XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a fantastically addictive game. Somewhat due to the challenge it presents and the feeling of accomplishment when gaining success in anything.
The game is hugely tactical and often, slight mistakes can be extremely costly. Errors will rarely go unpunished.
So to help out, Cracking Ace offers some hints and tips for ‘XCOM: Enemy Unknown’ that have got us through so far.
Squad Building
Your soldiers are your greatest weapon against the enemy. It’s important to have a balanced team who are capable of handling any situation thrown at them.
To begin with, you will have four Rookies, equipped with standard gear. This will do for starters, but you will want to upgrade as quickly as you can. The aliens don’t play nice.
Once you finish the tutorial, you may find it a good idea to restart the game and switch off the tutorial option. This way you may be able to prevent your team being almost wiped out. This gives you more experienced soldiers with promotions to begin the game with.
Size
The best quick upgrade to invest in would be the squad size allowance. You can get up to six soldiers in your squad after upgrades. An extra man on the field is worth a lot more than a stronger gun.
Classes
Your Rookies will gain experience (provided they live) and earn promotions. With promotions comes a soldier class and abilities.
You will want a good balance. If it is still early on and you have not upgraded your team size, then one of each of the classes will be best; an Assault, a Heavy, a Support and a Sniper.
Assault soldiers are good as the front line. Give them a shotgun and the strongest armour you have so that they can get in close and deal maximum damage. The perk ‘Run and Gun’ is often invaluable. They can also learn quick reflexes, allowing them to be immune to some enemy reaction shots.
Heavys are your tanks. They carry the biggest guns and can cause the most trouble for enemies in a number of ways. If not blowing them up with rockets and grenades, they can be pinning them down with suppression fire or taking opportunities to do double damage with an extra shot.
Support class troops are, as the name suggests, useful for helping your own guys out. With a number of skills to learn, you can choose to either have them specialise as medics or give them extra defensive capabilities. You will need medics. On tougher missions it’s often best to have two who are able to carry a pack of three medikits each. Give these the ability to revive at greater strength as well. Other support troops will have smoke grenades that can boost defenses of your men as well as other useful perks that help you hold the line.
Snipers are your long range assists. They stay well back, out of the range of the enemy while singling out aliens for headshots. One of their most useful abilities is ‘Squad Sight’. This gives them a much greater range, allowing them to fire at enemies who have no means of retaliating. They can also learn to disable enemies guns temporarily, which may help with capture missions.
Squad make up should usually be one Sniper, one Heavy, two Medics, an Assault and a spare slot that can be taken by either a second Assault, Heavy or Support depending on your play style or for bringing along a Rookie who could earn a promotion.
Two Medics are vital. You do not want to take in one and by some misfortune his/her being the only one who requires medical attention.
When your troops get promotions, often it is wise to choose different perks than what you thought best before. The squad members with unique abilities may complement the seemingly more sound abilities. For example, having a medic who can carry 3 medikits and revive his allies will mean missing out on the other perks available. Another trooper can take these perks, making him more use on the battlefield while the medic still has their own job.
The assault class has a choice between a ‘Flush’ perk and a ‘Rapid Fire’. If you have one of each, then one can flush out enemies from their cover, while the second can hit them hard twice.
Try to keep in mind ideas for combinations.
Later in the game you may want to use your spare squad slot for a second Sniper. Fully upgraded Snipers with Squad Sight and the ability to fire multiple shots can do an amazingly efficient job of clearing the battlefield.
Although it’s tempting to stick with your best soldiers for every mission, it’s a wise tactic in the long run to try and get as many of them promoted to decent levels as possible. If your elites are killed or wounded, it will only be tougher for you if all you have left are Rookies.
Equipment
Armour is probably better to prioritise than weaponry.
A live soldier with a basic rifle is more useful than a dead one with a heavy plasma gun.
If possible, use items like the S.C.O.P.E. to boost your weapon skills until you can get the tougher guns.
It’s also a smart idea to skip bulk upgrading to lazer weapons if you can get plasma just as quick. However, you may still find it life-saving to equip a Sniper and/or Assault/Heavy with lazer weapons just to give you an extra edge in the meantime.
If you are skilled enough at keeping your team alive, then doing a little less damage on your attacks will just mean battles last a touch longer.
When constructing armour and weapons for your team, keep in mind that it isn’t really necessary to purchase any more than six of any type of thing. Often that is too many. You will only ever have six squaddies in the battlefield so although it’s a little bit of fiddling, you can swap gear between them.
Don’t forget your sidearms too. Pistols come in handy for many situations, especially for Snipers, who can not use their main weapons after moving. Should a trooper run out of ammo in their rifle and have no time to reload, their pistol can be a lifesaver.
They are also useful for softening up enemies for capture.
Later, you will be able to build S.H.I.V.s: heavy weapon platforms. They are hard hitters, but a lot less flexible than a regular soldier. They are less able to navigate terrain and are unable to gain promotions and learn many more abilities. Things such as this may seem cool and attractive, but remember that in the long game, rushing to get these can cost a lot more than the construction price.
Ensure you buy things that will be useful over things that seem fun.
Protecting the World
As well as single battles on the ground, you will need to keep a watchful eye over the planet. In order to do this there are a number of things to keep in mind.
Satellites
Satellites are your eyes in the sky. They watch out for UFO invasions and allow you to spot more enemy activity. It’s vital to get as many operational whenever you can.
Although having said that, it is a good idea to keep them held back until desperately needed.
If a country has a panic level of about four or five, that is a good time to launch a satellite to cover them. It will instantly reduce the panic by 2. If a country already has a low panic, it is probably safe to ignore them for a little bit longer.
You also should take note of how much cash and staff the country will provide you in return for coverage. If you have a few satellites spare towards the end of the month, it could be a good idea to launch them so you can rake in some extra funds. Obviously, go for the countries who offer the highest monthly payments first (panic levels permitting).
Annoyingly they take 20 days to build, so it’s a good idea to get them ready as early as possible so you have them handy.
If you’re in a good enough position to pick and choose where to place your satellites, you can also keep in mind the bonuses gained by having satellite coverage over whole continents.
North America: Air and Space – Halves the cost and maintenance of Interceptors.
South America: We Have Ways – All alien autopsies and interrogations research instantly.
Africa: All In – Increases Council member funding by 30 percent.
Europe: Expert Knowledge – Halves the cost and maintenance of labs and workshops.
Asia: Future Combat – Halves the cost of Officer Training School upgrades and Foundry projects.
Some of these obviously work better BEFORE you start spending on certain things, or using research time on autopsies. In which case you might want to prioritise those so you can save time and resources later.
Air force
You will need an active air force both to defend your satellites from being shot down and to go after UFO’s who get too close. Make sure every country with a satellite also has air support.
Your craft are fairly weak compared to many of the alien ships, so you will need to give them a bit of a boost here and there until you can get more powerful ones.
Use the evasion equipment once it is researched.
If you have more than one craft in a continent, you can abort your first attack if it isn’t going well and send in the second to finish the UFO off.
Once you are able to begin building Firestorms and attaching plasma weaponry to your birds, your defenses will be a lot tighter. A Firestorm equipped with either a plasma or EMP cannon should be able to handle almost any threat.
Panic
Keeping panic low is important. If a country has a panic level of 5, it may leave the World Council and take it’s funding with it. If you lose eight countries, the game is over.
When presented with options as to which country to defend in the event of alien attacks, panic level should be your first priority. Always defend the one that has a level of more than 3. If each country is at an even level, then you should take into consideration the rewards.
Engineers are more useful than scientists in the long run, though if you already have a good amount, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bump up their numbers too. Money is very useful early on as until you get a few satellites in the sky, you won’t have many ways of getting it. Experienced troops are probably the least useful reward (unless you’ve had bad luck and lost your best in battle (or just have been careless)), as you can hopefully train your own.
Any country you help will lower it’s panic level, while those you ignore will rise.
If you complete a major story mission, panic will decrease worldwide.
The Grey Market (Because Gray is definitely not the way it should be spelt)
You can sell items to the Council to earn yourself a bit of extra cash, which can often prove vital when you need some extra equipment.
Items will be things found in the field, such as alien equipment and corpses.
Some things that you find will be clearly marked as useless to research. You can sell these without fear of missing something later. Damaged UFO computers are a great earner.
You may also want to sell a few other items if needed, but some things should never be sold. Elerium, alloys and rarer alien corpses are important for a number of researches and constructs. Keep them. If you do choose to sell some corpses, always keep the majority, just in case they come in useful.
From time to time, Council members will send specific requests for items. If you are able to, you should send them what they need. The rewards are always in your favour.
Terror Missions
Saving civilians is a good way of decreasing panic. However, as horrible as it sounds, your XCOM soldiers are more valuable than the screaming public.
Heroic acts of sacrifice for the sake of an unarmed woman are noble, but costly when it comes to the rest of your world-saving campaign.
Remember, it’s War and casualties are unavoidable. Do what you can, but keep your priorities straight.
Fighting Battles
The most important thing to do is keep your troops alive. If they die, then you have lost your most important assets.
Certain promotion perks will help you with this and it’s important to use them wisely.
Your team are a unit. There is no place for a Rambo to run ahead and fire madly. Rambo will get killed.
Take your time when planning moves. There is no time limit for taking turns, it’s a thinking man’s game. The only time you will have to think about speed is either when one of your troops is bleeding out and requires a medic, when you are attempting to rescue civilians in a terror attack, or when you are diffusing a bomb. However, ‘speed’ may not be the correct word. You still have unlimited time to take in your turns, you will simply have to take fewer turns to achieve your objectives.
If your mission is none of these, no need to rush at all.
When moving into areas, take baby steps. If you’re moving into the fog of war, always make sure it is your first troopers first move. If aliens are revealed, you then have several options open with your squad. You can position them in ideal flanking positions and either take shots or go into Overwatch. Alternatively, you can pull your first guy back and maybe draw the aliens into a trap.
If you go in with your last move, you might end up putting your soldiers in a dangerous indefensible position.
Although the team needs to stay close for maximum effect, you should also keep a reasonable distance between them. A clustered group of soldiers are an easy target for a Muton or Cyberdisc carrying a grenade.
Each team member gets two moves per turn. Don’t feel as though you need to use both at once. If you are unsure what to do with a soldier, move on to the next and see what opportunities they have. It might then open something up for the first again.
Don’t be afraid to use your abilities. Saving tricks and equipment for emergencies only could lead you to never using them at all.
Overwatch
Overwatch is one of the best abilities in the game. It allows you to fire at the enemy during their turn, sometimes ruining whatever it was that they had planned for you. It is pretty important that you have one or two people on Overwatch every turn you make to ensure that you are prepared for surprises.
Stick To Cover
Cover keeps you alive. Use it. Never leave your men and women in the open. They’ll be sitting ducks.
Don’t be afraid to retreat if you’re in a tough situation. You need your troops alive if you hope to win.
When dashing, try to make sure your soldier ends up in full cover. Half cover should only be used for Overwatch or attacks.
Take The High Ground
Being at a higher position than the enemy lowers their defenses and raises your accuracy. It’s great. If you have a Sniper, get them up high so they can pick off the aliens with ease.
Keep in mind that you also do not want your troops to be at the wrong end of this arrangement.
Regrouping
When areas are clear of bad guys, take the chance to reload and patch up wounds.
Bring the team back together and allow skills to recharge so that you are ready for another wave of bad guys.
Explosives
Your scientists and engineers will scold you for using explosives in the field. They do not want you to destroy their precious research materials.
They’d be right (most of the time). If you can, avoid using explosives.
In some situations however, you may need to. If it is a case of blowing them up or losing your man, choose life. Your soldier is more precious than a few alloys and weapon fragments.
On the other hand, when facing tougher enemies like Mutons or Berserkers, you can cut out a massive chunk of their health with a well placed rocket or grenade, then finish them off with conventional weapons to save the artifacts for your team at the base.
Some environmental objects can be destroyed with explosives, either removing enemy cover or in the case of cars etc causing a second deadly explosion.
When attacking UFO’s you may want to be more careful about using explosives. There are a lot more useful rare artifacts that you may need for research.
Capturing Enemies
Your team will eventually be equipped with Arc Throwers, devices that stun enemies for bringing back to base.
Capturing enemies as opposed to killing them has a number of benefits that should not be overlooked.
On your first capture of an enemy type, (as long as you have a holding facility) you will be able to interrogate them and learn things not gained from autopsies.
Often this will grant you a bonus when researching certain other types of project.
After your first live capture of an alien type, it is definitely smart to catch more of the same (should no other types present themselves). Live captures allow you to steal their functional weapons and let you equip your soldiers for free rather than through costly manufacture of your own guns.
This can get you a squad of plasma toting troops much faster.
You will have to ensure that your targets for capture have 3 or less health before making an attempt. Soften them up to get the best chance. 1 health gives you a 90% chance of successful capture. You will also need to get in very close to use the Arc Thrower. You really do not want to put your soldier at point blank range against a fully functional powerful Muton.
Remember that Crysalids, Drones, Sectopods and Cyberdiscs are immune to capture, so don’t bother trying.
Mind Control
Sectoid Commanders have psychic abilities and can actually take control of members of your team, turning them against you.
Your best bet is not to turn guns on your own, but to do everything in your power to take down the alien mindmelder. Once they are dead or stunned, the link is broken and your trooper returns to you.
You could alternatively find ways of temporarily taking them out of the battle. For example a Sniper’s disabling shot, although it does a small amount of physical damage, will prevent your squaddie turning their gun on one one of your others.
Ghost Armour
When you eventually get the armour that allows you invisibility it grants you a few new tactical advantages.
You can sneak Snipers into ideal positions or get squaddies into perfect flanking positions.
During terror missions, it’s great to have an invisible team member rush through enemy lines rescuing civilians without being seen, while the rest keep the aliens busy.
Enemy Specific Tips
Sectoids have a psychic ability to join with Sectoid allies. If you see one begin a link, try to kill the one establishing it on your next turn. The link boosts the second aliens health and heals them slightly. However, if you kill the Sectoid performing the link, the psychic connection will destroy them both.
Cyberdiscs often (if not always) appear flanked by Drones. The Drones heal mechanical aliens for 3 points each. So if you do 6 damage and there are two Drones, the shot will likely count for nothing.
Even though the Drones are weak, it might be worthwhile to destroy them first if possible.
However, sometimes the Cyberdisc will wander away from them temporarily. In this case, a trooper with Suppressive fire might be able to hold the Disc down so that it can’t retreat for health.
Also, destruction of a Cyberdisc makes it explode, damaging anyone nearby. If the Drones are close to it, this usually means they go down too. So if your troops are strong enough to destroy the Cyberdisc in one turn, they may end up killing the Drones as a side effect.
Cyberdiscs are more vulnerable while in their assault/spider form. Hit them hard when they are like that. On taking a hit, they will revert to their more sturdy disc form that can withstand more punishment.
Crysalids are extremely dangerous – especially on terror missions. They are fast and powerful and capable of poisoning their victims. If they kill someone, that person will come back to life as a hardy zombie-like creature. For a few turns the zombie will stagger about and fight for the aliens, before collapsing and hatching into another Crysalid. On terror missions, when there are almost twenty civilians wandering about, this could mean you end up facing up to twenty of these menaces if you aren’t careful. Kill zombies before they change and do what you can to prevent more being made.
Floaters have the ability to fly across the map and drop themselves into ideal flanking positions. This can be dangerous when you have lone Snipers kicking back feeling as though the battle is a million miles away. Suddenly they could be flanked and alone. If Floaters appear, don’t let your team get separated.
Saving
XCOM allows you to save during missions, so if you like, you can save every so often so that you can avoid restarting the whole mission if you fail. I would avoid saving after every turn you make however. You don’t know if you might save yourself in a no-win situation.
It’s best to save when you know for certain that all your troops are safe, such as when you can’t see any more aliens for the time being.
Alternatively, don’t save at all and relish the fear of having no safety net to fall back into, forcing you to live with your consequences.
Story Missions
It will be tempting to dive head first into the Council missions, but doing so can be dangerous. Your team may not be ready for what is waiting for them. It’s best to hold off for a while until you have better equipment and have done a bit of research and built vital facilities.
Base Building
Plan Ahead
Before you build anything, plan the base in your head. Many types of facilities gain bonuses for being built next to similar ones.
Bonuses apply to facilities built both to the left and right and above and below.
If you build two Satellite uplinks side by side, and two Satellite Nexus’ directly below them to form a square, with the bonuses you will have enough to cover the entire world with Satellites.
Labs, Workshops and power stations also grant bonuses so choose where you want to place them. Two labs should be sufficient, while the more workshops you can squeeze in the more cashback you get from Engineer projects.
You will also need to save some room for other stand alone facilities vital to the story missions.
Keep in mind that the deeper you dig, the more expensive it is to excavate, so prioritise your construction for cost effectiveness and mission urgency.
Engineers Are Key
Engineers are extremely useful. You need as many as you can get. They make construction of facilities and items cheaper and greater numbers are required for some of the more complicated projects. Building a Workshop is an easy way to boost your engineer numbers.
Always Remember
XCOM is a bit like chess. You have to be very tactical and try to think several moves ahead. What seems like a good idea immediately may be a mistake further down the line.
Always play the long game. Something that is costly now, may save your life later.
