Yeah, capturing any Terrorist live will bag you Psi powers, so just capture anything you can (I usually assign 3 people in power suits with tasers to do this - to do this they need hugely high bravery and psi resistance, though) at a terror site apart from floaters/reavers.

Not to say you shouldn't capture floaters, though. I got a live technician on the first turn of a terror mission, and just ran away (I had no armour/tanks at the time) by hopping out of my Skyranger and stunning the first thing I saw, which excellently turned out to be a floater technician... :w00t:

So the moral is - blind luck will often win when tactics will not :D

Oh, when you have a hyperwave decoder, fly a skyranger over the area which the ships seem to be coming from. This is amazingly important, as it reveals an alien base, which can then be assaulted whenever it seems useful.

And for the love of whipped cream, don't attack muton ships until you have craploads of armour and good weapons/tasers. Laser tanks are good if you have any, but the best type would be a tank with a fusion launcher.

So remember kids, tasers are very, very useful, especially on small type ships. And if you feel a fool because you blocked a door you want to get into with a proximity grenade, then throw a norma grenade at it to get rid of it. Then storm it with crack troops with tasers, with a sniper with a laser rifle outside of the door, with high reactions and shooting skill. Remember that soldiers never reaction fire with grenades (although this is very useful) but remember that soldiers do react with HE ammo, so be very careful about that kind of thing.

The new version of XcomUtil is great, as it makes HE powerful enough to open holes in UFO roofs and blow through walls, which is how it should be.

X-Com tip of the day : Research Mind Probes ASAP, so that you can identify aliens and their rank and decide whether to kill or capture them.

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You, sir are a fool. Crysallids should be, under no circumstances be shot with HE weapons. As I previously stated, you are wasting ammo. HE is awful against Crysallids. :wall:

To be honest Crysallids are easy to take down with tasers by anyone with armour. Surround them with tanks (no really) but don't shoot, then move a couple of guys to taser it. If one get turned into a zombie, kill it and the other crysallid with tanks before making the capture. You could try stun launchers, but Crysallids have quite a lot of health, I use small launchers on Sectoids, who have weedy amounts of health.

And it's technicians, not navigators who give you Hyperwave Detectors. Navigators give you UFO information, not Hyperwave Detectors.

Unlucky mate, but you are wrong.

Erm you might be wrong about those psi-power thingys. Unless there is some bug in your game because I just wnet out zapped a few chrysalids here a snakeman there, pretty much stunned all the aliens in the map and only lost two guys,

Researched everything...... and nothing, nada nope. No Psi-Powers there. :not_ok:

However stunning everyone on the top floor in an Abuductor UFO i managed to find a sectoid leader which allowed me to get psi-powers as well as research the martian solution. :ok:

Also if you blocked a door with a proxy grenade, dont fret. Simply take either a rocket launcher or a bomb and simply make a new door, Works great against aliens all sights on one door and then they get blown up from behind.

Now reading back I see many people dont like building a lot of flying suits. I understand why as they are not only expensive in elerium they are annoying to move into the proper position and when in mid-air you dont get a lot of cover.

However there are plus points in being in the air. When equipped with a rocket launcher or any other high explosive when you fire from the air if you miss you usually hit the ground near the alien instead of a rocket swooshing by the alien and exploding far off into the distance.

Also in Base Attacks flying suits rule as there are loads of little places where you can use your suit to fly up and sneak up behind enemies. Especially usefull in hit and run tactics I use in bases now (Thanx Jman) to just sneak in and stun a few aliens, steal thier weapons and escape. I usually leave one alien alive so the base is still there for the next assault.

Flying suits are especially good in snakeman bases as chrysalids roam round the corridors and if your flying your quite safe while you can proceed to blow them up or stun em.

So whenever I assualt a base i give most of my troops flying armour but in normal missions I just give a few flying armour.

Hower if you know there is going to be a chrysalid in a terrorist attack then everyone gets flying armour just to be on the safe side.

Hmm... that's odd... I thought all types of Terrorist gave you psi powers.

Well, I was wrong... sorry all.

This might seem like cheating, but I use XcomUtil, and just disable psi powers.

This is because to begin with it makes the game extremely difficult, and near the end it makes the game very easy, so I just disabled them. The thing about flying is that whilst it is good against melee aliens, when the aliens all start to get heavy plasmas, Power Armour is a better bet, as you can hide behind all of the obstacles in the game.

Oh and when you are inside a UFO, try not to use grenades/HE (especially in small UFOs as you can easily accidently blow out the Navigation/Power sources), due to the large risk of dying and blowing up the rest of your comrades. No really, it might seem obvious, but it is easy enough to do by reaction, and once you prime a grenade you should really throw it , before something extremely bad happens. (Crysallid turning soldiers into zombies etc, as if you drop a grenade, you have 2 of them to take on)

Er prejeduce you might be a little bit wrong about the HE thing.

So er HE does sorta work well against them. Incedinary works best against the reapers (although they never get close enough for that). You want to take on chrysallids, then pack grenades, HE rounds, and lotsa rockets.

Also not a good idea tasering them either. Running to a chrsalid and finding that you dont have enough TU's to stun it or the stun simply doesnt work, you find yourself in a lot of trouble and one soldier less. A much more effective way is blasting it sky-high with a rocket or simply using a combination of stun bombs and conventional fire.

If you are facing a Chrsalid you should use lots of weapons just incase. Prime a grenade and throw it at the chrsalid and then start shooting. It is very unlucky if all your troops miss or only get grazing shots.

Although the most fun way to deal with chyrsalids (not advisable to do in terror missions) is simply hover above them with a laser pistol and annoying them.

Ooh and btw, dont sell all your laser weapons. Once you get etherals doing terror missions they bring along your friendly playful sectapods who are beasts to kill and are almost immune to plasma attacks, however laser weapons work quite well.

Foolish me doesnt lose people to crys because I read the autopsies. Crys also have something like 120 TU, messy trying to catch one for a taser, try a small launcher. Crys are hand to hand so flying works wonders too.

Sharp and I use pretty much the same tactics for them and bases, but I just use a full set of flying, dont waste elerium on power suits that way. As it is I dont have problems with elerium because I rely heavily on finding weapons and ammo off the bodies of the fallen foes from afar. Current game I have nearly 700-800 units or so scattered between my bases. (late game)

The creature you capture and research has to have psi powers to learn them from it aka sectoid leaders commanders? ( i assume so, but Ive always had psi before I capture commanders) and etherials.

And it should have read that you can also use navigators as well as technicians, either gives the HD. Doubt it? Boot a game up and try it. Like Ive said before I run the windows version and it MAY have changed from the DOS version (cant tell if I cant play it) But I find Navis in the small scouts and such early on camping the door, so i stack on the door equip a taser to my high reactions TU guy AFTER poking in and out to see how many are hiding in there and try to rushem and takem down (if theres only one left, ie toss nades in corners and hope you guess which one is navi correctly and try to not get him in the blast, open the door auto shot and back out untill theres only one left hard to do early because of lack of armor though >_<) Because the smaller craft are only a few tiles wide so even early on my guy has enough TU for two maaaaaaybe three shots depending on where the badie is.

O, and sectopods are teh devil. I walked out not expecting them on a terror mission once four of them were camping the door.... it hurt.... laser tanks = good. :sneaky:

Oh yes....about 70% damage from plasma, 150% damage from laser.... :max:


And even if something has a modifier to negate HE, it is likely very effective since it is dealt against the unit's "under" armour, which is generally the weakest.

Nononono did any of you read what I said?

To get one with a taser, surround it with tanks. At this point, send 2/3 soldiers to stun it. That way, it is quite easy to get. If it breaks lose, blow it to pieces (hopefully with Laser tanks)

And you do realise that Plasma with 70% damage kicks 150% Laser Rifle behind and hands it back on a silver platter?

Laser Rifle: 60avg (7 shots per turn)
Heavy Laser: 85avg (2 shots per turn)
Heavy Plasma: 115avg (7 shots with no movement whatsoever)

60*1.5=90
85*1.5=127.5
115*.7=80.5

Taking into account the massive armour on a Sectopod (142 front, and around 90 rear), the Heavy plasma doesn't even do damage most hits, with the Laser rifle being slightly better (10 more beyond armour). The Heavy laser actually has a use here. Shoot it in the back from a distance with a sniper and possibly oneshot it. :bye:

Well, i don't know whether i'm wasting elerium or not, but i seemed to have endless supply of elerium whenever i play this game. So, i'll always go with the best equipment there is.. I only care about elerium early on in the game when you get only about 50 of them.. but once you have the larger UFOs coming, then there should be no problem about elerium.

As for the psi amps, i rarely (almost never) use it for panic attacks.. i'd rather MC them, and let those aliens "throw" their weapons, and use them as scouts.

And terrorist don't give out psi-lab/amps research. Any race (here it's just sectoids & ethereals) which have in their stats "psionic strength/skill" will give out psi reseach. In this case, sectoid leader/commander and ANY ethereal will do the trick.

Well, the first time all of us face ethereals in terror sites, i believe we all suffer lots of casualties from their psionic attacks :D