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[nenjin]

What's a "decent" number of troops/HWP to take for the mid-game on beginner, per mission?

Just started getting my terror missions....and when 3/8 guys are discovered to be psychically vulnerable, one gets killed, and you're pinned by enemy Cyberdisks and guys on every flank....yeah. I've managed to muddle through it and reload until I get the mostly desired results, but I feel like I'm not taking enough guys. I usually have 2 to 3 infantry, 2 heavies, a grenadier, a scout, and someone in a commander role.

Also, still wanting to know if anyone knows how to run the Xcomutil setup in something other than Dosbox on Win 7. I cannot get the maps to generate because my command prompt doesn't handle 16-bit applications.

[Soulwynd]

I take 10 people until I can get the alien-based crafts.

If you're using xcomutils you can also have small 4 men teams in the attack fighters to deal with the small ufos.

[nenjin]

Are the numbers of aliens scaled to the game play? What I mean is, am I always going to have 2 to 5 aliens from a downed craft, 6 to 10 from a landed, and 12+ on terror, base defense and base attack missions?

Or do all the numbers of aliens just continually get higher as the game goes on? I haven't really seen a need for loading up interceptors with people in the early game, and it doesn't seem like the missions get any more forgiving as time goes on, for smaller numbers of guys.

[Soulwynd]

I believe it depends on the type of craft and mission it has. A downed terror mission craft is a terror mission on its own.

I don't remember it escalating in number, but they do get much harder. The faster you can research and acquire research supplies (such a certain living aliens and items) the better. Specially if you're playing on normal or harder. The best way to finish the game is fast otherwise they start retaliating non-stop and flooding the sky with UFOs and last thing you know, you lost countries.

[nenjin]

I can already tell I don't have the stomach for a lot harder than normal I think. With how long it takes to do missions right sometimes and not just hemorrhage guys, on top of trying to police the world in the early game, I won't be up for 3 month long games of Xcom. 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Also about the UFO extender, you can't use the windows version normally in Vista/7, but I read in the feature list that you can change the DirectDraw into D3D, as well as make it windowed. I guess it makes it Vista/7 compatible?

Yeah. Doesn't help playability much, for me anyway. Is there any way to make X-Com CE be as close to X-Com DOS as possible? In terms of sounds, music, etc?

[Sowelu]

Are the numbers of aliens scaled to the game play? What I mean is, am I always going to have 2 to 5 aliens from a downed craft, 6 to 10 from a landed, and 12+ on terror, base defense and base attack missions?

Or do all the numbers of aliens just continually get higher as the game goes on? I haven't really seen a need for loading up interceptors with people in the early game, and it doesn't seem like the missions get any more forgiving as time goes on, for smaller numbers of guys.

The aliens per craft-type stays constant throughout the game (though there are more on higher difficulties).  It gets a lot easier once you have flying armor and good strength, but once the mutons show up, you're back to needing a big pile of guys to deal with a downed medium scout again.

[Fikes]

Don't be afarid to ignore missions or crafts, or run from missions that are lost. A snakeman terror mission can turn into hell quick, you are better off retreating. Same with the Etheral missions.

Also, losing a bunch of rookies is not a bad thing. Fill the Skyranger with Rookies and send them to the small crashes. They win and get promoted, cool, the get out of the danger squad. They get mostly wiped? Time for replacements.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, true.  Three rookies cost about as much as one plasma weapon.  Okay, about as much as two plasma weapons if you count sacking the bad ones.  Don't keep worthless ones around, but unless their stats just scream MEGA SUPER HERO to you, let them have their trial by fire!

And personally, I don't subscribe to that "Every new recruit must be sacked unless they have 50+ bravery, 55+ reactions, 60+ TU and 60+ accuracy" thing.  I mean if they're really terrible yeah I throw them away, but it's always nice to have a stable of base defenders lying around, right?  You always need some people you don't feel bad about leaving behind or having die horribly.  They just can't be pathetic enough that you cringe when they get experience instead of some other guy.

...Once you have at least plasma rifles, snakeman terror missions aren't all that bad.  Just remember a few key rules:

• If the chryssalid didn't scream, it's not dead.  When it wakes up, it'll have its full TUs that turn.  Throw a grenade at the body.  Blast weapons are guaranteed to destroy stunned critters regardless of hit points, and for all weapons from HC-HE on up it'll happen no matter where they are in the blast radius.  For grenades, land one no more than two tiles away.
• Assume that all civilians are as good as dead.  Don't bother rushing to save them, you won't get there in time.  If you manage to save any, it's a happy accident.  If there's a civilian next to a chryssalid and all you have is a rocket launcher, kill them both.
• Saving a civilian is worth 30.  If aliens kill a civilian, it's worth -30.  If YOU kill a civilian, it's worth -50.  Therefore...if you assume that all civilians will die anyway, killing one yourself is only really -20 points.  Go wild with the rocket launcher, you've got very little to lose.
• Remember that explosives will blow up other explosives on the ground.  You cannot chuck ten grenades at a zombie to kill it and the resultant chryssalid.  So, don't kill zombies with grenades, or they'll hatch on their own turn and you will be sad.
• Don't rely on reaction fire.  Chryssalids have great initiative.  Kill them on your own turn, and use any spare TU to run away. (Remember though, that they can sprint like 24 tiles and still zombify you, if it's along a straight line and not a diagonal.  You can only see 20 tiles in daylight, and 9 at night.  Have fun.)
• Bring flying suits and laugh in their faces.  Standard guidelines about blowing up buildings instead of entering them apply.  Warehouses are two stories tall inside, so that's a bonus.

Spoiler: Potentially major geoscape spoiler, if you want access to psionics faster (click to show/hide)

Sectoid leaders and commanders are the only members of their race to give you psionics.  You can't find them on scouts of any size, but you will find them on all larger ships and on terror missions.  You probably already knew that.

SHOOTING DOWN a ship will make them delay future missions in that sequence.  Basic research missions only send scouts, but all other missions will result in larger craft as time goes on.  If your hyper-wave decoder shows a sectoid harvester or abductor mission, you probably want to avoid shooting down their scouts...that way, they'll show up with bigger ships sooner.  Weeks or even a month sooner.  Assaulting landed ships doesn't make a difference though, so feel free to do that all you want.

[nenjin]

My only real issue with recruits right now is that they are prohibitively expensive early game to prune for the best, before you obviously get your manufacturing arm rolling (which takes months) and start raking in the cash.

I've been selling tech I'm not using yet to cover emergencies, but mostly I'm stock piling. Plus, I haven't been researching "FTW". I've been sitting on unresearched plasma weapons since the very first encounter of the game, because there's other stuff I want to see and know about, and I just got my laser weapons all done.

Anyway, I call "30" decent enough for most stats, bravery included. (Since the leadership rules and playing right counter act most of the morale hits.)

What does sink a recruit for me though is anything in the 10 to 20 range, and it seems like that's 1 out of every 3 guys I recruit. Then you take them into battle and find out, haha, the AI picks them for the very first MC attack, meaning they've got the lowest innate score of the whole group. And then the next new recruit is the next target. So out of the three you recruited, all ended up being canned for one reason or another.

I could just hurl guys into the meat grinder to make for quicker games...but like DF, I baby my alter egos. At least until there are 50 or 60 of them, and they've got highly skilled leaders to keep things together.

[MrWiggles]

What's a "decent" number of troops/HWP to take for the mid-game on beginner, per mission?

Just started getting my terror missions....and when 3/8 guys are discovered to be psychically vulnerable, one gets killed, and you're pinned by enemy Cyberdisks and guys on every flank....yeah. I've managed to muddle through it and reload until I get the mostly desired results, but I feel like I'm not taking enough guys. I usually have 2 to 3 infantry, 2 heavies, a grenadier, a scout, and someone in a commander role.

There is no right or wrong amount of troops to bring. I generally have a squad of 8-6, depending if a mission pops up before the replacement soldiers or if I can't afford them.

If I have 8, then I split them into two groups of 4 that take half the map, furthered into 4 groups of of 2. These two man groups are covering the map, while each team can support generally one other team.

With 6 peeps, its a similar set up, but its 3 groups of 2, and they can't support each other as well.

However, there are "Challenge" play throughs, which restrict the number of soldiers, you can bring.

The Chuck Norris challenge, is where you have only one person sent to a mission, armed with only a stun rod for karate chop action. Bonus points for only have the same person make it to the end game, and win.

I generally get a causality every other mission 1-2 soldiers, who are generally my rookies.

I rarely bring HWPs on mission. Though HWPs are a style choice. At the early game, I bring HWPs along on the first few mission to act as forward scouts. They however do not make any kills. Each shoot, and kill that an HWP makes, take away the possible XP gain, and stat boost of a soldier. The HWP, is static in its stat, but given enough time and success, your soldiers do become quite the super soldier. 

I have a Sarge right now, thats been with me since day one. In fact, he was only survivor of my first alien mission. Which had 5 causalities and 2 panics.

He managed to hold it together with his high bravery of 60.

He has 20 confirmed kills, and his stats are reflecting this.
TUs is 69.
Reaction is 58.
Firing Accuracy is 76.

And, damn it, I'm attached to this little badass sarge. Hes never been injured, but has taken 10 heavy plasma hits.  My other badass unit, with similar stats has been injured numerous times.

Now for terror missions, it depends. If I don't have power armor, or plasma weapons, I bring a HWP, and it takes every kill it can get. I do this because, unlike most missions, time is of the essence. The longer the mission takes, means more zombies, and more dead civvies.

After I get power armor and or plasma weapons, I stop bring the HWPs.

Though I always have HWP acting as base guards, especially for my auxiliary bases. (Though you do need one soldier their regardless.)
----

Are the numbers of aliens scaled to the game play? What I mean is, am I always going to have 2 to 5 aliens from a downed craft, 6 to 10 from a landed, and 12+ on terror, base defense and base attack missions?

Or do all the numbers of aliens just continually get higher as the game goes on? I haven't really seen a need for loading up interceptors with people in the early game, and it doesn't seem like the missions get any more forgiving as time goes on, for smaller numbers of guys.

The number stays more or less constant, based on the craft size, race  and mission.  Difficulty ups the number of terror units only in my experience. (Beside the hardier aliens.)

[Sowelu]

Personally I rank my soldiers something like this...

Time units of 70+ is worth +1 point, 80 is worth +2.
Stamina isn't very important.
Health isn't important either.  The line between "unaffected" and "dead" is always so thin, regardless of health.
Bravery under 40 is worth -1 point, bravery of 70 and up is worth +1 point for every 10.
Firing accuracy under 50 is worth -1 point.  60 and up is worth +1 point for every 10.
Reactions under 40 is worth -1 point.  50 and up is worth +1 point for every extra 10.
Strength is completely irrelevant.  It'll increase over time, just gotta be careful who I give my rocket launchers to at first.

I sack anybody with negative points, unless I'm super hard-up for troops and cash like the very start of the game.  Anyone with 0 points, I bring along just long enough to hit squaddie, then I leave them at home for base defense.

I don't really believe in sniper/shock troops/medic/whatever roles.  I just rank my guys with a symbol or two after their name.  And of course, UFO Extender makes it easier since I don't have to mark their strength in their stats.
-2 or -3: _
-1: .
0: -
1: =
2: !
3: !!
4: *
etc

Psi defense isn't all that important once you have hyper-wave decoders and more than one transport.  Just send your awesome but psi-weak guys to go hunt Mutons.  It means you don't have to sack half your guys once you finally get your psi labs.

[MrWiggles]

I've never done roles either. Everyone has a medkit, everyone has a stun rod, everyone has a backup laser rifle. Everyone fights.

[Soulwynd]

Xcomutils already renames them for you, so I see no need.

I also don't usually throw squaddies away, sure I can use them as fodder and grenadiers, but I don't waste them.

[Sowelu]

Fun Fact!  It takes 4 TUs to pull a grenade or pistol or whatever out of your belt, but only 3 TUs from your shoulder pocket!  Hooray for non-spoilery pages.  Considering that priming and throwing a grenade costs 75% of your TUs, and turning costs a little too, shaving one point off your grenade-drawing time could really save you 10% or more on your car insurance your butt.  Only useful for grenades, maybe motion trackers, and absolutely nothing else...but still.