Best build order for my situation?

[jimmy.cwl]

I have started a game at Normal difficulty and have a savegame at the earliest opportunity. So far, I don't think I'm spending my construction time in the most effective manner. First try, I started with GTS, then Proving Ground, then RR. Second try, Proving Ground, Resistance Comm, Power Relay, RR.

I just started my third try. This time, I'm planning on Lab, or RR if I get RR before the first room gets cleared. I'm not sure what will be the second yet. But Power Relay will be third, because I have Power Coils in the third level center and right rooms. If I dig straight down, I can potentially get Instant Excavation just in time for the third room. I got it around the same time in both previous tries, so I'm betting on it again.

Does anyone have suggestions for better rooms to build?

[syken]

Jimmy,

I think you are trying to optimize your game at the wrong end. At no point XCOM requires instant excavations in order to be successful.

If you want some tips regarding build order, watch my Legendary / Ironman Guide, the build order is very much applicable for normal. Let me stress that if you had issues so far, it is most likely your lack of performance during the missions and not on the strategy layer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20S53kOFk8A&list=PLhZuVFh-nPsik-nFy1aXNPHTcs2-2O9sf

[Rui83DeathMetal]

My bet for normal is: rring, gts and infirmary in this order, then good bye power and the 4th must be a power relay. Next it depends on how good you are. Safe play would be pgrounds/ resistance coms ( if you are loosing the clock race). By suggestion of another commander, I always start with a lab and I love it. Beware, starting with a lab have some short term disadvantages, be sure you can survive a couple of rough weeks with low resources, but the pay off it's tremendous. I also play on commander difficulty and after that I'll try legend. Cheers and good luck

[Abrakadabra]

There's a few options.

If you go resistance ring first, you can train more soldiers and fill your roster faster. Additionally you get the rewards or buffs or resources from the missions.

Thats a strong opener.

Depending on how lucky you are with recruiting new engineers, it can delay taking advantage of the first Sergeant you get. Meaning, you might have a Sergeant already but you stilll dont have the gts. So you will have to coninue to fight with just 4 soldiers, unless you use e.g. robojumps squad select mod and give yourself more soldiers right from the start.

All in all I believe that the gts opener is slightly better. It gives you a significant advantage by allowing you to fight with more soldiers much quicker. So, gts gives you a pretty substantial advantage in the missions. When you have to actually fight the evil monsters.

Starting with resistance ring, will grow your roster faster and you might get good stuff via ops, like an engineer, intel, fraction soldiers and so on.

Its a matter of personal preference.

In my opinon gts is the safer approach. because what truely matters and determines if you survive and win mission, is your combat prowess in missions.And just one more soldier is huge. 5 soldiers is much stronger than 4 soldiers and significantly impacts your survival chance.

After gts and rr (no matter the order) I would immediately go for resistance coms. After that, power, (wait, I think youll have to build power after resistance ring and gts first, then you go for resistance coms) and after that I like to go proving ground, then training center and then I usually squeeze in defense matrix before building infirmary.

Infirmary might seem like its very important. But in my experience things will go downhill anyway if you take too much dmg consistently. By the time you might build infirmary, even, if you really prioritize infirmary, you prolly wont risk buidling it before your first resistance oms. Because delaying resitance coms can be fatal. By that time you will have a six man squad and you should be able to win missions or maybe take some hits occasionally. Your roster should allow you to compensate for that.

After defense matrix and infirmary, yoll have to get more power (or somewhre in between) and after that its preference again.You could go for psi lab or shadow chamber.

[Cris]

I build in this order: Ring, GTS, Infirmary, Power Relay, Proving Ground, Resistance Comms (if i have to stop now Avatar progres) or Training Center if can wait, Lab, Shadow Chamber.

[.O.]

I assume by normal, you mean veteran, in which case I would recommend:


1. Resistance Ring -> the cards/orders and the covert ops gives you a lot of nice bonuses in advance
2. GTS -> The squad size increase is a nice bonus, but I mainly prioritize GTS for the easy training of soldiers to fit roles that I need.
3. Training Center
4. Infirmary/Power
5. Infirmary/Power
6. Resistance Comms/Proving Ground
7. Resistance Comms/Proving Ground


I don't really build infirmary until I get at least one injured soldier or one soldier with a trauma, which can happen even on flawless missions.

[Commander Gorda]

GTS, ring, infirmary, power, proving ground. IMO.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

RR is a very good start because you can go on ops (which nets your soldiers both xp and bonds) at the same time there's ALMOST ALWAYS that crucial engineer which you can get as a reward.

After that is really up to you.

My build order for Commander and below is:-
1) Laboratory (for those breakthroughs)
2) RR
3) GTS
4) Power
5,6 onwards are situational.

My build order for legend
1) RR
2) GTS
3) Lab
4) Relay
Again 5,6 situational. Some may want to subsitute lab for infirmary because the wounded soldiers on legend takes tons of days to recover....

[Rui83DeathMetal]

OP , the commander above was the one who told me about lab 1st, and I vouch from 400+ hours in game that works wonders. Gts always after ring, because you can only expand your squad after you got a soldier promoted to seargent.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

Originally posted by Rui83DeathMetal:

OP , the commander above was the one who told me about lab 1st, and I vouch from 400+ hours in game that works wonders. Gts always after ring, because you can only expand your squad after you got a soldier promoted to seargent.

Haha thanks, but unnecessary. Everyone can play however they wanna no issues.

I would like to credit this utuber for his invaluable info.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ump_caIRvPA

Also, why I think Labs are important.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1559115786

(+1) DMG to ALL BEAM WEAPONS. Before that I did research some +1 DMG to some individual weapons too, like Assault Rifles. So, I guess I get a combined DMG boost of +2.

GG. Legend ironman. Gonna finish it really soon with 0 casualties

[Fluff Bunny]

I didn't build the infirmary until the very last spot on the avenger in my current run through on Normal. On a harder difficulty level it might be more necessary. At first I thought it pointless until I finally realized you can use it to remove negative traits. So I built it for that purpose.

[The Captain]

I'd do Guerilla school (train soldiers to the class you need) for squad upgrades asap. Then resistant ring, resistance comms. Then you have to build a power relay. Followed by proving ground, another power relay/infirmary - staff engineers and upgrade the first power relay if you need to build the infirmary first with urgency lol..
Resistant ring isn't needed right away, proving ground there isn't much to create until more research done, and infirmary is at the end unless you really need it. Labs I never bother with at all, or workshops. You should naturally get engineers and scientists from pickups from the map, mission rewards and covert ops..
Each to their own! You can't go too far wrong in any order you build really, as long as you are constantly excavating and getting engineers as a priority from rewards.

[Abrakadabra]

I play with aba and abc+. Starting with a 5 man squad going up to 7 max later on. I failed a few times vs pods of 5 when pulling 2 or 3 pods and fighting 15 monsters at the same time.

I started to actually win when I stopped building resistance ring first.

As I said, nothing trumps getting a bigger squad asap.

As such, gts is the most important opener in my opinon. If you die becuase your squad isnt big enough then none of those buildings mentioned here will do you any good. So it depends how much of a challenge the current difficulty and mode presents.

If its really tough and you struggle then gts is always the best and safest option. Bigger squads trump everything else.

[jimmy.cwl]

I started with RR, then GTS and Lab this time and am satisfied. However, I have come to agree that GTS and Lab are the best buildings to start, but not for the reasons that have been stated by others.

The reason I believe it is best to start with one of those two is they are not staffed by engineers! After completing them both, you will definitely be able to build a third building without worrrying about the bonus of staffing the previous two. Any of the other buildings, you'd have to choose between staffing or digging.