Tricks, Tips and Hints
Battlescape Tactics
- Reaction fire formula
- Reaction fire triggers
- Scouting - The few. The brave. The twitchy.
- Artillery/ Firing Blindly
- Field Manual: HWP
- Field Manual: Terrain
- Morale - Don't Panic. Assign a Rear Commander.
- Saving - Cheat or Necessity?
- Reaction Training
- Experience Training
- Laser Pistol Gifts - The Best way to train reaction stat.
- Time Management - Time, time is on your side, yes it is...
- Grenade Relay - Hot potato fun
- Destroying Terrain
- When bringing that alien down, listen for the death scream. If you don't hear that sound, the Chryssalid may only be unconscious. Follow up with a grenade.
Geoscape Strategy
Starting Your Shadowy Paramilitary Organization - A Beginner's Guide
The way of the Privateer - If you think mass-producing Laser Cannon is cheesy
Logistics
- Managing the Item Limit - To make a lean mean fighting machine and eliminate redundancies at the same time.
- Spring Cleaning Tips - Learning to cope and deal with the pressure of cleaning out the thousands of ammo clips littering the HWP closests and hallways, and deciding on what to keep.
Build Order
- On higher difficulty levels, you'll want to make your base defensible early in the game. See Overhauling The Starter Base.
- Your first base will need Stores, Alien Containment, and Living Quarters very quickly.
- If you have the cash, you can start these three simultaneously.
- You will also want an additional Laboratory as lots of scientists working is key to advancing quickly. 50 scientists will keep up with almost all your needs; 100 scientists may be overkill.
Jasonred : Though I sometimes find even 200 scientists inadequate to my greed... er, I meant need. Especially if I've just captured an Ethereal or Sectoid leader and want Psi. Or the aliens are going battleship crazy and I want Avengers to shoot them down. Or if I capture myself a Navigator and can soon replace those stupid radars with Hyperwave Decoders! Or... if all those happen at the same time, as often happens...
Manufacturing Base
- When you have an extra 4 million or so, start a second base on another continent, and dedicate one to research (keep all scientists here) and one to manufacturing (keep all engineers here).
- If your original base is dedicated to research, wait until the Workshop, Stores, and Living Quarters are complete in your new base, then transfer your engineers and dismantle the old base's Workshop to make room for Laboratories.
- Manufacturing Bases will need a spare hangar to build new Craft.
- Don't forget a garrison force of soldiers, and weapons for same.
- If you're confident about your cash flow, you can start building another base as early as $1.5 million, since, to build a secure base, you're only going to be building one general stores and possibly a hangar to start. Building a secure base, you're unlikely to have more than 4-7 modules built by the end of the month, methinks.
- more to follow.
Base Locations
- In terms of radar coverage of wealthy funding countries, your first two bases should go into Europe (covering Britain to Africa) and North America (USA, Canada, Mexico). Both these bases should have Interceptors and Skyrangers.
- A fairly standard base build order might be Europe, North America, China, Africa, South America, Australia, North Pole, South Pole - covering the major funding areas first, and then filling in all the remaining landmass at the end. The only gap in the coverage of such a layout is the central Pacific region.
- Alternatively, you may keep about 2 Million into February and, one week into the month or so, check the "UFO activity" Graph. You don't want to disappoint the US, of course, but what good is a base in north America if the Aliens busy themselves in Asia? The graph indicates where the aliens really are. If you start construction in early February, you'll miss out on the early scouts preparing the field. But the large radar will be finished in time to pick up the Harvesters, Abductors &c.