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 is 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.
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, generally 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 ask for 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. Similarly, ladders and pipes can be "locked" by standing at the top of them; this can be effective for blocking berserkers.

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. Using the grapple hook on various armors will not trigger overwatch shots. Suppression and flashbangs will cancel overwatch (although the eye indicator will stay up). Taking any damage, cloaking, and flashbangs will cancel Suppression.

Drones and their lack of programming.
Drones cannot overwatch, nor can they go through closed doors.

Cyberdicks.
Cyberdisks are nearly immune to critical hits in their folded up form, but not in their attack form. If they go on overwatch upon reveal, it can be a good idea to take a shot taking advantage of the crit bonus. Upon the disk folding up, you can then run a scout to pull the overwatch fire thus tricking the cyberdisk into unfolding again so you can take more shots at it. Using this method can maximize your crit damage potential.

Outsiders.
They can't climb ladders and have no grenades. Beware on landed/crashed UFO missions, triggering the outsider pod has a tendency to make other alien pods converge on your position.

MECs
The MEC grenade launcher and proximity mine launcher can be fired while the MEC is acting as a heavy cover element with "one for all" without breaking the ability. The restorative mist will not stabilize a critically wounded soldier.

Flush mechanics.
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%.

LOS
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.

Chemically assisted capture.
When an alien is affected by Acid and only has a single hitpoint left, he will always refuse to use an action that would otherwise cause it to be triggered and kill him. This can be used to your advantage to prepare unwary invaders for multiple, safe stunning attempts with the Arc Thrower. If an enemy unit is shredded, acid will cause 2 points of damage. Enemies that are shredded, acided, and have 2 hit points left will still move because the AI doesn't take into account the extra shredded damage; thus the alien may move to its death. Be careful when psi-panicking acid affected enemies with 1 HP left, they will often panic move, killing themselves (thus no arc thrower capturing).

Capturing Aliens.
An easy method to capture aliens is to have a unit with packmaster/repair carry an arcthrower and a unit with psi panic. Leave one enemy last such as muton/floater/outsider (or any other low-will enemy), use psi panic on it and make liberal use of the arc thrower until successful.

End Game Armor
Don't just go with the heavy titan armor as always. Archangel armor is one of the best armors available, and not just for that squadsight sniper. You can easily trade 2 hp for the increased mobility and defense bonuses, plus the flying ability and the associated aim bonuses. Your units will rarely miss shots and will not be in danger of getting flanked. You can also laugh at those charging chryssalids and berserkers.

Ethereal Tactics.
Psi lance is actually the regular attack of the ethereal, and deals damage proportional to will (thus very high damage). Two suppressions can easily reduce the aim close to zero, while also reducing the range of rift. Clustered units can be easily wiped out with rift. The ethereal will not use rift if it will get caught up in it as well. Take note that flying units cannot be damaged by rift. Shredding an ethereal first is an ideal way to quickly take it down in one turn with enough firepower.