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[Zangi]

How to save a VIP ? Seriously, I remember it being easy as pie, but now, aliens seems to shoot at it first, and when 5 thin men rain down from the sky, I can't kill them all, and they inevitably kill the VIP with their crazy accuracy (failed 3 VIP missions that way).

Don't rush the VIP.   Enemy spawn on the VIP's progress if I remember correctly..  Set Overwatch, move VIP, watch thin men die, move troops forward.  Rinse and Repeat.

[EnigmaticHat]

So, bought Enemy Within with the last sale. After trying again a Classic Ironman (and I'm quite failling at it too), I'm wondering about some stuff :
What happens if I lose a special mission (say, an Operation Slingshot mission ? I also failed one with a french military convoy that has been attacked, don't know if it leads to anything) ? Does the operation chain continue or not ?
Medals are destroyed if the soldier you gave them is dead, I assume ?
How to save a VIP ? Seriously, I remember it being easy as pie, but now, aliens seems to shoot at it first, and when 5 thin men rain down from the sky, I can't kill them all, and they inevitably kill the VIP with their crazy accuracy (failed 3 VIP missions that way).
And, any general advice on classic difficulty ? I know it's kinda too hard for me, but when the game went out, I played Normal, and it became too easily too quick (hell, didn't even finished the game), I wish there was a middle difficulty, so I'm trying Classic.

All the special mission chains are harder than (most) standard council missions, so that might be what's going on with the failure.  Anyway, you need to assume that if any alien ever tries to shoot the VIP, you will lose the mission.  So either hide the VIP in areas where the aliens cannot possibly see him (like in small windowless rooms, or behind a cargo crate/large wall) or kill every revealed alien.  If the VIP is pinned out of cover and you can't kill the aliens, dash a soldier into a safe location to clear out overwatch, and then dash the VIP after him.  Or dash the VIP first if you can afford to lose the mission.

My advice for classic would be as such:
1.  Stay in full cover.  The soldier with the least cover will be shot.  So if one soldier is in partial cover, the whole squad might as well be.  Same with hunkering down if the rest of the squad doesn't.
2.  Before you make any move, have a half-second "is this an awful idea" pause.  If the squad is in danger, don't act until you're confident you've figured out the best move with the information at hand.  Remember, its a turn based game.  Take as long as you need.
3.  The best form of safety is having all revealed aliens dead.  This is the only exception to advice #1; if the aliens don't get to attack, it makes no difference whether you're in cover or not.
4.  If you're going to move a squad member into unknown territory, move them FIRST.  That way if you reveal aliens, you can retreat the first soldier and use the rest of the squad to protect him/her.

[PanH]

How to save a VIP ? Seriously, I remember it being easy as pie, but now, aliens seems to shoot at it first, and when 5 thin men rain down from the sky, I can't kill them all, and they inevitably kill the VIP with their crazy accuracy (failed 3 VIP missions that way).

Don't rush the VIP.   Enemy spawn on the VIP's progress if I remember correctly..  Set Overwatch, move VIP, watch thin men die, move troops forward.  Rinse and Repeat.

I'll try that. I actually used to try to get the VIP as fast as possible out of here, so it seems weird that spawns are based on that.

And thanks for the other answers. Though, anyone knows whether special missions can still be done if one of them is failed ? I might restart my game anyway.

Actually, IIRC, if a soldier dies, you can steal the medals and give them to another guy.

So, once you have 6 medals of each, it's nearly useless ?

[PanH]

Well, failed a game again (most nations were already in panic as I was researching carapace, 2 nations had left). I guess I'm just terrible at this game. What frustrates me the most is that I don't really know what I could do better. Sure, I do some mistakes from times to times that kill a soldier, but nothing that feels very important, yet I fail in every classic game that I tried. Maybe it has something to do with the managing part, I dunno.

[umiman]

Tips:

1. Ignore armour. Rush laser weapons. Your objective is to always be able to kill an entire alien squad in one turn before they can fight back. It's not always possible, but that's what you want to aim for.

2. Priority 2 is getting levelled squad members asap. You want 6-man squads before you fight mutons ideally. So keep using the same guys (except maybe put in a new rookie each mission so you get a stable base of squaddies).

3. Don't take risks. Always make sure you have a back up plan in case something goes wrong. For example, suppose you are relying on someone getting a 75% chance of hitting a target. What happens if it misses? Make sure you have an answer to it. In that case, you could nuke the enemy with a rocket or a grenade in the event of failure, or you could have everyone run away. You don't actually have time limits in the normal missions, so take your time. Even the meld thing doesn't really matter as you get so freaking much of it anyway.

4. Plan ahead for your base, make sure you take advantage of adjacency as best as you can. It's not too worrisome though as you can sell stuff later. Make sure you have room for officer training school at least. Of course, try and get satellites too.

5. Save your satellites. There's no need to launch one immediately since money is a fleeting issue. Satellites are far more important to reduce panic in code red countries. You can get money by selling stuff on the black market. You don't actually NEED 15 sectoid corpses after all. Also, if you're not planning on researching stuff like the alien computers, just sell those too. You get so many of them anyway. Let Dr. Valen cry.

6. Engineers > scientists. You can research without scientists. You can't build satellites without engineers.

7.  Running away is always a viable option. Whenever you're in a sticky situation, always see if you can just run back to the spawn. There might be better cover, and the aliens that follow and chase you will be out in the open. If you can't run away, use hunker down. You might get hit, but it makes you immune to crits.

[Silfurdreki]

...

Even the meld thing doesn't really matter as you get so freaking much of it anyway.

...

I just won my Classic/Ironman game and I was actually strapped for meld in the end. It all depends on what you want. I can see it coming in in abundance if you're only doing the odd gene-mod, but I ran two MECs, and I had to wait for meld to upgrade to the third suit. A fully upgraded MEC costs 200 meld, so two of them costs a lot. And that's if you never get anyone killed in them so they don't need repairs.

[umiman]

Would you rather lose the game in one turn because you hurried to grab a canister, or be short of meld for your "already won the game but just loafing around for some reason" team?

Besides, you get plenty of meld from killing enemy mechtoids and heavy floaters, both of which are in abundance. The last impossible game I did had so damn many mechtoids I wish I could actually sell the meld.

[Silfurdreki]

Of course, meld is second to troop survival. I was merely sharing my own experiences.

[WillowLuman]

Heh, I was looking at the start of this thread and everyone panicking/going "They're gonna change it and it will suck." Hindsight is fun.

Anyway, brought a friend over the other day and he borrowed my Xbox copy. I was gonna buy it for him on steam, but apparently he bought it from his phone before he even got home. I think this is one game that's almost as fun to watch as to play.

[PanH]

And ... another failure. Started decently, but had a few wipes when thin men and floaters began to appear and everything went to hell afterwards. Couldn't succeed a single mission after this.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just finished the bridge mission. Run a mech through while everyone was still messing around with the aliens. You could see the aliens standing around during the dramatic moment.

"Oh, don't mind us. You've got 90 seconds a turn anyway."

[Silfurdreki]

Did anyone catch the small nod towards Terror from the Deep in the Newfoundland mission, by the way?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When you find the ship, Bradford remarks at how it looks like it was overrun and then ends by saying "I guess we should be thankful it wasn't a cruise liner."

For those of you who never played it, the terror missions from TftD were on cruise liners and they were terrible. In so many ways.

[Mr Space Cat]

So, I uh, encountered the Base Defense mission for the first time. It's probably gonna make me lose this game of Classic Ironman now. there's no way I can kill the last wave with the soldiers I have available.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So many aliens oh man.

The XCOM "defense operatives" the game throws at you are practically useless. Doesn't help that I didn't get one support, or a medpack even, and even if I did get a more experienced soldier thrown in with the reinforcements, they didn't have lasweapons or carapace armor, because I didn't realize they'd need such equipment equipped for something like this.

Then there's those waves. Three cyberdiscs at once? Bloody hell.

At this point basically I need to fend off waves of mutons and mectoids with rookies and some rockets. I'm screwed, man.

[Sean Mirrsen]

So, I uh, encountered the Base Defense mission for the first time. It's probably gonna make me lose this game of Classic Ironman now. there's no way I can kill the last wave with the soldiers I have available.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So many aliens oh man.

The XCOM "defense operatives" the game throws at you are practically useless. Doesn't help that I didn't get one support, or a medpack even, and even if I did get a more experienced soldier thrown in with the reinforcements, they didn't have lasweapons or carapace armor, because I didn't realize they'd need such equipment equipped for something like this.

Then there's those waves. Three cyberdiscs at once? Bloody hell.

At this point basically I need to fend off waves of mutons and mectoids with rookies and some rockets. I'm screwed, man.

The game allows you to restart the base defense mission on Ironman, owing to the fact that you lose the game if you do. It also allows to restart the final mission.

[umiman]

I had to fight 11 Mechtoids on one of my base defense missions.

2 in the very first wave.
5 more in 1-by-1 reinforcement increments.
and 4 in the final wave in one go.

I was... aggravated. Thank god they give you so many nameless rookies to use as cannon fodder. They basically buy you free turns as you can make them stand in the open to tank shots and give your guys more time.