Bullet-Tooth Tony

Smash-and-grabs is something that an experienced player wants to fave fun with. If you: 1) Let more UFOs land and attack them on the ground; 2) Don't use explosives near the UFO power source; 3) Actually win those missions (kill all aliens) you'll get a nice supply of Elerium and don't need to do any special things to get more of it. Let the alien base exist ner your one and get landed Supply Ships is also a good strategy. With this you'll hardly ever need more Elerium.

As far as I've figured out, Terror ships on Alien Terror missions, Scouts and Battleships on Alien Retaliation missions never land, any other ships on any other missions land almost always. Pretty easy. Well, Terror ships going for terror land as well, but a terror site instantly pops up and you don't get the landed UFO. It's great to have a Hyper-wave decoder as soon as possible, which makes alien plans clear. If you don't have it - Terror ships are Larges with a cruise speed of 4800 (near destination it slows down and changes direction, as NKF said). With Retaliation it's more tricky. A small/very small UFO looking for something near your base is not neccessarily a Retaliation scout. But it can be. Usually Retaliation starts with several very small UFOs, if you take them down, they continue to Medium and then Large Scout, and then to a Battleship. Anyway, if you're sure an UFO is not a Terror ship on terror mission or not a Retaliation ship, then it will most likely land, the questions are where (can you reach it in time?) and when (day/night).

Some ammo saving tips, that I figured out while playing. First of all: it was mostly the bug with ammo disappearing if it's loaded into a gun at the end of the mission, that made me choose DOS version under DOSBox over the CE version. In DOS only used clips disappear, so it's one headache less. Gauss against Aquatoids and Gillmen is fine. Use Gauss, if you want to save some Sonic ammo. If you're sure you won't see Xarquids, Calcinites, or Hallucinoids there - you may have problems killing them with Gauss. Early Transmission Resolver helps to determine the race of an USO and what they're planning to do. Another tip - often, while moving your soldiers forward you'll see dead alien bodies with guns missing only one ore two shots. If your soldier have a full gun, you may want to change it - there's no big difference between 10-shot SC and a 9-shot one, but it's one more clip saved, because a 9-shot clip is already wasted anyway. Watch your explosives usage. If you see a lot of stuff on the ground, try not to blow it up with unnecessary DP torpedo or Sonic Pulser. Use drills, if possible. NKF doesnt' give bad advises. MC Control is also a good savior of everything - ammo, soldier lives, etc. If you don't mind using it.

X-Com 2. Mostly with Tentaculats. Yes, I agree with Aiki-Knight, they're pretty much flying Cryssalids. Add Lobstermen to the mix. And not for the reason that they're tough as heck. It's because X-Com 2 is the only one of the three games mentioned, where you can unexpectedly get "late-game" aliens right in the beginning, if you're unlucky enough. When you don't have the tech to normally deal with them. And Lobstermen is one of them - probably the worst to get in 2nd - 3rd month. If they attack your base and you don't have sonic weapons yet, you're pretty much doomed. I've had such experience a couple of times.

Rumors: a new X-Com game might be in development: Irrational Games Developing X-COM Title? I know, that kind of source is far from 100% reliable, but still... A little bit of hope.

I'm using only XComUtil to remove the Difficulty and Base Disjoint bugs - I don't think it counts as an "editor" and can be a reason for this, because it doesn't touch the economic part of the program. With exception of XComUtil patch the game is clear (DOS 1.4 under DOSBox).

Sometimes, when you're short on money, to make sure you don't start the next month in debt, you go to "Base information\monthly costs" screen, observe the data given there to see if your (income+current funds) is greater than total costs. You see that everything's OK, but the next month starts and suddenly you have -218 000$ on your account. What's going on? First possible reason is that your engineers have spent some money while building something. But when you make sure manufacturing is not the key, you still may find some money missing. Yesterday I've done some testing, and what I've discovered: 1) Your biggest expences - salaries and craft rental, thankfully, are calculated, shown on the info screen, and taken from your account absolutely correctly. So, no surprise here. 2) Base maintaince. It's tricky here. Manually calculated sum based on facilities you have and maintaince costs from UFOpedia equals to what is taken from your account, but differs from what's shown in the info screen. But doesn't differ that much, and the sum on the info screen is bigger than your actual maintaince cost, so if you can afford to pay the sum in the info screen, you'll be able to pay the actual sum for sure. 3) The "lost money" comes from the facilities you've dismantled. An empty square, where something has been built and dismantled before costs you $80k each month, and it's shown nowhere. A place, where there had been a Hangar costs you $320k monthly fee (4 x $80k), while any other facility - $80k. Thankfully, if you build something in empty $80k place, this" fee for nothing" is removed and replaced with "propper" cost of the facility you build. With many bases you can lose more than a million because of this. The practical side of this bug is that many people (including me) are using "safe" base layouts with several empty squares isolating the base from Access lift and Hangars, and also using the cheap and fast-building General Stores (that will later be removed) to build the base faster than normally module by module. When you're increasing construction speed this way be aware of $80k monthly fee for any square that has been used for that. Count those squares and limit their usage to save money. Build somethind there, if it doesn't break the defensive base layout. Hoever, in the end-game time with several "LC manufacturing plants", big loot from Supply ships and so on, an uncounted million or so in monthly costs doesn't hurt much.

I've seen once a battle, when a lucky attackers's missile have razed almost whole slum building, killing many defenders's vehicles and gates they were emerging from. I don't remember, though how this all ened.

What has happened here was probably a failed attempt to throw a grenade. He was near the window - I beleive, he was trying to throw through it, but hit the wall. When aliens panic, they can shoot (go berserk), but they won't prime and drop grenades. However, they sometimes make unlucky throws that kill them or their comrades.

Not sure about "long before". First landed UFO happens usually when you haven't even researched Laser Pistol. Sometimes, when you're researching Laser Rifle. But a Medium Scout (typical 1st UFO) may be lacking a Plasma Rifle. However, 2nd UFO will have a rifle almost for sure. Whether I have a Plasma Rifle or not, I'd still finish the Laser Rifle project, and arm my people with it. So, when you get to Heavy Laser, you almost always have an option to research a Plasma Rifle instead. IMHO, Heavy Laser + Laser Cannon and Plasma Rifle + PR Clip + Plasma Beam are roughly equal in terms of research time.

What "Laser cannons on Interceptors" are people talking about, I don't know. Plasma cannon in X-Com 1 is so fast to research and pretty cheap to manufacture. All you need is Plasma Rifle + Plasma Rifle clip and Plasma Beam itself. You'll probably capture the rifle and some E-115 to manufature PB on the first UFO. Well, it does still take some time, but if you go for it, you'll be able to afford to FORGET any interception problems (except Battleships) for the rest of the game. 1 PB-armed Interceptor can easily deal with the whole base construction fleet (While Skyranger attacks landed Battleship). Also, don't forget that in the beginning your vision radius is very limited and you are not able to fight aliens all over the planet. If you see an UFO, and its speed is low, it will probably land and you don't have to shoot it down. If its speed is high, you'll probably be unable to chase it, so what kind of weapon your Interceptors are using is irrelevant. You may only want to shoot down a Terror ship, because, when it lands, a terror site will pop-up and you'll be unable to attack the landed ship.

Well, maybe against Sectopods because of their tough armor, but against all other 2x2 units Laser Rifle is better. LR auto-shots miss them noticeably less (you get "bonus" hits that should have missed, but still hit the unit's other tile). So, there's Heavy Laser's 1 (aimed) or 3 (snap) shots against up to 7 per turn (2 Auto + 1 snap) with Laser Rifle. So I don't see a reason to choose Heavy Laser over Laser Rifle. Where LR needs more damage, you are able to just place more hits and thus still do more damage than HL.

A question about multiple explosion hits on 2x2 size units. How many times do you substarct the armor? Shouldn't it e taken into consideration for every of 4 hits, but not once?

If you want to control where the fire spreads with explosives, isn't it easier to use all this explosives to kill the aliens? Easier and cheaper.

Dwarmin, there are several techniques experienced players are using, learn them and this will improve your performance greatly. They aren't hard to understand, though may take time to master. Also, knowlege of game mechanics doesn't harm as well (for example, reaction shot mechanics). I recommend you to study the UFOPaedia website closely, especially the Tactics section. The techniques I'm talking about include: - Sniper + Scout tactics; - using smoke to cover deployment from craft; - intelligent grenade usage, including the grenade relay trick; - using flares in night missions; and others. When I read it and strarted using all these tricks, I was amazed how my casualties dropped down and number of glorious victories increased.