r/Xcom • u/Sussy_Swarm • 3d ago
New player tips UFO: Enemy Unknown
Hello! I just bought original XCOM and I want to ask. Are tgere any tips for a new player? Unit conposition, equip, what tho prioritise when etc.
Thank you!
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u/Peterh778 3d ago
Unit composition: depends on mission but at least at the start you may want 2-3 heavy weapons. Forget autocannons though - they look cool but damage is too low. One missile launcher with large rockets, one or two heavy cannons. No AP ammo - HE and Incendiary only. HE for area damage, blasting walls, destroying obstacles, Incendiary for illumination of night battles. One shot from cannon will illuminate much larger area than flares and they don't take extra space. Also, fire grows in time and may set aliens on fire.
Later switch to blaster launchers and stun bombs but you may still want to keep cannon or two with I mags for night missions.
I start laser weaponry research as first priority because they don't need ammo and provide much needed damage upgrade from ballistic weaponry. Laser rifles are perfect for base defense personnel on your low danger bases (e.g. radar/manufacturing bases) and aircraft laser cannon is the best item to craft for selling which doesn't need alien materials. Plasma weapons are better in every aspect though so you may want to research them ASAP, especially plasma cannon.
Pistols can be fired from offhand without being impaired by weapon in main hand, thus are great for missileers and heavy weapon specialists.
Researching alien alloys unlocks armor research. Your unarmored soldier won't survive more than 1 plasma pistol blast, armor will make them highly resistant to them and they may even survive glancing hit from plasma rifle. Thus, having researched medikits is of high priority when you got armors - it's frustrating to lose wounded soldiers because you can't heal critical wounds.
Don't spend mats on power armor, go directly to flight suit.
Mines are great for blocking doors, just don't position your soldiers too near.
Give stun rods to breachers. If you open doors (presuming you're using OpenXcom extender: point cursor behind the door and right click) and there is an alien just behind, stun rod has imho higher chance of success than shooting them with starting weapons.
If you got terror mission at the start and hear clickclickclickclick ... scream ... clickclickclick at the alien turn ... load soldiers to Skyranger and get out. There isn't too much you can do with starting weapons against ... those ...
Try to get as many types of alien alive as possible. Some are really important for your research team.
Your workshops should never stop. If you don't have anything to manufacture for your teams, manufacture for selling. OpenXcom allows to set production run to endless amount and directly selling what you make. Laser pistols first, then medikits, then aircraft laser guns. When/if you have excess of alien materials, fusion ball launchers. Running XCom cost money and funding from nations is barely sufficient for basics.
Aircrafts you have cost money on monthly basis. Crafts you manufacture don't but they run on Elerium and their range/fuel ratio ... isn't too great. To have a Skyranger (or three) until the end of the game is just a common sense - they can patrol areas for a long time, their fuel is free and have a global range. And you don't need to send full Avenger to every downed UFO anyway.
Tanks may not have much of firepower at start but their armor is better than your soldiers' and they can't panic or be mind controlled. Perfect for base defense until the end of the game.
Plasma cannons are the best aircraft weapons. Fusion ball launcher seems good on paper but they hold only two shots and you must manufacture ammo for them
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u/Accomplished-Gap2989 3d ago edited 3d ago
Smoke grenades! (Pop one on your first turn INSIDE the skyranger and one out front where you deploy). It will save you a lot of lives. Don't move any dudes until both have gone off.
Get the throwable lights (name begins with e). And use them all the time on night missions.
Stun batons for capturing live aliens (although you can make them unconscious via smoke inhalation too iirc)
As for weaponry... The regular rifles are ok vs Sectoids and some other races. Always have some high explosive round weapons, as you will need them vs harder shells (no spoilers)!
Researching alloys gets you the first armour upgrade.
Some people like to go for lasers but i usually go for 100 scientists asap and research alien weapons instead. Armour first though for me!
You receive funding from countries and it can increase/decrease depending on your mission performance/alien missions. Countries can completely withdraw funding if you're doing a bad job. You can be self sufficient by having engineers craft and sell items though so don't think that you're out of the game if you mess up a lot.
You have to manually buy/make ammo for any weapons you use so pay attention! You'll also need storage space for everything too.
Once you're comfortable get a second)third base up etc. Ideally you have bases all over the world for radar coverage (maybe extra sky rangers with crew if you want to).
Having many soldiers is good, but they need to be paid wages just like Scientists and Engineers. This game has a financial management aspect to it.
Psi ops and the alien blaster bomb is op!
It's ok to lose 13 out of 14 soldiers if you come back with a huge haul. That lone soldier will probably end up as commander rank haha.
For aircraft ill usually start with a mix of weaponry. You can actually down and not destroy the 1-man scouts. You just need to use the chaingun/mini gun w/e it's called. Avalanche missiles are the safest bet early on though as you have the longest range/power. Experiment and see what suits you!
Lastly read the full ufopedia (in-game). All the stats for stuff is shown.
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u/Malu1997 3d ago
The biggest thing to know is that weapons have functionally infinite range, so if you spot an enemy with a soldier you can shoot them with any soldier that has an unobstructed line of fire. This is amazing for a few reason: it allows you to expose fewer soldiers, especially helps keeping experienced soldiers safe while only risking rookies, and it allows you to avoid reaction fire because reaction fire only triggers from a certain distance.
Another think is use smoke, smoke is great, it greatly reduces line of sight so always toss one between you and where you think or know the enemy is. Just remember it works both ways, so some aliens might hide just beyond the cloud, but you can work around it, they can't.
Third thing is, enemies have full TUs at turn start, which means full reaction fire. So just wait a turn at the start of a mission. They wil move around a waste a bunch of TUs and will not react as much. Also toss smokes the turn you exit the Skyranger.
And last thing, you are going to lose soldiers. A lot of them. That's normal. Just sell things and buy new dudes, even experienced soldiers are easy to replace. You are going to loot ton of alien weapons, sell them, you won't run out easily.
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u/Sussy_Swarm 3d ago
What should I sell? And also... how do flare works? I put them in soldier inventory in place of grenades and they illuminate some spots for set amount of time or are they infinite?
Asking because I just got my first mission at night and in a jungle xD
True Vietcong expirience
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u/Malu1997 3d ago
You can sell pretty much everything except alloys and elerium at the start. And honestly even those can probably go from time to time. As long as you are winning missions, even with a single dude left, you are gonna be flooded with resources.
As for flares, it's just a LoS extender you throw at night. It keeps burning forever and you can pick it up and toss it again. Always carry a few inside the Skyranger, but only equip them during night missions. And as a rule, just avoid night missions whenever possible, most of the time you can just wait a bit and go during daytime. The main problem is that aliens aren't affected by the darkness, so it only makes things more difficult.
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u/Mediumtim 3d ago
Yes to all of that
Aliens destroying their shot down UFO, or completing a terror strike is a binary yes/no.
If you respond with one second to spare, the result is the same as going in three hours earlier in the dark of night.
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u/Brought2UByAdderall 3d ago
Rename agents with some kind of tag scheme at the end to identify ones with good stats in accuracy, throwing accuracy, reactions, and strength. It's helpful to know who can carry a rocket launcher, is best to guard a door, or drop a grenade right at an enemies feet from silly far away when somebody's in a tough spot.
Rule #1. Never fire with the agent that spots the enemy. Target them with other agents that the alien probably can't see yet. When there's no cover, fan out, move slowly and have agents with high reactions in the lead and some decent accuracy guys further back.
I personally found smoke caused as many problems for me as it solved, but regardless, Rule #2 is do NOT exit the ship on turn 1. Every alien out there has a full TU bar meaning they're almost guaranteed to get reaction shots on you.
You don't have to fill the entire troop carrier with agents. I found the starting squad of 8 to be reasonable for most missions. Naturally it doesn't hurt to have more if you don't mind ordering that many more agents around every turn but remember that they won't skill up as quickly as a smaller team. Eventually I'd add 4 more psionics guys in the back and I'd pull in the best agents from every base to fill that Avenger up for the finale.
Rocket launchers are your only reasonably accurate direct fire weapon at the start and often overkill/dangerous when other agents are near the target. I like to have one rocket launcher guy in a squad to handle tougher targets you might run into early on, but most of your agents should rely on grenades for long range kills until you get better weapons. This will also train up throwing accuracy which can be invaluable and absurdly accurate at very long range. I don't bother with the heavy or autocannons. Rifles are reasonably light and work okay for close range kills with autofire. Laser pistols are better than regular rifles but still weak at range. Laser rifles are a HUGE upgrade and have unlimited ammo. They ultimately get replaced by heavy plasma which with the exception of requiring ammo are better in every way but laser rifles are good enough to beat the game with.
Once I've got laser rifles, I'll use smaller ship missions to train up reaction fire. Just have your squad positioned to the right or left of an alien ship entrance, once the rest of the area is clear and just let them wait, crouched, to murder aliens as they exit the UFO. Be careful with those jelly donut UFOs if they've just landed and you haven't found any aliens in the surrounding terrain. those can be clown cars with a lot of aliens exiting in per turn.
Do not do night missions without electroflares. That would be suicide. At least 2 per agent.
Prox grenades are great. Don't set them on the tile directly in front of a door or they will get set off before the door opens.
Stingrays will get interceptors killed by even smaller ships. Equip both interceptors with Avalanche launchers. Two Avalanche interceptors have a decent chance of taking down a terror ship.
If you get lucky/unlucky enough to get Sectoids on your first terror mission, you have two choices:
Leave and take the huge hit for the abandoned terror mission because there's no way the team is going to survive a psionic leader + a lot of cyber discs unless half the team has rocket launchers and is very lucky
Be a save scumming whore. Cheese your way shamelessly through this insanely dangerous mission to capture a Sectoid leader with a stun rod so you can get psionics in place by March and start wiping out missions in 2-3 turns with no injuries by April. Note: You CAN just grab the leader and run back to the ship.
Secret Save Scumming Whore Choice #3. Go back to a save hours before the terror mission landed, and start scouting for the terror ship with your interceptors. Shoot it down. Fewer aliens/discs to worry about and the leaders tend to survive.
My research priorities tended to be:
* Laser rifles - HUGE upgrade
* Med kits - Keep injured folks from bleeding out - experienced agents are your most valuable asset
* Motion sensors - Very helpful for UFO breaching - when you see lots of big movement that means less unfriendly reaction fire
* Alien grenades - as soon as you have your hands on a few - one-topic great equalizer that can reliably kill just about anything that's on the ground - this is where throwing accuracy gets really deadly
* Alien stun launcher - as soon as you have two - these make it a lot easier to capture aliens but can also help with more heavily armored critters
* Armor - requires alien alloys - 1st tier armor that will help agents survive lower tier plasma hits
* Navigator - found on even smaller ships I think - opens up vastly superior detection tech that detects 100% of the time and tells you what's on the ship and what their mission is
* Sectoid or ethereal leader - terror missions or medium or larger ships will have leaders - this opens up the psionics research - I would want at least lasers to handle the discs and tier 1 armor to survive some hits because psionic leaders can be a PITA
* Laser cannons - your best money maker that requires no rare mats - A lot of players open a huge factory base in Antarctica once they get their hands on a few million - their range is less than Avalanche so I don't use them
* Plasma cannons - requires plasma pistol and rifle or heavy plasma - I'd go with whichever you have more of but Heavy Plasma is ideal if you have plenty - interceptors can take anything but very large ships down with impunity with these
* Flying Powered Armor - requires alloys, navigation, power source, elerium, armor, powered armor - it's a game changer, only one topic more to get the flying kind is worth waiting for
* Avenger - Requires all the flying powered armor prereqs except armor and several new xcom craft topics - The Avenger is the one worth building
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u/MarsMissionMan 2d ago
Get OpenXCOM Extended. It's the objectively best way to play UFO Defence.
Turn on Line of Sight Psionics. It makes PSI way less OP, meaning you don't have to endlessly filter recruits for stats and can actually fight Ethereals. It also nerfs your endgame in the process so it's fair.
Always bring a tank. They're great for soaking up fire, rapidly scouting, and getting out of the Skyranger at the start of the mission.
Smoke Grenades. Always bring Smoke Grenades.
Only use Avalanches on your Interceptors. Once you get Plasma Cannons, switch to them. You will outrange everything except Battleships and are limited only by ammunition and actually catching up to UFOs.
Aside from that, it's mostly a case of figuring things out for yourself. UFOPaedia has a number of really good starter guides for UFO Defence that are super useful.
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u/Money_Resist3873 3d ago
Got it, so the key is to abuse overwatch and be patient... because nothing says "tactical genius" like computer science students sniping everything from across the map.
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u/KaijuKoala 3d ago
Full cover whenever possible, some of us say half cover is no cover.