Base Defense Equipment Issue

[M. Norton]

I must be doing well, this is the 2nd base defense mission I've had to do so the aliens are tweaked for certain.

 

Anyhow, I'm running into a problem equipping the soldiers during the base defense. I have been doing a lot of muton downings and am swimming in Heavy Plasma weapons and clips in stores. Seems fine. I only take 4 HP and 4 clips in the Skyranger so I know the rest are in stores. However when the base defense loadout screen shows up, I don't get NEARLY the gear I know I have. Most of the HP weapons are without ammunition and there are not clips available.

 

Is this a version of the item limit for base defense since I have a LOT of equipment and the game only has so much space for so much gear in the tactical view? If so, is there a way to get around this? Presumably shipping stuff off to secondary bases I suppose. Anyhow, there's almost no ammunition for the base defense which is pretty annoying.

 

EDIT: Just spotted a thread down a few with someone with the exact same issue. So I will try to shuffle stuff around and see if I can't clear up the issue.

Edited September 15, 2009 by M. Norton

[M. Norton]

Yeah that was the problem. Unloaded the Skyranger entirely and made count of what I needed and transferred the rest. Still ended up with a few soldiers without weapons but I had enough to cover it. Only one death due to a stupid squaddie and his aim, killed another guy (though it was his superior and he was promoted after the fight so maybe it was intentional! Intersquad rivalry!)

[Zombie]

Always keep an eye on your General Stores when you suspect the aliens are going to be attacking your base. You only get 80 items to play around with on this type of mission, and what you get depends on the sell order. I had this exact same problem many years ago and the only viable weapon I had were a few stun rods. I managed to make that work and win the mission, but I learned my lesson forever.

 

- Zombie

[[NKF]]

Best way to avoid this is to get into the regular habit of spring cleaning your stores on. You don't need 100 heavy plasmas for example, so you may as well convert it into cash. Besides, Heavy Plasmas show up in almost every mission once they start appearing, so there will be no shortage.

 

Most equipment have a priority in which they appear. This is roughly the same as the order they appear in the buy/sell screen. If I'm not mistaken, lasers are a higher priority than plasma weapons, so you should be able to get away with stocking some spare laser rifles for your defenders.

 

The same note is true for your basic equipment. They are even higher up on the priority list. So if you have lots of autocannon ammo stocked for example, you'll find you base bogged down with them, and might not even get access to the lasers. Perhaps keep enough to last you a few weeks and order extras as necessary.

 

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One of the more exciting base missions I had was a really early base defense (right after first UFO) where I had almost nothing to fight back with (new stuff was in transit - no stun rods yet). Was down to my last two bullets in a pistol and some smoke grenades. Last alien left standing was a sectoid commander - unarmed. Found out its rank when it panicked. Was a great find but couldn't deal enough damage to kill it. Had to restart the game then. Great fun all the same.

 

- NKF

[M. Norton]

Well I wasn't even getting lasers in the right quantities and I did have some of those in the Skyranger and in stock, enough to have made a go of it. It was very strange. i finally just decided "well I have 20 soldiers, I don't need more than 20 of this, that and the other" and transferred EVERYTHING else, dead bodies, research items, the works. Then on the loadout, I pretty much had everything I intended. But I really didn't have a lot of anything in particular, maybe a few more heavy plasma than I needed but not lots more, as they sell well and I get loads of them. I do hoard the clips though so that was probably some of it. I had close to 100 clips.