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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Strategies


Junkhead

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What are your favourite strategies and tactics while playing the game? Do you sit back and wait for 'em to come, or do you barge right in and give 'em heck!

 

I use a combination of guerilla warfare (prox mines, hiding near windows, on buildings) and aggressive warfare (barge right on in).

 

One of my favourite tactics is to attack someone, and then save enough TU's to use a smoke grenade near me at the end of my turn so none of their men can see me. Then, I move my men into position in the windows and I snipe everyone, and then I move back. If the enemy isn't paying attention, they're screwed :)

 

EDIT: Crap! I posted this in the wrong forum! Mod, can you please move it?

Edited by Junkhead
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I like to use the heavy laser in the mountains map.. when you go inside the cave underneath a mountain you can use the heavy laser to blast a secret stairway to the top of the mountain, yet the graphics on top of the mountain didn't leave a visable hole.. .. I don't remember if you can go back down the hole since its not visable, it might be a one way staircase which you can go up but not down..

 

EDIT: oops.. nevermind.. that was only possible in one of the older versions.. I can't do it with the newer betas.. now you can only make one step that you can climb up. before, you could walk up as many steps as you made....

Edited by brian-o
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on Xbase, there is a spot on the very top floor that has a large amount of scrub covering it. if you blast a hole in the roof under it, you can float up and spy on anyone up top. very handy, also serves to sheild ur soldier from damage
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  • 2 weeks later...
I think the most useful once in a while tactics is the suicide bomber... I used that on Hobbes one to many times, and now we play no explosives... another good tactic I came up with is the old booby trap. 1 motion sensor grenade that is primed and 2-3 unprimed alien grenades.... If the one gets triggered then KABOOM!!!! I used that one on Hobbes too many times as well....
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Always changing ideas around confuse the player btw, it flusters them. Players will assume you have weak units if you blow up your own sectoid. My strategies are different in every situation, so it would be too long for me to post it all...so take advantage of the tips I just gave. :wink1: Edited by Kratos
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no special strategy here... in fact my strategy depends on situation (means map, used weapons and behavior of opponent) and is sometimes better, sometimes weaker. i like playing round trying something new or doing stuff i myself wouldn't have expected. thats a gamble most of the time. either it works, or it does not. many of my ideas could as well lead to my own defeat... ^^

 

i favour to rush in, especially if im first to play, an map is at least 5x5 and of course it's city map or something else, providing enough cover. and all of the following is rather meant for play without explosives/smoke

so i try to get as far as i can, and end up in positions that can't be seen from the other side, no matter where the other guys are coming from (except maybe the other players uses all his tu's to get so close). and don't have all soldiers grouped together, rather split them up a bit. if there's many men, i also like to get one or two upstairs somewhere where they've got nice line of fire for longer range. don't forget to shoot the stairs, when the enemy's closing in. you don't want uninvited visitors, do you?

next round take one soldier at some corner to a nice open spot with wide view, and let him have a look around. sneak a peek ^^. then don't do anything, even if you can already see enemies. go to some other place of the front, and do the same thing there. take a peek wherever you want, and leave the peeking soldier where it is. then take a look at the whole map, all enemy soldiers you have spottet, and the locations of your own men.

never use the peekers to shoot, since they easily could attract reaction fire. take some other soldiers further back or at some more hidden places.

then shoot a lot, but always leave enough time units to be able to get back to some hiding places.

try to shoot soldiers endangering your peekers first. if only your peekers (or call em scouts if you like so) are left with tu's and they are still in direct sight of an enemy, just draw them out and hide them rather a bit further away, from the place where they've been seen.

always try to remember how many soldiers you have seen at whicht places, and count how many of them you have killed. whenever you have to move a peeker bevor somebody else shoots, try to remember the exact locations of your enemys. (count squares to the next border or something...) since you won't be able to see them anymore, once you have moved.

if your peekers still got a lot of tu's left, and there's no enemy in sight, try to get him further in. never forget to take a look sideways at every corner... it's definitely worth its 2 TUs!

if you go deeper in, always make sure you will reach a very good hiding place with your TUs. rather don't go too far and leave a bit for reaction fire.

if its your enemys turn, try to see as many shots as you can, and try to guess the approximate location of the shot origin. combined with the knowledge of your own sightings, you should be able to make a rough guess how many enemy soldiers are at which places.

at places you think you outnumber your opponent you can rush in more aggressively, at places where there seem to be lots of enemies, rather be careful. if there are really a lot of enemy soldiers at one tight spot, you can take blind shot's in there. destroy much cover. do one auto-shot with two different soldiers each and see if you can spot some enemy then. if you can, try to shoot them with other soldiers. if you are successfull and kill some, then you can either use the rest of your tus shooting in there too and hiding somewhere very close then, or you could even dare to stay ground in a line and kneel down, with TUs left for reaction fire.

if you are not successfull, rather do only one attack with each soldier, and spend the rest of your tu's for drawing back. if this happens for example at top of the map, and you successfully conquer the bottom, where you yourself are bigger in numbers, then you can use your soldiers at the bottom to surround them later... the idea is, to buy some time before making losses at places you don't stand much chance.

if you are outnumber at some certain point, try to stall there as long as possible until you are in advantage of overall numbers.

 

sometimes i try to place one soldier on the very border of the map and to sneak him through, behind enemy lines. if you succeed, get them in your opponents back, and always hide him well at the end of your round. use him as the first to move, to find out some locations of enemies, and hide him again, so that if somebody paranoid enough takes a full look around (you should do that sometimes too! good advice ^^) still wont neccessarily see you. never ever fire a single shot with this guy, since you would betray his presence then. that one should have lots ofs TUs. and maybe some more energy too ^^

 

sometimes it's also fun to place all your men in one half of the map, and just crush through there. if you are fast enough to kill a lot before you get circled, you should have enough advantage already to be able to win despite the encirclement ^^

since you've got all your fire power balled together at one spot, the enemy defense stands no chance to hold you back.

the downside of this is, the enemy won't need to aim at you. even if he misses the soldier he is aiming at, it may happen that he hits someone else by chance. so i normally rather spread my men...

 

if also tried to bunker into the uper floors of a large, high building, and destroying all the stairs, so noone could get up. that didn't work to well, since it seems that its much easier to spot someone through holes in the floor from bottom up, than looking downwards. there were enemys standing directly in front of me below, that could see me, but still i could not see them. that made the whole thing rather uncomfortable.

 

changes i would like to some weapon set, to encourage this kind of play:

explosives don't make any smoke. pure smoke grenades produce smoke for several rounds, not only one. priming and throwing should take more TUs, so you have to decide if you either want to throw a grenade, or do some shots. priming and throwing should be so expensive, that you've got only very few TUs left, just to find some cover close by. it would be wise than to prime in advance. stuff like the rocket launcher shouldn't be in such a set, or at least don't have that much blast radius, since it eats up too much cover by far.

 

i think once we have some royalty-free weapon sets, i'll do some especially modified version to fit Llyr's street combat style ^^

i think there rather won't be weapons which can do single shot AND auto shot AND aimed shot either. so you gotta specialise more.

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  • 1 year later...
Using muton scouts, and high-strength floaters up high, you can do a lot of damage by throwing down HE packs. It doesn't work well against experienced players, and is impossible in a no-explosives game. No explosives strategies are harder.

Thats something thats always bugged me about the explosives in ufo2k since the advent of floaters. People whore them by sitting right up high and raining badly aimed (but damaging enough to throw off your mens aim) shells while being extremely hard to hit themselves. The problem is that changing the damage makes explosives non viable as an effective weapon. Personally id like to see only the more expensive flyers capable of hovering in air indefinitely. Id like to see cheap units like floaters drop after end turn to the closest floor level (IE, flying for only one turn).

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  • 1 year later...

This is how I roll:

6-8 Soldiers

2-4 Fire Support

 

Soldiers pack Personal Armour, Laser rifle and smoke bomb. Fire Support have Rocket tubes with 4 large rockets, laser pistol backup and flying armour.

 

Soldiers rush forward and engage the enemy, acting as spotters for the fire support. Firesupport jsut go as high as they can so that they can rain down missiles whithout any issues.

 

Found this setup to be very good and flexible.

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I think if you reduced the throwing strength of floaters (by 90%) , people would stop using them as B-52s. Personally I would rather see that than reducing their visibility to 45 degrees since I usually play no explosives, but oh well.

 

I think a good tactic is to get behind the enemy as fast as possible, while creating a diversion in front of him on the opposite corner of the map.

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if/when walls that are able to block damage from explosives are implemented that will reduce the over effectiveness of spamming an entire map side with HE/Rockets. You'd be able to dogpile inside a solid brick building and wait out the firestorm.

 

Flying units are fine as is, Explosives are fine as per their design, it's the walls that play the big role. Players who use this tactic tend to run themselves low on ammo rather quick in my experience anyways.

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  • 6 months later...

A bit old thread, but the game is not dead yet...

 

It is possible to use floaters as death from above by equipping them laser sniper rifles and have somebody as scout. Once one spots an enemy you rain aimed shots at confused enemy.

 

Through, if scouts are killed you are blind again...

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this is essentially the basic scout/snipe tactic mentioned above.

The downside to using a floater/flying powersuit is your snipers lose about a quarter of their accuracy if they are not standing on something solid.

Also if you fly too high and your opponent gets a scout of his own past your front line all your snipers are now highly visible targets.

 

 

 

A bit old thread, but the game is not dead yet...

 

It is possible to use floaters as death from above by equipping them laser sniper rifles and have somebody as scout. Once one spots an enemy you rain aimed shots at confused enemy.

 

Through, if scouts are killed you are blind again...

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The downside to using a floater/flying powersuit is your snipers lose about a quarter of their accuracy if they are not standing on something solid.

Also if you fly too high and your opponent gets a scout of his own past your front line all your snipers are now highly visible targets.

 

And that's why I use flyers with spammy weapons and ground-based troops with sniper weapons.

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It is possible to use floaters as death from above by equipping them laser sniper rifles and have somebody as scout. Once one spots an enemy you rain aimed shots at confused enemy.

 

Through, if scouts are killed you are blind again...

 

Quite easy to accomplish that :). You could use the inventory menu and equip your floater/ethereal with a laser sniper and there you have it, if you have a scout unit in your team aswell, you have already created that combo :).

 

However, i wouldn't use such a combo like that. I need to have at least one more unit in the vicinity, because scouts tend to die quite often. Also you could lose your scout because of reaction fire. If that happens, you see the enemy unit at least once and if you have another unit there, you could consider using a grenade (not always the best idea though).

 

If your scout doesn't die, you can use your laser sniper to take the enemy unit down. I wouldn't count on aimed shot so much, as you may have to move your sniper to ensure line of fire. That would leave you 1 aimed shot and 1 snap shot. I decide by leftover time units, which shot i am going to use, because i usually decide to take at least 2 shots on my target, because aimed shot still has a chance of missing, or if hitting, not being able to take down units with strong armor. Also if by any chance your sniper gets injured, the accuracy loss is considerable, making the sniper just another unit with a laser weapon.

 

What I do when trying to get the most accuracy out of a flying sniper, is place it near a building, so that i could get on top of the roof and crouch, which gives the unit extra accuracy. So instead of the floater losing about 25 % of its accuracy, it can use its full capability + a little more and maximise the chance of hitting the target.

 

I do not want to come telling you what strategy to use, because every battle is different and you have to change your tactics quite often. I just told you what I do. Therefore, test your laser sniper idea in any way possible and see if it works out for you. It is not the units that play the game, it is the person controlling them(however, weapon choice and using the team as a whole is very important).

 

However, for me, floating troops have proven to be excellent cover units, usually carrying something explosive, such as the rocket launcher (then usually taking a small pistol, preferrably plasma, as well) or a heavy cannon. Grenades work as well, therefore you could provide the units with a couple of smoke vials just in case. So in that point (using autofire weapons [plasma pistol xD] and explo), i agree with AlumiuN :)

 

Best of luck in your following games! :)

Edited by trolly2
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  • 4 months later...

The last time I played UFO2k with my brother Mike we picked a large urban area with a road dividing the map in half. Mike wasn't stupid enough to cross the road and barge into my side of the map, and I didn't bring enough missiles to do a proper HE/spam, also my scouts couldn't cross the road in one turn.

 

So I decided to pop smoke on one side of the map and watch mike shoot at the clouds while I picked off about half of his troops from a building on that side of the map. He didn't realize that none of my men were in the smoke and just kept firing in that general area while I also managed to sneak a hand full of soldiers across the wide open area and cause even more havoc. It didn't help that he had started moving every one of his men to that part of the map, in search of the imaginary soldiers who had crossed through the smoke to safety. He didn't realize what had happened until after I was attacking the remainder of his forces from two directions.

 

Eventually he copped out when he got down to three guys and I had eleven.

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  • 1 year later...
And that's why I use flyers with spammy weapons and ground-based troops with sniper weapons.

 

I agree... the extra few hundred points for flying is much better spent on quickly scaling and scouting buildings for snipers on the enemy's side of the map, as opposed to getting a slightly better firing angle. This is even more true when playing in Dawn City where the buildings are so tall that it doesn't matter if you are sniping from 15 levels up or not.

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