Talk:Starting Your Shadowy Paramilitary Organization

Regarding base placement, one other good point of consideration (apart from money) is to place it in land mass that contains a generous amount of terrain that you're comfortable fighting in. Some players love to fight in desert or arctic terrain on account of it mostly being barren wastelands. Some may find it more tactically sound to fight in farmland, well, you're not going to get any short supply of these. If you want a base that gets a wide variety of terrrain types, the US has quite a lot of terrain types, and you only need to go south a bit to get jungle terrain. Europe unfortunately has lots of farmland. Africa has lots of desert. The far eastern end of Russia, or the coast of Japan is mostly forest. The polar caps are all polar terrain. Great for those that like to use flying suits and weapons that make really big bangs - preferably a long way away.

As for experimenting with the weapons, one point I'd like to add is to get to know the tactial strengths and weaknesses of the starting weapons, and to not be afraid of hanging on to some of them even after you've come up with a general weapon set. It's always good to have options available to you. You may not use autocannons much after getting the heavy plasma, but a single autocannon on standby can come in handy simply for its HE and incendiary shells.

Ah, but don't mind me. I've got this "must cover all play styles" approach to whenever I make any attempt at writing starters guide... which really does hold me back at times.

- NKF

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You're right about the terrain issue-- I usually start in Europe, and consequently have come to hate farm buildings with a passion. (Where do you place if you want to fight in mountains? TibetCom? I didn't even know the mountain terrain existed until I had been playing for two years.) I don't know anyone that doesn't keep one or two pet weapons about for contingency or just because they don't want to live in a world without autocannon. I should tone down the talk of standardization-- it overstates the case somewhat.

However, I want to keep this thing brief and somewhat open-ended, and I don't want to spoil all the surprises. There are more detailed starter guides out there-- Warlock's comes to mind-- but I don't want to leave something open to player intitiative, instead of being an exhaustive checklist. That's why I'm not going to put my "Get an Alien Navigator As Soon As Possible" routine in, or all the other things I do on Day 1. I'm trying to keep a middle ground between getting the new player started, and micromanaging his gameplay.

--Papa Legba 08:10, 13 December 2005 (PST)

Mountains are limited to the China/India border area (and some of that is arctic rather than mountains) and western South America, with a few small patches in Europe (the Switzerland, Scotland and Norway have small amounts). So unless you deliberately try it is very rare to see it, I agree. The entire US is basically flat, it seems. -- Sfnhltb 07:25, 28 February 2007 (PST)

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The battle tips are going to be tough. I want to keep it very open-ended, but still useful. Gotta let a commander make his own mistakes. --Papa Legba 00:13, 14 December 2005 (PST)

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Note I updated to say that the US is usually your biggest sponsor, it happens in the current game I am in (still first month) that Japan are contributing more than the US, although I have a feeling that will change fairly rapidly.

--Sfnhltb 07:19, 28 February 2007 (PST)

Hawaii base? :P --Kyevan 16:13, 17 August 2007 (PDT)

Meaning of "QCB"

Just looking over the article and didn't know what QCB stands for. Maybe someone could fill me in. Otherwise that acronym should be removed to prevent confusion. --Zombie 23:20, 4 November 2008 (CST)

According to [[1]], it means "Close Quarters Battle", which would be a quite accurate definition of any fight inside of a UFO(with the possible exceptions of shot down Supply and Terror Ships). I'll edit it shortly. Arrow Quivershaft 23:41, 4 November 2008 (CST)

Total Party Kill

This, I'm sure, happens to every new commander at some point. You march into a terror mission, kill off the first wave of enemies, and then as you begin your sweep a few remaining aliens take you by surprise and wipe out your troops. There goes 3/4ths of a million in men and equipment. Any recommendations for rebuilding a devastated army? Or should I just reload my last save? --Aegeus 21:59, 5 December 2008 (CST)