Required reading

[NoiseMan]

I love tactical games but I’m so bad at them. Before I buy this is there any books or articles about combat that I can read in my spare time to help me be better at this kind of game?

[noas5]

I don't think there are any guides out yet. You can read some of the X1 guides. It will give you some good ideas if you are starting from scratch. The fact that its turn based and you can save as often as you like helps learn things without getting too frustrated.

[Idalgo]

Try demo. IMHO this game is excellent tactical game. Every step has consequences

[Saica-Fox]

Originally posted by Idalgo:

Try demo. IMHO this game is excellent tactical game. Every step has consequences

the demo isnt around anymore

[NoiseMan]

I mean I would like the basics of tactics and engaging the enemy. I want to do some reading on the side. I would like if it’s applicable to other tactical games.

[Goldhawk]

The key thing is to play the tutorial, and to play on the lowest difficulty setting - it's still probably going to be quite hard, but hopefully not so hard you won't have a chance to learn from your mistakes.

The game does have a wiki and I did a quick pass over the Beginner's Guide too, which provides a little extra information that's useful for new players:
Beginner's Guide[hoodedhorse.com]

But once you've read enough to learn the basic rules, part of the joy is experimenting and figuring the rest out for yourself. Don't be discouraged by failure!

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Goldhawk:

The game does have a wiki and I did a quick pass over the Beginner's Guide too, which provides a little extra information that's useful for new players:
Beginner's Guide[hoodedhorse.com]

Thank [Steam's lovely hearts]ing goodness. When I searched for "xenonauts 2 wiki" I didn't find one (no, the F-word doesn't count).

Would you please do my wiki-loving arse a favour and add a link to the wiki to a pinned thread, or something similar? Even on the store page and following the store page to the official website linked there[www.goldhawkinteractive.com] I didn't find a link to the wiki. And wikis just about live or die by how many people find and use them.

[Goldhawk]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Originally posted by Goldhawk:

The game does have a wiki and I did a quick pass over the Beginner's Guide too, which provides a little extra information that's useful for new players:
Beginner's Guide[hoodedhorse.com]

Thank [Steam's lovely hearts]ing goodness. When I searched for "xenonauts 2 wiki" I didn't find one (no, the F-word doesn't count).

Would you please do my wiki-loving arse a favour and add a link to the wiki to a pinned thread, or something similar? Even on the store page and following the store page to the official website linked there[www.goldhawkinteractive.com] I didn't find a link to the wiki. And wikis just about live or die by how many people find and use them.

Sure. I think I'll wait a few weeks before I do as right now it's pretty sparse, and I don't have time to fill it out myself (I just thought the beginner's guide was particularly important).

There is a link to the wiki on the title screen of the game so I think people with access to the game should be able to find it without too much trouble in the meantime. It is annoying it doesn't show up in the Google results, though - our publishers are hosting it so I'll follow up with them about that.

[Ormányos Tokmány]

no

[UltrawideGameGuy]

I mean, you can google it since what you want isn't really about Xenonauts 2, which is what this forum is for.

You can try reading Art of War, or learning chess. People go to school or into the military for this stuff, so if you want a bullet point list it'll be more searching for specific tips or guides towards a particular game.

Or, again, do your own search on the internet for something like general strategy games tips.

[baddoggs]

Originally posted by NoiseMan:

I love tactical games but I’m so bad at them. Before I buy this is there any books or articles about combat that I can read in my spare time to help me be better at this kind of game?

Go to Utube and search.. military history visualized.
There are small video's that explain the how and why of
small unit composition, tactics and doctrine.

[Ciecieji]

I feel like there's two questions here, a) what books are there are tactics? and b) what can I do to get better at this type of game?

a) Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel is a classic, Sun Tzu's Art of War is an even more classic classic, Shooting to Live is not a bad read either. The Army/Navy/Airforce all have a variety of official reading lists many of which are linked here:
https://companyleader.themilitaryleader.com/reading-lists/

b) In the context of the game you basically need to follow a handful of principles.
1) never try to encounter an enemy when meeting them would not allow you enough remaining points to react.
2) Keep your dudes close enough together that they can help each other by focusing force, without keeping them so close together they get in each other's way.
3) Try to divide the enemy attention while focusing your own.
4) maintain assets to the extent you can, by making healthy units tank over damaged ones, but be willing to sacrifice a unit to mitigate outgoing enemy damage.
5) minimize the potential lines of attack and stay close to cover if possible to cut them off completely. Particularly if you can attack but prevent a counter attack, or force a move to make it happen (using enemy AP) you can gain advantage.
6) maximize your chance to hit while minimizing the enemies whenever possible. This might mean shooting with most of your squad and then using smoke grenades to block line of sight or it might just mean better positioning/flanking.
7) generally try not to rely too much on any single thing 'going right' and have a contingency, for critical, flanking ops this could mean deploying in pairs (in case somebody catches a bullet and goes down)

That's basically all I can offer. Of course, I don't know what you are doing wrong/what issues you are having to call yourself 'so bad' but I think that you should play a pretty solid game if you follow the guidelines above fairly closely but not dogmatically (No plan survives contact with the enemy).

In general the strategy layer of games like this is almost as important as the tactical level, so try to keep up on the right research priorities so you don't get power-crept on the ground.