That's interesting. I only played it for two tactical battles, one on real time and one on turn based but i didn't want to get into it before finishing the previous two versions.

So i didn't see any boomeroids (that i know of) and got totally owned by some head eaters and spitting slug things that are on the loading graphic. I think the learning curve is steeper on real time than turn based. Though beng able to pause time helps.

I mean to say in the last post, which was long enough anyway, that i never bothered with laser weapons before. I researched the plasmas as soon as i could and took on all comers with plasma rifles.

Yeah, Brainsuckers permamently take over your troops.
UNLESS the trooper in question is an android. :D

The thing is that the game prevent you from accessing inventory when someone have a brain eater on him... But there is two workarounds for this: 1) you should never send squaddies alone anyways. The other members of his group should have ample time to kill the thing, assuming you manually target the alien for them and you set them to autofire (quickfire).

Autofire work for every weapon in this game... What it really means is that the squaddie won't take time to aim and his aim may be drastically lowered when he does unless he have an incredibly high shooting skill. At the very end of the game most of my (old) squaddies can fire most weapons with normal or even autofire without even losing accuracy... It is then a matter of deciding how fast I actually want them to shoot versus ammo usage.

2) If you have more than one squaddie alive, simply pause the game and go into another squaddie inventory. Then click on the name of the poor soul on the right and you'll magically have access to his inventory. You can then switch weapon(s) for a grenade and set it to blow up immediately then drop it on the ground. The squaddie will probably be injured from this blast but the brain eater will without a doubt die in the explosion. This is of course better to use this strategy when you have a lone squaddie stranded alone somewhere... That's why I always equip all my squaddies with at least one explosion grenade. It saves lives, especially the lives of trained soldiers.

You have access to the best human made armor from the get go in this game. Marsec armor, which comes about one week later after starting the game, is too weak to be used on anybody short of those who have an awful strenght score. The torso can be useful if you want flying squaddies but the armor is not good enough to stand most Alien weapons hit to maximize survivability. And in this game, unlike other X-com games, you want your men to survive because their stats improve directly with their kills and fresh recruits always suck. In the mid game you should have your full trained squad with replacements and use training facilities to get recruits up to speed before sending them into the fray.

At the beginning of the game, the Aliens are quite weak and they have poor or no weapons at all. You should have at least one squad member per group with a machine gun, especially those who have poor accuracy. It fires so fast in auto mode that it won't matter if you spray the whole room while firing at close range. Squadies with high accuracy and high strenght should be given the sniper laser rifle and those with high accuracy and low strenght should be given the autocannon or whatever the name.

This setup may sound awkward but it is the best way to ensure that most of your squadies even up by the time you need them to fight real opponents. Use mainly sniper riffles for long range, autocannons for med range and machine guns for close range. Sniper rifles work best at long range with aimed shots, same for autocannons at med range and machine guns with autofire at close range. Change weapon mode liberally depending of the situation as even the earth weapons are subject to availability as far as ammo goes.

I was under the impression the head eater thing permanently turned the trooper bad. Are you suggesting you can get the thing off and 'rescue' the trooper? Is it posible to do this by having another trooper throw a grenade at the turned troop?

Unlike other XComs?! In all versions of the game you want the marines to survive! And they all get better in the same way. The experience system is rather good, i think.

A different question now.

In the few battlescape missions i have done since replaying XCom i have scored "OK". Is it posible to score "Excellent" or "Great"? I suppose it is due to the limited number of aliens on the ships you get at the beginning?

Definitely and indeed, with smaller UFOs you simply don't get to an "excellent" score because of the few aliens involved. Wait until you meet your first battleships :OK:

This is the best game, period.
I remember playing this to death.
My tactic was to keep the first team till the end of game(if someone died,load a savegame, and that's it), if I remember corectly you get 8 team members, and ship can carry 12, so first I bough 4 of soldiers. Then you get better ships and it can carry 14 men, but 12 was enough for me, and that little tanks or whatever they were caled were waste of money and time, they just sucked.

I think you understimated them, tanks can be a strong support to your soldiers if you know how to use them :p. They can't be scared or controlled by aliens and if you spend money on reserch you can also upgrade them with laser and plasma weapons. And plasma tanks are like hovercrafts and can even fly.
They can't substitute soldiers but they are a valid support IMHO. :)

Tanks are convenient to fill extra spaces in your transporters when you start running out of the item limit (and you will run out, seeing as an Avenger has a total of 22 transport spaces).
The Rocket Launcher one, in particular, counts as a single item and has no reload time vs the infantry version of Rocket Launcher - which would need a total of 9 items including the ammo to have as many shots as a tank has, and a single soldier could only carry 5 rockets at most (including having one loaded into the RL at the start.

I wonder how this game gained ANY popularity considering it has a hidden stat, if in what your soldiers lack you'll not be able to solve the final mission (the whole goal of the entire game), this stat can only be seen AFTER you hire a crew, and even then only at LATE PHASE of the game!

Later in the game I use the plasma tanks as scouts. All my men usually stay in the ship and use psionic attacks against the aliens. This way I could easily finish a mission on the first turn. And the stats of my men are usually almost maxed out at this point so there's no reason to risk losing them in battle.

You'll always have some men with high psi strength (they usually have high bravery as well).
I don't see any problem with not knowing this stat from the beginning. In fact, I think it just makes the game more interesting.