X-Com: UFO Defense
- When you begin your game, begin building more Living Quarters and General Stores. You'll need them for more Scientists and all the loot you'll be shortly aquiring.
- Change both Interceptors' weaponry so they use Avalanche Missles; these are longer range than most UFO beams and should take out all UFOs until you can get Plasma Beams.
- Understand that units are expendable; it is not uncommon to have 50% mortality rates for new players. Just be sure to buy more Rookies.
- You can right click to have a unit turn and look. The Skyranger has windows allowing you to see a good portion of the map simply by right clicking.
- If you are finding yourself running out of ammo clips after missions, unload as many clips before the end of the mission. The game reads any clip currently in a gun as completely expended if even one shot as been fired from it. Alternatively, ammo clips not in a gun after the mission is finished counts as a full clip, even if only one shot remains.
- Never, ever, EVER sell Elerium-115. This is the basis of making plasma clips and advanced aircraft fuel. You cannot buy or make it; you must recover it from UFOs or alien bases.
- Terror missions are hard in the early game, especially for new players. If you think you cannot handle a terror mission, go there anyway and abort the mission on the first turn. Though you'll recieve a bad score, the penalty for allowing a terror mission to go unchecked is much worse.
- The best starting places for your first base is America or Europe. The surrounding countries contribute a large amount of money to your cause every month. Do good and they will increase funding.
- Try to research Laser weapons as soon as possible. They are a large upgrade in terms of damage and speed, and they don't use ammo to boot. Rifles are best for combat, pistols are manufactured in bulk to sell for a good early profit, and heavy laser is regarded as useless due to lack of auto-shot.(This is a filthy lie. Laser weapons might be better than Rifles, but relatively speaking they are completely useless. By the time you're done researching them and have a batch manufactured, you should be almost done researching Plasma Cannons.)
- Auto shot. Use it, learn it, love it. It fires three shots right after each other, statstically increasing your chance at actually hitting the target. In some cases where ammo or risk of secondary explosions is high, Aimed shot may be better. Maybe.
- Try to keep your scientists researching and your engineerings manufacturing 24/7. Shoot down and recover every UFO you can until you think you have a firm grasp on the game. X-Com is a big game and it will take a few sessions before you feel like you know what you're doing.
- Plasma Cannons are the best weapons in the game. They have stats (accuracy and TU cost) comparable to or better than the Rifle, but they deal damage equivalent to a Heavy Laser. Ammunition for Plasma Cannons is pretty ubiquitous, too. Within a couple months of the start of the game, you should have all your soldiers carrying Plasma Cannons all of the time.
- Get lasers, fuck the haters. Keep at least one laser rifle in your squad at all times, right up until the end of the game. You will thank me when you run into your first Sectopod/Cyberdisc. Lasers utterly destroy the mechs in 2-3 hits vs. 5-6 Heavy Plasma shots.
- Ignore all the talk about Heavy Lasers and Laser cannons. Neither is worth researching, even though Laser Cannons have the highest profit margin. Your best seller early on is Motion Scanners, not Laser Pistols. Once you're well down the line of research and your engineers need more stuff to research, research the big Laser weapons and convert your manufacturing wing to that.
- Each Lab can hold 50 Scientists. A given Workshop can only hold about 30 Engineers, because whatever they're building takes up space. Never have excess personnel. If they're not working, they should be fired.
- Capture an alien ASAP and research and build an Alien Containment. It will cost you a lot of soldiers, but it's worth the effort.
- Get the Stun Launcher as fast as possible. If anything larger than the cross-shaped UFO lands or crashes, try to stun every alien inside until you get a Navigator. Immediately research a Hyperwave Decoder.
- Get a damn Hyperwave Decoder as soon as you can. Seriously, do it.
- Electroflares are reusable. You never need more than 12 of them, ever. Do not waste your space with more.
- In base defense, the game automatically gives you the first 256 items in your base inventory, regardless of whether you have better stuff. The list follows your sell screen, so unload all those crappy rifles and pistols, and don't fill your inventory with 80 electroflares (see above) and 20 stun rods.
- If you're getting sick of Battleships attacking your base in the late game, build 3 Fusion Ball Launchers and a Grav Shield. This is guaranteed to destroy any and all ships that ever attack your base. Ever.
- 2 Alien grenades or high explosives going off in the same spot can blast a hole in the wall of a UFO. This is much cheaper than using a blaster bomb, and a lot easier to do early on. Manipulate the timers to make them go off in the same round.
- Crouching raises your accuracy and makes you harder to hit. Always save at least 4 TUs to make everyone crouch at the end of a round. Crouch before you fire if the shot will end your round.
- Equipping something in your other hand when you have a two-handed gun will lower your accuracy. Avoid when possible. Pistols and Stun Rods are the only 1 handed weapons. Psi-Amps and Mind Probes don't even use accuracy, so you can equip both at the same time.
- Your first base should be in either North America or Europe. Before you start building alien craft you should build a second base in Antarctica. Fill it with Living Quarters, Labs, Workshops, and Alien Containment, and give it 1 Hangar. Put ALL of your scientists and engineers here, then remove all your Labs and such from Base 1, excluding the Alien Containment. Use the extra space for more storage and Psi Labs, and rearrange the base so that the Elevator and Hangars all have one entrance to the rest of base. Line this entrance with your storage and living quarters, because that is where your soldiers will spawn in a base defense. Transfer stuff back and forth, it's a lot more efficient and the aliens will never find your base in the middle of the south pole. Add some defenses later on.
- You can rename soldiers. Get into the habit of going through their stats to figure out their strengths and weaknesses, then adjust their name so it's easier to outfit them on missions. Someone with high Throwing might get a De (for Demolitions) tag after their name, which means you give them extra grenades. At the least, make sure you label your Psionic guys, and don't let them die. Everyone else is expendable, but a well trained Psi is worth more than most of your team. Remember that the size and weight of weapons affects Stamina, so don't give big guns to guys with low energy, unless you're not planning on having them move around too much. Never give an AoE weapon to someone with a weak Psi Defense.
- Your best Psi ops are NOT expendable. Keep them in the Skyranger/Avenger, and you only ever need two of them. Only one of them needs a Mind Probe, but both need Psi Amps. Psionics do not need line of sight to work, so they can attack and control an alien anywhere on the map from their relatively safe spot.
- Your guy with the lowest stamina but decent accuracy works as a good Blaster Launcher/Sentry at the back of the Skyranger/Avenger. Give him a Plasma Pistol to help defend the Psis. You can reach almost anywhere on any map with the 9 waypoints you get, so he doesn't need to move.
- If you see a black crabby thing during a terror mission involving Snakemen, RUN AWAY. Don't ever get near those things.
- There are two things that can kill you--having too many major countries surrender to the aliens, and not having enough money to put up a fight. These are generally linked, although manufacturing can keep you in the black even with a small number of supporters.
- As other posters have stated, pick the US or Europe for your first base. Personally, I choose Europe--western Germany or Switzerland. Why? Two reasons. First, Europe as a whole provides slightly more money than North America early on, and if you keep them happy, they top out at a higher level of funding, too. Second, If you base in the US, Europe will tend to surrender before the end of the first year unless you really hustle to defend them (which is hard to do before you get alien ships, and even then eats up precious Elerium). If you base in Europe, the US tends to support you (and even pay you a little) for close to a whole year even if you refuse to ever give them the time of day.
- Replace your fighter weapons with Avalanche missiles. Range matters. I never use anything but Avalanches and plasma cannons.
- Don't pass up a chance to gain Elerium. Don't throw grenades around intact generators. Do consider letting an alien base sit for a while so you can attack the landed supply ships for their precious intact generators full of Elerium.
- Don't be afraid to pass on the first couple of Terror missions. Especially if they are on the other side of the world. Especially if you estimate that you will arrive at night.
- Stay away from the chrysalids.
- Research Heavy Plasma/clips as soon as you can, as aliens start dropping them like candy. The personal armor line is also critical to actually keeping the rare high-skilled troops (you'll need them).
- Stay away from the chrysalids.
- In the end, victory goes to whoever makes the best use of Blaster Bombs.