...but I never had a problem with "not enough corpses", I had to sell off the excess and still couldn't financially afford manufacturing enough boosts anyway.
Not that they help anyway.

I hardly used them myself as they seem too random, however it's the principle of the thing mostly. I might be more inclined to use them if they wern't a finite resource on top of everything else.

Even just being able to sell off obsolete gear would be welcome. After the first couple/few months cash was pretty much always the limiting factor for me and my 2nd game's early strategy was completely focused on putting up as many satellites and workshops as I could as soon as possible.

Guys I feel really dumb now, but you can sell some items. Corpses and such.

Go to Situation Room. Click on Grey Market.

Yep, and it says what can be sold that doesn't have any purpose.

Yeah, selling the damaged scavanged stuff certainly helps. Would be a lot better to be able recoup some credits from transitional gear upgrades like Carapace armor or old laser weapons through the Grey Market as well though.

Had a fun nearly screwed the pooch moment in my new non-tutorial game. Two back to back missions, and most of my forces were mangled and in the hospital. No problem, order some recruits and get them in a couple days. A day until the rookies show up, and I get the first terror mission. I have three soldiers that I'm able to field, a Cpl. Support, a Squaddie Sniper, and a rookie. Cobbled together some carapace armor for the three of them, loaded them up with frags, and sent them out.

I lost six civilians, used all my grenades, and was at point blank range with the rookie having his action left and armed with a pistol against the last chryssalid at the very end. Those boys did me proud. The rookie needed a bit of time in the sick bay, but I've taken the time to level him up and nicknamed him Lucky. If I can help it, he comes out on every mission now.

I would also love to be able to sell obsolete gear. Oh well.

I did restart. I'm bypassing laser weapons entirely; after capturing a Thin Man, Light Plasma Rifle research opened up, and I'm going to start producing those as soon as I have the money. I'm also bypassing carapace armor for skeleton suits. Depending on how fast Titan armor research opens up, I may bypass skeleton suits, as well.

I would personally still grab the skeleton suits as they definitely seem to work well for the supports and snipers. It took me a lot longer to get to Ghost armor than Titan and I think I'd find the additional mobility and grappley goodness too much to pass up in the interim. JMO though.

End game I've gone w/ Ghost for the supports and snipers (or Psi since my only talented troops are in these classes), Titan for the assaults and Archangel for the heavies (could probably get by almost as well w/ them in Titan as well, but how can I pass up soldiers w/ plasma miniguns, rocket launchers, and jet packs? ).

Anybody else find the voice acting strains suspension of disbelief? I really wish they had recorded each line in the correct accents for each nationality; it's really strange to hear my French medic, Dutch heavy, and Spanish sniper all speaking in American accents.

I feel more immersed. But I'm American, and expect everyone to speak as I do or don't speak at all.

Uh yea. Sat coverage gives you more money.


How did I miss that?

I laughed my ass off when the Engineer found Alien Entertainment.

I dunno, particularly given the dollar figures next to each country on either side of the Big Board.

What's really odd is you can't sell them, but once in a while you'll get a council request for them. I've found myself on occasion making some more laser rifles or the like so i can offload the lot of them, even if that point money is not really an object.

"Who are you people?"
"We're Americans."
"Since when?"
"Swedish."
"Blackfoot."
"RETARDS..." - Expendables 2

Heh, that was a funny scene

Nah. I believe I'd be more upset having to listen to badly imitated accents from all over the world (as I had a British sniper, a Spanish offensive support with psi abilities, tag-team of assault guys, one Japanese, one Irish, an Argentinean heavy and a Canadian medic). I'd go MENTAL with a team like that! "Wotsit then?", "Si?", "Ayessuh!", "Oi!", "Si?" again and "Eh?"... To say nothing of the B-Team, where the sniper is a buzzcut Russian I luckily didn't name Ivan Drago, and the backup medic is Nigerian.

So... I have 5 Israelis in my barracks.

I have 5 Israeli Snipers in my barracks.

I'm not sure whether I should be concerned or not.

Racist game ;p. My snipers tend to be Chinese or British.

Most of my German and British commonwealth soldiers (Britain, Australia, Canada) trend towards Assault.

Can't wait to try out the latter with oen of my heavies.

Yes, Shen will mention it when you see it for the first time (IIRC it's on the raised platforms on the sides of the large arena where the Sectopod usually spawns).

I did enp up getting it after going back. I had to intentionally get one to spawn by ignoring UFOs a bit.

I'd say you're fine as long as nobody else in your Barracks is from the Middle East.

If they are, you might have problems. Otherwise, it's the aliens who should be afraid, because clearly you're sending MOSSAD after them.

Hint to the aliens: You're better off voluntarily turning yourselves over to Dr. Vahlen for some of her trademarked tender, loving, Geneva-convention compliant interrogations.


Also, as regards laser weapons: My advice is just to skip them entirely and push for Plasma research as soon as you capture a Thin Man. Then capture five or six more Thin Men. You can skip lasers entirely for your Assaults and Supports and go straight to spewing Light Plasma Rifle fire (Plasma Carbine fire?) right back at the aliens. Level the playing field, and then some, if you find more Sectoids. You can also skip manufacturing plasma pistols by stunning Sectoids and Sectoid Commanders, but if you're researching fast enough, you may actually be fielding plasma rifles and cannons before the aliens do.




It won't last forever, but by jove it feels good to go into battle with the alien invaders and have them be the outgunned, underequipped side in the battle.

Then Cyberdisks show up and you go back to hurting for gear. Hint: Alloy SHIVs and Hover SHIVs are not a match for Cyberdisks, not one-on-one.

Then Sectopods show up and you're in deep trouble. The first one I fought was just after I got Ghost armor, the last armor you should ever bother using. It's as fast as Skeleton armor, retains the grapple... Oh yeah, and you can stealth, which means either you can let the enemy ignore you (really, really useful if you accidently ran your scout into close range of a Sectopod,) or you can break it for a +100% critical hit chance.


Also, as regards snipers: I killed the Ethereal Commander in one turn with my elite Colonel sniper. Double tap, motherfucker. Though sometimes I regret not having tried to capture him alive... I wonder if that's even possible? If not, then hey, exposition? Who cares, get off my planet!

RIP 'Gypsy.' You saved the world, literally singlehandedly.

Vahlen's interrogations are anything but Geneva convention compliant. Which is actually sort of ok as the aliens are beyond the scope of the conventions.

Word to the wise, do not try skiping lasers on anything above normal difficulty. Many bitter bitter tears will be had when your in that mid range where you can't reliably kill the buffed up thin men, and they eat your lunch.

I had no problem with this, personally.

Thin men only have 5 HP. My sniper rifles reliably do that, even without headshot, as do miniguns.

I only just now got Plasma rifles, and I'm fighting disks, mutons, berserkers, and (recently) heavy floaters on Classic.

I think your sarcasmometer is tuned so low I broke it completely there, Lurker...




That's what sniper rifles and combined fire are for.

Well, my star sniper (aside from being Israeli, having 40 total missions and over 120 kills) also was psionicly gifted. I was worried about making her the Gollop chamber jockey by having her wearing Psi Armor over Ghost Armor (survival and all that). So I had an Australian bird go in the chamber. Seeing how the final mission played out, I'm glad at my decision.

Also, humorous to me. My team of 6 for the assault contained 4 psi-gifted individuals, all of whom had mind control. The very fine room I mind controlled the two Mutons who tanked the two ethereals to the side then when their turn came up I had them dump their grenades and the high ethereal. Finished mopping up the ethereals and both mutons were still alive and at 1 hp. So I brought up my heavy and dumped the fusion laucnher on the mutons because why the heck not? I wouldn't call it friendly fire...

That is one thing that bugs me about mind control. It would be nice to be able to still target mind controlled enemies, or at worst allow you to disengage mindcontrol, eating the controller's action, so you can hose the aliens and get the mission over with. Gets annoying when you're low on grenades and have to sit on overwatch waiting for the muton elites to break free.

Has anyone tried to live-capture the ethereal leader?

I wanna go for it. Just hitting endgame I think (can build the Gollop Chamber, messing around with leveling up a bunch of squaddies first for kicks) so I'll do my usual save at the start of the mission, and see if I can taze it.

What's the viability of standard Interceptors armed with plasma cannons, versus Firestorm fighters? Can I get away with bypassing advanced fighters?

I never had them on normal difficulty and only had to pass up 1 UFO shoot down.

Pretty good, I would say. Unless I'm mistaken you can abort the attack (if the Interceptor is about to be destroyed) while the damage to the UFO stays. Then you just launch up a second one. So you're going to need multiple interceptors to take down the heavier ships.

I got rid of some old equipment when some of my member nations asked me for them as a pending request. Got some decent cash for it too - I was pretty cash-strapped until I got 2k in cash for 5 plasma rifles. Coincidentally, I had 4 already so I just made one, completed the request, and then re-made the 4 that I needed for my squad.

Yeah I got a few of those, but never any for Carapace or Skeleton armor, or Laser Rifles, etc.

Just seems a bit hit or miss.

I got one from France asking for Scopes to assist their military.

After I finished laughing, I had Dr. Shen get to work on the project.

Haha nice

Perhaps they were arming the Foreign Legion?

I got a request for something like 9 Carapace armors, and the payout was over 6k.

Sadly, I didn't have the bodies to produce that much.

I had one from Germany asking for Sectopod wrecks.... I gave it to them.... I was concerned about the 4th Reich popping up if I did....

Germany's pretty stable, politically speaking, so that's not likely to happen. Of course, the entire EU coalescing as an actual, bonded superpower, formed around a strong German economy with the full technologies of the invaders.........

Well, let's just say that the Yankees should probably demand their own sectopod wrecks if they hope to stay on top of that whole peksy "World superpower" thing.

I had one for 12 light plasma rifles, and the payout was 16k. I did it ASAP, and then regretted it, having had to gut my inventory of weapon parts and other necessary components to do so.

What do you guys spend your money on? I did everything that I had the parts for (which is my limiting factor now) in the Foundry, have a Firestorm in each region, satellite uplinks/satellites for every country (except for South Africa - they panicked early and withdrew), got every research project thus far, etc.

I've still got like 1.2k sitting around (with 16 soldiers in my barracks). I guess I could just hire more soldiers? But I don't see the point in that, considering I'm leveling up the people I have (2 at a time) - I don't dare send less than 4 of my vets with 2 lower-ranked people.

You could always hire a ton of soldiers, put them thru psionic testing and dismiss the dropouts. Try and create a balanced team of psi operatives.

But isn't psi ability based off the willpower stat? So the highest chance of nabbing a psi soldier is to test them when they're colonels. I only say this because I got 5 psi soldiers out of my ranked soldiers (around 10) while I only got 1 out of my squaddie barracks of the about 20 I tested.

The chance of them having the "gift" is based on their will chance. Just means you need a larger pool.

And you can only test 3 squaddies every 10 days. It might make more sense to at least marginally level up soldiers before testing them.

Yeah, probably. But once you have full satellite coverage and firestorms you're pretty safe (also, no abduction missions occur on countries with satellites)