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The last turn based strategy games I played were Final Liberation and Chaos Gate (so pretty much eons ago ) but this thread and some of the gameplay videos on youtube have got my interest. The character management reminds me a little of the older Rainbow 6 games too, especially earning experience for your troops, injuries and the possibility of losing them.

My only problem atm is that I have New Vegas, Ghost Recon FS and Space Marine to finish up and Dragon Age Origins to start. At least by the time those are cleared up XCOM may have dropped in price again

Ya, it is kind of like those old timey Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games. It's tough losing a vet.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Really? Some think shivs are good at times but they have no real abilities and at this point in time i don't really need them. They can't take advantage of cover or anything. Basically they may as well have a bulls-eye painted on them though you can eventually get arc throwers to repair them with a foundry upgrade.

SHIVs do have a target painted on them. Or at least, if they don't then you're missing the point.

Using arc throwers to heal them is missing the point. You send them out scouting, and when they spot something then your squad sight snipers and heavies blow the aliens to kingdom come, with your assault on standby if there's only one alien left and you're sure he can get up close and kill it with run & gun and rapid fire (and you're sure doing so won't reveal any more alien units).

If that doesn't work then they'll blow up your SHIV... and you build a new one for the next mission. The point being that the SHIV might not be as powerful as veteran troops, but it's a lot better than a rookie soldier. Expose a vet to danger and lose him and you have to get a rookie. Lose a SHIV and you just build another SHIV.


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 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Anyway I got some psi-guys now. They mentioned it seems to be tied to will. Should I not bother testing rookies and low level guys until they level up for a better chance of getting a psychic?

Whether or not a guy is a psychic is random. How good a psychic he is depends on his Willpower.

One thing to note is that if a guy takes a critical wound he takes a permanent hit to his will. By figuring out which guys are your psychics you know which guys to make sure never suffer will hits.


So its a good idea to just buy a whole bunch of guys and test them all, and then start getting them experience. The end goal being to do the final mission with six elite psychic troops

Poor Flores. He's my longest serving trooper and he's been wounded so many times his will is quite low. He's freaking out in combat now, pretty sure he's got PTSD.

I don't get the strategy with ghost armour. Why would you cloak when you could shoot? Even on Overwatch your going to shoot and reveal yourself anyway.

Cloaking doesn't take up an action point when you use it.

@sebster: I have no need to send my guys in needlessly to die though. My tactic of moving each guy one action point worth of moving before going into overwatch (and if i find something then i can react to said enemies with everybody) tends to work.

I find SHIVs can't hit the broad side of a barn.

In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.


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I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I find SHIVs can't hit the broad side of a barn.

In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.


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I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.

Destroy their cover with explosives or similar. It tends to help infinitely more than being on high ground and even flanking. Most cover should be fully destructible or at least it'll explode (like cars for instance). Most indestructible terrain is usually partial cover and in the form of a slight hill an enemy can hide behind. There are basically huge rock-faces from huge levels of land but usually this isn't the case. In most cases enemies will be behind trees, rocks or parts of their space ship and most of their ship is destructible too.

Yes shooting uncloaks you but you get 100% chance for a critical hit when you do it in almost every single case. Also it basically gives you infinitely more critical hit chance without the need to maneuver your guys around to flank an enemy and possibly open yourself up to be flanked by said enemy.

Ah, so there's an advatage to shooting cloaked. Kind of like Mass Effect.


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Engineers are working on some kinda fancy flying armour right now. How's that going to work? Is it going to allow my guys to move faster or just get them shot in the head more?

In general,they are able to move further.Plus,taken with one of the sniper skills,it will increase damage and critical hit chances due to being in an elevated position.

On the SHIV front,i like taking one ( a plasma flyer ) for scouting.

I prefer the ghost armor. In the end you're still a big open target in the air. Yeah the elevated position is nice with a sniper esp. if you have 'd*mn good ground' and 'squad sight'. 'Squad sight' of course will allow you to just fly up and shoot from across the map and the height bonus for aim is good. That said sadly in some maps like the really weird 'supply ship' map it's not easy to really shoot down at enemies and in a lot of alien crash site missions they also like to stay indoors which prevents you from getting any good shots off. The same goes for some maps in general with aliens just taking cover in buildings to avoid being shot at.

The arch angel armor sounds good in theory but in many cases you can't use it too well if at all. It also has limited fuel and i don't think it's terribly fast. It is funny to troll melee units with them though (chrysallids and berserkers) and i'm fairly certain grenades can't hit you in the air.

Who knows though as maybe you'll figure out a good use for the armor with some abilities or classes and throw out some good combinations i've never thought of.

I'm pretty sure in the game it says it does not confer an ellevated position bonus but I just looked up a wiki and it says it does. So I guess the game is wrong about itself....

Anyways, I did it! I saved the world! It was approprately dramatic.




I'll try out Iron Man I guess. On the console you're only allowed 1 save. Pretty sure it's going to go badly... I got the DLC too for some reason.

I always use Archangel armor with snipers. With squad sight it lets you get good field coverage from the middle of nowhere. Certain ships you can even see from through the front door all the way to the back room. A sniper shot from the other side of the board is a beautiful thing.

Ya, I was looking up Xcom on the interwebz and found this pretty interesting discussion about how you shouldn't use Titan Armor. You should use ArchAngel armour on your snipers, give them squad sight and the use ghost armour on the other guys to scout and just shoot people from the other side of the map. Sounds intriguing. I'll try it next time.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@sebster: I have no need to send my guys in needlessly to die though. My tactic of moving each guy one action point worth of moving before going into overwatch (and if i find something then i can react to said enemies with everybody) tends to work.

Who said anything about sending guys in needlessly to die? Point is, when you move in to an area, there is a chance you won't wipe out every single alien. And so, when the surviving aliens retaliate, some soldiers of yours will be victim to return fire. If you've moved a SHIV aggressively then the aliens will, most times, focus their fire on that, saving your vets, who are a lot harder to replace than a SHIV.

And moving a single action then going in to overwatch is kind of the basic strategy of the game.


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 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I find SHIVs can't hit the broad side of a barn.

It can from two feet away, which is the range a SHIV should be firing from. Actually, preferably two feet above, with a hover SHIV.

In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.

Scopes work really well with every class. They're an obvious choice for snipers. They're an absolute must for heavies (who otherwise struggle to hit often enough). Even for assaults they can be ideal if you're going with the no shotgun version (and if you do go with the shotgun they can still be nice, except armour helps so much more then). And they work really nicely on supports, who with deep pockets and extra speed become really hand support units, able to dash into position and put out an accurate rifle shot when you really need one.

I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.

With bullet storm on a heavy can you shoot and then cloak again?

Ya, but you only get 4 cloaks so seems like a bit of a waste. I'm not even 100% sure cloak shooting gives you better criticals.

Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.

I tend to have one of each of Squad Sight and Snap Shot at high levels (not on the same team), just make sure you know which one you are using! They both work really well....

Been playing a new game on classic difficulty on ironman mode with europe as my starting position. I already took down the alien base with no casualties though i think a chrysallid would've taken out a sniper early on if it hadn't been like a space or two away from the end of its first move.

I'm actually using a very different assault build for my assault major and it seems to be having great success and working to great effect. I'm using all of the critical hit % type abilities as well as the added critical damage per enemies you can see if you get a critical. I mean with just a scatter laser i've been getting 12's to wound and since i have the double shot ability i can rack up 24 damage on a unit with it. It's pretty crazy. I've basically been one shotting mutons and chrysallids with it.

I've also have one sniper with the scanner ability (my sniper colonel) but my other two snipers have the disabling shot. Maybe it's just how i play but i prefer disabling shot because it great for when you're trying to capture enemies and just want to get close with your other guys with arc throwers and you don't want them to get shot to death. Also disabling shot is good if you don't have the ability to kill everything you're facing and just need a unit to just leave you alone for a while (cyberdiscs and sectopods are good examples).

Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Ya, but you only get 4 cloaks so seems like a bit of a waste. I'm not even 100% sure cloak shooting gives you better criticals.

Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.

Ghost is 100% critical for your next shot (or two if you have rapid fire). You can see it on your screen.

Squad sight is awesome. Put your guy on high ground at the back. Move forward your forward element. Use sniper to take out any hard targets. Rinse repeat.

It is pretty much necessary in Classic + since you have to be a lot more conservative.


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 kirsanth wrote:
Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.

I used that in my first game but then went to classic. I'm just a lot more careful and make sure no one advances outside of support range of the others. If someone gets mind-controlled, the easiest way to fix that is a shot to the head for the psyker. Battle Scanner is just too useful in Classic for keeping yourself alive and only exposing one pack at a time.

I agree, pretre.
Most of the use I got from using that idea though was not from really planning to as needing to. I had already gotten two good snipers leveled, but the lowbie I was messing with ended up psychic so his "silly" skill ended up finding uses.

After that run I pretty much stopped taking "silly" skills on even random guys that I think are worthless.

Even so, it is not even all that useful, as I am pretty sure they can still use grenades, poison spit, et al.
Or maybe I am misremembering.

Battle scanners are great, regardless. First move is either fly up and chuck one, or move to cover and chuck one.
The former less likely on Classic. ^^

 kirsanth wrote:
Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.

Oh yeah, good idea.


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I'm playing an Iron Man game. It's been pretty rough. Lost two entire 6 man squads. Don't got much in the way of veterans.

I may be wrong about this but i think you take less damage from psychic attacks if you have a high will (in the form of ethereals) or said attacks have a much harder time hitting. I'm wondering if psychic armor on a psychic with the mind shield is any good if you also use supports with the +20 will smoke grenade. Maybe if my psychic is a support i'll also give it combat stims for an even higher will boost. It'd probably be a waste since it's not like there are that many psychics but it'd be funny to throw said guy at some ethereals and just be like 'There ya go *ssholes! Have fun killing and/or mind controling him.' At that point maybe i'd pull the other guys back and see how things go.

Psychic armor is a very strange thing to work with. Definitely boosts will for psychic attacks and that's alright. I kind of wish they gave more psychic abilities honestly. You only have 5 abilities and you get 3 of the 5 of them anyway. I kind of wished the touched up more on the psychic armor too btw. You pretty much get it at the very end and then that's it. You don't get the time to experiment with the armor or any builds with it really. I might try to use a crazy combo with some colonel that's a psychic in classic difficulty (not on this playthrough most likely as it's classic ironman) and throw said person in a one man fight against a small scout that crashes just so i can get the achievement already (i think i'll give him mind control and psi panic). I'm thinking i'll use a support class for my psychic though chances are that's the worst one to use considering it's a SUPPORT class .

I will also say the assault dude i had with the super critical hit/damage boost is fantastic but when you get up to plasma weapons and the alloy cannon the extra +1 damage per enemy and such types of skills become a bit less preferable. Also i can probably get as good critical hit % with ghost armor anyway. I still enjoy all the damage and the percentage to hit but i honestly think it does much, much more with early and middle tier weapons. Blowing through a muton with one shot is pretty awesome though when only armed with a scatter laser though even if you're at close range and flanking the dude the critical hit % still can get pretty high if you have those skills.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.

Squad Sight is about as powerful an ability as there is in the game. The ability to have guy in an elevated position, able to plink an alien just about anywhere on the map is a really powerful thing.

Snap Shot I never figured out the appeal of. So now the sniper can move and shoot... like everyone unit can do already, but less accurately? What's the point? Who looks at their heavies, assaults and supports and says 'oh if only I had a guy that could move and shoot. Well, that said Snap Shot can work well with In the Zone, but that's kind of a specialist, novelty build, compared to the much basic Squad Sight & Double Tap combination, that just ensures you 20 odd points of damage a turn.


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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Been playing a new game on classic difficulty on ironman mode with europe as my starting position. I already took down the alien base with no casualties though i think a chrysallid would've taken out a sniper early on if it hadn't been like a space or two away from the end of its first move.

Heh, I'm doing the opposite in my current game. Just for fun I left Xeno-Biology until I'd occupied South America, after which I was going on an autopsy splurge (as they're immediate).

So by the time I got around to Xeno-Biology, getting an arc thrower, getting the crystal guy, and going to the alien base there were Sectopods in it Wasn't too much of a problem as I had archangel and titan armour, though the lack of plasma weapons made it a bit tougher.

I'm actually using a very different assault build for my assault major and it seems to be having great success and working to great effect. I'm using all of the critical hit % type abilities as well as the added critical damage per enemies you can see if you get a critical. I mean with just a scatter laser i've been getting 12's to wound and since i have the double shot ability i can rack up 24 damage on a unit with it. It's pretty crazy. I've basically been one shotting mutons and chrysallids with it.

Yeah, that seems the variation in Assaults. Either you go with guys who take a lot of punishment (Def bonus, immunity to crits etc), or guys who deal out a lot of punishment (bonus to crit chance and bonus crit damage). I'm thinking I might go with one of each.

I've also have one sniper with the scanner ability (my sniper colonel) but my other two snipers have the disabling shot. Maybe it's just how i play but i prefer disabling shot because it great for when you're trying to capture enemies and just want to get close with your other guys with arc throwers and you don't want them to get shot to death. Also disabling shot is good if you don't have the ability to kill everything you're facing and just need a unit to just leave you alone for a while (cyberdiscs and sectopods are good examples).

I hate battle scanners. They don't always work properly, and when they do and you spot aliens it's boring, you just sit there squad sight shooting them, and they don't retaliate properly. Really disappointing.

So I go with disabling shot instead. It's a handy ability to take a troublesome alien out of the game, and sometimes 2 damage is exactly what you need to make an alien able to be stunned, without the chance of killing it.

You all make me want to re-install the game and play.

I hate you all.

That's the point for battle scanners. In classic / impossible, if it isn't boring, you're dying.

 malfred wrote:
You all make me want to re-install the game and play.

I hate you all.

Give in!

Good thing my computer crashed. I don't think my laptop is up to spec

In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.

I still think i'm gonna go with the super damage assault class variant for early and mid game high ranking assault guys. Once you have ghost armor and/or plasma weaponry it's probably a waste though.

Gotta say capturing mutons fairly regularly definitely gives you a nice bonus to your plasma rifle pool. Considering how much plasma weapons and such cost it's probably best to at least get the plasma rifles and possibly pistols from capturing some enemies first.

I'm not sure if i mentioned it but so far in the campaign i have 3 sets of ghost armor and 3 of titan armor. For whatever reason i totally avoided skeleton armor. I also took down a battleship though it practically killed the firestorm i had in the continent i took it down in (i took it down in the continental U.S.). I'll have 4 firestorms soon but even with a plasma cannon it almost got taken down and i think i may have used dodge too. After that i managed to beat the whole mission without a single death though one person became incapacitated and i had to save them. So far though it's going well and i've only lost china. I have a satellite on every other country and 3 continental bonuses proved to really help a ton. I'm at the end of october of the first year. So yeah going from a small organization to having a satellite over every country except the one i lost, having all the continental bonuses except asia's, having pretty much all the most advanced gear and having pretty much everything short of a couple interrogations (sectoids who never show up anymore, muton elites which are hard to hit and do insane damage and ethereals which i haven't been able to engage since they show up in continents without firestorms) and the fusion lance ship to ship weapon (i prefer the emp cannon to it anyway since it doesn't damage the enemy ship and does ungodly damage). Pretty much all i need is maybe a couple guns, a little more armor and then just some psychics and equipment and such and that'll be it really. I already have at least 5 plasma rifles and possibly more from all the mutons or armored floaters i capture.

 pretre wrote:
That's the point for battle scanners. In classic / impossible, if it isn't boring, you're dying.

Impossible, sure, but not classic.

And that's why I didn't bother much with impossible - I don't really want to spend my time grinding through AI exploits.


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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.

Oh, no doubting In the Zone is a solid skill. My doubts are more with Snap Shot.

And I thought of In the Zone and Cryssalids, but I find by the time I get a fully levelled sniper Cryssalids have stopped being a problem...

I still think i'm gonna go with the super damage assault class variant for early and mid game high ranking assault guys. Once you have ghost armor and/or plasma weaponry it's probably a waste though.

Enemy hitpoints scale faster than our weapons upgrade (Muton Elites & Sectopods) and with the built in critical resistance of some enemies, having some bonuses to override that becomes really handy.

I've worked on the idea that there's snipers and heavies to do the killing, what assaults need first and foremost is to soak enemy fire. But playing through this time, getting to the end game enemies, I'm thinking maybe an extra bit of killing might be very handy, and my own crit focussed assault is really useful.

Gotta say capturing mutons fairly regularly definitely gives you a nice bonus to your plasma rifle pool. Considering how much plasma weapons and such cost it's probably best to at least get the plasma rifles and possibly pistols from capturing some enemies first.

Sure, but at max you have maybe four guys needing plasma rifles (two assaults and two supports). Four rifles isn't that hard to do, and once you've built them they're there forever.

I'm not sure if i mentioned it but so far in the campaign i have 3 sets of ghost armor and 3 of titan armor.

I build six of everything, and use whatever seems the most fun at the time. Six Ghost, six titan, six arcangel, or some combination of the three, it's all fun.

For whatever reason i totally avoided skeleton armor.

Skeleton armour is great fun, and on some maps it lets you put sniper in a totally dominant position. Other times you get yourself in trouble and it gets you killed (cover on the tops of buildings always gets trashed by enemy fire for some reason).

I also took down a battleship though it practically killed the firestorm i had in the continent i took it down in (i took it down in the continental U.S.). I'll have 4 firestorms soon but even with a plasma cannon it almost got taken down and i think i may have used dodge too.

Yeah, basically the only time all those dodges and matrices become useful is when battleships turn up.

Still, completing a battleship means blaster bombs, so fun times ahead

After that i managed to beat the whole mission without a single death though one person became incapacitated and i had to save them. So far though it's going well and i've only lost china.

Shame about losing China, because then you lose the Asian bonus. That's why I start in Asia - you can let Asian countries go and keep the bonus, and the other continents are much easier to keep all the countries (except maybe Europe, but their bonus is junk).

having pretty much all the most advanced gear and having pretty much everything short of a couple interrogations (sectoids who never show up anymore, muton elites which are hard to hit and do insane damage and ethereals which i haven't been able to engage since they show up in continents without firestorms)

You might get lucky and get an abduction mission that is full of sectoids, that can happen late in the game. Capturing a Muton Elite shouldn't be too hard, kill his two mates, then Disabling Shot/Suppress him and run in there.

(i prefer the emp cannon to it anyway since it doesn't damage the enemy ship and does ungodly damage).

Yeah, that's actually one of the very few pieces of poor design the game has - there really isn't any reason to use anything other than EMP.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.

That sounds pretty crazy. Do you have to kill the target to get the next free shot though?

I decided to do this game with "Damage Roulette". So far it makes all my snipers and heavies do 1 damage and Mutons do like 12. Fantastic!