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[Delta Foxtrot]

I think I'll start off with a request for some tips for the first one, UFO Defense. I've got the power armor, I've got plasma rifles, I've got a tank, and I'm up against a bunch of sectoids in a terror mission.... They one shot everything. My tank rolls out, shot and dies, all my guys in power armor die in 1-2 shots, similar to the sectiods who aren't wearing any armor at all. One of my guys with a rocket launcher get taken control of, and manages to fire off 2 rockets. 1) When I have control of him his movement starts off at about 60% every turn and I can't even fire and reload it he same turn. Why can the aliens magically give him more movement? 2) The rockets hit 2 guys directly. They aren't hurt. Why do rockets not scratch my power armor, but I get one shotted?

Plasma weapons do humongous amounts of damage. Flying/power armour gives your troops a chance to survive a hit from a plasma weaponry. They're still more likely to die than live, but out of a dozen operatives, few will survive a direct plasma hit. Rockets do little damage, but they do it to a large area, so they're good against weaker aliens, especially when there's lots of cover you want to demolish.
Just to reiterate: even the best armour is never guaranteed to save your individual guys, what they do is increase the survival rate of your entire team by a few operatives per mission. Never ever cook up a plan that relies on your guys taking a plasma shot (even from a pistol) and live. It won't work.

The reason your rocket guy is always out of TU's could also be because he's exhausted. If your soldiers carry more weight than they have strength points, they won't be able to use as many TU's per turn. I try to keep my rocket guys at ~40 strength, +30 at the very least, and have them carry nothing but a launcher and some rockets. For reference, rocket launcher with four light rockets weigh a total of 34 units, most rookies have less than that from what I remember.

And how do you guys get off the ship without being murdered by reaction fire? I send out a tank and if I feel like it, throw a smoke grenade before moving out.

Turn 1, prime and throw one or two smoke grenades near the skyranger exit. End turn. Turn two, charge out. Don't leave the ship before turn 2 because the aliens have full TU's on turn 1 and can thus reaction fire you to hell and back. Smokes work for other situations too. I always tend to bring one smoke per operative and use up most of them each mission. The concealment they offer is invaluable and has saved dozens of my operatives. Keep in mind that since this is an old game, there's only a limited amount of smoke that can be generated by the game. Keep that in mind when you throw smokes, grenades and blaster bombs.

How do you move around the map? I like to get into a house right away and slowly make my way around using cover and conserving movement points for reaction shots, but this is time consuming and not the best method in a terror mission.

How I do it: fire teams of 3-5 guys, each clearing out their assigned sectors (on an average farmland map, a huge barn or a number of smaller farmhouses make up a single sector). One guy is the designated scout, moving ahead of everyone else, preferrably with smoke concealment. The rest move up slowly behind him keeping enough TU's to launch several auto-/snapshot barrages at once when an alien is seen. As for terror missions, ignore the civilians. Take your time, keep your guys alive and advance steadily. Aliens and civies are spawned randomly and so whether or not the whole lot of them get killed or not is mostly down to luck.

Some personal observations on weapon effectiveness in veteran difficuly:
-Assault rifle/projectile weapons give a decent chance of one-shotting sectoids and floaters
-Laser rifle takes out all primary alien types before Mutons show up
-Heavy plasma works for everything

That said, I usually field a large number of laser rifles very late in the game. Of course a single LR won't kill a muton, but when I have three or four guys autoshotting with good accuracy, I get results.

[Werdna]

When sending your first guys out of the vehicle (with smoke preferably), go one square onto the ramp, turn them 90 degrees, and have them walk off the edge of the ramp.  They should fall next to the rear wheel of the Skyranger, IIRC.  The wheel and ramp will give them a fair amount of cover from return fire.  I do this on both sides of the ramp.  From there I rotate them, and end their turn squatting; they should have enough TU's left to fire or be put usefully on overwatch.  This is a good way to initially scout the exterior of the Skyranger with a minimum of exposure (aside from using tanks).  After that, if I have fliers, I take one step out of the ranger, fly up one square, and then back one square onto the Ranger, between the stabilizers which give partial cover.  These guys give a great overhead view of the surrounding area around the Ranger.

[Micro102]

Wtffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!

One Chryssalid just running around turning everyone into zombies, and one shotting all my guys. Incendiary ammo? Nope, miss all shots and doesn't matter as my auto cannon guy gets swarmed.

[sluissa]

That's X-Com. Chryssalids and Sectoids were the objects of my nightmares for a good chunk of my childhood.

[Flying Dice]

Yep. Welcome to X-COM.

Seeing the descriptions of the Cryssies in new X-COM killed any remaining interest I might have had in it. Hell, just the fact that they are considered balanced for multiplayer should tell you all you need to know.

[Hanslanda]

Chryssalids in new X-Com are frightening at first, but with a good Assault soldier and a nice shotgun, you can one shot them with the double reaction shots you get on their turn. Then kill one on THEIR turn again, not to mention snipers = instant win against everything. It's fun, but not X-Com fun.

[Shadowlord]

Wtffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!

One Chryssalid just running around turning everyone into zombies, and one shotting all my guys. Incendiary ammo? Nope, miss all shots and doesn't matter as my auto cannon guy gets swarmed.

And this is why I tried to give EVERYONE auto cannons in the beginning, and fired everyone with shitty reactions, bravery, or whatever the marksmanship-with-guns stat was.

[Sonlirain]

Yep. Welcome to X-COM.

Seeing the descriptions of the Cryssies in new X-COM killed any remaining interest I might have had in it. Hell, just the fact that they are considered balanced for multiplayer should tell you all you need to know.

If Old X-Com from times of yore was to be released after year 2000 it'd get patched since the oneshot chryssalid death machine was actually a bug.
The original idea was to have chryssalids move fast and execute a flurry of attacks that turned the victim into a zombie IF they killed him.
The AI still listens to the original programming and attacks soldiers repeatedly untill their heath drops to 0.

AD2012 Chryssalids basically act like the chryssalids of yore were intended to act.

[sluissa]

Autocannons actually aren't that great weapons. They're inaccurate, they fire slowly and they're heavy. They don't even do a heck of a lot of damage if they hit, their best feature is that they can use HE and Incendiary ammo. HE is good for clearing out cover and Incendiary is good for lighting up areas at night.

Against chryssalids, I like to use smaller weapons, rifles and even laser pistols. You need something that fires fast to give you a better chance at reaction. Sometimes a reaction shot is all you will get against a chryssalid. And don't give too much credence to weapon type weaknesses and strengths. Excepting superhuman mode or in regards to the really low power starting weapons, it rarely makes much difference. I prefer to fill the air with shots than depend on a few high powered shots to get me through. Also gives more flexibility in how you divide up the shots among multiple enemies. That said, Aimed shots have their place as well.

[Heron TSG]

This is why I used ResourceHacker (the utility for modifying the XCOM .exe)  to make Chryssalids more powerful. Trying to get them to have a leap attack, or at least more movement and attacks. Perhaps more hit points. It doesn't really feel like a Chryssalid mission if you can gun down every Chryssalid you see before even one of them gets a hit in. (And that hit probably won't even kill a guy.)

Argh.

[itisnotlogical]

Never try to take on more than two Chryssies at a time, and even taking on two has shown to be pretty risky. I always try to get at least five guymanz with a clear LoS to a Chryssie, because you want that thing dead the turn it discovers you. I've found that sometimes they'll walk right up to one of your soldiers and then walk back to their cover without doing anything, but this is a rare occurrence and shouldn't be depended on.

[sluissa]

I believe it's because the melee attack they use still has a chance to miss. If the attack misses, it looks like it just stands there, no visual, no sound.

[Flying Dice]

Yep. Welcome to X-COM.

Seeing the descriptions of the Cryssies in new X-COM killed any remaining interest I might have had in it. Hell, just the fact that they are considered balanced for multiplayer should tell you all you need to know.

If Old X-Com from times of yore was to be released after year 2000 it'd get patched since the oneshot chryssalid death machine was actually a bug.
The original idea was to have chryssalids move fast and execute a flurry of attacks that turned the victim into a zombie IF they killed him.
The AI still listens to the original programming and attacks soldiers repeatedly untill their heath drops to 0.

AD2012 Chryssalids basically act like the chryssalids of yore were intended to act.

Yep, and they suffer for it. X-COM wasn't fun just because you were ordering dudes to go around and kill aliens. It was fun because you were planning out proper tactics every turn, ordering shitloads of dudes to go around and kill aliens with all sorts of interesting tricks, and if you messed up even a little the game would bend you over a table. When there's no serious danger unless you have a massive run of bad luck or are incredibly stupid, you don't need to think as hard, and at least in my experience you don't develop the same level of attachment to your squaddies. Hell, new-X-COM cuts the maximum group size down to 4-6 soldiers and it's still beatable even on Ironman Impossible. Try beating all your missions in original X-COM with 4-6 operators; you're going to get massively fucked up even if they're all super-psyker cheesily-trained colonels with heavy plas, flying suits, and blaster launchers.

But that's enough nostalgia filter for tonight/this morning, even if it is warranted.

[andrea]

I think I read that somebody managed to beat the game with only an handful of soldier.
but I don't think they were doing a self imposed ironman.

[puke]

Autocannons actually aren't that great weapons. They're inaccurate, they fire slowly and they're heavy. They don't even do a heck of a lot of damage if they hit, their best feature is that they can use HE and Incendiary ammo. HE is good for clearing out cover and Incendiary is good for lighting up areas at night.

This is exactly what I used them for.  I usually had two, even in mid-late game when everyone else on the team had plasma.  I'd use them to light stuff up, and to tear down buildings and cover.  I'd rely on the low accuracy to make sure that i got a good spread with the explosives or incendiaries.