User:Tequilachef

Currently I am trying to finish the game on superhuman and with "Council Money Only".

Rules

• Not selling any alien artifacts, corpses or UFO components
• Not selling any X-Com made Equipment
• Thus only getting money from the funding nations (and by selling surplus earth equipment like rifles or stingray launchers)
• No exploits!
• No farming (Alien supply missions may not be intercepted, alien bases may only be attacked to be destroyed)
• No reloading if something goes wrong! Saving in Battlescape is allowed, but only for backups if the game crashes.

This makes the game much harder and much more fun.

Finances

When expending money, always keep in mind that you only will get oney ONCE a month! As soon as you are out of money you cannot manufacture, hire personell or buy equipment. Remember what costs might come to you for the rest of the month! Important:

• For manufacturing
• Replace losses on the battlefield (one or two terror missions can push this one up quite well)
• Replace equipment (Ammunition for earth weapons, grenades)

Huge one-time costs that need to be planned ahead are:

• Hyper wave Decoders, Mind Shields and Psi Labs (each damn expensive but worth every penny)
• Psi Amps (160,000$ each)
• Interceptors with twin plasma beams (1,042,000$ each)
• Starting base defense makeover (excluding additions like radar/alien containment/etc): building 2 new hangars, filling up the old hangar squares with 8 general stores to avoid "paying for dirt" (pays off after 2 months, you'll need a lot of room anyway), building replacement for living quarters at choke (total of 2,000,000$)
• New bases (if you plan to build up decent base defenses):
  • 3 hangars (Alien spawn points!!)
  • 2 general stores
  • 1 living quarters
  • a small garrison for base defense (I normally take 10 soldiers)
  • equipment for those soldiers (weapons, ammunition, medikits, maybe armour)
  • radar or decoder
  • crafts
  • transfer costs for crafts & equipment
  • additional capabilities (workshops for craft construction, psi labs, backup laboratory/alien containment, backup storage)

Before making any expenses, calculate what you are going to need over the month. Will hangars be completed? You might want some savings for an interceptor. Is important research coming up? Save some money for the Psi-Labs/Hyperwave Decoders/Whatever. If you are low on soldiers between the last 5 to 3 days of a month, do not hire new ones until only 71 hours of the old month are left. This saves the salary for those soldiers for the new month. 10 Engineers are far enough for the first few months. You won't have the money for excessive manufacturing, anyway.

Research

Everything that saves money should be researched immediately.

• The first to go should be Medi Kit. Although expensive in production, everytime a soldier is saved by those you save 40.000$!
• Next up should be alien weaponry. Although you need ammunition for it, the weapons themselves are for free. Equipping a squad with laser rifles costs a fortune. Also remember that all X-Com made equipment destroyed in battle has to be replaced, what costs money again!
• I therefore suggest plasma rifles. They combine supreme accuracy with good firepower, which is needed to bring down terror units and to kill most aliens with one hit. Additionally, plenty of ammo for plasma rifles can be found during the first months.
• This unlocks the plasma cannon research, which does not require ammo and therefore saves money, too.
• Alien grenades are quite nice, too. All alien equipment, except for those useless plasma pistols should be researched and used!
• When using personal armour of all kind remember that losing a soldier in one of those costs even more than 40 grand! Only use those for your best men!
• Psi Labs are expensive! Be very careful with soldiers currently in psi training, if possible keep them out of battles at all. Build your psi labs in multiple bases and in those that lay in remote areas. Shuffle your Base garrisons for psionic training and send wounded soldiers to training since they cannot do anything else, anyway. After that train your most talented soldiers excessively, you wont have many of them!

Tactical Combat

One of the big bills is hiring replacements. Therefore keeping your soldiers alive should be top priority. Some tricks to reduce your soldiers' mortality rate:

• Throw a smoke grenade out of your craft in the first turn. Do not exit, all aliens have full TUs at the beginning of your first turn and will therefore be able to reaction fire on your troops.
• Think of bringing an incendiary rocket to light up night missions and to burn down jungles.
• Electro Flares are an absolute must-have for night missions. If one lights your own troops, blast it with a grenade or pick it up.
• Employ psi puppets if necessary.
• Tanks cost a whole bunch of money and are very vulnerable to reaction fire. Better use 10 soldiers for the same money.

Scoring

Obtaining huge amounts of score points is your top objective. Those will increase your payment by the funding nations. Normally, a score around 3,000 points will result in a remarkable increase in funding. This is absolutely necessary to cover rising maintenance costs, which come with global radar coverage and multiple interceptors. Some tricks to keep your employers happy:

• Every UFOpaedia entry gains points. Save autopsies and other alien research for worse months.
• If you have a nice amount of points and the monthly report is near, keep possible sources for points (alien bases, downed UFOs) untouched. Taking them when already having enough points would be waste.
• Downing UFOs earns points, destroying them in air combat doubles them! Having plasma beams...
  • makes those points absolutely free
  • gives the chance of destroying medium scouts and very rarely even large scouts (more free points, the ground assault would cost money and endanger squad and equipment for 200 points or less)
  • hugely improves your capability of taking down terror ships and supply ships!
• Points cost money! Every tactical mission that gains points costs money. This can go from a few thousand for ammo up to some hundrets of thousands for killed soldiers. remember that wounded soldiers still receive salaries while doing nothing, so soldiers being wounded cost, too. Therefore leave downed UFOs when having enough points halfway through the month.

Emptying the stores

Although selling stuff is forbidden, there is no reason you should not be allowed to destroy it. Sell surplus equipment or corpses, then "destroy" the money by building and destroying base facilities or buying and then selling items. A nice spot for that is the position of the starting base original living quarters. This improves the defenses of your base while keeping down the paying for dirt bug.

Aftermath

After having tried this I must say it is still quite easy to win the game. Well I must admit I got lucky in few respects (all alien retaliations against my starting base were floaters or mutons, those only after having psionics; having 8 out of 20 soldiers with psi strength over 80, 4 of those with 99 or 100; never having to defend any secondary base) but I also suffered some mayor busts (lost my first skyranger in april, the second one in may (both of course with almost every soldier and all X-Com equipment I had) with a terror assault following up I could not respond to; losing the USA and 2,400,000$ with them in July). I think I can say with good tactics for battlescape and the early and excessive use of heavy weapons, grenades, smoke grenades and flares many soldiers survive in your service for quite a time. As soon as plasma rifles, armour, blaster launchers and psionics come in the battle for earth is likely to be won. Although the loss of my primary base would have been a mayor setback, I think I would have survived if it had come after may.