Рекомендации по выбору начальной страны и континента. Континенты КонтинентНазвание бонусаОписание бонусаДоходК-во странЭффект (§)Расчёт эффектаРейтингСеверная АмерикаПревосходство в воздухеПокупка, содержание и вооружение перехватчиков стоит на 25% меньше.3303800020 истребителей, 10 громобоев, это около §3000 экономии на производстве/покупке и §3000 на обслуживании. Плюс около §2000 экономии на вооружении.AАзияНовые приёмы ведения войныДля проектов в Литейном Цехе денег, Элерия и Сплавов Пришельцев требуется на 25% меньше.46045600Это сумма экономии денег и материалов от всех проектов литейки.BЕвропаБогатство нацийЕжемесячный доход XCOM увеличивается на 20%47045500С условием полного покрытия спутниками за 14 месяцев, получаем в среднем §250 за этот период и полный бонус в §332 в оставшиеся 6 месяцев. Это на нормальном уровне сложности, на невозможном выходит около §4800.BАфрикаАрхитекторы будущегоПостройка и содержание Лабораторий и Мастерских стоит на 30% меньше.230312006-7 строений (4 мастерских, 2-3 лаборатории), §40 в месяц обслуживание, §400 за постройку.DЮжная АмерикаЭнергию - народуПостройка и содержание всех сооружений, дающих энергию, стоит на 30% меньше.17021100По 2 генератора каждого типа, один обычный как временный вариант. Около §500 за постройку, §30 в месяц обслуживание.D Расчёт вёлся исходя из следующих условий: Продолжительность партии в 20 месяцев Обслуживание строений в месяц учитывает тот факт, что строения строятся постепенно (фактор 0.7 на финальные затраты на обслуживание) Как видно из таблицы, лучший бонус даёт Северная Америка, потом идут Европа и Азия (у Азии бонус чуть лучше, особенно на высоких уровнях сложности), потом с большим отрывом идут Африка и Южная Америка. Разрыв между Северной Америкой и Азией/Европой не такой уж большой, с учётом того, что у последних выше доход и больше хороших бонусов стран. Страны (часть 1) КонтинентСтранаНазвание бонусаОписание бонуса#КомментарийАзияКитайXenological RemediesПри продаже трупов пришельцев и обломков роботизированных юнитов, получаем дополнительно 100% к стоимости.10Подсчитаем. Среднее количество противников на миссию 17,5. Если отбросить экзальтовцев и уничтоженные взрывами трупы, то получим около 12 трупов за миссию. В среднем в месяц мы проводим 12 миссий. Возьмём среднюю цену за труп в §4, в итоге получаем 12x12x4=§576 в месяц! Понятно, что часть уйдет на запросы и исследования, поэтому пусть будет §250. За 20 месяцев мы получим около §5000, что больше, чем почти все бонусы континентов! К сожалению, этот бонус раскрывается ближе к середине игры, когда уже появляются более продвинутые пришельцы и многие исследования уже завершены. В любом случае, это самый мощный экономический бонус из бонусов стран.ЕвропаФранцияQuai d'OrsayЗапросы стран Совета происходят на 40% чаще; удовлетворение запросов повышает оброну стран Совета дополнительно на 40%, и сканирование на предмет обнаружения ячеек EXALT стоит на 40% меньше.10Ускоряет развитие сразу по нескольким направлениям. Больше запросов означает, что у нас будет больше учёных, инженеров, солдат (при необходимости) и денег. Кроме того, это очень сильно понижает защищенность стран от паники (в пределе, если брать соответственно на 40% больше запросов, это даст 96%, на практике мы будем принимать, скажем, на 25% запросов больше (но более выгодные), что даст нам 75% к скорости роста защиты). По деньгам получается около §500 за сканирование, плюс, допустим, §75 в месяц за выгодные денежные запросы на 20 месяцев это еще §1500. В итоге получаем §2000 денег, ощутимо больше учёных, инженеров и солдат, а на закуску еще и почти в 2 раза более быстрый рост защиты от паники.АзияКитайDeus ExУменьшается на 50% количество нано-сплава, денег и времени для Генетических Модификаций.9Зависит от количества и типа модификаций. У меня было около 40 модифицированных бойцов с 2-3 модификациями (как правило средние/дешевые модификации) и в этом случае экономия была бы около §3000. Кроме того, уменьшение времени модификации обеспечивает большее количество свободных бойцов. Один из лучших бонусов.АфрикаЕгипетВо имя славыИгрок начинает с изученным проектом Литейного Цеха "Улучшенный Ремонт" - это уменьшает время на ремонт перехватчиков, МЭК, Т-БМП и повреждённого снаряжения оперативников.8"Улучшенный ремонт" появляется довольно поздно в игре и ощутимо облегчает воздушные бои. Бонус экономит около §1100 напрямую и может сэкономить еще столько же, а то и больше, за счёт большего количества сбитых кораблей пришельцев.АфрикаНигеpияPax NigerianaВсе оперативники получают +1 к мобильности.8Считается одним из лучших бонусов для тактических боёв, если не лучшим. Нужно учитывать, что 1 мобильности это не одна дополнительная клетка передвижения. Это одна клетка примерно в половине случаев (значений мобильности) при первом действии и 1-2 клетки в рывке (чаще 1 чем 2).АфрикаЮАРИзобретательныйИгрок начинает с изученным проектом Литейного Цеха "Металлургия пришельцев" и "Улучшенный сбор" - это даёт бонус к количеству извлекаемых Сплавов Пришельцев и Фрагментов Оружия (+20%).8Экономит §960 напрямую и даёт большее количество сплавов и фрагментов оружия на ранней стадии игры. Сложно сказать, сколько конкретно, но полагаю, что на сумму не меньше §1000.ЕвропаРоссияРОСКОСМОСИгрок начинает с дополнительным Спутниковым Модулем. Постройка всех спутников стоит на 50% меньше.8Экономит около §1500 (зависит от скорости постройки и количества мастерских, сколько спутников будет сбито и т. п.). Весьма полезен еще и тем, что облегчает спутниковое покрытие в начале игры, когда это наиболее критично.Северная АмерикаСШАSpecial Warfare SchoolВсе проекты в Школе Офицеров стоят на 90% меньше.8Экономит §1700 и в довесок позволяет намного быстрее увеличить размер команды и получить доступ к офицерским званиям.Южная АмерикаБразилияРазведчики джунглейДо исследования "Тактической Разгрузки" вся ранняя защита и броня (Тактический Костюм, Тактическая броня, Бронекостюм "Пустельга", Броня "Фаланга" и Пси-броня "Аврора") получает дополнительный слот под маленькие предметы.8Сильно помогает в начале игры на миссиях, но в середине может возникнуть ситуация, когда уже есть более мощная броня, но еще нет "Тактической Разгрузки". Кроме того, третий предмет замедляет и так не очень быстрых поначалу бойцов, а до сервомоторов еще дожить нужно. В целом, я бы сказал, что это самый сильный тактический бонус в начале игры, который теряет актуальность в середине-конце игры, но усиление в начале важнее будет.АзияАвстралияЧерез тернии к звездамПри найме все оперативники получают дополнительно +5 очков к своим характеристикам, которые распределяются случайным образом.7Немного улучшает характеристики бойцов, хотя и случайным образом.АзияИндияJai JawanИгрок начинает с 2 дополнительными перехватчиками в ангаре штаба XCOM и изученным проектом Литейного Цеха "Элериевые ускорители" - это увеличивает время на перехват НЛО.7Экономит около §800 и немного облегчает воздушные бои в начале игры.АзияЯпонияKiryu-Kai CommanderИгрок начинает с дополнительным оперативником случайного класса в звании "Мастер Старшина".7Тут многое зависит от того, какой класс выпадет. Снайпер, к примеру, может практически в одиночку зачищать карты и сильно поможет в начале игры (привет сектоидам от ITZ снайпера). С другой стороны, он не сможет быть на каждой миссии, только на каждой третьей или около того.АфрикаНигеpияСтарый путьВремя пси-тренинга уменьшено на 50%.7Эффективнее мексиканского бонуса для обучения псиоников. Даёт около 23-25% к шансу успешного обучения и те, кто обучился в первую попытку, освободят слот раньше. Если форсировать псионику, то этот бонус весьма неплох.АфрикаЮАРОбучение по выживаниюВсе оперативники получают +1 к очкам здоровья.7Неплохой тактический бонус в начале игры. Ближе к концу становится гораздо менее важен (уже есть мощная броня и бойцов редко ранят).ЕвропаВеликобританияСпецназВсе оперативники получают +3 к меткости.7Меткость вещь хорошая, но 3 меткости это не такая уж большая прибавка.ЕвропаВеликобританияTheir Finest HourИгрок начинает с изученным проектом Литейного Цеха "Бронебойное Оружие" - это увеличивает бронебойные способности орудий перехватчиков.7Экономит около §600 и облегчает воздушные бои, особенно если идти через лазерные пушки. Страны (часть 2) КонтинентСтранаНазвание бонусаОписание бонуса#КомментарийЕвропаРоссияОАО "Компания "Сухой"Игрок начинает с изученным проектом Литейного Цеха "Улучшенные системы авиации" - это даёт в воздушном бою +10% к шансу поразить цель.7Экономит §480 и облегчает воздушные бои.Северная АмерикаМексикаЩедрое пожертвованиеИгрок начинает с дополнительной суммой в размере 500.7Сумма не такая большая, по сравнению со многими другими бонусами, но зато мы может использовать деньги как хотим, да и §500 в начале игры намного важнее §500 в конце игры.Северная АмерикаСШАГора ШайеннВ штабе XCOM уже построены все лифты, а стоимость выемки грунта снижается на 50%.7Экономит §500-§600 и облегчает/ускоряет расширение базы.Северная АмерикаКанадаТщательные приготовленияВ штабе XCOM уже построены Лаборатория и Мастерская.6Оба строения строятся рядом, что нарушает структуру базы. Бонус в §400, даже меньше, поскольку одно из строений придётся снести.Северная АмерикаКанадаКадровый составИгрок начинает с 4-мя оперативниками в казармах в звании "Капрал" по одному каждого класса.6Прокачаться до капрала можно довольно быстро, поэтому это не такой уж большой бонус. Суммарный опыт 4-х Капралов это 2/3 опыта одного японского "Мастера Старшины".Северная АмерикаМексикаНаследие УшмальДополнительный бонус в 20% к шансу пси-тренировки.6Бонус от спутника даёт 10%, так-что разница не такая уж большая.Южная АмерикаАргентинаPatriae Semper VigilisВсе оперативники получают +5 к воле.6Не особо хороший бонус. Для защиты от пси атак он не особо сильно поможет, а псионикам выгоднее взять нигеpийский или мексиканский бонусы.АзияЯпонияОгненное кольцоШтаб XCOM имеет 3 дополнительных источника пара.5Может сэкономить деньги на постройку элириевых генераторов, если источники будут расположены удачно, но тут нужно либо везение, либо ОЧЕНЬ много времени на перестартовку игры. Даже в идеальных условиях экономия будет в районе §600-700, что не так уж и много.АзияЯпонияРобототехникаНовые Т-БМП и МЭК получают дополнительно +5 к меткости.5Так себе бонус. В начале он практически никак не помогает, а в середине игры мы всё равно не сможем себе позволить использование многих МЭК, так что усиление довольно средненькое.АфрикаЕгипетДар ОсирисаУсталость от использования пси-силы, Генетических Модификаций и офицерских званий уменьшается на 50%.5Бонус от спутника даёт 25%, так что разница будет минимальна и не будет играть большой роли (Поправка: 25% только на усталость от генетических модификаций, так что разница всё же более весомая).ЕвропаВеликобританияКоролевская военная академия в СандхерстеТребуется на 33% меньше повышений для открытия новых проектов в Школе Офицеров.5Так себе. Тут всё скорее упирается в финансы.ЕвропаГерманияЗодчийВремя постройки всех сооружений уменьшается на 33%.5Не даёт ни прямых экономических ни тактических бонусов. То, что строение будет построено на несколько дней раньше, не особо поможет.ЕвропаГерманияНеотанкиПри создании основных орудий МЭК и Т-БМП требуется на 50% меньше денег, Элерия и Сплавов Пришельцев.5Бонус касается только основных орудий и даже при активном использовании МЭК и Т-БМП является скорее средненьким.ЕвропаФранцияИностранный ЛегионИгрок начинает с 20 дополнительными оперативниками в казарме.520 новобранцев особо погоды не сделают. Это лишь §500, которые мы получаем в виде новобранцев, что не лучший вариант, особенно если играть с сохранками и не терять или терять мало бойцов.Северная АмерикаМексикаДревний артефактИгрок начинает с одним предметом "Голографический прицел".5ПРИЦЕЛ появляется в начале игры и не так уж сильно уступает голографическому. Чуть улучшить одного из бойцов ... как-то слабовато.АзияКитайWei Renmin FuwuИгрок начинает с построенными Мастерской и Ремонтным Ангаром.4Экономит около §250 и нет возможности выбрать место для постройки, но, по крайней мере, обе постройки из одного блока и получают "смежный" бонус.АзияЯпонияПризрак в машинеИгрок начинает с двумя Т-БМП в казарме, а также все Т-БМП получают +10 к меткости.4Обычные Т-БМП весьма так себе. Ценность бонуса к меткости зависит от стиля игры. Я, например, Т-БМП вообще не использую, поскольку они крадут опыт у наших бойцов. Есть люди, которые проходили игру практически одними Т-БМП. В подобных случаях бонус ощутимо более весом.ЕвропаГерманияSkunkworksВ штабе XCOM уже построен Литейный Цех.4Даёт лишь §200 и нарушает структуру базы (строится рядом со спутниковым модулем).Северная АмерикаСШАУ нас есть способыВремя вскрытий и допросов уменьшено на 75%.4Вскрытия и допросы проходят быстро, так что ускорение тут особо не нужно. Они составляют около 15% от общего времени исследования и бонус даст общее ускорение в 11-12%. Одна лаборатория, ценой в §200 даст 20% и это без учёта смежного бонуса. Если считать этот бонус как половину лаборатории, то получим что-то около §300 причём там, где это не особо и нужно (2-3-х лабораторий хватает за глаза, в конце они уже будут простаивать).Южная АмерикаБразилияКомпетентностьДополнительно +15% к бонусу ускорения исследований от допросов пришельцев.4Исследования это та часть игры, которая не особо нуждается в усилении. К тому же бонус спутника уже даёт +10%, т. е. разница всего в 5% к бонусу ускорения. # - рейтинг от 1 до 10, где 10 - максимальный рейтинг. Рекомендации На самом деле выбор сильно зависит от режима, сложности и стиля игры. Играя с сохранками на нижних уровнях сложности можно пройти игру даже с худшим бонусом страны и континента. Также выбор зависит от того, где у игрока наблюдаются наибольшие проблемы (тактические миссии, воздушные бои, экономика и т.п.). Я лично предпочитаю стратегические бонусы, поскольку тактические миссии это та часть игры, в которой игрок может "вырулить" за счёт умелой и осторожной игры, тогда как влияние на многие другие аспекты игры у игрока сильно ограничено. Лучшие на мой взгляд стратегические бонусы: Xenological Remedies (Китай) - лучший экономический бонус, если рассматривать все стадии игры. Плюс к этому, получаем хороший бонус континента. Quai d'Orsay (Франция) - улучшает много вещей сразу, понижает панику, экономит деньги, ускоряет исследования и т.п. Континентальный бонус очень неплох. Deus Ex (Китай) - даёт приличную экономию денег/нано-сплава, что дополняется хорошим континентальным бонусом. Эффект сильно зависит от того, насколько активно вы используете генные модификации. Special Warfare School (США) - экономит прилично денег (что важно, в первой половине игры), ускоряет получение офицерских званий, позволяет быстро увеличить размер команды и ускоряет прокачку солдат за счёт более ранних офицерских бонусов на опыт. К этому всему еще и лучший континентальный бонус. РОСКОСМОС (Россия) - экономит деньги в начале/середине игры и упрощает спутниковое покрытие, что особенно важно на невозможном уровне сложности (только 25% финансирования без спутника). Хороший бонус континента. Во имя славы (Египет) - тут тот случай, когда хороший бонус страны нивелируется плохим бонусом континента. Не смотря на это, всё еще один из лучших бонусов, ибо воздушные бои сложны, особенно в начале. Изобретательный (ЮАР) - один из лучших экономических бонусов, но бонус континента всё портит. В целом, похуже, чем вышеперечисленные бонусы, но всё еще ничего. Лучшие тактические бонусы (ИМХО, опять таки): Pax Nigeriana (Нигеpия) - бонус несколько переоценен, на мой взгляд, но среди тактических всё еще один из лучших. В реальности 1 мобильности это примерно 1 клетка движения при первом действии в половине случаев и 1-2 клетки в рывке (чаще 1, чем 2). Приятно, да, но так ли сильно это помогает? Мы получаем один из худших континентальных бонусов, отказываемся от стратегических/экономических бонусов и всё ради того, чтобы некоторые наши солдаты иногда могли походить на одну клетку дальше? Разведчики джунглей (Бразилия) - помогает в начале игры, пока нет продвинутой брони и не исследован соответствующий проект литейки. Опять таки, не так уж сильно это упрощает тактические миссии, чтобы жертвовать экономическими бонусами и хорошим континентальным бонусом. Через тернии к звездам (Австралия) - сам бонус похуже, чем первые два, но зато получаем хороший континентальный бонус. Обучение по выживанию (ЮАР) - 1 HP в начале еще играет роль, ближе к середине уже эффект мало заметен. Похуже вышеперечисленных. Плохой континентальный бонус. Спецназ (Великобритания) - 3 меткости ... конечно лучше чем ничего, но как-то слабо. По крайней мере континентальный бонус хороший. В целом, смотрите сами, думайте сами. Можно и не самый эффективный бонус взять, к примеру нигеpийский "Старый путь" и уйти в псионику, получая удовольствие от самой игры.

How to build your soldiers' skills, what items are useful for, and how to factor in gene mods, psi powers, and MECs. Introduction Before I begin; Credit where credit is due: When I was learning to play Enemy Unknown, the single resource that became most valuable was a guide here on Steam "XCOM: Enemy Unknown - In-Depth Class Guide" by Rensje. While it hasn't been updated for Enemy Within, I would recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone playing the Vanilla game, and as a good start for anyone playing Enemy Within as well. I essentially started with that guide, then advanced to learn my own tricks of the trade. Can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=135567870 With that done; Here is my contribution to the steam community's collective store of shared knowledge, a guide on how to build soldiers in Enemy Within, what different skills do, and which options are better for which play styles. We'll start with the basic four Soldier classes, and rookies, before proceeding to the more specialized skill-sets, Psionics, Gene mods, and MECs. Rookies So, at the beginning of the game, you'll have no classes at all, just some schmucks with assault rifles and bad aim. These are Rookies. Rookies, if they get promotions, randomly assign to an actual class, and become more useful, if only by feeling like they're more useful. In the early game, I would recommend spending your first few easy missions (your first abduction, your first UFO you shoot down, etc.) using only rookies, leaving the units that get promoted at base. I stress that this is a style for lower difficulties, but it can result in a decent variety of useful soldiers early on, rather than a team of Corporals that leave you with no choice but to use rookies every time one gets wounded. All soldiers gain experience by just going on missions, as well as by getting kills. Rookies promote to Squaddie and receive a class by getting a single kill, and should always get first dibs on a kill, so long as it doesn't put them in danger to do so, as their aim is pretty terrible. As a result, it can often be better to rely on frag grenades to make kills than to rely on their ability with a rifle. Be Careful though: As Dr. Valen is quick to remind you, killing enemies with grenades, rockets, or exploding cars will destroy the fragments you get from their weapons upon death. Wounding enemies with grenades is fair game. Every soldier (except MECs, but we'll get there) has a primary weapon, in the rookies' case, rifles, a secondary weapon, almost always a pistol, as it is on the rookie, armor, and an item slot, two slots after the foundry project "Tactical Rigging", which is awesome. Rookies should be given simple, durable armor whenever you send them into battle. Basic armor before you research anything better, Carapace armor when you reach about laser technology, and Titan armor in the endgame, though you should hopefully have enough soldiers you've already promoted by then that you don't need to train rookies. As well as whatever the most advanced assault rifle and pistol you can have a good supply of, though I might recommend light plasma rifles over normal plasma, as light plasma rifles do less damage, but have an aim bonus. For supplementary items, grenades are a good choice actually, because any enemy with three or less health left (or total) can be killed reliably by a frag grenade, though you will loose the weapon fragments. Worth it if your soldier won't otherwise be promoted, or will otherwise die. If you complete the Alien Grenade Foundry project, equip them with those, they do a good five damage, which can make quite the difference. Be aware that if an enemy is next to a car/truck/UFO power source, you can grenade the obstacle to make it explode, usually doing 6 damage. If you catch the alien in both the grenade and the secondary explosions, then they both do damage, and the alien probably dies. Grenades can also be used to blow up enemy cover and any walls blocking another soldiers' shots, which can save you in a pinch, or be used to just tilt the odds in your favor. Also worth considering for a rookie: Health items, with follow the hierarchy of Nanofiber Vest < Respirator Implant < Chitin Plating. Because you really want to keep your fragile rookies alive (Experienced soldiers are still more valuable though), it makes sense to give them a health boost. Also also worth considering is a SCOPE, to boost that crappy aim of theirs. I'd go with a grenade first though, it's versatile, and good for getting you out of a jam. Feel free to give the Rookie that and one of the others once you get Tactical Rigging though, two grenades a mission is just asking to come up short on salvage. Heavies Stalwart Defenders, A Heavy is harder to kill than an assault or Support, but can spread damage across multiple enemies like no other. Armed with a Light Machine Gun and a Rocket Launcher, the heavy will do great damage against anything that has the misfortune to be in his or her line of fire. Heavies Should be right behind your assaults at the front lines, and make a good unit to use more than one of once you expand your squad size. Heavies have Machine guns that are less accurate than assault rifles, but do better damage, and Rocket launchers, but can only use the launcher if it's their first action that turn, meaning they cannot move or shoot, then launch a rocket, and the rocket takes up both their actions for the turn. Upon gaining the class, Heavies gain the Fire Rocket power, which functions like a supped-up grenade with firing restrictions. Use it when you need to, but the more enemies you kill without explosives, the better. The Rocket is a great, powerful tool for emergencies, and remains a powerful weapon throughout the game. You only have 1 per Heavy per mission at this point though, so I recommend saving them for when everything is going to hell. At the next Rank, Corporal, heavies can choose between the "Bullet Swarm" Power, which makes shooting only take up an action, rather than ending a turn, meaning the heavy can take a shot, then move, overwatch, reload, hunker down, or shoot again, or "Holo-Targeting", which makes it so whatever opponent a Heavy shoots at, regardless of if they hit, becomes easier to hit (+10 aim) for the rest of the team. I recommend Bullet Swarm here, because the Heavy isn't the soldier you want making risky shots, due to their sub-par aim, and because Bullet Swarm is just versatile. Big, dangerous enemies can be greatly weakened by two attacks from a heavy, or two different weaker enemies can die in a single turn from the Heavy, or the heavy can take a shot then retreat. It's not to be underestimated. It's not like I don't respect the potential of Holo-Targeting; it's just that I consider bullet swarm to be one of the best abilities in the skill tree, and Holo Targeting isn't. There are more firefights where Bullet Swarm will save your bacon than Holo, that's my stance. Sargent Heavies get "Shredder Rocket", another rocket you can use each mission that does less damage, but makes the target take more damage every time they're hit by your soldiers, or Suppression, which pins down a target, lowering their aim and getting a reaction shot on them if they move or attack. Suppression is a super useful skill for buying you a turn against dangerous enemies, and controlling the threat that different aliens pose to your squad. I'm still constantly going back and forth on this one, because both abilities are GREAT. Suppression is how you take a dangerous enemy you can't kill this turn and keep them under control for now, and is a huge tactical advantage to make fights winnable. Shredder Rocket, on the other hand, is a great way to start any hard fight with big, dangerous enemy targets who will take a lot of fire to take down. I lean toward suppression more these days, but not without some regrets, because Shredder Rockets are a really powerful way to melt a Sectopod, or a Mechtoid, or any number of dangerous opponents. Lieutenant Gives us "HEAT Ammo", which boosts all damage done by a heavy, rockets, grenades, and LMG rounds, by 50% against mechanical enemies, and "Rapid Reaction", which lets the Heavy take another reaction shot on overwatch, but only if the first one hit. Never take Rapid Reaction. You have to A) have two aliens run past to trigger reaction shots, and B) Hit with both of them to accomplish more than wasting ammo. The number of situations where this actually plays out properly are just too few and far between. HEAT Ammo, by contrast, is so good it got seriously nerfed in this expansion (from double damage to +50%), and is still much better than the alternative. A bunch of the scariest enemies in this game are the big deadly robots, and having a heavy do extra damage against them is a lifesaver. ALWAYS go HEAT Ammo. No regrets. Heavy Captains choose between "Grenadier", which gives you an extra grenade if your heavy carries those, or "Danger Zone", which boosts the Blast radius of rockets and makes Suppression into a small area of effect. So, here's the thing- I don't really give Heavies Grenades often. Sure, being able to pack 2 would make it a lot more worthwhile, and I've done it before on Supports because of that in the late-game, but I'm not convinced it's actually good. On the flip side- Danger Zone is a skill that makes it so when everything's gone to Hell and you need to blow everything up with a Rocket, your rockets are better at that. Also, the Suppression AOE thing is more-or-less incidental. It doesn't come up that often. Cool, but not a selling point. At Major, no soldiers actually choose their bonus, but they're all pretty darn good at keeping your people alive, so no real complaints. Heavies get "Will to Survive", which reduces the damage they take when they get shot by 2 if they're in cover and not being flanked. This is wonderful, because no matter how careful you are, your soldiers will get shot, and you want them to be able to move on and shrug it off as much as possible. And finally, at Colonel, Heavies choose between "Rocketeer", which gives them an extra normal Rocket, and "Mayhem", which gives a great boost to Suppression and Rocket/Grenade damage based on the tech level of your LMG and Rocket launcher. II strongly take the "Quality Over Quantity" Approach to explosives in this game, and thus recommend Mayhem myself, but if you didn't pick Shredder Rocket, and you don't often run two heavies, then I can see the argument that you'd rather pack 2 just in case. I prefer Mayhem, but Rocketeer is reasonable. You don't need 3 rockets though, and boosting damage on Shredder Rockets is pretty sweet. For Item slots, Heavies could really use a Scope, as the extra 10% aim does them well. Once you have Tactical rigging, you might go for a health boost, they are going to be in the middle of the fray. I recommend against grenades, due to the Heavy's already Copious Explosion potential. If the heavy is a Psionic, Then a Mind Shield is great, but if not; don't bother. Assaults The Assault might be your primary damage dealer; they're definitely your primary fighter, and will be used to jump around the battlefield to find good positions to attack the enemy soldiers. Assaults can pick between Assault rifles, the rookie guns, and shotguns, which will do greater damage, but are short-range weapons. Your choice. The rifle is more versatile, the Shotgun is more devastating. Assaults also have a Pistol, which is weak, but accurate and never runs out of ammo. Useful at a distance if you've got the shotgun, but little damage. Gets better with Rapid Fire, but that's down the road. For the first few months, I go back and forth between if I want a Rifle or a Shotgun, but the priority should be on giving them the most advanced weapon they can use, with the scatter laser and Alloy Cannon (higher-tier shotguns) being considered more advanced than their rifle counterparts. The Assault gain "Run And Gun" upon receiving the class, which, when activated, lets the soldier shoot after their second movement, meaning they can dash into the area highlighted in yellow when they move, then shoot. Run and Gun is a vital ability when you're using shotguns, as it's great to get close with, and can be a viciously effective flanking tool with assault rifles (With Shotguns as well, there's not much point getting up close if you don't try and angle yourself around to flank them, now is there?) This ability is on a 2 turn cooldown, meaning you use it on one turn, then two turns pass where it cannot be activated again on that Assault, after that you're ready to Run and Gun Again. This is how Assaults fight; they run&gun into an enemy's face with a shotgun, or use it to maneuver into an advantageous position, either responding quickly by covering distance across the battlefield, or flanking your enemies. They get where they need to go and start killing everything in sight. At Corporal, Assaults choose between "Tactical Sense", Plus 5 defense per enemy in sight up to a maximum of +20 (Defense can be seen as the opposite of aim. +5 defense is -5% chance to hit for anyone shooting at you, just as +5 aim is +5% chance to hit when you're the one shooting.) or "Aggression", which is +10% chance to get a critical hit per enemy in sight, max of +30%. I usually go Tactical sense with this one, just because I like shots to miss my soldiers as much as possible, and while I can respect aggression, I don't find it necessary. You don't often need a crit, and when you do, clearly things have already gone seriously wrong to get you there. Boosting your defense passively is really strong on the soldiers most likely to be up on the front lines in half cover. At Sergeant, Assaults choose between "Lightning Reflexes", force the first reaction shot taken at this unit each turn to miss, or "Close and Personal", which was changed in Enemy Within so that this assault can take a free shot each turn at an enemy within just a few tiles of them, but can't combine this power with Run and Gun. Lighting Reflexes, all the way. It might not sound super useful, but it is Awesome to be able to waste your enemies' overwatch shots with this ability. It will save you a lot of damage if you can consistently remember to use it, and makes missions full of overwatching Thin Men much less dangerous. Where a skill like Tac Sense protects this one soldier, Lightning Reflexes lets this one soldier protect the whole squad, which is immensely valuable. Close and Personal is great, if a touch clunky to pull off, letting you get close and take extra high-damage shots, but is not nearly as useful for survival as Lightning Reflexes. Assault Lieutenants gain either "Flush", a special shot that forces an enemy unit out of cover, but does less damage, or "Rapid Fire", which lets you take two full-damage shots on an enemy in one action, each with a 15% accuracy drop. Rapid Fire, hands down. This power can effectively double your damage output if you're up close enough. Combined with Run & Gun, you can make a huge jump across the battlefield and do huge damage, all in one turn. The 15% aim penalty sounds harsh, but since you're taking two shots, usually Rapid Fire makes you more likely to hit, not less. And it has no cooldown, so you can abuse it constantly. This is your killing soldier, and Rapid Fire is few things if not Lethal. At Captain, Assaults choose between "Close Combat Specialist", which gives a free reaction shot, even without overwatch, to enemies that come too close to the Assault, ie within the range that the assault will essentially never miss these reaction shots, and "Bring 'em on.", which increases your critical damage by one for each enemy the squad can see up to a limit of 5. While it's cool and I like that it's boosted by the whole squad, Bring 'em On only boosts Critical Damage, not the chance to deal a Crit, making it only for people who took Aggression earlier, and even then... Close combat Specialist, on the other hand, is a wonderfully fun ability, because it means that any enemy that tries to run past the assault, tried to get close for a melee attack, or any enemy you get close to that tries to run away (assuming you didn't kill them the first turn), gets a barrel of buckshot to the face for their troubles. Really good defensive tool against Melee enemies like Cryssalids too. That said- every campaign I play to completion, there's at least one incident involving Mind Control and one of my soldiers getting shot in the face with Friendly Fire due to this ability, and it's been fatal before. Understand how big an endorsement of Close Combat Specialist it is that I still think it's worth it. At Major, Assaults get "Extra Conditioning", which increases their health boosts from armor. Already a pretty tanky class, the Assault just became Nigh Unkillable. Because of this, you don't have to fret about giving a Psionic assault Psi armor instead of Titan, or giving any of them ghost armor over titan, because they'll still have more health than a support wearing the stronger armor. At Colonel, Assault choose between "Resilience", an immunity to critical hits, and "Killer instinct", which gives you +50% critical damage when you use Run & Gun. Yes, that does combine with Rapid Fire. Killer instinct is only for people who chose Aggression, and even then, it's hardly a consistent boost, since you can only use Run&Gun every third turn. I like Resilience, just because critical hits can REALLY ruin your day. You soldiers will take hits no matter what you do, but with skills like this, you can at least be safe knowing that there are less surprises coming at you in those attacks. For Items, Assaults are best with health boosts early on, I feel, due to the front-line nature of their work. The Arc thrower seems a good idea at first, but they can't use it with Run & Gun, so they end up not much better equipped for it than anyone else, and I never find myself with a good opportunity to use the Arc Thrower whenever I put it on an assault. People constantly tell me that you're supposed to put it on the assaults, but every time I try, I'm disappointed by it. Give the taser to the Supports. The Assault ideally won't need a scope, since shotgun assaults are trying their damnedest to get up close and rifle assaults are doing their best to flank, which should give them some great shots, but things are never ideal, and +10 aim is always appreciated. Once you get Tactical Rigging, the Scope is a great choice. Doubling up on health items, due to the variety there are, is possible, but obviously rather redundant, particularly with the crazy health Assaults end up with as they level up. Late game, I use Chitin Plating and a Scope. Snipers Ah, the fun one. Snipers are not a class much like the other three. If a sniper moves with their first action, they can't shoot with their rifle on the second. This leaves them to use their pistol, which kinda sucks until the late-game. The strength of this class is that the sniper rifle does as much damage as the Heavy's machine gun, and the Sniper has the best aim of any of your soldiers. Snipers are the hardest class to get that first level-up on: They're just hard to get many kills with before their promotion to Corporal, but after that, they start picking up the pace very quickly, and are usually my first soldiers to Colonel. At Squaddie, the sniper receives the skill "Headshot", which is a special attack that can be used every third turn, which gives a boost to the snipers critical chance, and a boost to critical damage. the damage boost scales as you get better sniper rifles, meaning it's always useful, and the critical chance is just plain nice. Save it for enemies you wouldn't otherwise kill, someone you need to get a critical on, or someone you just need the full damage of the rifle, or more. It doesn't affect accuracy, so don't waste it on hard shots. That said, it does regenerate, so don't treat it like you have to save it for the perfect moment either. Corporal is the level where you decide what kind of sniper you're fighting with. the two skills are "Snap Shot", which lets you fire the Sniper rifle or use overwatch after moving, with a -10 aim penalty, or 'Squadsight", which lets the sniper shoot enemies outside of his normal range, so long as another member of the squad can see them, but you can't get crits with squadsight shots unless you use Headshot. I will say this once, then say it again, then a third time for good measure; Squadsight, Squadsight, SQUADSIGHT. This ability is just. plain. awesome. You can plant your sniper in the back of the team and just plug away, kill an enemy every single turn without them ever catching a glimpse of your sniper. This is the reason you have this person on your team, don't screw it up. You'll have a hard time getting kills for your sniper to level up with before they get Squadsight. After? No, not really. Snipers turn very suddenly from a load you're pulling along to your surest killers. Snap Shot could be good, but honestly, you're making your sniper into a lame Heavy who never gets rockets or Bullet Swarm at that point, when instead they can be The Angel of Death in their own right. Sergeant Snipers choose between "Gunslinger", +2 damage with Pistols, and "Damn Good Ground", +10 aim and +10 defense if the sniper is above their opponent, in addition to normal elevation bonus (which is +20% aim, so pretty rockin'.) If you put snipers to higher ground often, Damn Good ground makes them better at it, but the +10 aim isn't a guarantee, and is situational. On the flip side, Gunslinger makes the Sniper a viable offensive threat after moving. Assault rifles do 2-4 damage. Pistols do 1-2 damage. With +2 damage, your pistol deals 3-4, slightly better as an assault rifle. It doesn't hold up that well as the weapons upgrade, but gunslinger snipers do perfectly respectable damage, and are far from useless. I love Gunslinger for making Snipers still powerful in unideal situations, but I understand trying to specialize them with Damn Good Ground, even though I disagree. Lieutenant Snipers choose between "Disabling Shot", which forces the target to reload before they can shoot again, keeping the enemy from shooting next turn, but not doing much damage (2 turn cooldown), and Battle Scanner, which can be thrown like a grenade and reveals enemies, even invisible enemies, in a massive radius. Disabling shot is good for dealing with big deadly enemies you want to stop from shooting you more than you want to do damage to, which is one of a few good methods for avoiding fiery death by Sectopod. Battle scanner isn't that useful, though you could throw it out to combine with squadsight the next turn if your sniper can't rely on its team for vision, but if you need to do that, you're doing something wrong. Battle scanner's most useful feature I've found is to quickly deal with Seekers, since you can just toss it out wherever they spawned and reveal them. More a "I'm tired of your stupid games" feature than a "I need to kill these guys NOW" kind of mentality though. I consider Disabling Shot the better choice, because I'm deathly afraid of Sectopods, but the skill is kind of a poor man's suppression a lot of the time, unless you're going for the capture. But I never use scanner when I do pick it, so either way. Sniper Captains get "Executioner", +10 aim against foes at half health or less, or "Opportunist", removes the aim penalty for reaction shots, also lets them do critical hits. I always go opportunist, because snipers do so much damage and have such good aim already that they have better uses than clean-up duty, and accurate overwatch shots are kinda awesome, particularly so when you're overwatching with a sniper on the other end of the map so you can nail some poor alien who showed up at the wrong time. Majors get "Low Profile", half cover counts as full. Badass. Now your snipers can go into half cover and be as safe as anyone else in full, letting you save the full cover for the rest of the team. Particularly good if you're throwing snipers on rooftops where the edge is low cover, or if you're using your sniper on the front lines with their pistol and there's less full cover than you'd like (And there always will be). Just remember to use it, it's easy to forget. And, the two most fun skills of them all, At colonel, Snipers get "In the Zone", if you kill an enemy that is flanked or not in cover, that shot doesn't take an action, and "Double Tap", Sniper can use both their actions to shoot, can't be done two turns in a row though. I personally lean Double Tap, to kill big nasty things like Berserkers, Sectopods, Mechtoids, and Cyberdisks, and to take out multiple enemies with one soldier more reliably (Great against Exalt), but damn can I respect In the Zone for the hell it wreaks on Melee enemies like Cyrssalids, as well as dumber groups of floaters, and the drones that accompany more dangerous enemies. Both skills are great, you could build two snipers just so you can pick between them on a mission-by-mission basis if you want. Double Tap is always powerful, and you'll never feel like it's a waste, but I'll be damned if In The Zone ain't always just tempting for how good it can be when it does work. Bit of a 'win more' ability though, at times. For Items, The sniper should get a Scope, to maximize their aim, because you will be relying on them to hit as much as possible. Once you get Tactical rigging, the Sniper is actually the only class I equip with a grenade, because I like them being able to blow some stuff up if they get surprised by wandering enemies while they're separated from the group. It also makes for good support when the whole squad is in close-quarter areas where the sniper rifle is less useful, and you could use someone who can blow tough enemies out of cover to give the heavies better shots. A Sniper can do this wonderfully, and if they have gunslinger, get a few kills of their own. But most importantly: I can't think of anything else useful for them. Snipers don't really need health-boosting items, since they shouldn't be getting shot at much anyway. And remember kids: SQUADSIGHT. Supports The Support has several vital uses in the XCOM squad, from healing to smoke grenades, to suppression, to Captures, to occasionally just shooting Aliens in the face alongside the rest of 'em. They are a reliable backbone of your squad, as well as combat medics, and are otherwise invaluable. Supports are armed with an assault rifle and pistol, just like a rookie, but much more useful. Thank God. Squaddie Supports, ie everyone you know is a support, have "Smoke Grenade". This creates an area of thick, red smoke that increases the defense of anyone inside by 20, equal to being in half cover. Useful power, great to throw out if you've got teammates stuck in half cover, Flanked, or even out of cover completely, in a fight scene. When Things go to Hell, the default plan is, "Fall Back to Full Cover, Pop Rockets and Smoke." Corporal supports choose between "Sprinter", which increases your soldier's move distance by 3 tiles, and "Covering fire" which lets overwatch trigger on attacks, not just movement. Covering Fire is fine, really, It has it's uses, and can save your bacon sometimes, but really it feels like a Poor Man's Suppression most of the time. Pick Suppression later down the tree, if you ask me. Sprinter, on the other hand, lets the support reach more allies for clutch heals, reach better cover and firing positions that are otherwise out of range, occasionally giving you sick flanks for the support's secondary role as another good gun in the field, and makes the Support the class best-equipped to handle the Arc Thrower, making it the better option, IMO, both early-game and long-game. As this guide's comment section makes clear, you can argue with me on this one pretty reasonably, but Sprinter is my call. Sargent Supports get either "Field Medic", which makes any medkit you bring into combat usable three times per mission, rather than one, or "Smoke and Mirrors", which lets you use Smoke grenades three times per mission. This one makes me kind of sad, because I'd love to have Smoke and Mirrors, it'd be useful, but I use supports for Field Medic, that's what they're best at. Smoke and Mirrors would be a great pick if you're using the Training Roulette Second Wave option, but as is, Field Medic lets you have a single, or even a pair, of dedicated supports who can keep your squad healthy and stabilize them if they go down. You need combat medics in XCOM, it's the only way you're going to keep your team alive. Being able to use Smoke Grenades more often would be awesome, but it's not worth what you'd have to give up for it. maybe have one, dedicated Smoke&Mirrors Support in your lineup if you have extra supports, but you still need a Medic on basically every mission, and I'm not convinced that slot in the lineup doesn't have better uses. Lieutenant Supports choose between "Revive", which brings critically wounded soldiers back into the fray at 1/3 health when you revive them, or "Rifle Suppression", which is identical to Heavies' suppression, in that in pins a target, lowers their aim by 30, and gives you a reaction shot if they do anything funny. I did revive a lot in the past, but, to be fully honest with you, I consider switching to Suppression to be the turning point where I actually got good at XCOM. There are a lot of missions where Revive doesn't actually do you any good, because you're sorta by definition not actually saving the revived soldier any more than a normal stabilization would. A soldier has to go down, bleed out instead of just dying on the spot, and you have to be able to stabilize them, at which point you get your wounded soldier that you're gonna be babying for the rest of the mission back, and they're not gonna be doing that much. Suppression, on the other hand, is a great tool to lower the threat posed by a chosen enemy until you get the situation under control and kill them. When taking another shot at the enemy has a high probability of doing stone-cold nothing, suppression temporarily removes that enemy from the equation, and is a damned lifesaver. Call it the preventative medicine to Revive's reactive medicine. It needs to not be underestimated how good suppression really is. Support Captains choose between two upgrades to the smoke grenades, "Dense Smoke", which increases the defense boost by an additional 20, or "Combat Drugs", which provides +20 will, +10 crit chance. In vanilla, Not in Enemy Within, but in vanilla Enemy Unknown, they also gave +20 aim by accident, and were thus good. It doesn't do this anymore, and thus kinda sucks. Combat drugs makes the smoke a little useful offensively, but Dense Smoke is nice for the aforementioned defensive situations you normally use smoke grenades for. I say Dense Smoke, so I don't have to change the way I use them, and because +40 defense is equal to full cover. Damn. That'll make for a solid defensive position when things go to hell, which is the point when you most need a solid defensive position anyways. Majors get "Deep Pockets", which give all limited-use items an additional use, including grenades, combat drugs, and medkits (Not smoke grenades, they're a skill). Great ability, makes the support an even better field medic, gives them a reason to use grenades if you feel like it, gives them an extra charge with the Arc Thrower. This is the point where you can have 4 medkits with Field medic, or 2 medkits without, if you're going ham on that smoke&mirrors support I don't think you can quite make work. This is where I also occasionally arm supports with grenades if I feel like I want those more than I want an Arc Thrower or a scope. But it doesn't happen often. At Colonel, Supports gain either "Savior" which adds 4 healing to your medkits, and "Sentinel" which gives you two shots on overwatch. Savior makes for a kickass field medic, though it isn't necessary, and Sentinel is a bit situational. Good when it works, but situational. Better than that Heavy skill "Rapid Reaction", for damn sure, but I've just never been that impressed by it. I go Savior on this one, but I wouldn't put up any real argument if someone had strong opinions in either direction. As for items, Supports obviously want medkits for combat medic potential. Besides that, they're the best users of Arc Throwers, thanks to Sprinter, and when you don't want an arc thrower post-Tactical Rigging, it's a toss-up between health and aim. If you only have one support, until you get Titan Armor, I'd say health, since one goes down and you have no more healing (don't be afraid to have a support use a medkit on themselves), but if you have two, or one with endgame armor, then you're fine, give 'em scopes or something. I've also become a fan of giving them grenades every once in awhile, but most of the time, the scope is probably better. Covert Operatives Covert Operations are new in the expansion, special missions against the EXALT faction. Covert Operatives are soldiers of any class besides Heavies and MECs that you send into the field for these missions. They have no armor, and only a pistol for weapons. I heartily recommend giving them your best pistols (and using the pistol foundry upgrades), as well as choosing someone who is either gene modded, psionic gifted, or both. The soldier keeps all their abilities from normal play, from Run&Gun to Squad Sight to Field Medic. I recommend snipers, because of Gunslinger making them quite dangerous with a pistol, and low profile if they're high enough level, but assaults are good too, thanks to Run&Gun, Lightning Reflexes, and Rapid Fire. Supports are also valid, as they can basically fill the same role they normally do by Sprinting and using medkits, but then you get scary missions where the support starts out alone on the other side of the map and doesn't deal enough damage to defend themselves. I still lean Sniper, but they all have their merits. The situation I always think of is when you go on an Op and the covert operative begins on the opposite side of the map, alone and unsupported, and you have to rendezvous with your squad to complete the objective. In that situation, a support Operative is in over their head, but an assault or a sniper can fight for themselves fairly effectively if it comes to that. I lean sniper, if I have enough kicking around in my roster, with assaults as a back-up plan. That Said: I do believe that most Covert Operations put the Operative relatively close to your squad's starting position, at which point protecting them, and getting them to aid your squad with smoke and heals, is easy to pull off. So if you have to send in a support, it'll probably work out, but I don't like it whenever I get in the situation where I have to. Oh, here's a good spot to mention: Squadsight doesn't allow for long-range shots with the pistol, just the sniper rifle. Or it shouldn't: Overwatch shots with the pistol still trigger, and have a weird tendency to hit, funnily enough. Abuse this on Covert Operations. Abuse it Often. As for items, I go with a Scope and a Grenade, personally, but that's just me- I don't think that health items actually work on Covert Operatives, otherwise I'd totally use them. Mind Shields are also solid on psionic Operatives. Specializations Now that the basic classes are defined, we get to the extra fun stuff: The other skill trees. After a certain point in the story, you will build the Psi labs. If you put soldiers into the psi labs for ten in-game days, they will be tested for psionic abilities. If the tests come back positive, they will unlock the first rank of psi powers. If the tests are negative, you get nothing. This is random based on the soldier's will stat. In addition, after researching it, you can use MELD to modify the genetics of your soldiers in the gene lab, providing passive abilities to enhance individual soldiers, who will leave service for three days per gene mod. One second wave option makes it so you can't psi test a gene modded soldier, or modify a psionic trooper, but normally they're not mutually exclusive. And finally, you can amputate the limbs of any soldier above rookie rank to fit them into MEC suits, hulking, powerful armored platforms that function much like a heavy class, using heavy armor plating, high damage, low accuracy weapons, and powerful on-MEC weapon systems. MECs can't take cover, on account of being huge, and can't equip secondary weapons, or equipment, but their MEC suits provide them a selection of powerful abilities, in addition to extreme durability. MEC troopers can't be gene modded or psionics. As far as usefulness goes, in my experience: Gene Mods are what you have going on in the background when you don't want to put real resources into using that MELD, MECs are super powerful, and fun as hell, but expensive enough to enable that I usually don't get them online until the campaign is already moving along pretty smoothly, and psionics just don't kick in fast enough to ever be necessary. By the time I'm trying to level them up, I don't actually need them to win. They come in late enough in the game that they become 'Win More' by association. Psionics The Only specialization in Vanilla Enemy Within, Psi powers are unlocked about halfway through the game, and, while required, to an extent, to finish the game, can easily become your least used set of alternate abilities. Any class besides MECs can be psionic, but only some soldiers can use psionic powers, and the only way to find out who is to put them through psi testing with Dr. Vahlen. Apparently there's a correlation between will and chance to be psionic, but I don't really know how that one works. The first, and most important, ability any psionic soldier activates right out of the psi labs is called 'Mindfray'. Against anything that isn't a robot (Isn't a drone, seeker, cyberdisk or sectopod), mindfray can do five damage, and give penalties to aim, will, and mobility. Mindfray's chance to hit has nothing to do with distance or cover, so long as they're close enough to see (no squadsight mindfray, as awesome as that would be.), but instead with the target and users' Will stats. . Mindfray also carries a pretty strong will penalty to its targets, so the more psionic damage you do, the easier it is to keep doing psionic damage, or to use the more flashy powers (we'll get there in a bit). Mindfray is incredibly useful to kill weaker enemies, like thin men, floaters, and sectoids, because all of them have very low will, and are almost certain to die. Same goes for Mutons, except that they have higher health. so shoot them first, or hit them with a couple of mindfrays if your shots are bad. Mindfray is a great weapon against enemies in high cover, since psychic powers don't care if you're behind a big rock. Plus, Mindfray gives penalties to Aim, so the victim is less likely to hit you back if they do survive. It's not a Suppression or a Disabling Shot, but it's pretty good. After using mindfray a couple of times, you gain the psionic experience to use one of two new powers: Psi panic, and Psi inspire. Psi panic is targeted like Mindfray, and makes them panic, which can lead to all sorts of funny and not funny results, from them running for the hills, to hunkering down, to taking a low-accuracy shot at either you or their allies. Again, panic shots are super low-accuracy, no matter who's panicking or why, so it's not too dangerous a power so long as your troops are in cover, and it can disable or otherwise make useless a single enemy soldier for one turn. I talk about how good suppression is a fair bit through this guide, and this can serve the same tactical purpose, though being dependant on rolling well against the enemy Will Stat is a bit of a damper on things. Psi Inspire gives a pretty massive Will boost to all allies in range, and also removes any panic or mindfray effects. The real reason psi inspire is useful is if you're trying to buff the Will of an ally to pull off a mindfray or mind control you really need. Don't get me wrong; that's a perfectly legitimate use, but it's not that useful. Neither is psi panic really, this level is mostly a wash. Snipers should definitely take psi panic, simply because psi inspire is only useful if you're with allies, and snipers should be in the back. Supports should probably run with the support theme and take psi inspire, and heavies and assaults can go either way. Just understand that it doesn't really matter; mindfray is the most useful psi power (That you get to use) because it actually does damage, and this level in particular isn't really helpful. The final level of psi powers (Yeah, that's it: There's not much here) is split between two actually really useful powers: Telekinetic Field, and Mind Control. Now, I know most of you just went "The hell with telekinetics: I want to mind control some alien bastards!" And you'd be reasonable for saying that; mind control is pretty darn fun. But Telekinetic Field is its equal, if not the better of the two options particularly when your squad is under fire and you're forced to use half cover or nothing at all. It is less sexy, but it's also quite good. Telekinetic field throws out a circular area around the user that gives +40 defense, meaning you're 40% less likely to get hit. That. Is. Huge. As in equal to full cover. For context, it takes the dense smoke upgrade for Smoke grenades to provide an equal boost, and Telekinetic field has a cooldown instead of limited number of uses, and a much greater range. Worth noting though- just like smoke, enemies can benefit from telekinetic field as well, so you probably don't want to use it in close-quarter fights. Mind Control has a very low percentage to hit, it takes a significant advantage over your target's Will, but, after a turn of them sitting there looking stupid, gives you control over the target for 3 turns. If all other enemies are dead, the target keeps the mission going until they die, so feel free to have your mind-controlee blow themself up with their own grenade. If the alien is under your control when they die, you get their weapon and grenade (if they have one), intact as salvage, so feel free to run them off on suicide missions, or to put them out in the open to draw fire away from your human soldiers. There's not much point putting a Mind-Controlled Alien in cover, is what I'm saying. On snipers, again, mind crontol, since you won't be close enough for telekinetic field to be helpful much (Though when you attack alien ships you'd be close enough). You usually won't be close enough to enemies for offensive powers to work either, but it's got a higher chance. Floaters and mutons are the best targets for mind control: They're mobile, durable, have weak will, and deal good damage. Supports might as well get Telekinetics, just because it fits the theme, and assaults and heavies can go either way. So can supports, it really doesn't matter. Just take a guess at what you'll actually use. Of Special Note: Psionics can benefit greatly from the will boost from a Mind Shield, which aids in offensive psi attacks, and in defending against psi attacks (and not panicking). Psionic powers also benefit from psi armor, which boosts will as well, but doesn't defend as well as a few other armors. Secondary Side Note: There's an achievement for Mind Controlling one of the Aliens' very nastiest enemies they can send against you, a powerful and deadly psionic alien that probably just strait-up has higher will than any of your soldiers are likely to have called an Etherial. This is a SUPER difficult achievement to get, because it means you probably have to land several successful Mindfrays AND buff the soldier with Mind Control using whatever means are availible. It's much harder than just shooting the alien, though it is VERY satisfying. Extra Bonus Side Note: Late in the game, if you complete the 'Progeny' Series of three missions, you get to recruit 4 garunteed-Psychic soldiers- First, Annete Durand, has a bonkers Will stat, and is a great candidate for doing the Etherial Mind-Controlling (I give her Mind Control Unconditionally just because she has great voice lines for psychically attacking people), as well as three other soldiers, the "Furies": Matthew Hawkins, a Sniper, and Said and Fatima Tariq, a Support and an Assault who are apparently supposed to be siblings I think? All of them will be a bit low-leveled by the time you recruit them, but are garunteed psychics for the late-game if you need them. Though, every campaign I play, there's an incident where one of the Tariq Siblings gets mind controlled by an Etherial, and one of them gets shot in the face with an Alloy Cannon. One of the two kills the other under mind control every 3rd campaign or so, it's really quite tragic. This is just the price of doing buisness, apparently (And Paritcularly of leveling lower-ranked, and thus lower-willed, soldiers in the late-game). It's probably my fault for always recruiting them late in the game where most of my roster are at max level, and trying to power-level these three to catch them up. Gene Mods After building a researching Meld and building a genetics lab, you can implement passive bonuses to your soldiers that will make them more effective on the battlefield, at the cost of money and meld. If a soldier is killed, the investment cannot be recovered. Some gene mods are unlocked at the start of the game, but most must be unlocked by performing autopsies on the different species of alien you encounter. The first Gene Mods you're likely to try out are the eye modifications, both of which are available from the start. Every area you can modify as two different mods that can be implemented, but are mutually exclusive on each soldier. In the eyes, you choose between High Reactive Pupils, and Depth Perception. Depth Perception adds +5 aim and +5 crit chance to the normal bonuses for height advantage. This works well for Snipers if you work to get them high ground, and makes them particularly vicious if they have the Damn Good Ground ability, though it's not very consistent. High Reactive Pupils makes it so that, if a soldier misses a shot, their next shot gets +10 aim. This is a great mod because it makes it much less likely for you to miss two shots in a row, which is often a fatal mistake if it happens. It isn't consistent, but it does give you an edge to make your mistakes less damaging. In the Legs, we choose between Muscle Fiber Density and Adaptive Bone Marrow. Adaptive Bone Marrow is available as soon as you build the genetics lab. It reduces a soldier's recovery time after being wounded by 66%, and restores up to 6 hp per mission to the maximum unit health without armor. that sounds great at first; an extra 6 hp healing every mission if the soldier gets hurt, but in reality, you're only likely to get that weak in the very early game, before carapace armor, and at that point, you're soldiers are so fragile that the healing won't make a huge difference. Muscle Fiber Density allows soldiers to move vertically without ladders or pipes or grappling hooks. this means that a sniper with Depth Perception and Damn Good Ground can just jump on top of a building rather than navigating all the way around it for a ladder, and sort of by accident increases your troops' effective movement speed, since moving vertically doesn't take up any points for moving around horizontally. I love Muscle fiber Density for the chance to get a height advantage, but it is very situational, always, and there will be plenty of times you just forget you have it. In the Chest are Adrenal Neurosympathy, and Secondary Heart. Secondary Heart makes sure your soldier goes down as critically wounded rather than simply dead, which means that if you can finish the mission or get a medic over in time, you can save them. Secondary heart also extends the time you have before they die, and removes the permanent Will penalty for soldiers being critically wounded. This is a good mod to spread to as many soldiers as you can get away with, because it will make your casualty rate drop dramatically, and keep your soldiers fighting fit when they get back in the action, but honestly it's expensive to spread around enough to make a difference. It was way nicer when a lot of these effects were just in the Officer Training School. Adrenal Neurosympathy provides a boost to all soldiers within normal Line of Sight whenever this soldier makes a kill. The boost cannot stack if you have several people with this mod, it just resets the timer, and amounts to +10 aim, +1 movement, and +5 crit chance. This power kicks ass. +10 aim to even one or two of your soldiers is a huge bonus, and if you can trigger it with your first kill in a fight, it should give you a good couple of shots with the boost. Several people with the mod, and you can chain those boosts real good. Skin implants aren't even a question; One of them is badly overpowered, and the other is just boring. Bioelectric skin makes it so that soldier can detect enemies through walls for a short distance, and through cloak. Problem is, it also makes the seekers, the only cloaking enemies, have no reason to get within range of you, since they can't strangle soldiers with bioelectric skin, so they just shoot you, which does more damage anyways. Not to mention that late-game armors also have that "No Seekers Allowed" clause. Lackluster, can't really do anything a battle scanner can't take care of better, I find it's not worth the Meld or Money. Mimetic Skin provides invisibility for any soldier who starts out of sight for any enemies, then moves into Full cover. Invisibility is broken if they shoot or leave cover. This is so broken because you can just stay cloaked forever and let your snipers plug every enemy in sight full of holes before anyone even sees your soldiers. And if your mimetic scout is a sniper, then Low Profile means they can cloak in half cover too! Plus, cloaking gives a +30% crit chance on any attack, meaning you can sneak into a fight and deal huge damage before the enemy even knows you're there. This Mod is strait busted, like "I Don't Use it Because It's Not That Fun." kinda Busted. Don't let that stop you from trying it, if that sounds appealing, but I'd rather not. And, finally, brain mods. Both are about psionic enemies, and for good reason; mind control is a ♥♥♥♥♥. Your Options are Neural Feedback and Neural Dampening. Neural Dampening is defensively focused: This soldier will never panic, gets +20 will when defending against psionic attacks, and, if mind controlled, disables the soldier for a turn, cancelling the power. This means that any enemy that tried to mind control your soldiers will only stun them for a turn, rather than take them over. And the panic prevention, and resistance to psi powers, are solid, seriously weakening psionic enemies from some of the most threatening foes on the battlefield, to a lot less scary. Neural Feedback, on the other hand, makes it so that any enemy that attempts to use a psi power on that soldier gets a rude awakening: weather the attack succeeds or not, the alien gets a psychic backlash proportionate to the soldier's Will, potentially dealing huge damage, and their psi powers are all set to cooldown, practically disarming some enemies. I usually go Neural Dampening, because I like boring but reliable options, if you haven't noticed by now. I actually experiment with both a fair bit, but I use each of them rarely enough that I don't have a strong opinion as to if one is better than the other. I know I didn't go into what's best for each class so much here, but other than the eye mods, it all is sort of one-sided. If you're playing without MECs, and can afford to make gene mods kind of standardized for your troops (which is expensive), then I think Muscle Fiber Density, Adrenal Neurosympathy and High Reactive Pupils should be the standard, and I only exclude Mimetic Skin because it's expensive and sometimes the boring kind of overpowered instead of the fun kind, and the brain mods because those can go either way. And I guess Depth Perception for Snipers, but that's a judgement call. Now: Here's the annoying thing about Gene Modded soldiers: Their armor looks like ♥♥♥♥. You spend the whole game developing this kickass Titan armor that makes your soldiers look like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tanks on the battlefield, and then you make their eyes better and what do you know; now they have to go with these stupid, sleeveless combat vests that only pick up the texture of whatever armor you're using. The stats are exactly the same, don't mistake me, it's only aesthetic, but it just looks terrible. It's seriously worth learning how to make Nexus Mods work just to download a mod to fix this. MECs: Gear and Previous Training MECs are new to Enemy Within, and can be constructed after building the cybernetics lab, available after researching Meld. You can convert any soldier above rookie rank into a MEC trooper in the Cybernetics lab, permanently amputating their limbs to drive the MECs. Soldiers retain the same rank they had before becoming a MEC trooper, and the same stats, even though any level-ups after the switch will be determined by MEC stat growths, if you want to manipulate how much health, Will, or Aim your MEC trooper has. Their skills earned on level-up, though, don't carry over, and MEC troopers have their own skill tree. What MEC troopers do carry over is a passive ability based on their former class. Assault-MECs have Shock-Absorbent Armor, which reduces damage from enemies at close range. Support-MECs get Distortion Field, which gives +10 defense to allies in cover nearby (visible in-game as a weird energy-fieldy thing). Heavies-turned-MEC troopers get Body Shield, which lowers the aim of the nearest enemy by 20%, and prevents them from getting a crit on the MEC trooper. Snipers-turned-MECs get Platform Stability, which gives you +10 aim and crit if you fire without moving. All are pretty good. I like Snipers personally, but that's just me. Supports are good for the team, heavies and assaults are tankier. MECs can't take cover, though they do get a +10 defense bonus from their armor. Mainly, though, MECs just have heavy enough armor that they don't die easily. They're tactically the tanks in your lineup most of the time, and part of how they do that is by making the aliens go "Hey, that big MEC is easy to hit, I should take all my shots on it instead of the vulnerable and fleshy guys." A+ Tactics aliens, A+ tactics. (Side note- I'm only half-joking here, the way XCOM AI works is that the aliens automatically target the one of your soldiers with the lowest defense most of the time, the one they have the highest chance to hit. So having low defense but high health like MECs do is sorta the only way to tank effectively.) The actual MEC, not the MEC trooper, can come in three stages, roughly corresponding to conventional, carapace, and Titan Armor. Each level you upgrade the MEC unlocks a new ability for whoever pilots the MEC to use. MEC troopers can mix-and-match between MECs at will, though it gets confusing who has what abilities, and it can get really Meld-intensive to build more than 2 or 3 MECs. At the first Level, you choose between equipping your MEC with a Flamethrower, or a Kinetic Strike Module. The Flamethrower has two uses per mission to throw six damage worth of fire and death across a pretty vicious cone area. Can be upgraded to 9 damage, and causes enemies to panic. Because, you know, they've been set on fire. But the Kinetic Strike Module deals twice as much damage in a mano-a-mano punch, can be upgraded to 18 damage, and increases your movement speed by a few tiles. I almost always go Kinetic Strike Module (Do the SHIV project in the Foundry, that's how you unlock the upgrade to fisticuffs). Also: it's freaking awesome. The cutscene when you go melee on a berserker is just beautiful, and the punch is really nice for taking down enemies, either big ones, or normal ones when you're out of ammo, which happens a lot with MECs. And you can punch down a wall of cover too! Just avoid punching Sectopods, they detonate on death. Your MEC will probably survive, but it's just best avoided if you can get away with it. Flamethrowers might just be better, since they serve as a strong crowd-control option, and can be great for keeping several enemies off your back with a single action, but if I'm investing all my Meld for a campaign into MECs, than I expect to rocket punch some aliens for my troubles. Level 2 gives us Restorative Mist, and Grenade Launcher. Restorative Mist is no replacement for a dedicated Field Medic, since it can't stabilize downed soldiers, but it is an AoE heal for 4 health that can be used between fights on the entire squad, including the equipped MEC, if you bunch them up for it. You normally only have one use per mission though, which limits the power. That said; it's the only non-medkit healing skill you have access to. Grenade launcher can launch a 4 damage grenade across significant distance, and can demolish cover to hurt and reveal stronger enemies like Mutons. You also have two shots, which is quite useful, letting you be a touch more frivolous with the grenading than you might be otherwise. Both of these upgrades are useful, and gain an extra use with one of the late skill choices. In addition, each upgrades with the appropriate foundry upgrade: Improved medkit, for 6 healing, and alien grenade, for 5 damage, to keep them from becoming obsolete. I think I usually go grenades, but then I don't put them to very good use, so either way. And with the final level, you can choose between Proximity Mines, and Electro Pulse. Proximity mines do a whopping 8 damage, trigger when enemies walk nearby (but not on friendlies), and can be detonated with other explosive effects. This is fully awesome, because you can have a MEC throw a mine down beneath the feet of a Sectopod, or at a cluster of tough aliens, then detonate the bunch of them with Grenades or Rockets for much more damage than the blast would normally deal, in what we in the business know as "Beaglerushing", or you can actually lay them out to detonate by proximity when enemies move, pinning them in place. 2 shots, 3 with the right skill tree option. Electro Pulse is a short-range AoE around the MEC that deals 5 damage to all enemies in the blast radius, stunning any robots who survive. It's particularly useful alongside the Kinetic Strike Module, thanks to the close-range focus and extra movement tiles. Plus, you can stun a robot, then punch it to death. And as a bonus, there doesn't appear to be a limit on uses. What Fun! Again, either upgrade is great. Electro pulse for when you're in the thick of things, and Proximity mines for more tactical control. Both are deadly as hell in the right hands. Choose by how you're using your MECs. MECs: Skill tree Sorry, lot of abilities to go over about the MECs. They're very different from other troops. The first ability you'll get it Overdrive: It expends two ammo, which is an entire clip until you upgrade, to deal an AoE attack that, on its own, does two damage, and doesn't increase until plasma weaponry, but also detonates anything explosive in range, including proximity mines and, more usefully, cars. Not an ability you'll be using too often, but a good one if you remember it. Great for detonating enemies who are behind the wrong cover. At Corporal, we get Advanced Fire Control and Automated Threat Assessment, both about Overwatch. AFC removes the aim penalty on overwatch shots, so that you get more hits, but ATA gives you +15 defense while in overwatch. This means you can use overwatch like you'd use hunker down on a normal soldier, and protects you if you try to use overwatch to pin an enemy in place, rather than to kill any surprise intruders. Both are valid. I lean toward Fire Control, but Threat Assessment has a worthwhile and valuable tactical use. Of course, I did already call Covering Fire a Poor Man's Suppression, and this is most certainly that, so if you have enough other skills to watch dangerous enemies, then you don't need it. Next, Vital-Point Targeting, and Damage Control. Vital-Point gives +2 damage against any enemy you've autopsied, and also against the human EXALT operatives. That might not be a ton of damage, but it's pretty nice, and you should autopsy every enemy you come across pretty quickly, at least once you win South America over. After that, it means you have one battle without the damage boost, autopsy them, then keep the boost forever. Damage control makes it so that, if you take a hit, then you start a 2-turn period wherein all damage dealt to you does 2 damage less. While nifty, it requires your MEC to be under fire from multiple sources simultaneously to be useful, which you really need to make not happen. Not only that, the shots have to hit, which you really really need to make not happen, and even then, two damage isn't a ton on a bulky soldier like this, and means much more early on. Same could be said for Vital-Point targeting, I guess, but I still lean toward damage dealt. Damage Dealt is how you prevent your soldiers from taking too much damage in the first place. Lieutenant gives us One for All, turning the MEC into high cover (which can still be shot/grenade-ed), or Jetboot Module, which can be toggled to let the MEC leap high buildings in a single bound, like the leg gene mod. Always go rocketboots. Not because it's useful, but because One for All is terrible. I've never really had any good use for it, particularly because I think the MEC reverts to normal form when they take a hit. Captain gets Repair Servos or Expanded Storage. Repair gives you up to 6 health in auto-healing, and is much better than the gene mod, because it can heal armor. Now: it's still not worth it, because Expanded Storage gives you one extra use of restorative mist, grenade launcher, proximity mines, and, most importantly, your primary weapon. Without foundry projects, you have 2 shots without this skill. With it, you have 3. That's a lot bigger deal than it sounds. And once Ammo Conservation happens, you have 5 shots with, 4 without. Later in the game you don't necessarily need Expanded Storage, but I still use it, because the extra shots of systems and weapons are really nice, and really useful. It lets you keep shooting early, and spam Proxy Mines late, so it's always useful. For Major, MECs get Bullet Swarm. They don't call it that, but it is. If your MEC is a sniper, they can take 2 stationary shots and get the aim bonus on both, or shoot with the bonus, then move into position for another shot next turn. This is freaking excellent, and makes you MEC into a beast. At Colonel... You can really go either way, because I'm not enthusiastic about these. Absorption field limits damage to a third of the MEC's health maximum, and no more in a single shot. Problem is, by this point your MEC should be so tanky that nothing much should deal that sort of damage, short of a lucky crit. It's too situational for me. That said, Reactive Targeting Sensors sends a reaction shot (with penalty to aim even if you use Advanced Fire Control) at the first enemy to take a shot at you each turn. Problem is, it'll burn through more ammo than a fire at a gun show if you don't upgrade the magazine size. If you don't have Expanded Storage, you kinda can't afford to take this skill. Equipment Part 1: Weapons I'm going to kinds rush through this section: I covered everything important already. Assault rifles are used by rookies, assaults, and supports. Basic assault rifles does 2-4 damage, laser does 4-6. Light plasma rifles do 4-6 damage as well, but have a +10% aim bonus that makes them really powerful. Full plasma rifles do 6-8 damage, and all assault rifles have a 10% crit chance under normal conditions. Light plasma is great for rookies, if you're still using any that late in the game, since their aim is ♥♥♥♥, but on your best you might as well give them the highest damage (though if they have bad enough aim for whatever reason, Light plasma is still very good. Strictly better than laser or anything before all the same.) Pistols are sidearms used by everyone but Heavies and MECs, and they have infinite ammo. Basic pistols do 1-2 damage, lasers do 1-3, plasma does 2-4. With improved Pistol I, they have +20% crit chance, which is nice enough, since only the laser pistol has any natural crit chance, and even it has just 10%. With Improved Pistol II, they get +10 aim, which makes them great for killing weakened enemies, since they're more likely to hit than a normal gun. and IP III gives +1 damage to all pistol attacks, making you deal 3-5 damage, before, say, gunslinger kicks in to deal 5-7 damage, with +10 aim and 20% critical. With your Sidearm. Damn that's good. This is why you should use Gunslinger guys, seriously. Sniper rifles have already been covered enough in their quirks, suffice to say they're Sniper-class-exclusive and hit like a sledgehammer when you can make them actually have a shot. Conventional is 3-5 damage with 25% crit, laser deals 5-7 with 30%, and plasma 8-10 with 35%. Just get your snipers the best rifles you've got your hands on, clean and simple. Worth noting is that sniper rifles are more accurate the further away your opponent is, and actually loose accuracy as the enemy comes closer. so put 'em in the back, use squadsight, and plug the X-rays full of holes from half a map away. Elevation is also great with them. LMGs are the Heavy's weapon, and while their wielders are less accurate than riflemen, they deal better damage. Though 0% crit across the board means they're not going to surprise you much. Conventional LMG deals 3-5, Heavy laser 5-7, heavy plasma 8-10. Shotguns are short-range weapons, as they loose accuracy much more dramatically with distance than other weapons, but gain accuracy more quickly as you get close, and deal heavy damage. Conventional deals 3-5, scatter laser 5-7, alloy cannon 8-10. You've seen those numbers before. All have a 20% crit bonus, and all are an alien's worst nightmare in close quarters. Heavies have a basic rocket launcher when you start, and they'll likely keep it for the entire game if you don't put effort into hunting down an enemy battleship. I mean, Slingshot DLC makes the stuff easier to get your hands on, but otherwise you aren't likely to even learn the Blaster Launcher exists. It's a nice damage boost on the rocket, 6 damage turns to 9, before skills upgrade the damage, and it also makes the rocket a guided missile, making sharp corners and maneuvers in between your most dangerous enemies. MECs have miniguns early on, then railguns, then particle cannons. All 10% crit, damage is 4-6, 6-8, 9-11. They have too little ammo though, fix it. Equipment Part 2: Armors Everyone except MEC Troopers get body armor, and can equip any kind. Basic armor that you start with gives +1 health and nothing else. It's simple, and it'll have to do. Carapace armor comes a little further into the game, and is roughly on par with laser technology. Carapace gives +4 armor total, significantly better than basic armor, but nothing super special. It's contemporary (if slightly more advanced) Skeleton Suit gives only +3 armor, but also increases movement speed by 3 units, gives +10 defense (-10% chance to be hit, basically), and lets you grapple onto higher ground. Which armor you want is a judgement call. 1 health for +10 defense is tempting as hell though, particularly if that +3 movement makes it easier to maneuver into good cover, as can the grapple ability. Obviously use whatever you can get your hands on, but when you have the choice it's interesting. I usually don't invest the resources into Skeleton Armor though. At the final level, you first unlock Titan Armor, which provides +10 hp. Yeah, that's a lot. I've won missions without any casualties where I shot my own soldiers with a rocket because of that health boost. Archangel Armor, developed not long after, provides flight for a total of six moves (can be upgraded to twelve), and +8 hp. finally, we have Ghost armor, which has a one-turn cloaking effect that can be activated four times per mission, +3 movement, +20 defense, and +6 health, and a grappling hook. Worth noting is that all three of these armors provide immunity to fire, poison, and seeker strangulation. I have to go Titan armor for terms of survival on this one: Archangel Armor doesn't have inherent defense/movement bonuses, and Ghost Armor gives 3 movement and 20 defense for 4 health, which is just too big a hit. Now, if you want to use cloaking or flight, they're valid. I usually don't but it's a personal choice: I recommend experimentation. Archangel works best on a Squadsight Sniper with Damn Good Ground and Depth Perception, floating in the back of the map, and Ghost armor would have to go assault or support. Finally, the last armor you're likely to get your hands on is psi armor, which provides +6 hp, +20 will, +2 movement, and +10 defense. Psi armor is restricted to psionic soldiers, but, thanks to that will bonus, makes them significantly more successful at using their psi powers on the enemy. If your soldier has mind control, you probably want them in psi armor. Otherwise, it's up to you: Most of the enemies I find myself using psi powers on are so weak-willed that psi armor is redundant, like floaters, sectoids, thin men, and mutons, and the other organic enemies are largely too strong-willed for psionics to be practical, even with psi armor. The exception, of course, is the Ethereals, whom it isn't precisely practical to use psi powers on, but there's an achievement, and it's also pretty fun. edit: Now that I think about it: you can use will boosts to help against EXALT, who are usually right on the edge of "is mindfray a practical choice?" MECs instead have different levels, each of which provides an additional subsystem as previously covered in its own section. Warden Armor gives +8 health, +10 defense, and +10 will, Sentinel with +12 health, +10 defense, +15 will, and Paladin, +16 health, +10 defense, and +20 will. Equipment Part 3: Supplementary items So these are your additional items, items not specific to any class or specialization, just not allowed to be given to MEC troopers. They come in all shapes, sizes, and measures of usefulness. The Grenades: Frag Grenades are the most basic tool you're provided: Throw it, and it deals 3 damage in a spherical blast radius. Good early on, when most of your enemies don't have more than 3 health, but looses a lot of shine once you're packing laser weapons. Alien grenades work just like frag grenades, and can even be produced in infinite quantities once you complete the foundry project for them (you have to retrieve an alien grenade from a captured alien). They deal 5 damage though, so they're useful for much longer. The flashbang grenade reduces an enemy's chance to hit by 50% and halves their movement speed, for two turns, effectively crippling them as a threat, as long as they aren't already right in your face. Good, can save your bacon if big enemies are too close and too hard to kill. It won't work on robotic or (halfway decent) psionic enemies. Gas Grenades create a cloud of toxic gas, like Thin Men use, that will poison enemies for 1-3 turns and deal about 1 damage per turn. Poison also reduces aim by 20 and movement by 3. Watch out for friendly fire. Needle Grenades have a bigger blast radius than frag grenades, but do the same damage, don't destroy cover, and can't hurt an enemy through cover. Alright, good in the rare situation that the cover difference averts friendly fire or the radius boost catches an extra bad guy, but they take valuable cryssalid corpses to build, and deal too little damage to be relevant by the time cryssalids are rolling out. Mimic Beacons draw enemies that haven't spotted you yet toward them, but other than a gimicky killzone set-up, aren't hardly useful. Ghost Grenades make it so all units inside the field of effect when it goes off are invisible. Invisibility makes it so they won't get shot, but only lasts until that soldier's next turn. Moving doesn't break cloak, but shooting does. All attacks from invisibility get a +30% crit chance, making it vicious when used on assaults. Passive Boosts: The S.C.O.P.E. boosts your soldier's aim by 10%, which can make a huge difference, in any situation. In addition, once you complete the appropriate foundry project, it also boosts crit chance by 10%, which is a nice boost sometimes. Snipers definitely get Scopes, and so do heavies. After that, it just depends. Supports and Assaults don't need them exactly, but once you get tactical rigging, scopes are a legitimate choice of another item. Nanofiber vests give a +2 health bonus, which is nice, particularly early on. It's enough that enemies might have to take another shot at you to get a kill, which is really all you can ask for. Better than nanofiber is the Respirator Implant, which does the same +2 health, and makes you immune to strangulation and poison. And even better than Respirator implants is Chitin Plating, which gives +4 health, immunity to strangulation, and halves any incoming Melee damage. Sadly, chitin plating takes a bunch of Chryssalid corpses to make, so you're not likely going to be able to build as many as you want for awhile. Health items like these last three are great for Assaults, and also work well on heavies. Snipers shouldn't need them, and supports are better served with other items. Reaper Rounds boost the crit chance of your primary weapon by 20%, but can't be used with laser or plasma tech, so it's strictly early-game. Actually pretty good while they last though: No effect on assault rifles or LMGs, only hurt you within 10 tiles with a sniper rifle (though you can't get non-headshot crits with squadsight, so it's not going to help much either) and hurts shotgun aim past 10 tiles, where you shouldn't be using shotguns anyway. That said, +20% crit isn't much, so they really aren't worth spending (at the time) your only item slot on. The Mind Shield is a late-game item that gives +30 will, and makes you immune to strangulation. The will is pretty potent on a psionic trooper with mind control, but besides that doesn't do much. They're also really expensive to make. Other Items: Medkits give the wielder immunity to poison, and can be used to heal an ally for 4 hp, or to stabilize (save the life of) a critically wounded soldier. Medkits also end the damage done by poison effects rather nicely. Medkits are absolutely vital to your squad's survival, because you get shot and you have to be able to deal with it. Medkits don't prevent stays in the infirmary when wounded, but they do make you more likely to survive long enough to get there. Foundry Project increases the healing to 6 hp, the savior support skill gives +4 healing, Field Medic gives you three uses from one medkit, which is huge and is why that skill is one of the best in the game, and deep pockets gives one extra use as well. Supports need a medkit. It's basically the whole reason you should bring one out in the first place. The Arc Thrower is a plot-important item that lets you capture enemy soldiers alive for interrogations. the problem is; to taze them with it, you have to get enemies down to 3 health to have any reasonable chance of success. 70% at 3 health, 80 at 2, and 90% chance for capture at 1 health. Captured enemies give you research credits, halving the time for some projects, and let you take their plasma weapons, which need to be researched before you can equip them, and their grenades. Foundry upgrades let you: Capture enemy Drones, Repair your SHIVs, and increase capture chances (6 health; 70%, 5 health 75%, 4-80%, 3-85%, 2-90%, 1-95%). The Arc thrower only has two uses per mission though, so take your stuns when you're reasonably certain it will work, and don't bother with the drones. Also: Don't capture enemies you've already interrogated, it doesn't get you anything special. Just their weapons. I recommend giving these to your supports, since they can get in close with sprinter. Assaults sound like a good idea, but you can't use Run&Gun to get close for an arc thrower, just to shoot. Combat Stims have two uses, and apply +40 will, -50% damage, and +3 movement for two turns, but end your turn when you use them. I don't usually make these, but they are decent. Pop the stims one turn on a soldier in half cover so that they take fire for the rest of the squad, then use that mobility to pull them out of the fire and medkit up. Not great, but in an emergency it could save your bacon. Just not the best use of an item slot.

This are simply a few tips discussed in other places from my own CI playthroughs. I am a mediocre player but still enjoy this game having played Xcom from the start in the 90's. I don't care if you add your own, disagree, whatever. These are just my observations after making hundreds of knucklehead moves. Tips IF you want to play defensibly and slowly and patiently, while thinking long about every move, play on Impossible. Otherwise play on Classic and have fun (it’s still plenty frustrating for the crappy player!) •Remember enemies overwatch •On a PC Y is overwatch key •Blow up all sharks as SOON as you see them •Chrysalids and zombies panic when they are burning from a flamethrower and run away-make sure to track em down though •Chrysalids and Zombies don't care about cover either do seekers when they fade so don't worry about cover on terror missions cept for floaters •The ? is useful when targeting enemies to find out how bad your chances are in detail •Healed soldiers still go into infirmary after mission. It's not how much you heal it's how many points they were hit for (the original wound) that counts for time in hospital •Don't get too cocky with the mec...he has feelings and bruises too (Oh and can die also) •Anyone can use a healing kit •Healing kits on your person keep you immune to thin men poison duh •If you block a single door with soldiers baddies can't run through them. You can trap them in a room ala William Wallace (FREEDOM!!!!) •Battle scanner reveals hidden seekers-rocket men heavies can also find them and expose •Mecs cant open doors and cannot lean around to shoot like regular soldiers so they can hide in full cover •Mecs collateral damage blows up vehicles with 1 shot-but uses up a full ammo clip •Pay attention to the music to know if you are toast or done •Escort Missions -don't move the escort till you have the rooftops covered-when enemies drop of course they mostly drop on the roofs •Usually moving the escort triggers a drop •Remember enemies overwatch •Don’t bite on getting that precious meld (especially early) if you are a crappy player like me-just let it be if you have to expose yourself too much. There is plenty later I promise •Regarding meld-don't get crazy with Gene Mods and Mecs if you haven't been getting it regularly as later upgrades will drain it fast •I gotta say an Assault with Mimetic Skin, Run and Gun, an Arc Thrower is pretty handy as you can be invisible as a scout behind full cover. Helps with the stunning if you are a stunner •That same assault with some kind of Shotgun is pretty badass on Exalt missions, especially with Rapid Fire (Double tap for gunners) •Do not waste time customizing your soldiers right away if you restart 1000 times like me you will get angry (er) •Maybe it's a cheat (I have no guilt about it) but meld tutorial is easy and gives you squaddies (one of each kind) after mission •You can survey the area sometimes to see where an enemy is standing-if you see no square when you mouse over-it's a scary person •Scopes on heavies is not a bad idea •Alloy Shivs on terror missions don't make you kick your cat or yell at your kids if they die. But you may still also treat them badly if you’re a bad person •Mecs work well on Exalt missions (especially before Exalt have lasers)-they don't get hurt much from Exalt weapons •Print out the "Alien Artifacts" page on UFOpedia to make sure you don't sell the wrong corpses •Interrogating Mutons, Muton Elites, Heavy Floaters and Sectoid Commander gets you Alien Grenades if you got one from a live mob •Remember enemies overwatch •If you have an Alien Grenade from a mob, it is reusable on next mission, till you research them (foundry?) then you get them instead of frags •You can get a Railgun for Mec after researching Heavy Lasers •Chitin is pronounced KY-Tin.... I was watching National Geographic so I know.... •Man I use a lot of scopes all the way till the end...on heavies •Watch out for your own feeding frenzy you get when later in game you have a bit of money and a Foundry...and you build all kinds of awesome stuff and run out of weapon fragments (or alloys etc) ...ugh... then you wait for UFO missions (because you are so clever with your full satellite coverage so no mo abductions) •I said "Roger Dodger" when I was a kid LOL love these guys •Generally if you are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ player like me you need to focus on stuff that helps you recover faster (i.e. Rapid Recovery, Defense abilities etc) •Laser or Carapace first? Hmm I play so badly I found I need armor more (I swear I thought I was being careful) but getting lasers first was also equally good on that play through. (I mean partial play through of course like number 40 or so.... •It is possible to research lasers and then use Exalts lasers for your squad if they have discovered them. . •Remember when you need the Outsider alive, if you have laser pistols and guns, are on overwatch, or have "Close Combat Specialist" on your assault with a shotgun you will kill him outright. You need him (or her sorry) at like 1 HP to stun-consider Hunker Down in this case as you will know where he is... •If you are tired being old and grumpy and forget it's a game consider using 1 save only (for start of missions maybe) and doing a hybrid Ironman. Maybe a "Copperman" or "Bronzeman" or something. You can also enable the Second Wave option "Save Scum" to assuage your deep guilt and shame. You will also learn a lot from your mistakes •Sextoy Commander is immune to a flash-bang (ya its a joke I know but true) •If you stun aliens without an Alien Containment Facility you do get their plasma weapons intact •Make a repeating macro that uses "tab" and "y" repeat to have an instant "overwatch all" option. I use a Nostromo gamepad-not sure how brainiacs would do it with a keyboard-many mice are macro-able •Remember enemies overwatch •If you do forget enemy overwatch an assault with Lightning reflexes should move first. Perhaps make him/her multicolored so you will remember •Watch lots of lets plays and hint videos so you can forget every ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing they taught you when you actually play yourself... •Mectoids are Sectoids inside. Altoids are for your tummy. Hemmoroids are just as irritating •If you augment a soldier to be a mec while they are in sick bay -they will only be there for 3 days even if gravely wounded •Pay more attention to your squad abilities and think about it before you move...i.e. use smoke if ya got it-in fact use smoke every mission no reason not to •Bring a rookie on alien downed ship missions-equip with grenade and always get them a kill. Otherwise try to get a good squad using same people for a few months. •If you start in Asia it's really handy after you get a foundry (which is really more valuable in EW than EU with new goodies) •If you start in Asia you will be broke all the time but Foundry with EW is so much more important and even more importantly OTS upgrades •Shivs can harvest meld •Late/mid game if you need meld you should farm it at crashes and abductions with mecs and shivs unless you need to capture aliens-why lose any good soldiers after you have colonels and most research done •Don’t ever use assaults with rifles-once you get good at not being a crouching hiding pansy you will run and gun face pellet them all the time its soo satisfying •After you start a million times and if you are really focused on armor, recovery, new squad members in a mission, healing and all the ♥♥♥♥ that happens when you are not patient-just dash sometimes for gods sake! You will “feel” when it’s right. (Classic Mode only-not Impossible) •NEVER sell weapon FRAGMENTS –I SWEAR YOU WILL BE SORRY. Elerium and Alloys seem to be much more abundant. •Get a MEC ASAP to be a tank-remember you are not a good player and aren’t clever enough to remember the right moves-so get someone early to scout •Shivs aren’t talked about much but are smart to have around-make sure if you decide to get them –get the foundry upgrades for them or what’s the point-see above re: Mec scouts •In Classic-March 1 satellite. Take USA for money. April 3 satellites. Take SA plus 1 panicky country (DON’T WORRY ABOUT ASIA YOU CANT LOSE IT you started there) Do autopsies In May get 3 more. Get A

Short guide on how to get A Continental Fellow achievement quick and easy and what achievements I recomend to complete during each walkthrough. A Continental Fellow is achievement where you have to complete game from every 5 starting locations and will probably be your last achievement you acomplish. Some words before I actually start: playing enemy unknown first and than within is great experience but in this guide we don't have a time for this so start with Enemy Within right from the begining. the tutorial is great for faster leveling your troops but it is only available for Europe and North America Slingshot DLC is great adition and you should have it enabled First gameplay starting location - EUROPE tutorial - ENABLED difficulty - EASY/NORMAL During your first gameplay you shoudl learn the basics and how the game works. I recomend to go with Normal difficulty becuase from Easy to Classic is very big step and one you'll need to make. Also this should be your longest gameplay. Try to finish all hard achievements that require no difficulty such as: Ain't no Cavalry Comin' - Have a soldier survive every mission in a full game Just use one soldier in every mission (sniper is best choice) and do not let him die. If he is injured, don´t start mission untill he is recovered. Guardian of the Earth - Designate a highly decorated soldier as the Volunteer Just save 1 from every medal type and give it to "Volunteer" before last mission Xavier - Mind Control an Ethereal You need to have soldier with very high Will (use equipment to help raise will) Edison - In a single game complete every research project You need to interrogate every alien type as well (no robots ofc) All Aboard - complete Confouding Light with more than 3 turns left on the timer. You need to rush a little bit Europe I think is the worst continent because you have 50% off from maintaining and building laboratories and workshops. I did multiple games without single laboratory or workshop so it is really useless. But it is your first gamplay and you plaing easy/normal and you can go with tutorial so Europe is good 1st choice. Second Gameplay starting location - ASIA tutorial - DISABLED difficulty - CLASSIC For your second gameplay you want to get used on Classic difficulty as much as possible and complete achievements that require this difficulty such as: Lone Wolf - Clear a UFO crash site with one soldier on Classic or Imposible difficulty Ofc you want to make this on Classic instead of Impossible. Bring your heavy soldier to first UFO crash site with only 4 sectoids and 1 outsider. Try to kill with granade 2 sectoids at time and save rocket launcher for outsider. Wet Work - Complete Very Hard abduction mission in five turns or less on Classic or Impossible difficulty Just start a mission. Save. Rush the whole map. Kill everyone. If some of your soldiers died reload save after you get achv. You will not need tutorial anymore so you can go with ASIA with half prize of officer training school upgrades and foundry projects bonus, which is nice addition. Third walkthrough starting location - AFRICA tutorial - DISABLED difficulty - IMPOSSIBLE This will be your most challenging and hardest game. You will go just for achievement for completing game on Impossible difficulty and nothing else since this is the hardest achievement. The best place to start is Africa in my opinion, because you have 30% more income from every satelite and on impossible you are instantly broke. Unfortunately you can not start the tutorial in Africa (so you miss easy XP for your soldiers) but it is better to save North America with tutorial for later. Fourth run starting location - SOUTH AMERICA tutorial - DISABLED difficulty - CLASSIC Your fourth run will be on classic difficulty and you will aim it on An Army of Four achievement. Now this achievement has the second lowest % of players unlocking it (less then Our Finest Hour - Beat the game on Impossible difficulty) but it is not that hard. Everything you have to (not) do is to not buy the squad size I and squad size II upgrade leaving you with only 4 soldiers per mission instead of 6 the whole game. Ofc this needs to be done on Classic difficulty (at least). At this point you should be familiar with everything in the game and you already beat Impossible difficulty. Classic with 4 soldiers is like 10 times easier trust me. You will start in South America with "Aliens intorrogations and autospies are complete instantly" bonus. This is like second worst place to start after Europe mostly because it is so easy to cover South America with satelites and have this bonus at early point in game because there are only 2 countries there. But, this bonus is very useful for your 4 soldiers because you need to level a circle them as fast as possible and with this instant research you will have better items sooner making your soldiers better. Fifth walkthrough starting location - NORTH AMERICA tutorial - ENABLED difficulty - CLASSIC Your fifth and final run will be an Ironman mode on Classic difficulty. Ironman is game mode which uses 1 save file which overwrites after everything you make, so your choices are permanent as well as your soldiers deaths, your shots missed etc. You cannot "turn back" and reload last autosave. BUT there is an option to copy the save file where your Ironman is manually, so you can reload your save. This makes Ironman less terrifying than Impossible diff. But still it is boring and kind of cheating method. I have to admit that I used this method during my Ironman 2 times because I would lose my whole squad of best soldiers and probably the whole game, but it is totaly doable without it. You will start in North America with 50% off to satelites and aircrafts bonus, which makes it perfect for satelite rush. You spend everything on satelites and workshops, pick abduction missions which grands you engeneers and if you survive first few months you are done here. Than just be careful. Do not rush and calculate your every move and this should continue as your basic 2nd Classic walkthrough. Also you can (and should) enable tutorial for this run so you will be granted free Heavy soldier right before your first mission which makes this even easier. That's it You got it. By now you should have every achievement completed in XCOM Enemy Unknown (achievements I did not mention should be completed as you progress through game, but watch out for any missing ones) maybe the 2 from multiplayer still left but that is 5 minutes matter. So, congratulations for your next 100% game. If this guide helped you you can leave a like. If you would change something leave a comment. Also english is not my native language so grammar incorrections will be included :) Good luck, central out.

Normal XCOM too easy for you? Try the Long War mod! This guide contains all you need to know to get started and possibly win The Long War. Introduction to the Long War Vanilla XCOM too easy for you! Not enough depth to it? Welcome to the Long War, a mod for XCOM:Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within that feels more like an expansion pack instead of a mod. Difficulty wise, the Long War is on par with Classic EU/EW difficulty on its NORMAL setting. Its recommended you play on NORMAL until you get used to all the changes Long War does to the game. Long War is basically a fan made expansion pack for XCOM EU/EW, and the XCOM head dev himself said that EU/EW was just a tutorial for how to play and win the Long War! The first half of this guide is here to help you ease into the mod, or if your familiar with the mod and want a more detailed strategy on how to win the Long War, that's what the latter half of this guide is for. When playing XCOM: Long War, I'd suggest enable the "Soldier VO" option in the options menu. This mod adds many new voices, including British English, Australian English, and many others and its very nice hearing such a diverse cast of soldiers! Remember, if you have a question that's not in this guide, check the wiki! http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Long_War Changes Made in The Long War An extended campaign requiring far more missions to complete Tactical missions that allow up to twelve XCom soldiers per mission with the right upgrades Eight soldier classes: Infantry, Assault, Sniper, Scout, Gunner, Rocketeer, Medic and Engineer, and eight MEC classes: Valkyrie, Marauder, Jaeger, Pathfinder, Goliath, Archer, Guardian and Shogun Eight soldier classes: Infantry, Assault, Sniper, Scout, Gunner, Rocketeer, Medic and Engineer, and eight MEC classes: Valkyrie, Marauder, Jaeger, Pathfinder, Goliath, Archer, Guardian and Shogun New and modified perks, including Ranger, Sapper, HEAT Warheads, Lock N' Load, Fire in the Hole, Hit and Run, and Javelin Rockets New and modified technologies, including Xenopsionics, Alien Biocybernetics, Pulse Lasers, Gauss Weapons and Advanced Aerospace Concepts, and many new foundry projects Five tiers of XCOM weaponry, many new armors and small items and S.H.I.V.s that can be equipped with perk-granting small items! Earlier access to psionics and an expanded psionics tree A system of commissioning and promoting XCOM officers who provide bonuses to your entire squad during missions (replaces the Enemy Within medals system) Overhauled interception game, with five new UFO classes such as the Fighter, Raider and Harvester, as well as six interceptors per continent, foundry projects to upgrade your aircraft, individualized pilot names and pilot experience, and the Stingray Missile weapon system Overhauled strategy game, in which the aliens gather resources and conduct research -- efforts XCOM must interdict if it hopes to save humanity. XCOM can now retake countries by finding and conquering alien bases in those countries. Help council countries defend themselves by fulfilling their requests for alien technology! Aliens and EXALT forces grow tougher over time, gaining stats and perks. More Boss Aliens! New weapons for XCOM soldiers Soldiers rest after each mission, requiring the player to build a much deeper roster of soldiers Modified Second Wave options to support longer campaigns New Tactical Combat options and additions, including Damage Resistance! Aliens act much more intelligently in Tactical Combat. Don't Ignore Seekers! As well as a bunch of nice misc fixes. Remember, perks in Long War might be different than they were in Vanilla! How to Install the Mod Read all about it on NexusMods![www.nexusmods.com] REMEMBER Long War is FREE! You may need to make an account on Nexusmods. You do not need to pay any money to them to make an account. 1. Download the mod from NexusMods![www.nexusmods.com]. You may need to sign up to download it. 2. You must have a legitimate version of Enemy Unkown with the Enemy Within Expansion. Slingshot DLC is optional. 3. If you have ever played with any other mods on your EW install, or have changed some files yourself, verify back to a vanilla installation of EW before installing Long War. If you have any trouble with installation, do this as well. 4. Disable any antivirus software. We have specific reports that Comodo security software prevents a proper install, and BitDefender free crashes the game on startup. 5. Make sure you have the latest .NET framework[www.microsoft.com] installed 6. Run the installer. 7. When you select your path to install the mod, you should receive a warning that the directory already exists. If you didn't, have you may have missed a step. 8. Start the game once. You may receive a crash to desktop (CTD) error; this appears to be some aspect of the mod completing installation and then making nice with Steam. Start it again, and it should run. 9. If you have been playing vanilla XCOM in a language other than the one you installed it in, switch XCOM to the installed Long War language via its properties in Steam. NOTE This mod will overwrite several game files and likely render multiplayer unplayable until you uninstall. A Mac and Linux version is available via separate downloads. The mod will not work properly on vanilla Enemy Within campaigns, so you'll need to start a new one. Campaigns are saved even if you uninstall, so you should be able to return to vanilla campaigns. Long War campaigns probably won't work well in vanilla. If Firaxis/2K Games issues any patches to vanilla XCOM, it will overwrite and disable Long War, and almost certainly make the mod unplayable until the modders are able to update it. Unfortunately, turning off automatic updates to the game in Steam, via the game's Steam Library context menu / Properties / Updates tab, does not prevent patches from loading. Your savegames should be preserved, though. If you want to use alternate game textures via TexMod, install them AFTER you fully install Long War. If you install this mod over an existing version you won't be able to uninstall back to vanilla; to do so, you'll have to go to Steam and use the Verify Integrity of Game Cache option (under the game's Steam Library context menu ? Properties ? Local Files tab) to restore your game to its original settings. You should also do this if something goes wrong with the uninstall. Troubleshooting If you want a cleaner version of this mod, you should play the EU version or wait until this version is final. If you get multiple CTDs upon boot, or when starting the first mission, or you start with only four soldiers, or see graphical glitches with some of the new weapons, try the following steps: Go to C:/Users/YOUR WINDOWS USERNAME/Documents/My Games/XCOM - Enemy Within/XComGame/Config Delete all files in that directory. Start the game and see if it works. Go to C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/XEW/XComGame/CookedPCConsole. (This may vary if you have a nontraditional Steam installation.) Look for the files XComGame.upk.uncompressed_size, XComStrategyGame.upk.uncompressed_size and Engine.upk.uncompressed_size. If they are present, delete them. Start the game and see if it works. If not, Go to C:/Users/YOUR WINDOWS USERNAME/Documents/My Games/XCOM - Enemy Within/XComGame/SaveData Delete or rename the file profile.bin and start the game. You may have to re-set your graphics and other settings ingame after this. Start the game and see if it works. Install Long War EW again, over the current copy. This will probably make the included uninstaller not work, so you'll have to verify back to vanilla via Steam to uninstall. If you are getting slowdowns in plays or CTDs when loading user settings, Play in Steam Offline Mode! Steam > Go Offline Check NexusMods![www.nexusmods.com] for the most recent troubleshooting tips, installation tips, and new versions! How to Fix the Freezing while Saving bug Block Outbound Traffic for XcomEW.exe found in Steam/steamapps/common/XCOM Enemy Unknown/XEW/Binaries/win32 If you don't have Enemy Within then just remove the XEW part above, and the .exe should just be XCOM or XCOMEU To block outbound traffic for Windows computers, check this link. http://www.howtogeek.com/227093/how-to-block-an-application-from-accessing-the-internet-with-windows-firewall/?PageSpeed=noscript Starting Your Long War Campaign So you've begun the arduous task of starting a Long War Campaign? There are a few things you need to know. Expect to run into missions that are EXTREMELY difficult. This mod is designed to have missions that are extremely hard and are meant to run away from, these are mostly in the earlygame. Don't be ashamed to lose a few missions or run away from something you can't handle yet. This mod is balanced around that fact. Aliens and Exalt grow more powerful as the game goes on, and they all gain perks as well from time to time. Example, a Thin Man or Chryssalid with Lightning Reflexes. There are many more UFO types, and you will find that you may have Large or Very Large UFOs in the first month, this is natural, as the Aliens are also playing their own metagame, and its expected for you to ignore these until you have the firepower to take them down. The air game is greatly expanded upon and is VERY VERY IMPORTANT. You will run into UFOs you can't kill without very powerful weapons and upgrades, and you will have to let some UFOs go after taking 50% or more damage (Yellow explosions come out of the UFO) just to save yourself the extremely long Intercepter repair times. You don't wanna be out of intercepters when the aliens are coming to shoot down one of your satellites! During the first month a council member will leave. This is normal, as the aliens have taken it over as their base. Aliens have different AI patterns and abilities. For example, Sectoids linked to other Sectoids or units that are killed don't kill the linked unit, but instead do about 2-3 damage to the linked unit instead. In addition, Xcom PSI units can gain Mind Link as well as a Psionic ability, and its nowhere near as punishing as in vanilla due to this change. When you can finally assault alien bases, you can reclaim countries and have them re-enter the council. In order to win, you just beat the Temple Ship. In order to lose, you have to lose all 16 countries from the council. Panic is a value of 100, instead of being 5 stages like in Vanilla. The small blue shield next to a country's panic is their ability to defend themselves against Panic and to help in defending the satellites you have deployed there. This is increased by completing Council requests. Damage Reduction, shown as a blue shield under your damage number, shows how much damage 'bounced' off an enemy. You can also obtain this on your troopers as well. Soldiers have Fatigue, meaning that after a mission if they go on another before Fatigue wears off they will come back injured no matter what. This means you need to make a huge roster of soldiers which you rotate around and might need to bring fewer than the max amount of soldiers on easier missions. (IE, downed scout UFO) In order to interrogate aliens, you must autopsy them first. Some alien autopsies are also behind other research paths such as Alien Biocybernetics. During Terror missions, IE missions where you need to save civllians, each civillian killed raises that countries panic by 2 and the panic of the continent by 1 (Meaning 3 panic per civvie killed for that country.) Losing terror missions or ignoring them means the country immediatly leaves the Council. This mod on NORMAL is a bit harder than Vanilla IRONMAN CLASSIC. That being said, it isn't that bad but still challenging. If you want an easier game, Enable Cinematic Mode in the Second Wave options. If you want a shorter game, enable Dynamic War. If you want a longer game, enable Liberator. Do NOT play in IRONMAN mode unless your ok with a glitch ending your run or your save file getting corrupt for no reason. (It can happen!) Due to this, if you do choose to do Ironman, Periodically back up your game. I'd recommend enablingCommander's Choice Second Wave option. Commander's Choice is something almost everyone uses so you don't have RNG ruining your class picks for a soldier. You can also pick Strict Screening if you don't want random stat variations between your soldiers, but all random allocated stats on soldiers equal the same total anyway and I feel that random stat soldiers make them feel more realistic. Remember, this is a very long war! Read the UFOwiki[ufopaedia.org] for more information. The Different Classes of Long War See the wiki. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Soldiers_%28Long_War%29 This has all the info on classes, officers, and the like. A few tips for each class when it comes to builds... Rocketeers have only one good build. HEAT Warheads Fire in the Hole Shredder Ammo Mayhem Shock and Awe Your choice between Tandem Warheads or Javelin Rockets Additionally you should Steady Weapon before you launch a rocket with a rocketeer, and never launch a rocket on your yellow move. Also if a rocket has a chance to deviate, make sure that it doesn't say "Rocket is blocked" when your firing it. If it does, that rocket will explode on ANYTHING it hits if it deviates, including your own soldiers. If the rocket is NOT blocked, it will go through all objects and cover until it hits the spot it deviated to. Gunners have many builds. Check http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Gunner_%28Long_War%29 Additionally Gunners make great officers. My favorite build is the Bullet Wizard, as they do guaranteed damage, have AoE suppression, and Shred/holo target everything they hit. Infantry have a couple builds. Check http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Infantry_%28Long_War%29 They also make decent officers. My favorite build is the crit build, as it allows them to kill bigger units later on. Snipers have many builds, and due to their sharpshooter rifle, can move with the rest of the squad if you want. (Usually for disable snipers.) http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Sniper_%28Long_War%29 Do note that enemies love shooting at Snipers if they can. I'd also advise making one or two disable snipers. They need more aim than normal snipers due to disabling shots -15 acc penalty, but are very useful when your assaulting bases. Make Sectopods and Bosses much easier. Medics make great PSI units as they usually have the highest will out of everyone. Engineers also make decent PSI units, but they'll be mostly throwing grenades with Sapper to blow away enemy cover or capturing aliens. Assaults and Scouts are pretty straightforward. Both make pretty decent Covert Ops. Scouts additionally can use Concealment to give your squad sight of a pod without activating it if you keep them to high cover. Its really finicky to use right and isn't as straightforward as XCOM 2's concealment, but its still really helpful when combined with Squadsight, In the Zone/Double tap, or Javelin Rockets. Do note that Lightning Reflexes ony gives the scout 90 def instead of making reaction shots miss. This means that while eating overwatch shots with lightning reflexes means 3% chance to hit shots for the most part, eventually the scout will be hit. Also if the alien has a buffed overwatch, the chance may be 20% instead. Check the wiki for MEC classes. Note that a Sniper MEC class starts with In the Zone, and is a great cleaner. The Aliens Have Research and Resources Too? Alien Research Aliens in this mod have research just like you! This means that as the game goes on, they will get stronger just as you get stronger. This could mean that they push out new units, or old units get upgraded with more health, armor, or even abilities! Aliens get research every time you don't shoot down a UFO, an XCOM soldier gets killed, an XCOM soldier gets left behind, A landed UFO is ignored (Besides a Supply Barge), an Abduction mission is ignored, every month per captured country, or just over time. Out of all of these, you can manage quite a few of them, although as the game starts, you wont be able to shoot down every UFO, so aliens will get research that way. That is normal. You can lower alien research by quite a bit if you assault an alien base, but other than that, you can't really lower it, just reduce the amount that they can get. Alien Resources Additionally Aliens have Resources. Depending on how much of a threat they think XCOM is, they will spend more resources each month to launch more and more UFOs/Abductions/Terror missions, or if they deem XCOM a serious threat, just take over a country instantly or Assault XCOM HQ itself. Both of these take a lot of resources from the aliens to do however. How aliens get resources is by successful UFO missions involving a Transport, Harvester, Raider, or Scout. They will also prefer to do these missions in countries where you don't have satellite coverage. This is normal. However if you see a UFO land, there is a good chance that if its not an abductor or one of the bigger UFOs, its a resource mission. Disrupting alien resource missions means that next month you may not get as many alien attacks as you did in the current month, which is great as it slows down their research and gives you breathing room. Of course this also might mean they will try more to shoot down your satellites so they can gain more resources. UFOs, Intercepters, and You UFOs and the air game are much more important in Long War. All alien missions are made from UFOs, from abduction to terror, UFOs are behind it all! Interceptors Remember to name Intercepters to see thier level! At the start of the game, you will sort of struggle dealing with small UFOs like Scouts and wont stand much of a chance vs Medium UFOs, and have no chance vs large or very large UFOs. This is normal, and as the campaign goes on, eventually you'll be able to take down every kind of UFO. Because of how important the air game is, you can now have 6 interceptors per continent, and aliens will eventually assault your hanger bases near the start of the next year if they don't assault XCOM HQ. Additionally you shouldn't engage every UFO. If a UFO is NoE (Nap of Earth) and it isn't a bomber, there is a high chance that it'll land, meaning you can just assault it when its landed and save yourself possible interceptor damage. If a UFO is High, that means its hunting your satellites and should be intercepted. If its a large or very large in early game though, say goodbye to that satellite. You don't need to down a High UFO, bringing it to half (yellow explosions appear around it) means that it failed its mission. If a UFO is low, it could be doing a ton of things. You should assault small low flying UFOs as they are pretty easy to take down (Except maybe in the first month or so when your trying to get your infrastructure up.) Also if you don't engage a UFO, you will get a small bit more panic than if you engaged it, but this is negligible as its better to protect your satellites than having a country gain 2 more panic. But if you have more than 2 active interceptors, then it might be worth it to take out all the UFOs you can, as they reduce alien research and resources. Of course until you have Advanced Phoenix Cannons from Gauss weapons, you wont be able to do much but take down small UFOs and the occasional Medium UFO. Dealing with Interceptor Repair Times Due to the longer repair times of Long War, a heavily damaged interceptor could be out for over a month! For this reason if an interceptor is doing poorly vs a UFO, you can hit the Abort button to bring it back to base. You definitely do not want an interceptor to die if you can help it, as they cost 200 dollars to replace, plus an additional week to put a cannon on them. So how do you deal with interceptors being damaged? You build additional ones on continents that you don't have satellites on and swap the interceptors between the continents so you can keep a couple interceptors ready to defend your satellites. Upgrading Interceptors You can upgrade interceptors by a few methods. The biggest upgrades come from the Advanced Aerospace Concepts research and a few alien autopsy's. These give a global upgrade to all your interceptors. You can also craft temporary upgrades called Modules in the Engineering interface upon researching the correct research. These are great for helping an interceptor take down a UFO, a bigger UFO then it should be able to, or fight a UFO without taking any damage. the Dodge and Aim modules are very very useful, and its usually a good idea to have 3-5 of each. Finally remember to name your interceptors so you can see their ranks. Every few UFO kills an interceptor gets, the better its aim. Interceptor pilots get +3 aim(Capped at 30) and +1% damage per UFO they take down. While their aim bonus is capped out by 10 UFO downs, their damage has no cap (As far as I know). For more interceptor information, check the wiki. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Hangar_%28Long_War%29 UFOs UFOs do quite a few things and there are quite a few UFOs. Read up on them in the wiki. About UFO missions http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Missions_%28Long_War%29 The Different type of UFOs. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/UFOs_%28Long_War%29 But in essence... Ignore NoE UFOs as they will probably land or are doing a bombing run. You can start shooting them down later when your interceptors are upgraded and the like. ALWAYS go after High flying UFOs that are Small so they don't shoot down your satellite. You might be able to discourage medium UFOs as well, but that might be costly. Ignore High Flying large or very large UFOs. Near late game you can shoot these down, but early game you should expect the satellite to go down so begin building a new one. Attack Low flying UFOs at your discretion, usually beating small UFOs to deny the aliens research or stop a scout UFO from spawning a satellite hunt mission. Clown Car UFOs If a UFO lands, it has a small chance of being a Clown Car UFO. What this means is that a small UFO, instead of having like 10 units, might have more than 20 with units you wont see until next month like cyber discs or whatnot. Same with other landed UFOs having far more alien units than normal, hence the name Clown Car. A shot down UFO will NEVER be a Clown Car UFO. Destroyed UFO If you do lots of overkill damage to a UFO, there is a chance that you will destroy it outright. The XCOM council will give you a cash bounty for destroying a UFO, and you will get some alloys, Elerium, and the like, but not much. Additionally the crashed UFO mission will not spawn since you destroyed it. If you don't want this to happen, it might be worth it in the late game to have some interceptors with lower tiered cannons to take down smaller UFOs. Choosing Your Starting Country The first thing you will notice when starting a Long War game is the massive amount of countries you can start in. Unless you desperately want to start in a country, some country bonuses are better than others. Here is the list of country bonuses, what they do, and if they're good or not. On Our Own means you get no bonus if you want a harder game. Continent Starting Bonus Unlike Vanilla XCOM, in order to get a continent bonus you must have full satellite coverage over the country. Here is a list of all the continent bonuses. North America Air Superiority: Aircraft and aircraft weapons cost 25% less to purchase and maintain. (Takes 3 satellites for full coverage) South America Power to the People: Power facilities cost 30% less to build and maintain. (Takes 2 satellites for full coverage) Asia New Warfare:Foundry projects have cash, alloy and elerium cost reduced by 25% percent. (Takes 4 satellites for full coverage) Africa Architects of the Future: Laboratories and Workshops cost 30% less to build and maintain. (Takes 3 satellites for full coverage) Europe Wealth of Nations: Monthly XCOM funding increased by 20%. (Takes 4 satellites for full coverage) Since these are continent bonuses, they're all useful. The most useful one though is probably Air Superiority due to the fact that it reduces interceptor costs from 200 to 150 and reduces the maintenance cost of them per month, saving you tons of money over the course of the game. Additionally Asia's bonus is very useful if you can get it early enough as it reduces the cost of foundry projects, and foundry projects get very expensive very fast. Country Starting Bonuses Here is a list of countries, their starting bonuses, and my take on how good/bad the bonuses are. Nothing is as bad as On Our Own which is no bonus, but not all bonuses are made equally. Country (Continent) Name Effect Argentina (South America) Patriae Semper Vigilis All soldiers receive +5 will. +5 will means more psionic resistance, less panicking early game, and better PSI soldiers. C-B tier Australia (Asia) Per Ardua Ad Astra All soldiers receive +5 ability points for stat rolls upon recruitment. Point distribution is random. Still decent though. C-B tier Brazil (South America) Jungle Scouts Early armors (Tac Vest and Tac, Kestrel, Phalanx and Aurora Armors) receive an additional small item slot until Tactical Rigging is developed. This means that all of your armors have 3 slots instead of 2 for extra items. Very very useful early game making this one of the top tier bonuses. A-A+ tier Brazil (South America) Expertise +15% bonus to research credits from interrogations. Not that useful, because the satellite bonus for Brazil is +10% bonus to research credits anyway. D tier Brazil (South America) On Our Own No unique bonus. Canada (North America) Advanced Preparations XCOM HQ starts with a Laboratory and Workshop already built. Almost as bad as On Our Own as you can't choose where these are placed, and they are placed next to each other, ruining your base layout. Additionally they don't circumvent the Engineer/Scientist requirement for new Workshops/Labs, and in total its only worth about 400$ which you will only keep 200$ as you need to disassemble one anyway to fix your base layout. You do start with a lab though which means you have faster research in the first month.D-C tier Canada (North America) Cadre Start with four corporals in the barracks, one of each supraclass. I don't find this useful as Corporals are fairly fast to get. That being said, this could mean that you can get an Officer Training School up fairly fast and get your squad size upgrades that much faster. Up to you on how you value that. D-C tier China (Asia) Wei Renmin Fuwu Start with a Workshop and Repair Bay already built. Just like Advanced Preparations, this isn't very good. But unlike Advanced Preparations, at least the buildings have the same adjacency bonuses and you could potentially make them work with your base layout, especially since they don't bother your Satellite Uplink/Nexus area of your base. That being said, they're only worth 250$ and workshops early on aren't that important for how cheap and fast they are to build. D tier China (Asia) Xenological Remedies 100% bonus cash from alien corpse and wreck sales. If your playing Brutal or Impossible, there could be a serious case for this as a great starting bonus. The problem is most of your money comes from selling Meld, damaged ship parts, or stuff like that. Include the fact that China's satellite bonus is 1/3rd of this and you see why its not good. C tier China (Asia) Deus Ex 50% reduction in Gene Mods' Meld and cash cost and modification time. Not that useful as gene mods are cheap. Shame really. D tier Egypt (Africa) Gift of Osiris Fatigue from Psi-powers, Gene Mods. and Officer ranks reduced by 50%. Sattlite bonus for this country is for Gene mods at 25%. And that's where the fatigue is short of using lots of PSI D tier Egypt (Africa) For the Sake of Glory Start with Advanced Repair foundry project, which grants faster repair time for aircraft, mechanized units and damaged soldier gear. This is a very good bonus as the Foundry Project itself is expensive and doesn't appear until much later. Plus lower interceptor repair time means you can potentially shoot down more UFOs. Saves you 500$, 100 Alloys, and 80 Meld. B tier France (Europe) Quai d'Orsay Country item requests occur 40% faster; fulfilled requests provide 40% additional defense, and intel scans cost 40% less. This is an amazing bonus and is contender for one of the best country bonuses out of all of them. What this means is that council requests will appear more often, meaning you can get faster scientists and engineers, more money, ext... from all the extra requests. Sadly they are random, but they're still usually pretty good to take if you can spare the items. 40% additional defense means that those 'shields' next to the countries fill up faster, and 40% less for intel scans saves you about 500$ or so if you do your scans.. A+ Tier France (Europe) Foreign Legion Start with 20 additional soldiers in the barracks. This is a horrible starting bonus as you don't need rookies that early on, and you can easily get more as you need them as they aren't that expensive anyway. Plus its going against one of the best starting bonuses. It is 500$ saved though, but considering you start with 40 rookies anyway its not that useful. D tier Germany (Europe) Skunkworks XCOM HQ starts with the Foundry already built. This is 200$ saved and forces you to put your workshop block to the right of your satellite Uplink block. Its not that great considering there are better perks that save you far more money. D tier Germany (Europe) Baumeister Facility construction time reduced by 33%. Its hard to judge how powerful this bonus is as it lets you build rooms in your base faster than normal. I don't have much experience using this, but it looks like its pretty decent as that's 33% faster build times for PSI/Gene/Labs/Uplinks which looks useful C-B Tier Germany (Europe) NeoPanzers 50% reduction in cash, alloy and Elerium required for MEC and SHIV primary weapons. If you want to have a game where your heavily invested into MECs and SHIVs, this feels like it could be fairly decent or average. D-C tier Germany (Europe) On Our Own No unique bonus. Choosing Your Starting Country (Part 2) india (Asia) Jai Jawan Start with 2 additional interceptors in your home base and Elerium Afterburners foundry project, granting extended interception time. Elerium Afterburners are one of the latest Interceptor upgrades in the game. That being said its not as useful as all the other bonuses that aid interceptors in some way, hence the extra 2 interceptors. In total this saves you 600$, 30 alloys, and 30 elerium. C tier Japan (Asia) Ring of Fire XCOM HQ has 3 additional Steam Vents. This is a very interesting bonus. While it may take a few base restarts til you get the vents in good locations, this bonus can completely eliminate your need for Elerium Generators, saving you lots of elerium and money, as well as allowing fast base expansion due to having so much power. I really like how this one shakes up the game so much. B tier Japan (Asia) Ghost In the Machine SHIVs receive +10 aim, and you start the campaign with two SHIVs in the barracks. If you want to have a mostly SHIV game, this is the bonus for you. That being said, normal SHIVs are terrible, you'll want Alloy SHIVs when you can make them as they are vastly superior. D tier Japan (Asia) Kiryu-Kai Commander Start with a Master Sergeant of a random class on your roster. This means that with Commander's Choice, you will have a Max ranked soldier after your first mission of a class of your choice. Considering soldiers get bonus stats every few missions they participate in once they reach Master Sargent, this bonus lets you work towards making a Super Soldier if that's a play style you want to try for. C-B tier Japan (Asia) Robotics +5 bonus aim for new SHIVs and MEC troopers. A slightly better version of Ghost in the Machine as it also benefits MEC troopers, which make great (although expensive) troopers. C tier Japan (Asia) On Our Own No unique bonus. Mexico (North America) Wealthy Benefactor Start with 500 bonus cash A very flexible bonus as its 500$ which you can do whatever you want with, which is the baseline amount that other cash saving perks attempt to save you. B tier Mexico (North America) Ancient Artifact Start the campaign with an Illuminator Gunsight small item. This starts you with a SCOPE that also gives Executioner as a bonus perk, meaning your soldier will have more aim vs targets with less than 50% hp. Considering you only get 1 other item like this later in the game, its up to you if this is worth 500$ or not. Note that this can't be stacked with a SCOPE item or Neural Uplink. D tier Mexico (North America) Legacy of Uxmal 20% bonus to psionic training chances. Soldiers have a base 50% chance for their psionic training to succeed. This brings it to 70% which if you want a strong PSI game and don't want too much failure, could be useful. That being said, the country sattlite bonus is 10% chance to PSI training chances. D tier due to Country Satellite Bonus Nigeria (Africa) Pax Nigeriana All soldiers receive +1 mobility. This means all soldiers can move 1 additional tile. A very powerful bonus. B-A tier Nigeria (Africa) The Old Path 50% reduction in psi training time. Instead of 10 days to train a psionic soldier, its now 5. Not that good, considering the satellite bonus is this bonus at 20% reduction. D tier Nigeria (Africa) On Our Own No unique bonus. Russia (Europe) Sukhoi Company Start with Enhanced Avionics foundry project, granting +10% to hit during air combat. A very nice bonus early game as you wont get this until Advanced Aerospace Concepts and early game you sort of struggle to hit Scouts as your pilots aren't trained or have good weapons. It also saves you 400$ and some alloys from the project itself. B tier Russia (Europe) Roscosmos Start with an additional satellite uplink, and all satellites cost 50% less to build. This is one of the other top tier bonuses, as this lets you build 2 sattlites for the cost of 1. And like it or not, satellites will be shot down from time to time, so the cost reduction for new ones is great. Plus the extra uplink is right next to your first one, not hurting your base layout at all. And if you have the Second Wave option Diminishing Returns enabled, this helps deal with that. This saves anywhere from 500$ to over 2000$ depending on Second Wave options and how many times your satellites get shot down. A tier South Africa (Africa) Resourceful Start with Alien Metallurgy and Advanced Salvage foundry projects (bonus alloys and weapon fragments). Another Top Tier bonus as this saves you 500$, 70 alloys, and 140 meld and lets you get extra alloys and weapon fragments from mission one, which you need lots of. A tier South Africa (Africa) Survival Training All soldiers receive +1 hit point. 1 extra hp means that a hit will not put soldiers into med-bay for as long and they may survive shots that would otherwise kill them. Up to you how much you value this. I personally don't value this much as its better to not get hit at all. C tier United Kingom (Europe) Special Air Service All soldiers receive +3 aim. Aim is always good. B-A tier United Kingom (Europe) Their Finest Hour Start with Penetrator Weapons foundry project, granting interceptor weapons increased armor piercing capabilities. This is another aerospace upgrade. This lets you possibly take down Medium UFOs with a Phoenix Cannon, a couple interceptors, and some luck. It saves you 300$, 80 alloys, and 45 weapon fragments. C tier United Kingom (Europe) Sandhurst 33% reduction in ranks required to unlock Officer Training School projects. Not very useful as you don't care about officer training school rank amounts due to how many soldiers you need to have leveled anyway to avoid Fatigue. D tier United States (North America) Special Warfare School Officer Training School Projects cost 90% less. This over the course of the game saves you 1500$ and basically lets you get squad size upgrades for dirt cheap whenever they're available. B-A tier United States (North America) Cheyenne Mountain XCOM HQ starts with all elevators already built, and excavation costs are reduced by 50%. This is a fun RP build since if XCOM ever existed IRL it would be located here. This gives your base +3 power, and lets you start to expand it quickly and cheaply. It saves you upwards of 500$ or 600$ over the course of the game which is above average. C-B tier United States (North America) We Have Ways 75% reduction in time to complete autopsies and interrogations. I don't find this useful as autopsies and interrogations are fast anyhow and at points even with them at normal speed you may run into times where you can't research anything due to not having enough weapon fragments anyway. D tier United States (North America) On Our Own No unique bonus. Country Satellite Bonus In addition to a continent bonus, each country also gives you a bonus if they have satellite coverage. Most of these bonuses are weaker versions of starting bonuses, but some are unique as well. Check them out on the Wiki, as well as the starting amount for each country. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/The_Council_%28Long_War%29 Tips On How To Have a More Sucessful Long War Commander's Choice is a recommended Second Wave option so you can choose your soldier's class. SHIVs are amazing. Alloy SHIVs make excellent tanks with the correct upgrades. (Crit immunity and more DR, alongside 2hp/turn Foundry project) and don't have fatigue if they finish a mission undamaged. They can also be upgraded to suppress targets, making them some decent support as well. SHIV kills give no XP. Don't neglect the Steady Weapon option. Additionally always Steady Weapon on a Rocketeer before you fire its rocket so the rocket doesn't deviate. Full Cover gives some DR in addition to its defensive bonuses. Try to stick to it as much as you can. Use Grenades to remove alien cover. Really helps vs mutons that like to hide in cover. Remember to scan for EXALT every 16 days. Remember to disable EXALT relays. Disabling a relay forces EXALT weapons to malfunction. EXALT can still use their alternative abilities such as firing a rocket or throwing a grenade though. Assaults make great Covert Ops since they can Run and Gun to disable an EXALT relay. Don't feel ashamed to sell items on the Grey Market. Its necessary on higher difficulties. Plus once you can get alien captives, those make better trades for the council than corpses. Only corpses you don't wanna sell are Cyber discs since they make Dodge modules for your interceptors. You also need 15 thin men for an acid grenade, ext... But since you get aliens like crazy as each mission has 10-50 aliens on the map at once or more, well, corpses are aplenty! And captured alien weapons sell for a lot themselves. Try to always have 1 satellite in stock just in case the aliens shoot down one of your satellites. That way you can instantly put up the new one. Suppressing an Overwatching alien will suppress its Overwatch until your Suppressing Fire is canceled. Likewise dealing damage to an alien using Suppression fire cancels its suppression. To finish Long War, you need a PSI unit with Rift. To obtain Rift, they must mind control an Ethereal. This is very difficult due to the obscenely high will of the ethereal. To help this along, a Combat Drugs soldier and a berserker serum, as well as a 2nd psi unit that mind links with the first unit, can help out a bunch. Even with all of this, you might only have a 60% chance to mind control the ethereal. Its the hardest part of the campaign for sure. Managing Fatigue Fatigue is a new mechanic in Long War. Basically what it means is that after a mission, those soldiers will be injured for 1 hp if you send them into another mission before their fatigue wears off. Psionic soldiers and Gene modded soldiers have longer fatigue than normal soldiers, and SHIVs have no fatigue at all. What this means is that you need to rotate your soldiers. Instead of the base game where you had one super great squad, in this game you will have, 4, 5, or maybe even 7 squads rotating in and out. A good way to help manage fatigue is to in the first few months, bring some Rookies in alongside your squaddies, improving them and getting your next few squads ready for when you need them later on. In addition you can build some SHIVs (I'd recommend Alloy SHIVs, they're good all the way til the end.) to help alleviate your roster's fatigue as they don't suffer fatigue. Just remember SHIV kills don't give XP! Building a Sucessful Base Planning your Base Layout Building a base for the Long War is actually fairly straightforward. A few things to keep in mind... 1. Lots of rooms have adjacency bonuses, forcing your base to have to dedicate places to certain areas depending on their adjacency bonuses. 2.. Restart if any steam vents are in the top left most 2x3 grid, as thats where your satellite nexus/relays have to go. Now, for the actual buildings, there isn't that much to say about the layout. Essentially your going to try for a specific layout for your satellite relays/labs/workshops and your base will basically have spots dedicated to certain bits. What this means.... 1. The top 2 rows to the left, you will have 3 adjacent Satellite Relays and 3 Satellite Nexus, filling out a 2x3 grid. This will give you exactly enough satellite uplinks to cover the entire planet. 2. Find a spot in your base with a free 2x2 grid. In this spot you will put 2 labs, your Gene lab, and your PSI lab. If you want more Research speed, you can put a temporary lab somewhere if you have spare materials/power. 3. Your Workshop section, comprised of Workshops, your Foundry, and the Repair Bay(Cybernetics Lab), will either be a 2x2 block, a 2x2+1 block, or a 2x3 block depending on what you can fit in your base. 4. Your Power Generators you probably wont have much of a choice on, but try to get as many adjacency bonuses that you can with them without interrupting the other 3 base areas. 5. Place the Alien Containment Facility, Officers School, Hyperwave Relay, and Gallop Chamber wherever you want that doesn't interfere with any of the above as they have no adjacency bonuses. Now that you have an idea on how to layout your base, what do you build first? Build Order In the Long War, there isn't a hard and fast rule of what you build first. Usually you want to get your foundry up while slowly getting over to your steam vents and putting up a relay so you can get your continent bonus. Once this is done, you can usually safely start working on the rest of your infrastructure as you amass more Interceptors so you can protect other continents, and eventually launch satellites on them. That being said, if you have some Second Wave modifiers active, like say, Wear and Tear, a Repair Bay might be one of your higher priorities. Thankfully its really cheap to make and is usually one of your first buildings anyway after the first Relay and the Foundry. Ideally the build order for your early game should be this... 1. A second Relay so you can have 3 satellites up at once. 2. A temporary Fission Generator so you can build down to your Steam Vents 3. Work your way down to reach your planned 'Workshop' block 4. Put up a Foundry 5. Work your way to your first Steam Vent 6. Build a Thermal Generator. At this point you can choose how you want to build your base from here. You can decide to remove that Fission generator if you want since the steam vent one will give lots of power and put another building there, or what have you. NOTE: On the higher difficulties, especially with Second Wave options War Weariness and Results Driven, you may want to keep that fission generator until much later as money is extremely scarce. Why Do I have building limitations? If your on a roll and have lots of money, and thus rapidly expand your base, you'll find out that some rooms such as Labs, Workshops, and Satellite Uplinks/Nexus have an 'engineer' or 'scientist' requirement. This is a new feature in the Long War so you have a need for those people. Just build the room when you have enough scientists and Engineers. Recommended Early Game Research Paths Research in Long War is fairly straightforward at the start, and branches off later in the game depending on how you want to build your army. This section is to explain the standard build path before you start to branch off into other paths. First and foremost, EVERY research path takes XenoBiology first, NO EXCEPTIONS! This allows you to trade Sectoid corpses to the council for scientists, thus greatly speeding up your future research. Next you will grab Alien Weaponry to unlock the SCOPE item for you to build, increasing soldier accuracy, and unlocking the way to Beam Lasers Next you will research Beam Lasers so you can get laser weapons, giving your soldiers a massive accuracy and damage upgrade. At this point you can choose to either get Alien Materials or Advanced Beam Lasers Alien Materials allows you to trade Meld and other items to the council, but some of those deals might not be worth it. Additionally it unlocks the Phoenix Cannon, which will give your interceptors a huge boost vs UFOs, especially armored UFOs. Advanced Beam Lasers meanwhile will give you the Laser Cannon for your interceptors, which is stronger than the Phoenix cannon vs non armored UFOs. Additionally it'll give you access to the specialized weapons for every class. Once you have grabbed both of these, you will get Experimental Warfare which unlocks the ability to make Acid grenades when you autopsy a Thin men. It also unlocks the next and last Early game research you should beeline for, Advanced Aerospace Concepts At this point you can decide if you want to rush Gauss weapons, rush Psionics, get Armor, rush Plasma, or rush MECs. Each of these paths will be in the ADVANCED section. Advanced Research Paths Now you have gotten your Xenobiology and maybe your lasers, and you want to know where to go from there? Well there are many paths that you can choose from. Do note, while Xenobiology is unskippable, you can skip Lasers if you know what your doing, instead picking up Alien Materials for a Phoenix Cannon and taking these alternate routes. Or you could come to these routes from the Early Game Research Path area of this guide. Additionally you can research autopsy's and interrogations at any time, as well as Alien UFO research projects. One Autopsy that is recommended is Thin men however, as they give access to Acid grenades after you research Experimental Warfare. Interrogations are also very nice as any future aliens of that type that you capture can be traded to the council for AMAZING rewards. 1 muton captive could get you 2 scientists and 200 dollars for example! In addition Interrogations give Research Credits, increasing future Research and Foundry speed for anything relating to that credit by 25%. Path 1: Armor Tech This is the next logical step up after Lasers, even though all paths listed here are also alternatives. Just upgrade your armor until you have Aurora or Banshee armor. This means getting Alien Materials, Improved Body Armor, Advanced Body Armor, Elerium, and Mobile Power Armor. You can stop this path upon researching Advanced Body Armor no problem and work towards other goals if you so wish, picking it up later when you have the chance to research Elerium. Berserker Interrogation increases Armor Research due to an armor credit, but chances are this will only help you with Advanced Power Armor or the MEC armor research lines. Path 2: Psionics Unlike the base game, it is very fast and easy to get into Xenopsionics, only requiring Xenoneurology, Xenogenetics, and Sectoid Autopsy to unlock the research option. This research path will give you the Gene Lab and the PSI lab, both of which give adjacency bonuses if next to laboratories or themselves, increasing your research speed and giving you access to PSI units. Sectoid Interrogation goes a long way to making this research faster, as Sectoid research credits increase Biocybernetics and Xenogenetic research. Sectoid Commanders help Xenopsionics, but chances are you will research Xenopsionics long before you ever see a Sectoid Commander. The downsides to this path are that if you skipped Lasers, your still using your starting weapons and may be feeling a slight pinch as Alien health has gone up. If you didn't skip lasers, you might be a bit behind on your armor, which isn't too bad. Path 3: MECs MECs take a bit longer to get to in Long War and are very expensive, but are still very good. In order to unlock Alien Biocybernetics, you must first research XenoGenetics, Alien Materials, and Alien Computers and have built a Repair Bay in your base. This lets you build a MEC and later on you can unlock the Flamethrower, which is still as powerful in Long War as it was in the base game. Sectoid Interrogation goes a long way to making this research faster, as Sectoid research credits increase Biocybernetics and Xenogenetic research. The downside of MECs is that they are expensive to produce, costing more than an interceptor per armor. Path 4: Gauss Gauss is the next tier weapon after Lasers, and can be either rushed at the start, or after you finish your Early game research paths. Gauss Weapons only require Alien Materials and Experimental Warfare to be researched before you can make them, and are the middle of the road when it comes to weapons. They also reduce enemy Damage Resist by 2/3rds of a point when shooting at them, and the Gauss Sniper Rifle has built in HEAT ammo. In addition you get access to the Advanced Phoenix Coils foundry project, allowing you to upgrade your Phoenix Cannons to be able to take down some medium sized UFOs with no help or Large UFOs using Dodge/Aim modules and 1-3 interceptors. Muton Interrogation Research Credits increase Gauss research, so they may be helpful if you find you can interrogate a muton before you get access to Gauss. There aren't any real disadvantages for going to Gauss after the early game build as its the next step up other than your armor might be falling behind. Path 4a: Gauss Rush This is the same as above, but you skip researching Lasers and just rush straight for guess. Unlike the above, this has some serious disadvantages, but if done right you can get Gauss weapons out 2 months earlier than normal. The downsides of this are numerous however, first and foremost they take a long time to research and build. It could take upwards of 2 months before you research basic Gauss after starting to research it, followed by another month building the guns themselves! All this time the Aliens are getting ahead of you in research, making the tactical game harder. Path 5: Pulse Weapons Pulse is the 2nd best weapon type in the game, and the highest type XCOM can build itself without you needing to capture aliens. It requires Advanced Beam Lasers and Alien Power Systems to research. If you research this and its Advanced counterpart after researching Advanced Gauss weapons, you will get access to EMP weapons, which will give you the 2nd strongest aircraft weapon, the EMP cannon, which is as good as a Plasma cannon but doesn't need an Alien Heavy Rifle to craft. Thin Man Interrogation help this research path immensely due to the laser credit. I'd recommend getting this after researching some armor tech, Gauss, and maybe a support tech like Psionics or MECs, as Gauss can get you to the end of the year usually. You can get this after getting Advanced Lasers, Aerospace, and all of that if you want though, but like Plasma, it might make your tactical game harder due to how long it takes to research and build. Path 6: Plasma These are the highest tier weapons in the game, and unlike the base game, are actually tricky to make as you need to capture an alien alive to get its weapon, which in turn is used to craft a plasma weapon as XCOM can't reproduce an alien plasma core. Researching Plasma takes a great deal of time, needing Xenoneurology for the capture device, Elerium, Alien Computers, Alien Weaponry, Alien Power Systems, and Alien Biocybernetics. Naturally if your going this route you will unlock MECs long before you unlock Plasma weapons, so this is a possible research path to combine with obtaining MECs and Lasers. Heavy Floaters give a Plasma Research Credit. The earliest I've seen Plasma Carbines come online is late August, so its not necessarily the best research path to beeline for after finishing the early game stuff, and you should definitely not rush plasma at all. Once you eventually make your way to Plasma and the heavier armor types, all that's left are a few other research paths that I'm sure you can figure out. One that isn't obvious however is Fusion Weapons, which requires Heavy Plasma and EMP weapons to be researched and for you to take down an Alien Battleship and obtaining a Fusion Core. This will give you access to the Fusion Lance Aerospace weapon and the Blaster Launcher, but chances are if you don't have the Slingshot DLC, you may never see Fusion Weapons pop up as downing an alien Battleship is very difficult. Advanced Tactics -Hide behind full cover for that extra 0.5-1 DR. -Hunker Down is a command you can use if your soldier is in a bad spot, but not being flanked. It makes them immune to crits and gives them more defense to survive shots more so they can tank while your other soldiers clean up house. Its not used that often, but don't forget its there. -Smoke Grenades are great for making alien shots miss. Combine with Acid to make most alien shots a 1% chance to hit. -Alloy SHIVs can be used as cover, and aliens will tend to shoot the SHIV and not the soldier if they're not using their grenades or other special abilities. -Smoke Grenades are very useful, especially when they're upgraded. -Engineers are something your going to take every mission. Being able to blow away enemy cover with one grenade is too valuable, so Sapper is a must for them. -Repairing a SHIV in the field so that it has all its health points healed up will keep it from going to the shop to be repaired when you get back to base. This is NOT true for soldiers however, who will go back to base with the lowest hp injury they had that round. Additionally if you revive a soldier and they go down again, they will have an even greater resting period. -Infantry will probably make up the bulk of your squads as they're the most versatile killers. -Don't forget to use grenades and rockets and other explosives. Sometimes you'll need to lose the alien artifacts to be able to withstand a large alien assault. Even then you'll tend to have a few aliens survive a rocket later on in the game. You only lose alien artifacts if explosive damage kills the aliens, damaging them is fine. -Shredder rockets are amazing for cleaning up a large group of Drones who are difficult to hit otherwise. -Explosives deal less damage the further away from the center of the explosion. This includes cover damage. So try to adjust the explosive AoE to be positioned with the biggest enemy taking the most damage. -Acid Grenades reduce alien accuracy by 30% and deal damage over time, one damage per turn or 1 damage per move. Poisoning a Berserker with an acid grenade for example will damage them for 1 hp per time when they move. Also Acid Grenades reduce enemy DR by 2, which means they let you penetrate and get more damage when used on mechanical units like Sectopods and Cyberdiscs. -SCOPES and Laser Sights +Aim bonuses stack for the earlygame. -Mechanical units have 2+ DR for the most part, so if you don't hit them with hard hitting attacks or shred their armor, you may have a difficult time damaging them. HEAT ammo works great for them as well. Modding Long War Do not change in game .inis unless you have a basic understanding of code. The wiki has a lot of popular mods. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mods_%28Long_War%29 My recommended mod is the Pistol Slot Arc Thrower. (It is also the easiest to 'install') With the release of B15, the code required for a pistol slot Arc Thrower is included in the DGC.ini. To make the change, all you need to do is comment out (add a ";") the default line for the arc thrower and remove the comment located several lines lower. Essentially you tell the game to stop reading the default line of arc thrower code and begin reading the pre-built code enabling the pistol slot. It is explained in the comments of the DGC.ini. To increase the range of the Arc Thrower to normal vision range, replace line 1673 in DefaultGameCore.ini with this: Itembalance_Normal=(eItem=eItem_ArcThrower,iCash=100,iElerium=0,iAlloys=94000,iTime=10,iEng=20) (The iAlloys field for the Arc Thrower item was set to 94000) Remember that each item has 2 different listings. Credits Guide creation: Archmage MC(Me) Mod Creation: Long War Studios Information: UFOpedia Remember, if you have a question, just reference the wiki! http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Long_War

开始玩《幽浮：内部敌人》时，我发现了一个小但令人讨厌的bug——基地控制中心的地球仪无法旋转（无论是用鼠标还是键盘）。我到处都找不到解决方法，最后只在英文论坛上找到了，现在分享出来——对我有用。 问题： 基地控制中心的地球仪全息图无法手动旋转，无论是用鼠标还是键盘。只有在时间流逝（“扫描”）时才会自动旋转。解决方法 操作步骤如下： 1. 保存进度并退出游戏。 2. 找到您账户的游戏设置文件夹，通常路径为：【用户】Documents My Games XCOM - Enemy Within XComGame Config。 3. 在该文件夹中找到XComInput.ini文件，用记事本打开。 4. 在[Engine.PlayerInput]部分的末尾，即紧接[Engine.DebugCameraInput]部分之前，添加以下两行： Bindings=(Name="TurnGlobeX", Command="Axis aTurn Speed=0.1") Bindings=(Name="TurnGlobeY", Command="Axis aLookup Speed=-0.Bindings=(Name="MoveMouseX", Command="Count bXAxis | Axis aMouseX") Bindings=(Name="MoveMouseY", Command="Count bYAxis | Axis aMouseY") Bindings=(Name="LeftMouseButton", Command="Left_Mouse_Button_Press | SetBind MouseX TurnGlobeX | SetBind MouseY TurnGlobeY | onrelease Left_Mouse_Button_Release | onrelease SetBind MouseX MoveMouseX | onrelease SetBind MouseY MoveMouseY") 重要的是要将它们添加到[Engine.PlayerInput]部分的末尾，而不是开头、中间或其他位置 保存并关闭文件。 启动游戏并检查。 这对我有帮助。希望对你也有帮助。我也提供来源——2K论坛，那里还有其他解决方案，如果你遇到上述情况且没有帮助的话。