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    XCOM: Enemy Unknown

    Game » consists of 19 releases. Released Oct 09, 2012

    The classic tactical turn-based combat returns in this modern re-imagining of X-COM: UFO Defense.

    Base management

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    clush

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    #1  Edited By clush

    First off, I'm loving the hell out of this game. I love how hard and unforgiving it is, and I love losing the game as much as winning as I'm always happy to start over, try harder and do better. I always play Ironman on normal difficulty.

    The problem i keep running into is that after a while I always seem to become exceedingly ill-equiped to effectively battle the enemies the game throws at me, generally around the point the mutons start showing up in numbers. If I try really hard I can still successfully fight the mutons (with the odd casualty thrown in) but then when the spinning discs start showing up I'll always be riding the downward spiral of getting wiped in the field, losing income, nations leaving the alliance and all sorts of bad things. Since I feel like I'm handling the fieldwork rather well, or at least know my mistakes when things go tits up, I think my problems are due to poor decisionmaking in the metagame.

    My question therefor is if any of you feel like you got the base development, research and panic control worked out to something that works in the long run. What are your research priorities etcetera. To me, there seem to be too many things that give too great a benefit to pass up on, but research takes a long time and cash is limited so I can't have it all. When i focus on armor the lack of firepower seems to get me, and vice versa. Meanwhile i feel like getting satellites up and interceptors stationed across the world is critical as well, nevermind capturing and interrogating aliens. I'm juggling so many things that all seem awesome, and could probably do with a more cohesive plan.

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    crusader8463

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    #2  Edited By crusader8463

    Get a Thermo powerplant and Nexus up ASAP. From there the rest is just what you need at the moment as far as I can tell. Make sure you take all the missions that pop up as they do, because winning them is vital to keeping countries from leaving. I also try to avoid researching those story items for as long as I can as that seems to be the main gate on when the game ups the difficulty. Also, get arch throwers on your guys asap as using them on enemies gives you their guns and getting rid of those dam machine guns without buying them frees you up that money to use on your base or upgrading.

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    Undeadpool

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    #3  Edited By Undeadpool

    @clush: It's all about prioritizing. You can't be all things to all people, so you've got to set solid goals and then follow-up immediately. I've personally found a lot of success with deploying a couple of satellites every two months (since it takes 24 days to deploy, this must be planned in advance and is usually best directly after a Council Report). Otherwise, just remember to use the Gray Market and upgrade your troops' equipment gradually. At first you're probably only going to have a couple of people with laser/plasma weapons and heavier armor, so prioritize who you think needs it first (I generally went with assault since they're the most in the enemies' faces). Oh and research the quickest technologies, even if some slower ones seem more appealing, since those are generally the projects you can afford to deploy immediately. Base facilities, other than an uplink immediately (be sure to link it with your starting one for a bonus satellite) and the odd power plant can usually be pretty far on the back-burner since they're expensive and time-consuming.

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    Phatmac

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    #4  Edited By Phatmac

    When should you have your third satellite up? I don't think I did it fast enough. :\

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    pyrodactyl

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    #5  Edited By pyrodactyl

    important: you can build satelites in advance so they are ready to launch right when your nexus or array comes online. Didn't realise that until the endgame. Still managed a killer playtrough on normal though.

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    seannao

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    #6  Edited By seannao

    *possible spoilers, but not really*

    Like what people have been saying, you should have a backstock of sats ready to go as soon as you can afford capacity. Ryan, for example, researched Stealth Sats to cut down on instances of them being shot down to save money in the long term. I, however, research improved medkits because I'm a big baby who wants to keep my men from ever ever dying.

    Well. Your soldiers can go a long way before the need for technology catches up to you. Huge emphasis on getting your sats in the air and prioritize armor research for less instances of wounding and survivability (keep in mind that frequent wounding eventually cuts a man's willpower down, leading to easier mind control and panic). It's ALWAYS HANDY to have some of the interceptor buffs on hand so you can raise the odds of shooting down UFOs in one go.

    I'm still new to the game, but I managed to get by on tier-1 starter weapons and tier-2 armor by the time I got to the Base Assault, but you have to make some pretty risky maneuvers and put your men out of cover. Mutons were hitting severely hard at that point and I've since swapped tech out to trying to improve weaponry now since my only other alternative is to slap grenades on more soldiers as an extra trump card and be completely willing to BLOW THINGS UP to save the lives of your men...

    Good soldiers mean more successful missions, and more interceptions means more missions, presumably, which then translates into easier base management as they help bring money in by keeping panic levels down and recovering more artifacts to pad out the coffers.

    On that note, be completely willing, at times, to sell some of your researchable items, even corpses, if you think it'll mean a larger reward in the long run, vs bleeding out due to indecision. A simple example, I guess, would be. If you had phoenix cannons, you could say that you could start selling off sectoid corpses because there's a less dramatic benefit using it vs the floater dodge for your phoenix interceptors. Admittedly, some of this requires foresight that I didn't immediately have, and is largely the reason I fumbled into the Assault mission with tier 1 weapons :( (selling researchable/usable artifacts for base structures/excavation)

    I have not researched SHIVs at all and keep prioritizing alien interrogation and autopsies as they became available.

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