Tactics (Long War)

General Advice & Tips

This section covers anecdotal or general concepts and tips that might not fit into any of the above, usually just player specific styles or advice that might help you set up the perfect team.

Medics A medic is one of the most useful classes to have around, they can keep your soldiers healthy during battle and they increase the survivability of friendly (and enemy) soldiers with their smoke grenades. They may lack the killing power of the other classes, but when you get poisoned by a thin-man or strangled by a Seeker, you'll be glad that you have them with you.

Divide and Conquer. Usually it is never a good idea to split your team into two, but on urban maps, there some merit in doing this. When you have both your Squad upgrades, you can split your squad into fire teams of four people. Why is this a good idea? Because it lets you breach buildings and other structures much more efficiently and sets you up for more flanking maneuvers. It also lets you get out of deadlock situations where you are in a prolonged fire fight with Alien opposition, without any opportunity to move forward.

S.H.I.V all the things. Liberally use S.H.I.Vs, they are much better than the standard rookie, can take more damage and can create moving cover. They might not get any experience and be less effective than a regular soldier, but they can be outfitted to oblivion due to the much expanded S.H.I.V tree, present in Long War. They also add the benefit of making me feel less sad when checking out the memorial wall, which by the end of the game is quite big.

Battle Scanners. Seriously. Battle scanners become a requirement when seekers start coming into the enemy squad rotation as they can seriously wreck any well laid plan. Seekers have had many shackles taken off their AI, so 4 seekers can decloak and strangle you in one turn unless you do something about it.

Mister grenade is not your friend. You might have a juicy HE grenade Target hiding behind a wall. You have the perfect throw with a grenade, but think before you throw. You might remove his cover, but you might also add line of sight to the three other aliens that was on the other side of the wall, now you have to contend with more enemies and you are caught in a very bad position. As such, always throw the Grenade as the first thing, not the last.

Meld doesn't matter While not true, it is not worth potentially losing valuable soldiers to recover it. If it's in a good place to grab, then by all means. If not don't waste a soldiers well-being on it. Also, the better you are doing, the less Meld you receive, so don't worry about missing it. Meld becomes increasingly necessary in the late game. In addition to meld canisters, meld is gained at an automatic rate of 1 meld per five alien corpses brought home on a mission (rounded down).

Explosive Terror solutions The most dangerous part of terror mission are the roaming Chryssalids. Chryssalids will frequently charge you in a bunched up group, which makes them excellent targets for grenades and/or rockets. You might not get any carcasses, but that is a small price to pay. This is one of the few occasions where AP grenades really shine.

Cover, cover, cover! Always keep your units in high cover, for that 45 defense and damage reduction. If in low cover, hunker. Hunkering in low cover is BETTER than standing in high cover. 45 defense with 1 damage reduction vs 60 defense with 1.22.

XCOM Nuances and Tactical Tips

The following is a list of small tactical tips based on the nuances of XCOM and the Long War mod. (Listed during b13):

Drones cannot overwatch, nor can they open doors.

A soldier can effectively "lock" a doorway if placed on the tile immediately on one side of it. This is because aliens cannot open doors, they can only charge through them.

Taking any damage, cloaking, and flashbangs cancel suppression.

Suppression will cancel overwatch (although the eye indicator will stay up).

Flashbangs will cancel overwatch.

Overwatch shots will not crit unless the soldier/alien has opportunist perk.

The 50% damage reduction from the perk "flush" applied BEFORE the HEAT ammo perk. This means that the bonus damage against robot targets is not reduced by 50%.

When an alien is flanked, they are extremely likely to move to get out of the flank - even if this means moving through overwatch and suppression. If you want an enemy to stay put for next turn, it might not be the best idea to flank him this turn.