find out which corporations are hostile to Xcom. DO NOT raid these corporation(s).
• Find a corporation that is neutral or better (gang based slums are the best to raid due to advanced weaponry used by them AND many psiclones) and then go and order your Valkyrie craft (with 12 troops on board) to land at this building you have choosen. Don't attack the building with you craft, just land there! Once it lands, click on the building and you'll find four buttons on the top right of the screen. Your Valkyrie craft and personel loadout displayed as well. Click on your craft to automatically select 12 agents, then click on the RAID button (second button down, i think).
• Why 12 agents? Usually, the tactical battles are generated from tilesets particular to the type of building. The battlescape usually will be larger if you use more than 12 agents. The Slum maps don't use tilesets, but one whole map by itself. Sometimes you'll find that the map has generated two slums, instead of the usual singular one. The Railway Station slum building is typical of this.

Starting the Tactical Raid

• REAL TIME works best.
• IMPORTANT: You are not to bunch up your agents, you must spread them around the map to stand next to the exit points.
• save your game.
• Slum buidlings will have usually only three main exit points. You MUST cover these points if you want you raid to be worthwhile. However, there will be five exit points if its a double size map.
• Set all you agent's attitude to agressive. Set them all to RUN mode. You do not want your agents to be cautious.
• Run two agents to the west corner, run two agents to the east corner and run three agents down to the south corner. Be careful that they don't exit the tactical map. Stand a soldier next to the exit points and make them face into the middle of the tactical map. (obviously if double size map appears, then place two agents at each middle exit point).
• Place you agents against the very edge of the map. It will help to space them apart just enough so that they cannot shoot each other, yet the range of the grapples slightly overlaps. (stun range = 6, so place the guys approx 9 cells apart)

Fighting with Stun Grapples

• When an 'enemy' approaches the exit point they will be knocked unconscious. Don't move your agent from the postion, but use a different agent to go and pick up all the equipment that this enemy soldier just dropped.
• IMPORTANT: DO NOT place a weapon which can be fired into the hands of the your agent. DO NOT fire any weapons except the stun grapple. Place any projectile weapons into the backpack.
• As you can now understand, your stunning the enemy to steal their stuff. Use your agents which are not in postion and guarding the exits to run around the map and stun enemy agents with wild abandon. Remember to pick up the stuff they dropped.
• If your agent is full of loot, just swap the guarding agents with the fully laden agent and continue your stunning. (walk the heavy troop back to the exit - but don't exit - THEN swap agents. Don't leave a gap for enemy agents to escape)

Loaded Down With Loot - What Now?

• If the tactical battle does not end because all hostiles have been neutralised, you'll need to exit the battle manually. Just make your troops exit the tactical mission. It might take a while for a heavy laden agent to walk back to the exit. Just be patient.
• Pres the escape gives you an option to exit as well. This isn't the prefered method because if your agents aren't near the exits anyways, the game will count as some troops as MIA.

Advanced Tactics

• if you raid a slum often, you'll eventually start to understand the layouts on offer (SEE BELOW). There are items laying on the ground which you can pick up. Common items are psi-clones (more common than Cult of Sirius raiding), Marsec armour (chest pieces as well), Elerium, and unloaded weapons.
• layouts are identical for positions of item to pick up, but the items will be different each time. Get to know them when dealing with slums. Pick them up before the enemy does.
• sometimes cutting away the staircase on the outside of buildings severely limits the escape routes of enemy agents. Just be sure not to kill anyone from causing them to fall.

Quirks

• you'll probably see enemy agents playing a game of "Pass the Parcel" ... with a live prox-mine!
• random rocket firings can sometimes happen when the gang members get itchy trigger fingers.
• hostiles do like to throw AC-AP clips as well.

Slum Building Item Spawn Spots

There are seven slum buildings generated in the game. This next section lists where the item spawns are located using a very simple (but tedious) method of direction. The isometric map has a corner at each compass point. The most obvious way to describe the map would be as the top most corner being North, the leftmost corner being West, etc. Also, each sqaure of the map is called a cell. A cell is a square which makes up the map at the most smallest part. One cell is the size of the cursor (only the base of the rectangular box, actaully).

Locations

Gravlift = Elevator. HINT: The items will appear. If they are missing from their spawn location, then they have been picked up by a hostile. NOTE: directions are given as absolute north of the map, being Cell 1,1.

• eg: Lev 05 - 23SW, 18SE means that the item is on Level 5 of the map and is how many cells you must count in that compass direction from the most northern cell.
• Elevator = Gravlift!

SPECIAL NOTE: Raid the gangs for the best stuff. Forget raiding a Mutant Alliance slum, and forget about Cult of Sirius!

Grasslands

A map which has only trees, grass, and some building rubble. The most obvious feature is the grass the is covering part of the road in the southwestern part of the map. (weird: there is a door that still works!).

• Lev 01 - 20SW,16SE - on ground next to I beam.

The Bridge

A map which has a large bridge crossing over a road. Lots of building rubble in northern part of the map.

• Lev 01 - 25SW,10SE - on ground near blue arcade machine.

Drug Plantation

A map that contains a plantation of trees near the west corner. There is a large multistorey building which has an elevator shaft external to the main superstructure.

• Lev 01 - 26SW,14SE - on floor inside the garden shed inside the plantation.
• Lev 01 - 28SW,25SE - on floor inside the garden shed, inside the rubble area opposite the plantation.
• Lev 02 - 14SW,21SE - on floor beside coffee table.
• Lev 02 - 13SW, 9SE - on floor beside table.

Graveyard Castle

A map that has a cemetary with names of the game makers. There also is a large building with a heli-pad on the roof.

• Lev 01 - 11SW,32SE - on floor inside the garden shed situated inside the cemetary.
• Lev 01 - 12SW,27SE - on ground, on top of the dirt mound of grave owner, Andy Greene.
• Lev 08 - 19SW, 7SE - on ground, on top of the castle tower which is on the right when exiting the door.
• Lev 08 - 31SW, 7SE - on ground, on top of the castle tower which is on the left when exiting the door.

U-shaped Hotel

A map that has a typical hotel look to it. There is a car parking area inside the U shape building. This building does not have a roof!

• Lev 02 - 6SW,34SE - on floor near oval table.
• Lev 02 - 13SW,10SE - on floor at far wall.
• Lev 04 - 28SW,16SE - on floor at middle of room.
• Lev 02 - 28SE,23SE - on chair right beside door.
• Lev 04 - 28SW,21SE - in hand basin on the left of door.
• Lev 04 - 29SW,27SE - on floor near wall.
• Lev 02 - 28SW,34SE - on coffee table.

Central Elevator

A map which has a large square shape building. The building has eight large foundations and an external fire escape. There is an elevator inside the core of the middle foundation.

• Lev 04 - 28SW,27SE - on large table against near wall.
• Lev 04 - 28SW, 5SE - on cupboard against external wall.
• Lev 04 - 34SW,10SE - on cupboard closer to windows.
• Lev 04 - 26SW,12SE - on floor between beds.
• Lev 06 - 12SW, 5SE - on coffee table near external wall.
• Lev 06 - 5SW,32SE - on box next to window.
• Lev 06 - 12SW,30SE - on bed.
• Lev 06 - 12SW,21SE - in air (!) just inside doorway
• Lev 06 - 8SW,21SE - on cupboard next to chair.

The Railway Station

not finished

NOTE: A dedicated double sized map. It will sometimes appear if there are many (usually over 20) Xcom agents present in a mission. It is a rare map to play!

A map which has an elevated railway. Doubled sized map needing more defenders stationed (pun! eek!) on the exit points.

• Lev ?? - 54SW,10SE - on elevated rail line between the two railways.
• Lev 01 - ??SW,??SE - inside carpark ticket booth.

more work need on railway, its just very tedious to wait for it to spawn --EsTeR 09:30, 23 April 2007 (PDT)

FAQ

• Do I have to count the cells each time I start a new raid?
  • NO! Due to the static shape of the slum buildings, each and every type of building will be the same with reguards to where the spawn loactions are situated. Once you know where the spawn is located after counting out the map cells for just one time, you'll won't need to do it again (unless you forget!).

• Why do you think slums are better than Cult of Sirius raids?
  • (1) The only items that will spawn in a gang slum are: Psiclones, Marsec armour, weapons (only M4000, Laser, Autocannon) and Elerium. You will NEVER get AP-grenades, Hi-Ex, stun grenades, or other ordinary low level junk. Also, the gang members never carry rubbish like the lawpistol.
  • (2) The buildings are easily defendable (exit points will be EXACTLY in the same spot - no guessing!). The slum shape is indentical each time (no dynamic generating of the map grid). It means that as soon as the map loads you'll know immediately where the items are situated for that given slum shape.
  • (3) The gangs are NEVER hostile at the start of a new game. Cultists can be. If there are hostile, then CoS stun raiding is now DEADLY and absolutely pointless.
  • (4) Gang slums generate psiclones at a 75% quantity versus spawn quantity. If a building has 9 spawn spots then approx 75% of the available spawn spots will contain a psiclone. If a building has 1 spawn spot, then a psiclone (once again) will spawn at approx 75% of the time. If it doesn't spawn, then most likely it will be Elerium or Marsec armour. TESTED BY DOING 118 STUN RAIDS within 2 hours of game time at the start of a new superhuman game.

any more??