Can anyone give me a rough timeline I should be following? Or just general advice?

[Coconut]

It's already June in-game and I haven't done the Advent Blacksite mission. The enemies seem like they're a lot stronger than me and my last two missions were failures. One was a Dark VIP mission (first one this run); 3 of my soldiers died, 1 got captured, and the last one escaped with not a single turn left on the timer to spare. The other mission was just a standard guerilla ops that ended with me just extracting all units because reinforcements dropped a MEC, and a Shieldbearer gave everybody armor bonuses.

I have magnetic weapons and predator armor, but I'm super low on supplies (25). I lost my only mimic beacon in the aforementioned Dark VIP mission. Shadow Chamber is currently in-progress of being built.

I'm playing Veteran Ironman.

I feel like these turn timers are hurting me more than anything. They're forcing me to put my soldiers in riskier spots for the sake of the objective, often triggering new pods. And it seems like if my soldiers fail to kill the first pod with their ambush, the whole mission might as well be a failure.


tl;dr
1. About how far along should I be each month regarding research, engineering, and story missions?
2. How should I approach Dark VIP missions if the timer is my biggest threat?

[talemore]

1.You should rush magnetic weapons if you gained a scientist on the gameboard, if you did not gained a scientist you should start unlocking guerilla school and focus on salvage repeaters and power cores to build exo suits in the proving grounds.

2. In my opinion you should remove the recruit cost and reduce the amount of recruits you gain each month. This way you won't bleed each time one soldier die, while if too many dies you won't have any new recruits to hire anyway.

This way you are allowed to play a more paced game who allow you to spend soldiers on the VIP missions who actually seems to be based on do everything you can to get the VIP to the evac zone. On Legend, I call the VIP missions "suicide" since no one else than the VIP will most likely come back home alive. They either get lockdown by enemy overwatch until the timer is zeroed out or get hit by hordes of stunlancers until disabled and unable to move or make an action.

[Coconut]

Originally posted by talemore:

1.You should rush magnetic weapons if you gained a scientist on the gameboard, if you did not gained a scientist you should start unlocking guerilla school and focus on salvage repeaters and power cores to build exo suits in the proving grounds.

2. In my opinion you should remove the recruit cost and reduce the amount of recruits you gain each month. This way you won't bleed each time one soldier die, while if too many dies you won't have any new recruits to hire anyway.

This way you are allowed to play a more paced game who allow you to spend soldiers on the VIP missions who actually seems to be based on do everything you can to get the VIP to the evac zone. On Legend, I call the VIP missions "suicide" since no one else than the VIP will most likely come back home alive. They either get lockdown by enemy overwatch until the timer is zeroed out or get hit by hordes of stunlancers until disabled and unable to move or make an action.

Thanks, man. I like the advice.
As for research, when and what should I be upgrading armor-wise?

[talemore]

The only armor you can research early on is nanofiber vest, if you want to unlock the wraith and war suits you need to be successful on a "raid mission" or buy alloy from the "black market" in midgame. The reason why I recommend to unlock the exo-suits is because you do not need to be "lucky" to be able to build exo suits and research weapon and armor are scientist demanding.

If you want to use the nanofiber vests I recommend to increase the hp from 1 to 2 and reduce your recruits hp by one and replace this one hp with "armor mitigration=1" and "mitigration chance=100"(copy and paste into the recruits defaultstats in the config file). The reason why is because kevlar armor doesn't start with any armor mitigration. Then it's fun to hear your soldiers say things like: woah I almost got killed, thank you body armor!

[QrazyQuarian]

I let my Avatar Project meter fill up as far as I can before doing the Blacksite mission; doing so gives me the most time to prepare my designated team to handle the mission efficiently. So usually I will pursue the Blacksite mission when there are only 3 segments left in the Avatar Projet. In the meantime, I am researching equipment as fast as I can while also branching out towards facilities that I can kill in a pinch. But when I'm almost full I decide to take care of the blacksite mission. After that, just take care of the important missions when you can; take your time, bro. Do things to lower your doomsday meter as you see fit, but don't let it get too full.

[Toenails10]

i didn't do that mission until my doomsday timer was active, with like 3 hours left.
this gives you way more time to prepare an a-team with better weapons/ more bodies etc.
when the mission is beat the timer drops out and it takes a few bars off as well.

[Tomathan1701]

Originally posted by Toenails10:

i didn't do that mission until my doomsday timer was active, with like 3 hours left.
this gives you way more time to prepare an a-team with better weapons/ more bodies etc.
when the mission is beat the timer drops out and it takes a few bars off as well.

Definitely don't want to do that anymore... according to Jake Solomon, the most recent patch has removed the ability to cheese the doomsday timer. If you let the timer get down to 3 hours the first time, the timer will only have 3 hours left the next time it starts.

[Toenails10]

whaaat, thats crazy, how to adapt?, so if i do a blacksite mission, it'll knock a few blocks off,
but if i let it get down to the timer sequence, there is no resetting,... for the rest of the game?
every time the timer comes on it will be less and less? hmmm, will have to rethink my strategy.

[.O.]

Originally posted by Toenails10:

whaaat, thats crazy, how to adapt?, so if i do a blacksite mission, it'll knock a few blocks off,
but if i let it get down to the timer sequence, there is no resetting,... for the rest of the game?
every time the timer comes on it will be less and less? hmmm, will have to rethink my strategy.

ever since the patch I've never let my timer get that low, in fact I rarely let it fill now, but if I remember right there is a minimum timer of 7 days to give you time to at least try to counter it.

As for OP, very first thing you should build on any difficulty is the GTS. I build this right after GateCrasher. The first engineer you get should either excavate immediately to make room for AWC or speed up GTS, this depends on difficulty level and your own research status. My personal research preference is:

1. Modular Weapons
2. Alien Biotech
3. ADVENT Officer Autopsy or Hybrid Materials depending on the timing/progress of my excavation
4. Whichever one didn't get done in the previous research
5. Resistance Comms
6. Mag Weapons or Radio Towers depending on need
7. Whichever one doesn't get researched above
8. Gauss Weapons
9. Plated Armor

I also do Faceless Autopsy and Muton Autopsy as soon as I can, but not before the first 3 on that list. Sometimes I also do up to Resistance comms before Faceless Autopsy depending on need.

In my opinion medikits are useless early game especially in higher difficulties because if your soldier does get hit they usually die straight away or they will panic and why waste an action on a panicked soldier that may or may not get killed before panic wears off.

A single flashbang is useful, but most everybody else should be carrying basic grenades unless you lucked out and got something like ammo or better grenades.

With any mission that has a timer:

First determine your position relative to objective(and evac for VIP missions) and figure out how many turns it would take to only use blue move to get to the objective and then evac/destroy/hack where applicable. Assume that this is time already lost. Total turn timer minus the time it takes to get there and complete objective with blue moves = How many turns you can actually afford to spend fighting.

Next determine your position relative to the rest of the map, mentally note down any high ground that could be advantageous as well as potential directions to approach the objective from.

If you spawn near the edge of the map, it's worth planning a path of approach that takes advantage of this since at least you know that you only have to worry about potential enemies from 2 directions instead of 3.

If you have a ranger with phantom(?) use them to move first, and always only do a blue move. Then bring the rest of the squad closer and if all still safe, then use your scout's second action point to explore further.

You cannot see the alert tiles/range of an enemy unit that you can't see, so generally speaking avoid standing near windows/skylights etc unless you know that the inside of the building is definitely empty.

Sometimes it's worth using your VIP as the scout instead of one of your own soldiers.

Sometimes it's worth moving your VIP separately to your squad e.g. keep the enemy busy near the center of the map while the VIP dashes around the side to the evac point.

It's always important to note down mission difficulty prior to starting one. It gives you a good idea of the number of enemy pods and the number of enemies. If you know that there is only one pod left and you're currently engaging that pod, then you can make riskier flanking moves or separate the VIP from your group as I mentioned above.

[SamBC]

Originally posted by archeryguy1701:

Originally posted by Toenails10:

i didn't do that mission until my doomsday timer was active, with like 3 hours left.
this gives you way more time to prepare an a-team with better weapons/ more bodies etc.
when the mission is beat the timer drops out and it takes a few bars off as well.

Definitely don't want to do that anymore... according to Jake Solomon, the most recent patch has removed the ability to cheese the doomsday timer. If you let the timer get down to 3 hours the first time, the timer will only have 3 hours left the next time it starts.

Not quite. It will start at the point it got to, or a certain minimum time, whichever is greater. That's 1 week on Commander, I believe.

[Bullett00th]

The time to tackle story missions literally doesn't matter.

On my current playthrough I've covered all continents, researched all tech, built the whole base and only just now skulljacked a codex and went for the blacksite mission.

I usually save them up for occasions when the Avatar timer is full and I have no Avatar Research sites to destroy. In this case I can go for a story mission and knock a few blocks off the timer.

The aliens progress regardless of the story missions. The only exception is I think the UFO, which will only start hunting you after a certain one.

[Coconut]

Originally posted by .O.:

As for OP, very first thing you should build on any difficulty is the GTS. I build this right after GateCrasher. The first engineer you get should either excavate immediately to make room for AWC or speed up GTS, this depends on difficulty level and your own research status. My personal research preference is:

1. Modular Weapons
2. Alien Biotech
3. ADVENT Officer Autopsy or Hybrid Materials depending on the timing/progress of my excavation
4. Whichever one didn't get done in the previous research
5. Resistance Comms
6. Mag Weapons or Radio Towers depending on need
7. Whichever one doesn't get researched above
8. Gauss Weapons
9. Plated Armor

I also do Faceless Autopsy and Muton Autopsy as soon as I can, but not before the first 3 on that list. Sometimes I also do up to Resistance comms before Faceless Autopsy depending on need.

In my opinion medikits are useless early game especially in higher difficulties because if your soldier does get hit they usually die straight away or they will panic and why waste an action on a panicked soldier that may or may not get killed before panic wears off.

A single flashbang is useful, but most everybody else should be carrying basic grenades unless you lucked out and got something like ammo or better grenades.

With any mission that has a timer:

First determine your position relative to objective(and evac for VIP missions) and figure out how many turns it would take to only use blue move to get to the objective and then evac/destroy/hack where applicable. Assume that this is time already lost. Total turn timer minus the time it takes to get there and complete objective with blue moves = How many turns you can actually afford to spend fighting.

Next determine your position relative to the rest of the map, mentally note down any high ground that could be advantageous as well as potential directions to approach the objective from.

If you spawn near the edge of the map, it's worth planning a path of approach that takes advantage of this since at least you know that you only have to worry about potential enemies from 2 directions instead of 3.

If you have a ranger with phantom(?) use them to move first, and always only do a blue move. Then bring the rest of the squad closer and if all still safe, then use your scout's second action point to explore further.

You cannot see the alert tiles/range of an enemy unit that you can't see, so generally speaking avoid standing near windows/skylights etc unless you know that the inside of the building is definitely empty.

Sometimes it's worth using your VIP as the scout instead of one of your own soldiers.

Sometimes it's worth moving your VIP separately to your squad e.g. keep the enemy busy near the center of the map while the VIP dashes around the side to the evac point.

It's always important to note down mission difficulty prior to starting one. It gives you a good idea of the number of enemy pods and the number of enemies. If you know that there is only one pod left and you're currently engaging that pod, then you can make riskier flanking moves or separate the VIP from your group as I mentioned above.

Thanks for the help!
I'll be referencing this thread as I begin a new game.