Tactics (Long War)

General Advice & Tips

This covers anecdotal or general concepts and tips that might not fit into any other place, usually just player specific styles or advice that might help you during the tactical combat.

Medics: They aren't useless
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. This is useful 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. A S.H.I.V does not suffer from fatigue either. If you want to try and take all the missions that the game throws at you, having a large contingent of S.H.I.Vs is almost a requirement.

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.

Grenades first.
You might have a juicy HE grenade Target hiding behind a wall. You have the perfect throw, 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 might be 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 1.33.

A plethora of specimens.
A good, albeit dangerous, way to earn more scientists and money is by giving captured aliens to council nations. As such, you should always try to capture at least one Alien, when doing a mission. Downed Scouts and Fighters are excellent ways to do this. You can have a near infinite number of Captured aliens at your base and countries will usually only request one specimen per request.

Knowing is half the battle!
In Long War, you will be given a short description of what type of terrain you will be fighting on. This is very useful information as it lets you customize squads that are tailor-made for fights on that specific type of map. This feature is a godsend, with the increase in classes and their more specialized nature.

Block the exit!
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.

Aliens don't like being flanked.
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.

Supression, Flashbangs, Overwatch and You.
Overwatch shots will not crit unless the soldier/alien has the opportunist perk. Suppression and Flashbangs will cancel overwatch (although the eye indicator will stay up). However taking any damage, cloaking, or flashbangs will cancel Suppression.

Drones and their lack of programming.
Drones cannot overwatch, nor can they open doors.

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

Alien line of sight can sometimes be determined: moving into a flanked position will show the shield as red. Moving away from the alien, the point where the shields switch from red to normal marks the limit of the aliens sight.