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[a1s]

I would have to disagree on "blue" ammo (hollow point rounds). If you haven't taken Drassen yet, they will on average net you more damage then brownish (ball) ammo. Glaser is useless by the time you get it.

also, in patch 1.13 hire Sheila Sterling ("Scope"), her starting weapon will be the best sniper rifle you'll see until late game (you'll need a decent marksman, but even if you don't have one, sniper weapon effect on sight range is hard to overestimate).

[Sordid]

Hmm, fights in open terrain suck REALLY hardcore.  You can make them a little easier travelling at night, but early on with early equipment, it's really rough.  Open-terrain fights don't really get any easier until you start having sniper rifles, which is maybe halfway through the game.

The way to win open-terrain fights is to not engage in them at all. The road to Drassen can easily be won if you know what to do - it's three tiles and the patrol is scripted to go back and forth. The trick is that in the third tile, just before Drassen, there's a barn and a small house, which offer some pretty good tactical options. To get to them, you exit Omerta south. Now two things can happen - either you've run into the patrol or you haven't. If you have, you'll have a strip along the northern edge of the map to position your mercs. Put them into the eastern corner and as soon as battle starts, exit the map east. Now you're ahead of the patrol and can take your positions in the barn and house before the patrol arrives or simply ignore the patrol altogether and continue to Drassen (I don't recommend this, the weapons you loot off the patrol will come in handy, especially if you have 'drop all' enabled). If the patrol isn't in the tile when you exit Omerta, you simply go to the tactical view, position your guys at the eastern edge of the area, and exit east as above when the patrol arrives and battle starts.

Once you get to the airport, be prepared to retry quite a few times.  It's hard.  You'll want to attack at night, and when you engage the enemy, make sure you engage with multiple people, and within the range of your pistols.  Shooting at a guard with one guy from 18 squares, he's going to bring in backup and by the time you kill him, you're wounded and his buddies have shown up.  Shooting at the guard with three guys from 8 tiles, he'll be blown away pretty quick.

You can make it easier by cutting through the fence with wirecutters from the warehouse in the first Omerta area (you did pick them up, didn't you?), thus bypassing the heavily guarded gate.

Mistake #1:  You didn't hire an IMP guy!  That is really important, in part because he comes with an awesome MP5 that will be your best friend in the world until it runs out of ammo (make sure that doesn't happen before you take the airport).  To conserve ammo, use burst fire with it, not full-auto.

The IMP's equipment is determined by his skills - if you don't have enough marksmanship, you'll just get a Browning HiPower or a 1911. On the other hand, night-ops has a chance of netting you night vision goggles, which come in very handy in early fights (before enemies get them too).

Fatigue is also pretty bad for your aim--guys with half a blue bar will be moderately worse shots than guys with a full blue bar.

Oh absolutely. Never ever engage in battle unless you have a fully rested squad. It's also a good idea to bring a few canteens along to replenish short-term fatigue.

Oh yeah, and stay the hell away from blue and green ammo.  Pretty much everyone wears armor, so glaser rounds will usually never even do a single point of damage.

Except against tigers and bugs. Machine gun + glaser = CARNAGE.

[mendonca]

And if you get caught out in the open, don't forget that you can run away!

If you have the edge on them in night vision (e.g. Night ops trait / Night vision goggles etc.) you will likely get in the first shot, this is very useful.

If you don't have the edge on them at night, they might have the edge on you!

Basically it comes down to learning a bit of tactical common sense (cover, when to engage etc.) learning what tactical advantages your equipment and your mercs give you, and applying this responsibly whilst considering your mercs as being important people.


And why not try going to San Mona first? If you have a few spare dollars, I hear there is an arms dealer kicking about who might have some really good stuff. Try speaking to Hans, he should be able to help you.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Also, don't forget the strafe button.  Really useful for countering interrupts.  Speaking of interrupts. It doesn't hurt to keep a few action points on hand in order to capitalize on them when you get them.

[Sordid]

I actually rely on interrupts. My tactic usually consists of simply moving my mercs into advantageous positions, having them aim to where the enemies will come from (by using the look button to turn them to face a particular direction and then using it again to make them raise their weapons) and ending the turn. When the enemies come into view, all I have to do is pull the trigger.

[Il Palazzo]

A quick question: what's leaderhip stat good for? Is this just a quantifier of how fast you can train militia?

[mendonca]

A quick question: what's leaderhip stat good for? Is this just a quantifier of how fast you can train militia?

I think it determines whether you can successfully talk to people in some small way.

I.e. I seem to remember Skyrider giving MD no time whatsoever when I went to try and recruit him, so I get my Leadership 40 IMP on to him and he joins straight away.

Maybe the same with Conrad and the others.

I'm not convinced it is of great use, apart from the militia bit.

[Sowelu]

Yeah--for conversations with NPCs, many of them NEED a high-leadership person or they will totally ignore you.  If you have a leadership of 35 and the guy needs 40, for example, you can try talking to him all day and night and won't ever get anywhere.

[sneakey pete]

Militia and teaching other mercs skills (not that you'd really want to do that).

Infact, Idon't really "train" any of my mercs in 1.13. I did back on my old version of the game with the punching robot glitch (start my IMP merch with stupidly low strength and agility put that into other things), and training explosives with deactivating a landmine over and over.
Fact of the matter is though, that body stats train up so slow that its not worth your time to bother with, and things like marksmanship train up fastest in battle. Most of my games i give ira my first or second sniper rifle and she has 80+ marksmanship by the end of the campain.

Hmm, what other tips and tricks do I know. This game is one of my big 5, so to speak. i've played it for probably 1000+ hours, so i know a lot about it. Oh yeah, the 1.13 patch. Really, they're both different games. It changes pretty much everything more complex than "take gun shoot bad guys". However, it gets rid of the old IMP creation method

One of my favourite things to do early on in the game, before the enemies get into really heavy armour, is run around with with either camo/NV and silenced weapons, rifles if possible. Its great fun managing to pick off enemies without them knowing exactly where you are and being able to fire back. Note however, that they'll usually get a decent idea of your area, so you need to move around a bit, however this makes flanking attacks perfect. Position someone only slightly ahead but off to the side, so they're not actually in a spot that's close to the enemy, however so that they have a great line of sight to where the enemies that are coming to investigate their fallen comrade will come walking.

regarding the IMP merc, I usually start him with 0 mechanical, 0 explosive and 35 leadership and medical skill. Considering his low cost he really needs to be effective early on, that's why i do this. As well as that, you can always get someone else to do that later on. This leaves plenty of points to be dumped into wisdom health marksmanship and str/agl/dex. Its always fun to make him a double autoweapons expert (though it contradicts with the silenced weapons style) as well, because later on in the game it seems to be a very AP effective way of killing someone, if you can land all 7 of the bullets into their torso from 200m away. Which your auto weapons guy should be able to do given his (hopefully) ~95 marksmanship and using a quick gun with a forgrip, rod and spring and a reflex sight/scope. 7.62 rounds work well for it too, but weigh a shittonne.

As for my overall strategic stratergy, i usually head for drassen, drassen sam site, find skyrider, and after that head off towards the central city. At this stage i usually hire a couple of the M.E.R.C. guys to act as a secondry militia training force. this way my main fighting team can move onto a new town as soon as the capture the old one, instead of sitting around training militia.