ufopaedia.org

BAM, there you go.

Has almost every bit of information on every X-COM game. Everything not covered by this guide and more. Been around since forever. The sky's the limit. Empower yourself.

The most powerful aspect in the game is money.
With money, you can build lots of nice things, buy bombs or build powerful equipment, and throw away soldiers as you will. Money is very simple. Get moar engineers.

Either research motion scanner or medkit and start manufacturing and selling them non-stop. Then proceed to research laser weaponry all the way to the end. Craft and sell laser cannons. No exceptions. You will be able to expand to max bases with all the best junk and roll in money.

Research turns your soldiers into absolute powerhouses. In order to get the best research, you want to stun the @#$_ out of certain aliens. You may want to have some stun batons. Or have a stun bomb when they are available and just shoot it into a sectoid commander room(bridge). Don't forget to get some scientists or your research will take forever. You don't need a lot. 20 to 30 to start out, 100 to 150 max. Items you need to research first are elerium, alien alloys, and UFO items to unlock armor and flying tech. Also, you may prioritize heavy plasma.

When you get a sectoid leader, you can and should research ASAP to gain and build psi labs. Then you have psi troops, aim for high psi strength.

Last, but actually first, you want to stun a live navigator, which can usually be found on a medium size or above craft. If you don't have the equip to figure out their rank, just stun the @#$_ out of all the inside aliens. They also always carry stun launchers, so that is a way to distinguish them, and you can also close on them without fear of death, but your troops may fall unconcious. Researching them gets you hyperwave decoder, which lets you take positive control of the map by knowing all their actions.

pay attention to the day/night cycle and try to time your skyranger to land on missions during daytime. Buy 24+ flares and use them on night missions. You toss them ahead of you before you can gain vision of the area. Avoid obstruction if possible. Try to get as much vision as possible without risk of having aliens come upon on their turn. You can make holes in walls with the right firepower. Don't squad hug corners. Try to have a firing squad with open vision where you may potentially spot aliens and have some scouts up front to spot aliens. Try to avoid shooting with the scouts. If you can't kill the alien, back up your spotter or go into cover. Vision/reaction range is around 16 squares. All your guys in the back can fire freely if they are that far away from the target. In close quarters, try to get into a situation where you are very close to the alien so that an autofire will secure a kill. Also...almost always use autofire.

To clarify, there's a mechanic in X-COM that ufopaedia calls mutual surprise. If you can see the enemy at the same time as them seeing you, there is NO REACTION ROLL. If you TURN IN PLACE past a corner, you're much more likely to survive than trying to walk past it. If you spot an alien in the distance, you won't get shot at if you don't move, and you can RETREAT without getting shot.

Smoke bombs are a valuable asset when used correctly. They serve to obstruct vision, and thus can prevent you from being shot by alienz. You have to activate them where you're or where you're going to be standing. Alienz will have trouble seeing into smoke, effectively reducing their vision radius, like they have your night vision. But they have to be OUTSIDE the smoke, just remember that.

About fog: Try to cover the entire area in a sweeping motion moving outward from the corner(the one your craft lands in). You will find any hidden aliens and not have any wander into already uncovered areas. Try to keep track of aliens that fell unconcious, they can wake up and wander around.

By the way, flares "light" about 6 squares around them, so 12 apart is enough to grant vision, not accounting for obstacles.

Originally, I thought this was easy to figure out. But based on all the bs going around in forums, it's not.

Firestorm are the best interceptors to have. Normal interceptors cost rent. Normal interceptors are SLOW. They have a max speed of 2100. That's slower than ANY alien craft. You will not be able to make intercepts when it really matters.

Firestorms are slower, but moar fuel efficient than the avenger. The skyranger has a long deployment time and may be useful for finding bases, but should be replaced by the avenger as a dropship. Lightning is total #$_& and you should never make it. Its exit hatch is terribly placed and deploying from it f-in sux. Avengers are FAST and have moar hp than Firestorm, but hp equates to repair time also. You CAN field full avengers, but you'd have to be prepared for the elerium cost in flying them(because all alien craft use elerium for fuel, and the avenger is the least fuel efficient, but fastest).

Any craft can fight any ship except battleships with plasma cannons. Thus, you could field full interceptors as long as you don't engage battleships(but they're so slow they can only keep up with small craft). Don't fusion ball, it's a trap. Full squad firestorms or avengers against battleships with plasma, and they'll only take a little repair time.

the only other thing besides money that is necessary for world domination are alien mats, which can only be salvaged. Assuming you have hyperwave decoders spread around the world, you will be able to see every alien acitivity. Technically, you only need to land on an alien site for one of 2 things:soldier training & elerium. Therefore, you should just shoot down every craft that you don't need AND IGNORE THEM. You really only need medium craft if alien activity is high. As small craft offers too little training, and large craft houses terror units, which are a bit of a hassle to deal with; but they do have the most elerium, so whether you want to put the effort into it depends on you.

NOTE: The above and below tip only applies once you're fairly established. Don't go ignoring alien crash sites when you begin the game. You need the early game salvage for cash and research.

So onto actually farming these mats. NEVER SHOOT DOWN WAT YOU WANT TO RAID. When you damage a craft, you lose potential materials. It'd be pointless to go raid a supply ship just to find out that you blew out the whole power room. The only missions you actually want to shoot down are alien infiltration and alien retaliation. Shooting down the initial craft prevents the big mission. Your big money comes from alien base. Leave the initial small scout alone, and eventually there will be a bustle of activity in the country where they set up a new base. Simply take your avenger and raid their ships one by one as they land. Ignore the small ships and go for the big ones. You will come out with plentiful of elerium. Scout the area afterwards to discover the location of the new base. Having one also brings in supply ships which you can raid for extra $$$. They also lead you right to the base if you were too lazy to look for it.

So in the previous section, I mentioned shooting down ships. That was not completely accurate. You only need to shoot down ships that THREATEN you: Alien Infiltration and Alien Retaliation.

These missions always start with a small scout. If you shoot down that scout, that mission is scrapped. But if you some how missed the initial scout. The main wave will come.

For Alien Infiltration, you can prevent a successful attempt by shooting down the scouts in the MAIN wave.

For Alien Retaliation, you have to shoot down a BATTLESHIP using ships from the DEFENDING BASE unless they're AVENGERS. The assaulting battleship travels at top speed and you cannot intercept it with slower craft unless you're head on. But only FIRESTORMS and AVENGERS can hope to take down a battleship and survive without some fusion balls. But as mentioned before, DON'T BUILD FUSION BALLS.

About score. If you've been following this guide, you don't need to worry about it. But if you really want to rack up points, just shoot down some UFO's. Easy.

It's occurred to me that I never mentioned this, so here's a new chapter.

YOU ONLY NEED SOLDIERS IN ONE BASE.

YOU ONLY NEED ONE DROPSHIP(unless you damage or lose it, then a spare maybe nice to have).

ONE TEAM IS ENOUGH TO STAY AFLOAT. If you make multiple teams, then it's just n* the training you have to do to get competent soldiers, which is a WASTE OF TIME AND RESOURCE. In the late game, ONE TEAM CAN COVER EVERY EVERY MISSION that you'd want to run.

Remember to make many bases for manufacturing purposes. Also, spread them out so that when you put hyperwave decoders on them, they'll be able to cover different spots for world wide coverage, not necessarily in that order.

So once you have psi labs, it's time to subjugate the masses. You should start mass recruiting, screening, and firing unqualified soldiers NO SOONER than getting psi labs.

Every stat on a soldier can be trained except for two: Psi STRENGTH and energy RECOVERY. Thus, what you want in a soldier is above 88 psi strength(100 max) and 57-60 TU AT THE TIME OF HIRE. 54-56 is acceptable if you don't want to be too choosy.

Psi STRENGTH is important because it's basically the multiplier for your psi attack. The other part is psi skill, which CAN be trained. But with a low natural multiplier, your psi attack will not be very strong.

Energy RECOVERY is important because over long battles, your troops will need energy to travel. If your RECOVERY is low, they will slow down to a crawl.

So hire soldiers, keep the ones with decent starting TU's. Put them through the psi lab at the beginning of each month, review their psi strength on the next month, and repeat until you have however many you want to have.

Now that you have your soldiers, it's time to train their stats.

Throwing ACCURACY can be increased by throwing a bunch of items every mission. You don't really need it.
Strength automatically increases, and also increases your throwing RANGE.
TU and energy automatically increases.

So all you're actually training is accuracy, psi skill, and reactions. You start out by using panic on enemies, because if you don't have near max psi strength, mind control won't work on any enemies. Get around 3 successes for each soldier. Around 5 fails is about equal to one success, so 15 fails if you can't succeed.

Do this for a few missions until you can mind control enemies. Floaters, Snakeman, and Muton are easier prey. Mind control all of them, make them drop their weapon and grenade, and herd them into a corner/box where your troops are sitting. Form a perimeter around them with your troops all equipped with laser pistols, and release their mind control. They may start walking around triggering reaction shots from your lasers. To make this more successful, try to let them have a pathway "out" or they'll just sit around and glare at you. Reaction kill them all, and repeat for each troop that hasn't maxed out their reaction/accuracy.

Congratulations. your squad is now so elite, aliens are just weed.

because I can print an in-depth essay, and it'd be wrong, or I'd be full of #$%^ because YOU DON'T GET IT, that's why I have to SHOW YOU so you actually know that I know what I'm talking about; and now you'll also know what I'm talking about.


For NAYSAYERS. Note 2 things:
1. I run on superhuman here and it's EASY
2. I practice what I preach on here and in the forums and IT WORKS
Your feedback is welcome, but if you don't agree with what I say and you either have trouble beating the game sometimes, feel that this game is not easy, or you don't complete personal challenges, then you could probably benefit from WATCHING the video first.

For everyone else:
Even if you just attempt to mimic what I do, you will probably beat the game.

This is NOT part of the guide. It's an add-on because according to forums, people do not know that they're hurting themselves hoarding some specific useless item(s).

Explosives
They're GOOD. I don't personally use them, because I don't like to blow up items. Even rocket launchers or rocket tanks are really strong against initial alien encounters. And you can blow up obstacles not that you would need to, because lasers. Just make sure if you use rockets that your operator is EXTREMELY psi resistant, has no ammo, doesn't have rocket in hand, or any combination. There's also the popular load a rookie fodder with grenades trick, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Stun bombs
They're not good in UFO Defense, which is important to note in case I publish another guide I'm considering making. They can shoot and reload like once per turn and it costs pretty much all your TU. BUT they're a better choice for stunning than trying to use batons. If you're serious about capturing a particular alien, most soldiers should carry a baton or stun launcher IN ADDITION TO THEIR STANDARD ARMS.

Laser rifles
They're GOOD. You can finish the game using lasers. More resilient enemies may take a lot more hits than say HEAVY PLASMA though. But you should carry BOTH anyway(weight allowing), because rifles don't require ammo to burn holes through non-alien-craft obstacles.

Heavy lasers
They are BAD. No autoshot, such trash.

Laser pistols
They are GOOD. They also do low enough damage to barely be able to damage flying armor. Not good for end game, but BEST CHOICE for stat training.

Heavy plasma
They're GOOD. Has autoshot, accuracy, damage, good TU cost, abundant ammo supply from enemies. Pretty much best in the game. You don't even need to research plasma pistol nor rifles.

Hover PLASMA
they're GOOD. You SHOULD get some of these for scouting, and plasma can break through most walls, but unfortunately, not as strong as heavy plasma and can't break ships. YES, THEY'RE THE BEST FOR SCOUTING because they refill MAX TU and MAX ENERGY every turn. And you don't care about breaking them(well you shouldn't) because they can't train.

Personal Armor
They're TRASH. They're BAD. A soldier costs only 40k, yet personal armor costs 22k+ALLOYS(26k), and yet your soldier isn't even going to survive anyway. In addition, you can make 2 laser cannons(ROUNDED DOWN) in the time it takes to make personal armor, so, in actuality, you're losing 106k for EACH SUIT just to attempt to save a 40K soldier that won't even survive(see youtube video) and isn't even needed(see youtube video), and causing your progress to suffer(see finance). Is that STUPID? VERY.

Using personal armor is like trying to run interceptors. They're NOT useful and you just made your game harder because you're not making the progress you could be(see craft, control, & youtube video).

Power Armor
They're BAD. Nice protection, but you would be able to get flying armor if you can get this ANYWAY, and if you can't, then you've messed up your research priorities. And the armor is SECONDARY to the FLYING.

Flying Armor
They're GOOD. You can fly and you have armor(see youtube video).

not actual gameplay guide related, but you should PROBABLY get OPENXCOM, nightly build.

Fixes lots of bugs, including issues you'd have if you were using DOSBOX. Quality of life changes. Interface improvements. Mods.

https://openxcom.org/git-builds/