I had been wondering about why abductions weren't happening to me anymore. So does that mean it might make sense to pick a continent with a bonus you don't particularly care about (South America might be a good choice) and leave the cheapest income nation uncovered?

Pretty much. Abduction missions don't offer much for you late game anyway aside from some high ranking soldiers.

Spot on. I'm finding that even with standard LMGs, my heavies are curbstomping Cyberdiscs thanks to HEAT Ammo.

How do you curbstomp something that floats?

OMG screw you Sectopods.

Attack from above, and wear really big boots.

Bionic Commando style.

The secret to sectopods is to utilize the "one person scouts, first thing, every turn" rule and have everyone else set and ready to blast it to hell and back. Ideally a heavy or two with HEAT. Also, is anyone else bothered by the fact that you can never capture sectopods or cyberdiscs? I know I really, really wanted to, and I even chewed them down to 1 box left and ran my assault next to it before realizing you couldn't. Made me very upset, because I wanted to do things with their nifty guns. Dangit, if the good doctor can interrogate a floater, she can interrogate a walking death machine!

Thought... not sure if I heard this right. Thoughts or misconceptions?

But aliens stop doing abduction missions once you have satellite coverage over a country. Those missions can pay you in high level soldiers and the like?

As a sort of semi-advanced tactic could you leave satellite coverage intentionally incomplete. Over something like say that one country in south america which pays next to nothing at 60/month. (and the south america bonus is pretty small as well... compared to africa or asia). If it's only one country out of many it should be fairly easy to do regular missions over it to keep it's panic level down. The idea being do more missions with better quality rewards than just the shootdowns.

Yes, essentially you can just leave a country in S. America uncovered and you will get abductions there. The more countries you have without coverage (up to 3) the more choices you have at abduction time.

S. America's bonus is fantastic early on so it's a great starting bonus but meh later on.

Holy crap, even Yahtzee likes it.

Damnit! You beat me to it.

Well, there goes his hate mail filled inbox again.

Strongly disagree on the south america thing.

The returns off the alien corpse research are sad. Live alien though research works against itself. You research a live alien and suddenly all your normal research times get cut in half for certain projects. Making the 3day time investment even less problematic.

I only built 2 labs the entire game and researched everything... with the labs idle most of the end game.



Hmm in terms of costs and cost savings and areas I'd go with...
Europe, big cost savings on workshops (and who cares about labs...), those cost savings spiral on themselves when you start getting workshop rebates, allowing you to build more workshops and eventually many things for nearly free.

North America, look at the cost to maintain 10 interceptors per month. Half price saves tons of money. Gets bigger as game goes on and you get more coverage. More interceptors helps keep panic levels down over covered areas.

Africa, +30% funding... gimme!

Asia, half price Officer training bleah... I'd rather have 30% more up front on everything.

South America... save 3 days of research early on... and a mere 1 day of research later... bleah.

Honestly I think Asia's a better grab in early game for a starter then North America. North America only has 3 countries to get to Asia's 4 if you want to pick the bonus and you likely always want to get a sat over the US for the big payday anyway. Cover Mexico and Canada and you've got yourself the air and space bonus. Half price OTS really helps in the early game when you can pick up extra squadies and rapid recovery at half price. Plus half priced foundry is nice once you get it.

I usually let europe burn, too many countries, plus the benefit is kind of meh. Half priced workshops are good and all, but I don't ever build labs until I'm swiming in cash and power, they are a trap.

I believe I read somewhere that the mechanic for determining if a soldier has the gift is going randomly generating a number from 1-100. If that number is less then or equal to 1/4th or 1/3rd the soldiers psi rating then they will have. So testing rookies is almost pointless (plus Rookies have other drawbacks, if your leveling their psi powers you arn't leveling them regularly I believe.

Beat the game on Saturday. Went with South America. Their ability to instantly research autopsies and interrogations is unmatched by any other grouping. Finished the game more then 100 days earlier then the rest of the world. The end of the game became a breeze. You're rarely outnumbered by opponents, so mind control becomes the default win condition.

Next game will be about trying to go for achievements. Winning an entire battle with just one soldier should be challenging and fun.

But that's an ability you can literally get as soon as you build another Satellite Uplink, though.

South America isn't particularly good when it comes to funding.

I like Europe for the cheap Labs and Engineering!

But then you don't get to play as the Nazis. Nazis fighting Aliens for the good of humanity is hard to pass up.

Considering Frau Doktor, I'm not so sure there aren't Nazis involved!

I was more refering to the title of South America's ODESSA-linked bonus. "We Have Ways".

It just amused me, since so few people seem to know/remember how many Nazis hid out in SA.

Now all I can think about is Krieger from Archer. Thanks for that...

"Nazis never had scientists! that's why we,I mean they lost the war!"

Oh please, just walk into NASA and say "Heil Hitler" and see how many of them jump up.

Not as many as before... Most have retired, or died, by now.

Well, if von Braun is any indication of the average of Nazi scientists most were probably NINOs.

I'm having flashbacks to Dr. Strangelove...thanks guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gXY3kuDvSU

?

Good soldier guide that someone else wrote up. Mimics my own opinions for the most part, but a different take is always healthy.

http://www.odstudios.com/article.php?anum=499

"Nazi In Name Only".

well with the World of "archer" being timeless I bet there are still plenty around,hell Archer's manservant Woodhouse served in WW I and he's still alive .

On the subject of the game is there a way to send multiple interceptors after a UFO? I know you can do that in the original and I hoping you can do it this time around as well.

Nope. One interceptor at a time, only.

Well, IIRC you can scramble more than one, but basically you take turns with one at a time trying to shoot it down.

OK thanks for the answers guys,good thing I got my researches working on advanced fighters,I think I'm going to need them to shoot down UFOs.

Focus on onboard plasma cannons first, those babies take out every UFO in one shot and have a mile of range. Have two dodge boosts and maybe an aim boost handy and you'll do fine with standard interceptors.
Firestorms are a tad faster and harder anyway, but it's what they're armed with that's important.

Well I got the firestorm and Dr.Vahlen and Her Team are working on the Plasma cannons. With that plus the satellite nexus I'm building I should start making more interceptions soon.

GRRR.....got the game for XMAS (love my wife), but I still have XP on my desktop. Didn't realize they don't support play on XP.

Windows 8 costs 40 dollars to get directly from Microsoft. You can probably find that or Windows 7 cheaper elsewhere. XP is quite old by now, so I suggest upgrading anyways.

Yeah, what Halinn said.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16832416562

As Canray could tell you, just got X-com.



Yeah, this ones a time sink of massive proportions.
I had read up extensively about it, but find myself running the fuck out of SOMETHING no matter how I optimise. Horribly, my tutorial attempt game was a beacon of shiny hope for humanity compared to the future world of grimdark grimdark that everyone's running about in.

Although you DO get some monster satisfaction surviving terror missions through luck, your team's skills and a non-stop barrage of LMG's versus Chyrlisks. Ullllgh.

-Tir.

And to think, they toned Chrysallids DOWN from the original.

Way way way way way way way WAY down.

In he OG, one of my reactions to sighting JUST ONE chrysalid, was to just "pull out nd nuke the site from orbit": lay down a wall of blaster-bomb fire from map-edge to map-edge, then walk that wall across the whole map. Yes, tons of civilian deaths. But at least the Chrysallids were softened up enough for a salvo or two of Plasma and Laser fire to take them down ...

Primed grenades for everybody!!!

"... you get a grenade ... and you get a grenade ... and you get a grenade ... and you get two because you smell funny ..."

^_^

There was a time that I started packing troops with High-Ex because of those grinning bastards!

Tanks man. Tanks. Sure, they can still shred a tank, but they are easier to replace and don't turn into zombies.