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[Silent_Thunder]

I'm not shitting you, my first op in my latest save was "Operation Empty Skull". Seems old Bradford must be pissed about not even having a tutorial to fuck up this time around

[LoSboccacc]

forgot to bought rookies at rokiemart, forced to go into landed ufo with a major and colonel, both sniper.

enter 6 floaters and 2 mutons,

RAGEQUIT

[jhxmt]

A couple of things I've picked up from this forum that I hadn't realised before - grateful if someone could confirm!

* Storyline missions progress the difficulty curve...which progresses anyway, but they force it to happen. Therefore my usual tactic (rushing the storyline) is counterproductive. Instead I should try to hold off on the storyline missions until I NEED to do them. Correct?

* Panic is reduced by having satellites over countries, rather than just by doing missions. Therefore priority one (or two or three) should be to get satellites up in as many countries as possible, correct? And should I be focussing on one continent, or spreading myself thinner (with the added cost of interceptors that this entails)?

* Never, ever dash someone ahead of the rest of your team if they're the only one who hasn't moved that turn. You're a moron if you do. Corollary: I'm a moron.

[LoSboccacc]

run&gun if you are exploring is a godsend: you keep your team overwatch, move the guy forward with run and gun,  if alien happen you move it back and you can overwatch him

[Shades]

I think my favourite unit at this point is the support, faster movement (three squares turns out to be a hell of a lot), able to place decent cover, extra medi kits and a second item and even a double overwatch skill which comes in ever so handy.

Although I like the bullet storm on heavy too, which you get nice an early, and these have handy rockets.

* Panic is reduced by having satellites over countries, rather than just by doing missions. Therefore priority one (or two or three) should be to get satellites up in as many countries as possible, correct? And should I be focussing on one continent, or spreading myself thinner (with the added cost of interceptors that this entails)?

I tend to pick either the highest income or the one that will give me the most engineers, assuming I have a spare one after I've been adding them to reduce panic. The basic interceptor doesn't cost much so I wouldn't worry about spreading yourself too thin.
I don't know if it's just coincidence but I've also never lost a country from the council once the satellite is there.

* Never, ever dash someone ahead of the rest of your team if they're the only one who hasn't moved that turn. You're a moron if you do. Corollary: I'm a moron.

Took me ages to learn not to do this, even when the game reminds you in painful ways each time you forget.

[LoSboccacc]

I'm beginning to hate the stupid keyboard interface.

Hey ho, now the 2 is overwatch. no wait it isn't. 3 is headshot, unless you press x, then becomes grenade.

Hard to make mistake since there is always confirmations, but still... at least the most common between class could have been in the first slots, fixed. Especially overwatch.

[Sirian]

Something i noticed : if you save before getting a request, you can reload and get different requests/rewards. Also, if you save before an abduction, reloading won't change the countries affected, but it can swap the rewards around. And it seems that saving/reloading before an UFO interception can change the country in which it appears. For UFO landings, it won't change the country, but it can change the map.

Also : using the sniper's radar to detect enemies won't make them move, so if you're careful you can then use a grenade or a rocket and quickly get rid of a small group.

[sluissa]

I'm beginning to hate the stupid keyboard interface.

Hey ho, now the 2 is overwatch. no wait it isn't. 3 is headshot, unless you press x, then becomes grenade.

Hard to make mistake since there is always confirmations, but still... at least the most common between class could have been in the first slots, fixed. Especially overwatch.

Overwatch, at least, has it's own keyboard shortcut: "Y" It'll send the unit into overwatch no matter where it is on the list... Only problem is for me, it forces you to listen to the unit acknowledgement before you can move onto the next where using the number keys don't for some reason.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Something i noticed : if you save before getting a request, you can reload and get different requests/rewards. Also, if you save before an abduction, reloading won't change the countries affected, but it can swap the rewards around. And it seems that saving/reloading before an UFO interception can change the country in which it appears. For UFO landings, it won't change the country, but it can change the map.

I'm not sure about the rest of the things, but the UFO interceptions are definitively not random. I've had the game crash on me many times before an interception attempt, and the UFOs have always appeared in the exact same place, down to the same longitude and latitude. So UFO do fly around the map in a deterministic fashion, and don't just spawn randomly out of thin air for interception missions.

I'm beginning to hate the stupid keyboard interface.

Hey ho, now the 2 is overwatch. no wait it isn't. 3 is headshot, unless you press x, then becomes grenade.

Hard to make mistake since there is always confirmations, but still... at least the most common between class could have been in the first slots, fixed. Especially overwatch.

Overwatch, at least, has it's own keyboard shortcut: "Y" It'll send the unit into overwatch no matter where it is on the list... Only problem is for me, it forces you to listen to the unit acknowledgement before you can move onto the next where using the number keys don't for some reason.

And shooting will always be "1" unless your gun is out of ammo. You can also reload with "R", which has caused me many problems when trying to rotate the camera.

[Cthulhu]

I'm using a gamepad.  The only trouble I've had is that the movement is a bit less precise, so on rare occasions you can have a guy miss the cover, and since you only get two moves that can be fatal.

[Sirian]

Something i noticed : if you save before getting a request, you can reload and get different requests/rewards. Also, if you save before an abduction, reloading won't change the countries affected, but it can swap the rewards around. And it seems that saving/reloading before an UFO interception can change the country in which it appears. For UFO landings, it won't change the country, but it can change the map.

I'm not sure about the rest of the things, but the UFO interceptions are definitively not random. I've had the game crash on me many times before an interception attempt, and the UFOs have always appeared in the exact same place, down to the same longitude and latitude. So UFO do fly around the map in a deterministic fashion, and don't just spawn randomly out of thin air for interception missions.

Hmm i don't know, i'm pretty sure that i once reloaded my game and, for the same interception, used a different interceptor (of which i only had 1 per continent). I noticed it because the previous interceptor had a laser and the next time it had missiles. But maybe it's because the ufo had travelled a different distance before i started the interception or something.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Something i noticed : if you save before getting a request, you can reload and get different requests/rewards. Also, if you save before an abduction, reloading won't change the countries affected, but it can swap the rewards around. And it seems that saving/reloading before an UFO interception can change the country in which it appears. For UFO landings, it won't change the country, but it can change the map.

I'm not sure about the rest of the things, but the UFO interceptions are definitively not random. I've had the game crash on me many times before an interception attempt, and the UFOs have always appeared in the exact same place, down to the same longitude and latitude. So UFO do fly around the map in a deterministic fashion, and don't just spawn randomly out of thin air for interception missions.

Hmm i don't know, i'm pretty sure that i once reloaded my game and, for the same interception, used a different interceptor (of which i only had 1 per continent). I noticed it because the previous interceptor had a laser and the next time it had missiles. But maybe it's because the ufo had travelled a different distance before i started the interception or something.

How far back was your save compared to the UFO detection? I've had the intercepts turn out differently whenever I reload, so if your save if far back enough then maybe the UFO took a different path. Then again the autosave feature could just be saving the game before the UFO is detected but after it has spawned. I'm not 100% sure.

[alway]

A couple of things I've picked up from this forum that I hadn't realised before - grateful if someone could confirm!

* Storyline missions progress the difficulty curve...which progresses anyway, but they force it to happen. Therefore my usual tactic (rushing the storyline) is counterproductive. Instead I should try to hold off on the storyline missions until I NEED to do them. Correct?

* Panic is reduced by having satellites over countries, rather than just by doing missions. Therefore priority one (or two or three) should be to get satellites up in as many countries as possible, correct? And should I be focussing on one continent, or spreading myself thinner (with the added cost of interceptors that this entails)?

* Never, ever dash someone ahead of the rest of your team if they're the only one who hasn't moved that turn. You're a moron if you do. Corollary: I'm a moron.

Pretty much, yeah. Satellites should always be priority #1 until you have full coverage. They give you tons of money. They give you tons of engineers. They give you tons of scientists. They remove nearly all panic. The only thing they don't do is win missions for you; which doesn't even matter since missions are much easier when you have 1000 per month to spend on troops.

[Werdna]

Just a word of advice on stunning stuff; if you're cursing the RNG and losing guys there's better ways of doing it.  Ideally you should be spending two turns devoted to the stun, one for set up and one for the stun.  First off, your target should be the last 'activated' alien in the group.  Once he's alone, on the set up turn you move your stunner in within a single 'move' to the target, Hunker him, pop smoke on him, Suppress or Disarm the target, whatever it takes to lower the chance of the stunner getting slagged.  Everyone else is either trying to whittle the target down to 3 or less bars, with pistols if need be.  Sometimes you'll crit and kill the target, oh well, they'll send another soon enough.  Second turn, you run the stunner in first and try the stun.  If it fails, you slag the target with everyone else.  When you run the stunner in, don't forget to try to place him near some cover in case he activates a new group of aliens, or the alien still had a buddy you forgot about offscreen. 

Obviously not everything is going to give you two turns of perfect setup to pull this off, but the basic idea can be adapted to any situation.  Particularly the 2nd turn, where you always try the stun first, and simply slag the target afterwards if you fail the RNG.  If the stunner does not have teammates with high % shots to back him up, don't do it.   Unless you are liberally using saves, a 90% success chance is still a 10% chance to fail.  It's going to happen!

Edit:  another tip; grenades are nice for whittling health down in a predictable manner.  They don't crit, and they remove cover.  I don't use them in the first turn however, because when you remove cover the alien will spend his turn moving to new cover, triggering Suppression shots, etc and probably ending up out of stun range.  Use it right before the stun on the stun turn.  This gives the alien no cover for the kill shots if the stun fails, but it may mean your stunner ends turn standing in the open.

[Werdna]

While I'm thinking of it, for people having problems with Cyberdiscs:

Heavy + HEAT ammo perk + alien grenade = 10 points of damage, often on the entire Cyberdisc circus.  Great way to clear the drones and put some hurt on the disc in a single move.