X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Average Manatee]

Night requires usage of flares and/or fire. Aliens can see perfectly fine in dark while your troops have their vision cut by half.

 

[octavius]

Night requires usage of flares and/or fire. Aliens can see perfectly fine in dark while your troops have their vision cut by half.

Yeah, that's what I figured. But for some reason I thought the game would tell me if a mission was a night mission. In hindsight that was of course a stupid assumption.

BTW, any advice on the use of smoke grenades? Use them when you need to cross open spaces?

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, many players use them to cover the whole map, but I like to roleplay my X-com so it just seems wrong fighting in a permanent mist. But smoke grenades is a life saver. What they can't see they can't react fire at.

 

[octavius]

Alien corpses: do you need more than one of each type for research? IOW, can I sell the rest without worry?

And Proximity Grenades: if the aliens won't take the bait so to speak, but your own soldiers have to pass them, is it possible set them off by shooting them?

 

[ArchAngel]

Night requires usage of flares and/or fire. Aliens can see perfectly fine in dark while your troops have their vision cut by half.

Yeah, that's what I figured. But for some reason I thought the game would tell me if a mission was a night mission. In hindsight that was of course a stupid assumption.

BTW, any advice on the use of smoke grenades? Use them when you need to cross open spaces?

Why would the game tell you if it is a night mission? It is a night mission if your Skyranger arrives when it is night, this is not nuXcom where stuff is not dependent on what is actually going on the globe.

 

[octavius]

In hindsight that was of course a stupid assumption.

 

[ArchAngel]

In hindsight that was of course a stupid assumption.

It is best you learned the hard way the pain of night missions and cyberdisks
We have all been there and learned that lesson

 

[Endemic]

Smoke takes time to spread and it's not an impenetrable barrier, so the graphics are misleading in that respect. Still, a lot safer than crossing open terrain.

 

[Average Manatee]

Best way to use smoke is:

1. Covering your initial deployment from the Skyranger (pretty much the most vulnerable part of the mission).
2. Move around without smoke during your turn and throwing smoke ahead to cover you during the alien turn. This way you can use your full vision during your turn while during the alien turn the aliens have troubles finding you. X-Com is a game about how not to be seen

 

[octavius]

Best way to use smoke is:

1. Covering your initial deployment from the Skyranger (pretty much the most vulnerable part of the mission).

Does that mean waiting one turn for the grenade to go off, or using the advanced option to make go off in the same round if the timer is set to 0?

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, wait a round for it to go off. It's a good idea not to go out of the skyranger turn 1 anyway, Aliens have their full TUs ready to fire out you, while on turn 2 they'll probably have spent some of it moving around on turn 1.

BTW, most of the advanced options are added by Openxcom, not really vanilla features (though a few of them are actually to revert things back to the way vanilla X-com worked, like the 80-item craft limit).

 

[Jaedar]

So how long does it take before you get that nice feeling of being in control in this game?

However long it takes you to acclimatize to the expected amount of casualties.

Basically, you just have to realize that losing half your dudes during a mission is totally fine, as long as it was the right half of the dudes.

 

[Dayyālu]

So how long does it take before you get that nice feeling of being in control in this game?

When you master sniper-spotter.

You can play the game two ways: sending your troops in, suffering like a dog with a tons of casualties and grin like a retard when the last survivor puts down the last alien, or employ sniper-spotter.

Smoke grenades. The most dangerous part is the exit from the Skyranger. Smoke everything. Deploy. Grenade everything that seems dangerous.

Deploy a line of snipers. Near cover, of course. Good soldiers, with the best weapons you have. Then, spotters. High AP rookies or whatevs, even without equipment or with minimal one. Spot alien. Fuck alien with the "sniper" fire. Remember that gunfire can destroy walls and stuff. Always have your spotters covered by interlocking fields of fire.

Rinse and repeat. A turn 20 the Aliens will know your position and rush you, and you chop them.

It's a somewhat boring way to play. And of course, it will not save you from those delicious moments when the Skyranger gets deployed near a barn with active aliens, and ALL movements cause reaction fire. Awesome.

Terror From the Deep is done?

 

[Endemic]

TFTD was done a while ago, unless you mean a full release with autoinstall?

 

[octavius]

This is fucking ridicilous...I have a whole squad parked outside the entryway to a UFO, all with TUs left for Snap Shots and looking in the right direction. One ET comes out, calmly shoots two of my soldiers and just stands there, but none of my guys fire a single shot. WFT?!?

 

[Niektory]

IIRC the percentage of TUs you have left is an important factor, so to have a good chance of reaction fire you need near-full TUs.

 

[Average Manatee]

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Reaction_Fire

The games UI is kind of misleading since the way reaction works is never explained, but the "reserve TUs for x" buttons are basically useless for reaction firing, they are for making sure you don't move too close and exhaust all your TUs before shooting on your turn. If you leave people with the bare minimum necessary to reaction fire they'll probably only be able to shoot if the enemy (usually with a higher base reaction stat) completely exhausts all of their TUs, which is kind of worthless. To have a good shot at reacting you want as much of your TUs available as possible, 80% or more on higher difficulties. If you have only a few TUs left you are better off looking for cover.

To give an example, if the Alien has 2x your reaction stat, and you end turn with 30% of your TUs left, you'll only be able to fire if the alien exhausts his TUs below 15% of his max. If your reaction = his then you'd be able to shoot once he's used his TUs down below 30%, and so on.

 

[octavius]

Those Chrysalids (nasty buggers!) seem to be spawning out of thin air sometimes, or I am just imagining things?
Funny thing that on the first Terror mission I didn't bring along any heavy weapons (except a Tank with a cannon) to minimize civilian casualties, I encountered these zombiefying bastards, and could just as well have killed the civilians myself.

 

[Dayyālu]

Those Chrysalids (nasty buggers!) seem to be spawning out of thin air sometimes, or I am just imagining things?
Funny thing that on the first Terror mission I didn't bring along any heavy weapons (except a Tank with a cannon) to minimize civilian casualties, I encountered these zombiefying bastards, and could just as well have killed the civilians myself.

Chryssalids have insanely high TU values. They can easily start outside of viewing range and close in a single turn.

When you get a Chryssalids terror mission, there is no "avoid civilian casualties". Nuke everything you see with heavy weapons and incendiary guns, you are doing them a favour. Remember, burnt zombies don't spawn extra Chryssalids.

Honestly, Chryssalids terror missions are easier than the Base missions with 'em: the trick is to have space. Go slow and be methodical: burn, destroy, and waste ammo to get good firing lanes. In Base Missions you'll get them in close quarters, your only hope there will be to get the drop on them or reaction fire.

I remember how in TFD I employed rookies with active grenades as Tentaculats spotters in Base missions (Tentaculats are TFD's Chryssalids, same mechanics bar the fact that they fly) . Fun times, fun times.

 

[Jaedar]

When you get a Chryssalids terror mission,

Fixed it for you.

 

[Average Manatee]

Honestly Cyberdisks are worse than Chryssalids.

The way to handle Chryssalids is with Tanks, using their inexhaustible energy and high TUs to scout ahead constantly. Chryssalids have around 120 TUs and crossing the full vision range costs 80 TUs IIRC, so a tank that can consistently scout ahead, then move 40 TUs backwards, is effectively immunized from attack. Plus Tanks can usually take quite a lot of hits from the buggers before dying, unlike your soldiers for whom its always instant death.

Cyberdisks, OTOH, fuck their OP gun with OP accuracy. Fuck their reactions. Fuck the fact that you can't tell which way they are facing. Fuck their explosion on death BS, which kills your guys in close quarters and kills your loot if it dies near any items. And a terror mission with Cyberdisks has Psi-aliens too, so it's already extremely risking to attempt and you have to bum-rush the map before half your soldier panic and shoot each other.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Oh, Cyberdisks...

I remember this game I was playing back in the 90s. Landed at a terror site in the Skyranger. In line with the ramp, with a perfect view into the plane's interior, some 15 or so squares away, three Cyberdisks arranged in a nice little triangular pattern so they don't get in each others' way.

 

[Mustawd]

Honestly Cyberdisks are worse than Chryssalids.

Rocket launcher those bastards. Done.

Chryssalids are the worst. The worst.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's not a matter of how hard they are to kill, every enemy other than Sectopods go down pretty quickly.

 

[octavius]

So how do you catch those alien bases? Every time I send the Sky Ranger the base is dismanted and they fly away before my squad arrives. Or is there a difference between landing sites and bases?
Word on the Ufopedia is that I need to capture an alien leader from a base.