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[Soulwynd]

It is.

My rookies are all grenadiers. If they live past that, they're given real weapons.

[breadbocks]

No, I mean suicide bombers.

[Soulwynd]

No, I mean suicide bombers.

That works as well. But only to a certain degree, since you often have more aliens than units and the aliens are often very scattered, so it's rare for you to kill more than one with a suicide bomber. But if you have like 3 or 4 of them inside of a room, prime two of those huge bombs and rush in.

[MrWiggles]

You want to avoid letting crafts land. That means they automatically do the mission they were sent for. Which can be a bad thing.

It's actually sort of a double-edged sword. If you shoot them down, they don't get to do their mission... but there's a 75% chance that the ship reactor explodes and leaves you a lot less alloys to salvage and no Elerium-115.

In the early game, I try to let a small UFO land, just so I can get a head start on navigation, e-115, and power source. However, for mid and late game, I shoot down all the others UFOs except the Supply Ships. As that what gonna get you the most E-115 and other cool things.

That comes with its own risk though. It does mean leaving an alien base in operation. That is a moderate impact on your monthly score.

There was a great episode with the beginning of the Jaffa rebellion. SG1 team were discussing the difference between a P90 and a Staff Weapon. P90 is a weapon of war, and the Staff Weapon is a weapon of terror ect.

It's a nice theory, but TVTropes is of the opinion that it's rather unlikely that you could shoot a rope like that. You can't use your P90 in melee combat, and the staves don't appear to run out of ammo. Of course, they're much slower to fire as well.

Also, it's Naquadah, not Naqueda. Wouldn't want to make a mistake like that.

Trinium anyone?

The P90 does have a bayonet, so it can be used as a last ditch melee weapon. Though the staff weapon does make a much better melee weapon.

I would have to rewatch the episode, but if I recall SG-1 team was talking about how the staff weapon was in general, an impractical  weapon. The rope scene was a cool exaggeration, but that scene did display that the P90 (and presumably other assault rifles) are more accurate and reliable to kill targets at a distance.

[Pandarsenic]

What you lose in monthly score from having an alien base, you more than make up for in clean, well-practiced UFO salvage missions on the Supply ships that keep giving you hundreds of Elerium. Over. And over.

My favorite is Snakeman bases, because:
1) Chrysalid population means you generally won't really want to attack the base directly if you don't have to
2) Snakemen are weaksauce
3) No psionics

They're also good for grinding up [That One Stat] Skill, reaction fire, accuracy, etc., as you like.

[Tarran]

Snakemen bases are also my favorite, mostly because of no psionics whatsoever. I personally fear psionic enemies more than Chrysalids, since at least with Chrysalids you can fire back. With psionics... not so much. Also, they're slow, meaning that they can't really fire and duck back into cover all that well.

[breadbocks]

I thought mutons couldn't psionic. They are my favorite because of their spiffy terror units.

[Tarran]

I thought mutons couldn't psionic. They are my favorite because of their spiffy terror units.

They can't. I just haven't run into any bases from them yet (strange, huh?). They're also decently good at sustaining fire, even from heavy plasmas.

[Pandarsenic]

I don't like raiding Muton supply ships because Mutons are too damn durable. The bastards. They also pack good equipment, and have plenty of TUs and high stats in a way that Snakeman (and Floaters) pretty much just don't.

[Soulwynd]

Letting them land is bad tho. Afaik their mission is completed when they land and not when they take off. So at least shooting them down should be quite good in terms of score. (I don't think shooting them down gives you any points, but at least keeps them from giving you negative points.)

As for grinding skills, Xcomutils + laser rifle (or the one from TFTD, which xcomutils makes ammo-less like the laser) + good lookout position + melee enemies = huge grinding potential.

My best units are those with autoguns (or any automatic rifle in TFTD) and floating armor. You can just fly up high in the city map, use units as spotters and then rain explosive ammo.

Fakeedit: I was trying to find my old saves, but I deleted them all, I have only beginning game saves but I have nice units with 15 missions and 20+ kills.

[breadbocks]

I thought mutons couldn't psionic. They are my favorite because of their spiffy terror units.

They can't. I just haven't run into any bases from them yet (strange, huh?). They're also decently good at sustaining fire, even from heavy plasmas.

True, but damn if I haven't gotten the highest skills off of Siliciods.

[Soulwynd]

I don't like raiding Muton supply ships because Mutons are too damn durable. The bastards. They also pack good equipment, and have plenty of TUs and high stats in a way that Snakeman (and Floaters) pretty much just don't.

You want to have PSI units before mutons appear. If you're on superhuman, then you're fucked anyway because you can get muton ship right off the bat. They're puny after you make them drop their weapon and run into other aliens.

[MrWiggles]

Letting them land is bad tho. Afaik their mission is completed when they land and not when they take off. So at least shooting them down should be quite good in terms of score.

As for grinding skills, Xcomutils + laser rifle (or the one from TFTD, which xcomutils makes ammo-less like the laser) + good lookout position + melee enemies = huge grinding potential.

My best units are those with autoguns (or any automatic rifle in TFTD) and floating armor. You can just fly up high in the city map, use units as spotters and then rain explosive ammo.

Fakeedit: I was trying to find my old saves, but I deleted them all, I have only beginning game saves but I have nice units with 15 missions and 20+ kills.

Yea, the alien mission is deemed done when they land. The only exception being the terror mission. Though unlike other alien missions, the supple mission doesn't have an affect on the country their in, just your monthly rating in letting an alien base exist.

It would be neat if you could starve an alien base by shooting down all its supply ships, but I don' think this happens.

Also, my favorite base to raid supply ship from is the Snakemen bases too.  I tend to use these raids to train up my auxiliary squads. The aux. squad is based at my storage base.

[Soulwynd]

Well, with xcomutils, even the fighters can carry a small crew. So you can shoot down and start the mission right there. Of course, if your fighter gets shoot down, you lose a bunch of units and equipment.

I don't like keeping more than one full ship for missions. The small/tiny ufos I do with the 4 units in the fighter (at least I think it was four).

[Robsoie]

Note that if psy alien troops are not fun for your squaddies survival, there's always the cowardly option to disable mind control powers in xcomutils.
Fortunately the option is balanced in the way that if the aliens can't do it, your XCOM can't do it anymore too.