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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Hard Alien Ufo's


Spoon

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Hey Hey.

 

OK Basically i'am currently going against ufo typt 5's. i have a griffon arem with some sort of long ranged missle launcher. and a sky hawk or something like that [i also have a storm dog, but i quickly found out that it was useless against ufo's. So my question is how do i prevent ufo incersions? or destroy most of the alien ships? I have down the occasinall ufo, with alot of help from police hover cars. but on my own, no chance. plus iam starting to lose some important funds from the goverment.

 

Please help.

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There are two ways lots of players like to use to shoot down most UFOs.

 

The first is to use swarms of ships. Basically Hoverbikes or hovercars. They're cheap, and armed with as bolter laser cannon, they can pinprick most of the early UFOs to death. Missiles, bolters and if you can afford them, lineage cannons are ideal armament. Even the default minigun is very good, so you might as well use up the ammo before replacing the gun. You will suffer losses with swarms, but the cheap cost of the bikes make them a little more expendable.

 

The other is to use a small group of very heavily armed Hawk Air Warriors. Small meaning 4 or more. General armament would include Lineage plasma cannons, missiles (Prophet or Janitor) or even Lancer lasers. You might even want to try the plasma multi-system too if you can buy it. It has a very wide firing arc, so it counter the Hawk's slow turning speed.

 

You can even go with combinations of the two with the hoverbike/cars going in first to distract the UFOs while the Hawks hang back and open fire with their big guns. Hoverbike swarms generally get phased out for smaller groups of gunships as the game goes on.

 

Basically, no matter what method you use, the solution is: More firepower! ;)

 

It might be an idea to try arming a LOT of the one-shot missile launchers on a fleet of hovercars, and then fire everything you've got at the UFO when it appears. Never tried this myself, but it sounds tempting!

 

If you spot a green UFO - that's a bomber and it's armed with a multi-missile. Not a spectacular weapon by itself, but it's an anti-hoverbike swarm countermeasure. Keep hoverbikes well away from it.

 

When fighting UFOs in general, if you find them overwhelming you, you should play it safe and let them go. For now and concentrate on only shooting down and capturing any UFO that you haven't yet got for research. Getting at least one of several different UFOs is absolutely crucial to your ship advancement.

 

When I say let them go, do let them go but don't just leave them alone. Pause the game and watch where all the transports in the fleet are heading (ignore the Fast Attack Ships - they're only on escort duty). Every time one drops troops into a building, mark the building for immediate investigation. Note, if it's a blue sparkly drop - there won't be any aliens in the building - so there's no point in investigating. Once they've beamed down whatever it is they were carrying, they'll bolt right for the exit. Send in your troops and clear out the site.

 

Keep playing it safe and only shoot down UFOs that are easy targets or if they are new and/or come with shields. This gives you a chance to build up your ship technology. Once you've got some top notch equipment like the medium disrupter and the small shields, you can start playing much more aggressively against the UFOs.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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The safest approach to research is capturing 1 of every kind of UFO, but some are specifically required for certain aircraft.

There are a lot of threads about countering UFOs and how to get an effective fleet early in the game, my tactic is one NKF described, I get lots of hovercars, equip them with lineage plasma cannons and send them all out. Later on I equip them with small shields as they become available.

Pros/cons about this tactic: it is semi-swarm, you are throwing out numerous craft with a lot of firepower, but they are not as vulnerable as a hoverbike swarm. The UFOs have harder time hitting them, but they'll get hit more often compared to hoverbikes.

 

Mass hoverbikes is useful as well, until bigger UFOs (and I really mean the bigger ones) start showing up. The main problem with hoverbikes is that you can't upgrade them with shields and they'll be obsolete once the big UFOs show up. They will also blow up a lot more often, but since they are cheap, they are easy to replace.

 

Another tactic is using a cover of numerous hoverbikes backed up with a few heavy hitters (hawk air platforms). The idea here is to use the evasive power of the hoverbikes to keep the heavy hitters out of harm's way. You send the bikes first, the slower heavy hitters follow them. It is a good tactic, but it gets problematic when you don't have enough heavy hitters (early in the game) and when UFOs show up from 3 different gates on the map (and they are all far away). You may have problems splitting up your fleet to efficiently counter the incursion.

 

Also, general advice: make sure all of your vehicles are housed in different buildings and you can get all them up in the air at the same time when aliens start popping through the gates. If you keep all of them in your base they'll leave one by one (or two at a time if you have two launch pads) and they'll be too late to stop any incursion.

 

In order to get vehicle weapons and shields, you should capture them. In order to capture them, you should shoot down UFOs and capture those :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I see no real reason to only down One of each UFO, but you need to down ATLEAST one of Ufo.

 

I personally dont enjoy using the hoverbikes, as they just die off so easily, by the type Assault ships come around (the upside down cone shaped one) they just dont stand a chance of survival..

On the other hand, Hovercars are pretty useful in themselves, and its a good idea to have some heavily armed storm dogs (2 or 3) in your base incase they come close to you. I usually arm them with the same missles from the APC, but the APC's cost much more than storm dogs and usually die due to road issues anyways.

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The Assault Ship (which I call the stumpy carrot)? Compared with some of the ships you'll be facing, that's one of the easier ships for you to shoot down with swarms or small groups of gunships. Its ground mission is a delight and beating it often wins you some awesome toys to reverse engineer and allow Hawks to cripple Fast Attack Ships easily. Since it does have a medium disrupter, individual hits on hoverbikes can be quite lethal, but they should be able to evade most of the attacks.

 

It's the Bombers and Battleships that you want to watch out for as they wipe the floor with the hoverbike swarms thanks to their multi-missile. Even hovercar/dim. probe squadrons don't fare well against the multi-missile until you get some adequate shielding.

 

- NKF

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I just started using midnight save editor to make beating the aliens a bit easier. i came across one large UFO, dark orange colored, It were hard but my 10 hawk air warriors sorted it out [with no deaths! :)] The ground mission was a little more complex, Lucky my 3rd squad killed off the last aliens.

 

Thanks Bye.

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  • 4 months later...

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