AWC, Shadow Chamber, or Resist Comms? + otber questions.

[Rm860]

My first play through so this post is a bit long.

My situation is this. Avatar project is 4 notches. One alien facility is up,, within a day or so a second facility goes up. Both are two make contacts away from territory I control. I have no contacts left if I start working my way to 1st facility. After facility 2 goes up about a week later a minor or major avatar breakthrough will happen. So to keep the bar lower i need to take out the facilities somewhat soon. This leans me toward picking resist comms.

Soldiers: 4 LT's, 5 SGT's, 4 CPL's, 4 Squadies. Do i have to many troops? I notice if I wait too much longer to build AWC my best troops will miss out on some perks as there are only 3-4 promotions left. leans me toward AWC.

The game has my objective being build shadow chamber. But I won't have supplies to build it untill my supply drop in 2 days. I'd still be short unless i buy supplies from blackmarket.This leans me away from Shadow Chamber untill i build one or both of the others. Yet if I wait to long to finish a objective Avatar bar goes up. And the game is saying/suggesting to build SC so then i lean toward building this.

Also should I research Plated Armor, Mag Weapons, Psionics(what does this do), or Muton Autopsy? I picked plated which unlocks alot of cool stuff but can't build any of it. Plated says it's a squad upgrade, what does that mean? I don't know how it works I can't build pred armor either as low supplies. If I backed up to before I started plated i'd still have supply issues from building one of the rooms into AWC, SC, or RC. Whats best to research at this point?

Lastly should I keep building experimental ammo and nades once one compleats or save the cores for later. Should I research battlefield medicine even if for now the normal medkits are fine.

Thoughts or advice is welcome.

[gimmethegepgun]

Resistance comms are more important than shadow chamber.
Also squad upgrade means that all relevant members of your squad get the upgrade, permanently (for plated armor, that's everyone. for weapons, it's for classes that use that weapon)

[adam west]

chill dude, i got avatar up to 8 notches and still managed to pull it back to zero just before the last mission,this was becouse i delayed a lot the very first mission to hijack an officer,and delayed making comms room.

In my experience, i only needed one comm room with an aditional engeneer.

from what i gather you need to strategize the end of the month,thats what matters, if the enemy will make a facility in a few week or days, LET THEM, make the contact, then act against the facility in that area to push it down a notch, while making new rooms .

Chamber CAN wait, it also stops all your research when you use it, focus on psionics, that way you can build a psionic chamber and train a soldier there (it MUST be a rookie).
But if enemies are already starting to buff up with more armors or 7 bars of life, yeah, get the mag weapons, so you can have at least the rifle. it makes a diference.

But plan for end of the month,so you get good grades,and have time to build stuff in the interim.

[Terin]

You've got plenty of wiggle room available. 4 pips is still very early on, and as you eventually get those facilities destroyed and complete story missions later on, it'll knock it down a bunch. Don't worry about the meter too much, if it fills up, you'll have a few weeks to reduce it in any way, so it's not an instant game over. Feel free to leave building the shadow chamber for later.

I'd recommend to get the Retroactive AWC mod so you don't have to worry out on missing perks. It's still worth getting quickly so you're able to half the time soldiers are injured for, but that mod should take care of the other problem.

You'll need to spend some resources for the Predator armor, but once you do every single one of your soldiers will get more health and an extra item slot to use. Don't panic about not having enough resources the second you finished researching it, just continue to do missions until you get supplies from somewhere then get it. Then you'll probably want the magnetic weapons to increase your offensive power.

Probably keep a couple elerium cores around, you can't even really use all those experimental grenades and ammo from the get-go anyways.

You're doing just fine, seems like you've got plenty of soldiers and are doing just fine on progression. Don't be anxious that you're doing something horribly wrong, just keep on playing and moving along.

[Gregorovitch]

I'd say going for tier two weapons and armour and getting resistance comms up to add as many new areas as possible are the biggies. Don't forget to build the radio towers always in new areas - supplies are two a penny, intel is not.

[Rm860]

I have 4 engineers and 2 scientists. Game is saying low scientist. Plater and Mag research times are 15 days. I see engineers are really useful but what one should i hire next? I here scientists decrease research time divided by # of them. so does that mean if i hired a 3rd my current and future researches would take 1/3rd less time. So a 15 day project turns into 10 days right? Or should i save the supplies for other stuff.

[Mercious Iron]

you need power relay, radio and shadow chamber in your base and 2-3 engeniers. the game has been dumbed down so much even the sectoid are ready to protest..

everything else is up to you.

/edit, Exo suits are a good tech path choice if your new to xcom.

[Scorrp10]

How many regions you got now? Have you already built any resistance comms? How many engineers you got? What is your power situation? How far would you need to dig to the nearest power coil? What you built already? How many open spaces you got? All these questions matter.

My take on things:
You generally want AWC asap, since it not only unlocks hidden abilities, but it also can cut down in half your healing times. You have lots of soldiers, so healing times are not that big of a factor. But without Retroactive AWC mod, you will likely miss out on a lot of those extra perks if you build AWC late.

If you already have one Resistance Comm, concentrate on getting it upgraded and staffed, which will give you a total of 10 contacts, quite a lot of expansion room before you need another comm. If you haven't built one yet, you really should make it a priority. Extra regions is what gives you income and access to Avatar facilities.

Shadow chamber on the other hand, you can safely postpone for a VERY long time. Chamber will get you missions that progress main story and knock ticks off the main Avatar facility, but you are not pressed for that yet. Better concentrate on the helper facilities. On my last game, I already had everyone in full power armor with plasma weapons when I started on the chamber. That said, on Legend, things are different, and sometimes this may be the only option to keep Avatar project in check. I would start worrying about SC when your Avatar bar is at 11.

Don't sweat the Dark Event either. In my experience, if there are helper facilities, the breakthrough dark events will usually add ticks to one of helper facilities. Then you can take those right off by raiding that facility. Same goes for events that speed up facility construction.

Research: I personally would go for Mag weapons first. Here is a quick comparison:
Soldier in plated armor but regular rifle shoots an alien, leaving it with 2HP. Next turn, alien shoots soldier, taking out 25-30% of his health instead of 50% or so. Next turn, soldier has to shoot that alien again, and run the risk of missing. Net result -6-9 days wounded.

Or, soldier in kevlar with a mag rifle, shoots alien and kills it dead. End of story.

In other words, anything that increases your damage output should take priority over defense.

Speaking of Psionics - probably good idea to do those right after Mag weapons. Or even before. But you definitely want to dig out your first power coil by that time, cause you want your Psi lab on a coil. Not much sense having Psionics researched if you lack power to construct and upgrade the lab. Psi lab lets you train Psi Operatives, who can get you massive advantage in missions.

Be sure to check Black Market for research credits. Cutting down an 18-day research to 9 for 60 Intel is one heck of a deal. Just make sure yoy keep enough intel to make further contacts.

Muton autopsy is important since it gets you grenade launcher upgrade and Plasma grenades (PG project) you. However, if you do a few more missions, you might score enough Muton corpses to make the autopsy instant.

Btw, 'squad upgrade' means you build it once, and all your soldiers get it.

Experimental ammo/armor/grenades: Depends on how many Elerium cores you got. The answer is, it really depends.

[Scorrp10]

Originally posted by Rm860:

I have 4 engineers and 2 scientists. Game is saying low scientist. Plater and Mag research times are 15 days. I see engineers are really useful but what one should i hire next? I here scientists decrease research time divided by # of them. so does that mean if i hired a 3rd my current and future researches would take 1/3rd less time. So a 15 day project turns into 10 days right? Or should i save the supplies for other stuff.

Don't bother with Scientists. Game will likely give you a Scientist VIP mission soon. More are rapidly diminishing returns.
Say, base cost of a given research is 60 days.
Tygan alone (counts as 2): 60/2 = 30 days.
+1 scientist: 60/3 = 20 days
+2 scientists: 60/4 = 15 days.
+3: 60/5 = 12 days.
+4: 60/6 = 10 days.
In other words, first two scientists are the heavy hitters. Any extras are kinda blah.

You want Engineers. You want lots of engineers. Prioritize them until you got at least 7 of them.

[Rm860]

you were right about getting a scientist mission soon. my mission i just got is a opps and one choice is scientist (counter hidden event, one for intel (counters advent extra armor, one for supplies (counter -50% supply). I can't deal if advent gets more armor so i'm going for that but strange the game must kinda self ballance. you guys are really helpful. i don't want to ask more questions so i can still figure out stuff on my own but ty for helping with my big questions.

[jonnydoh]

I second the "don't worry about scientists thing. I managed to research all techs/shadowchamber projects in one game, and Tygan was still on me for more scientists.

Also, definitely make progress toward contact with regions with facilities, but don't let it consume you. You can get by with two resistance communication rooms total, with upgrades/staff engineers they should handle all the contacts you need to complete the game. The only time to worry is when the meter is completely filled and you have 20 or so days to stop their progress (happened to me in a Legend game, but I still managed to reduce it to 3 squares by game end).

Lastly, definitely invest in psionics. Fully upgraded psi soldiers swing things in your favor so much it's almost cheating.

[Mistfox]

More than that, autopsies are instantly completed if you play on a bit longer, don't waste time on them.

[Scorrp10]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

More than that, autopsies are instantly completed if you play on a bit longer, don't waste time on them.

Autopsies become instant once you get a certain number of corpses. Number varies by alien/difficulty. Also any mission where you need to evac will not yield corpses.

[Rm860]

does the game try to balance itself or does it just seem that way?

[Mr. Nice]

Seems that way, like preferably giving your scientsits or engineers, whichever you have less off. Also class of mission reward/buyable soldiers seems to be a class you are lagging behind with, either in rank or number of. Could just be perception bias and placebo though.

[Scorrp10]

Might be placebo, but at least on lowrr difficulties (veteran), the game seems to give you a mission of needed type when it 'thinks' you are low on something, within a few days of getting a notification.

The game also loves to interrupt you at inconvenient times. Which is why I love 'remaining mission time' mod.