So the bombcast guys were talking about giving original x-com a go. I though I'd offer some advice as a huge x-com freak. I don't want to go into too many specifics as part of the fun is figuring out the game on your own but I wanted to give them a general grounding in what you should be doing. So here is my very basic guide to x-com

Placing your base:

I think that it's most important to cover as many funding countries as possible so I generally chose Europe but Asia is probably a good spot as well.

Building Facilities:

A new Large Radar Installation, General Stores and Alien Containment are important early on. You will also want extra labs and engineering pretty early.

Troops:

Fire anyone with a Firing Accuracy below 50 and hire replacements. Use the HWP rocket launcher. It'll save your guys early and can be used to scout as it has a lto of turn units. The most important stats are firing accuracy, strength and reactions. 60+ is good for firing accuracy, 40+ is good for strength and I can't remember the average for reactions. Change the names of your units to include what they are good at - if they have good reactions and firing accuracy, they make a good scout. If they are strong they make a good heavy etc. This is essential because when you get tothe loadout screen you cannot check your units stats. If they are weak and you equip them with heavy weapons then they may not be able to fire them at all. Equip some assualt troops for UFO missions with smoke grenades, stun rods and rfiles. These need to be your best troops usually, good shots and great reactions.

Equipment:

Check your troops, have enough heavy weapons for your heavies - I usually went with 2 Hvy Cannons, 1 Auto cannon and 1 Rocket Launcher. Sometimes I made a heavy weapons team, 1 with a launcher and 1 with a rifle but both carrying rcokets. That gives you 7 rockets in total. Great for laying waste as you can stillrecover items and sometimes even corpses after explosions. Ensure you troops with the auto and heavy cannons have both explosive and AP rounds. They will need AP if they encounter anyone close up.

Rifles are decent if your men do not have a strength in the high 30's or more. Laser rifles are great weapons as they have no clips and do decent damage until you meet Mutons.

Explosives are key. Grenades and HiEx charges are great for blowing out building walls to allow other troops shots at enemy in cover.

Tactics:

Use cover. I heard one of you saying that there was no cover in the game, that is not true. If the cover is waist high, crouch behind it and you can fire over it. Also remember to have your guys covering all directions as the direction they face is important. Aliens can walk right up behind you if you are notfacing the right way. Do not leave anyone exposed and have over lapping, layered fields of fire as you advance through the level.

Aliens can see further than yuo and have better night vision. Night missions are risky. Make sure you always have enough electro flares for every man. They can carry them in their off hand.

Always keep enough TU's for a snap shot (there's a button) unless you are confident you're not going to encounter enemies. I heard Vinny talking about wandering out of the Skyranger and being shot repeatedly. This is a bad plan. Always be in cover and have TU's reserved for snap shots if possible. NOTE: You can just be fucked some times by the random level placement. Your tank rolls out and is instantly vapourised by aliens and the same thing happens with every man as they emerge from the Skyranger. This is what reloads are for :)

Research:

I would advise - laser weapons, medkits and alien alloys in that order. You willthen have well armed decently armoured guys that can save each other (everyone carries a medkit). You will also be able to manufacture alien alloys and sell them at a profit in your engineerin bays. I think Laser cannons are the most profitable items to build and sell but I'm not sure.

Assaulting UFO's:

Do not fire hi ex at the power sources int he UFO. You cannot sell destroyed ones but more importantly you get no elerium. Elerium can opnly be gathered from power sources and you cannot create it. it is fucking in the late game as you use it to fuel your advanced fighters. Without it you are fucked so stockpile that shit.

So that's it, hope it helps you out. Laters.

@Arabes: Nice tips. The memories of playing through UFO Defense and Apocalypse are still vivid. I think an X Com endurance run would be an interesting thing. Maybe they'll consider that.

@mordukai said:

@Arabes: Nice tips. The memories of playing through UFO Defense and Apocalypse are still vivid. I think an X Com endurance run would be an interesting thing. Maybe they'll consider that.

The thing about ER games is that they need to have a good story. I've never played early XCOM but I'm assuming they don't have a huge narrative hook right?

@adam1808 said:

@mordukai said:

@Arabes: Nice tips. The memories of playing through UFO Defense and Apocalypse are still vivid. I think an X Com endurance run would be an interesting thing. Maybe they'll consider that.

The thing about ER games is that they need to have a good story. I've never played early XCOM but I'm assuming they don't have a huge narrative hook right?

You can sum up X-COM's story in 3 lines.

"Oh fuck, aliens! Cut up their ride and steal their shit! Fuck those guys!"

Tactics:

High knee position reduces chance for enemy to hit you and increases your accuracy.

Incendiary auto cannon doubles as light source projector. Combine this with couple electroflares for every one and night is not such big problem.

Smoke grenades make for safer exits from the Skyranger.

Proximity grenades help to eliminated aliens trying to pop from the corners, but MORE IMPORTANTLY they trigger your guys to fire upon the alien scum almost every time they go off.

AssaultingUFOs:

Can't shoot that big bad ship down? Just follow it with the Skyranger, maybe it lands. You have lots of fuel to wait for UFO to land.

Avalanche missiles allow you to shoot some UFOs down with "cautious attack" without taking damage. With the fusion launcher you can shoot ANY UFO down without taking damage.

General:

PATCH YOUR GAME. Game will most likely revert your difficulty to the easiest setting after first mission if you don't patch it.

edit: fixed grammar issues

@charlie_victor_bravo: Does the game auto patch when you play it on steam or do you need a user patch to fix the difficulty issues?

@Arabes: As far as I can gather, steam version suffers from the same bug as previous versions, meaning that you have to use XComUtil to fix the issue.

@charlie_victor_bravo said:

@Arabes: As far as I can gather, steam version suffers from the same bug as previous versions, meaning that you have to use XComUtil to fix the issue.

Dammit I knew it seemed easy the last time I played it. Gonna have to do it again :)

Good tips. I've been considering getting the old games since I love te new one so much.

Like some said this would be an iffy er but I think this game would make a great "breaking brad"

@mordukai said:

@Arabes: Nice tips. The memories of playing through UFO Defense and Apocalypse are still vivid. I think an X Com endurance run would be an interesting thing. Maybe they'll consider that.

I think that would be more in the "Breaking" territory than an endurance run.

If you want to play it on a true "iron man "-fashion, play it on the real PS1. Save during the mission requires a full memory card (as far as I recall), and usually you have space to save only outside of the missions. Also, making and loading a save takes so much time that you will probably never do it during the missions.

PS1 version also had a "nice" bug that happened usually when you were deep into the harder "very large UFO" mission. In this bug, usually a cyberdisc was trapped in a small room inside the UFO, without no way of getting out. Making it very difficult to kill it without loss of lives, but also it would make the enemy turns very long (30+ minutes).