Collection of Tips

[Lord Shadow]

So I just finished my 3rd run and thought I drop few tips here before I move to something else and forget everything :D

General
- get 4 Mach Weaves and dont bother with anything else. Dodge will save far more life than anything else
- Reflex Grips are Superior Scopes, ignore everythign else. Doing 2 shots insted of one...it's like having another squad when you have 4 of them.
- get mods. There are some really nice that repair or add what should already be in the game
- unless you want to use intel per nonlethal kill mod, I strongly advise AP Rounds early game and switching to Dragon Rounds later on. If you ever see Caustic Rounds or Bluescreen Rounds absolutely do that mission. Those are best rounds around but only appear as mission reward.
- Plasma Grenade, Bubble Grenade and Motile Inducer are only grenades worth bying. Adhesion Grenade can help against Ronins, Pretorians and Sacred Coil boss
- Cease Fire bombs are most useable breaching items
- Fire blocks most psionic abilities, making Dragon Rounds amazing counter against Progeny
- You can ignore red emergency missions and most of the time you should. It gives you no rewards and it is easy to manage city unrest and anarchy through your map powers.
- ignore Androids, they are waste of money and research time. Unfortunate result of bad game design, they would be great help if you could use them directly and not as back up.

Blueblood
- this is probably the most valuable person in entire squad, especially late game
- has reflex grip as part of his character abilities, giving you 2 shots in turn, in early game this is a lot
- Ever Vigilant helps a lot with reinforecements, dont even consider the other nonsense on the tree
- get him Artful Fathom, Superior Expanded Magazine and Superior Scope/Hair Trigger then use Face Off and watch how up to 8 enemies go to hell. Lightning Hands can activate Hair Trigger as well.

Zephyr
- very useful early on
- go with Vital Strike, Zephyr gets no damage upgrade apart from her abilities and armor could make her useless on quite a few missions
- while in Reaper mod, kills from Crowd Control contribute to it and help you move around enemies
- with Parry she can easily counter Pretorians and Ronins

Torque
- she should be on every squad as she easily neutralizes the most problematic enemies
- you can simply walk to and Bind enemies, not just use Tangue Pull
- Tangue Pull can be used to pull VIPs and your own units into evac zone

Shelter
- he is anti-Progeny unit with Solace and that is probably his only real use
- you can use his psionic clone to Relocate VIP or own unit to evac zone

Terminal
- she is great healer, has remote sustain, hacking doors without breaching item and has Cooperation which is main reason you want her in team

Patchwork
- similar to Terminal with higher damage outcome
- nice synergy with Torque using Voltaiv Arc

[Bregdark]

Good stuff!

[wicked lester]

Shadow, would you get weave before the first armour advancement?

[Lord Shadow]

Yes, especially on higher difficulties. Dodge halves the damage you would take. So you can quickly see that +2 life isnt much compared to taking far less damage. Torque with extra training can be really hard to land hit on.

[Nox Oculis]

Clear Blueblood can hit 9 enemies in one turn, he shoots 2 times 8 + 1, reload is free
don't forget that !
hopefully finishing a mission in one turn ! with him .
"Blueblood" can shoot 5 times in one round in my team with "Terminal"
with "Motility inducer" + "Teamwork" + "Coopération"

Zephir has free shares, a shield
even if they are not powerful, early is game
position it on a reinforcement points, it will strike for free
weakly, but enough, you move I hit you, have shield
next round , come baby i have 50% dodge and "Terminal "
What else ? a "magic potion"
like, Wotc it's an accumulation of free PA
and injuries that don't matter too much
I powder my nose and go again

[Kwic]

For me , THE best teammate is Patchwork, way ahead the others.

Blueblood is not bad. I dont know well all the others. My team is mainly Patchwork, Terminal (for the heal), Blueblood, Cherub, Godmother..

[Proofster]

-Always check what the scar does, before you reflexively put your agent in recovery, wasting two days: depending on what your agent is supposed to do, that scar may be irrelevant to them (say, less Mobility for a healbot Terminal, or Crit chance for psi-only Verge) or best treated only when it's very, very deep (Crit chance).

-You must rein in your instinct to try to get crits from previous X-com games: while the +1 damage is nice, it still will roll for "base" damage first (so it's not always "max possible damage+1"), which means that most of the times it will rarely make a difference, unless you are trying to compulsively capture as many enemies as possible (but in that case Sleeping Rounds and Verge's upgrades would be much more helpful)

-In order of importance, here's the strategic resources: Cash (on Hard and above, you're going to hurt for it up until the late game...which is a problem because upgrades cost lots of it); Intel (not only you can put down and upgrade Tactical Squads with it, but you can also buy things in the Black MArket. That being said, once you have all neighbourhoods covered, upgrading them all to LEvel 3 for max effect is more of a nice bonus than a necessity); Elerium (once you get past early game, oftentimes you're going to swim in it, and techs don't cost all that much Elerium).

-Delay purple missions as long as you can: rushing throught the story will only make your life harder for yourself for no real benefit, beyond perhaps keeping anarchy in check (which is relatively easy to lower anyways).

-If you have to choose between a mission that gives you a resource that you need right now, and one that's a red or near-red district, unless you're on the ropes, pik the former.

[wicked lester]

Originally posted by Proofster:

-Always check what the scar does, before you reflexively put your agent in recovery, wasting two days: depending on what your agent is supposed to do, that scar may be irrelevant to them (say, less Mobility for a healbot Terminal, or Crit chance for psi-only Verge) or best treated only when it's very, very deep (Crit chance).

-You must rein in your instinct to try to get crits from previous X-com games: while the +1 damage is nice, it still will roll for "base" damage first (so it's not always "max possible damage+1"), which means that most of the times it will rarely make a difference, unless you are trying to compulsively capture as many enemies as possible (but in that case Sleeping Rounds and Verge's upgrades would be much more helpful)

-In order of importance, here's the strategic resources: Cash (on Hard and above, you're going to hurt for it up until the late game...which is a problem because upgrades cost lots of it); Intel (not only you can put down and upgrade Tactical Squads with it, but you can also buy things in the Black MArket. That being said, once you have all neighbourhoods covered, upgrading them all to LEvel 3 for max effect is more of a nice bonus than a necessity); Elerium (once you get past early game, oftentimes you're going to swim in it, and techs don't cost all that much Elerium).

Since I've seen guides that prioritize Intel as highest, how do you spread out teams - that is, how many of each type. I was thinking 5 Intel and 2 each of the other 2. Now I'm thinking maybe 3 of each. Right now on my first game (normal) I have 3 Intel, and 2 each of the others.

[Kwic]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Proofster:

-Always check what the scar does, before you reflexively put your agent in recovery, wasting two days: depending on what your agent is supposed to do, that scar may be irrelevant to them (say, less Mobility for a healbot Terminal, or Crit chance for psi-only Verge) or best treated only when it's very, very deep (Crit chance).

-You must rein in your instinct to try to get crits from previous X-com games: while the +1 damage is nice, it still will roll for "base" damage first (so it's not always "max possible damage+1"), which means that most of the times it will rarely make a difference, unless you are trying to compulsively capture as many enemies as possible (but in that case Sleeping Rounds and Verge's upgrades would be much more helpful)

-In order of importance, here's the strategic resources: Cash (on Hard and above, you're going to hurt for it up until the late game...which is a problem because upgrades cost lots of it); Intel (not only you can put down and upgrade Tactical Squads with it, but you can also buy things in the Black MArket. That being said, once you have all neighbourhoods covered, upgrading them all to LEvel 3 for max effect is more of a nice bonus than a necessity); Elerium (once you get past early game, oftentimes you're going to swim in it, and techs don't cost all that much Elerium).

Since I've seen guides that prioritize Intel as highest, how do you spread out teams - that is, how many of each type. I was thinking 5 Intel and 2 each of the other 2. Now I'm thinking maybe 3 of each. Right now on my first game (normal) I have 3 Intel, and 2 each of the others.

I did my first campaign on hard (to understand the game) prioritizing Intel. I realized in my next Impossible one that Money is more important, because the Anarchy deadline is easy to counter.
Concerning the teams, you can get 3 of each, because you will need all of them. It is more about missions, choose the one that give you the resource needed on the moment.
I agrre that you should get 4 mach weaves and nothing else.

[Proofster]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Proofster:

-Always check what the scar does, before you reflexively put your agent in recovery, wasting two days: depending on what your agent is supposed to do, that scar may be irrelevant to them (say, less Mobility for a healbot Terminal, or Crit chance for psi-only Verge) or best treated only when it's very, very deep (Crit chance).

-You must rein in your instinct to try to get crits from previous X-com games: while the +1 damage is nice, it still will roll for "base" damage first (so it's not always "max possible damage+1"), which means that most of the times it will rarely make a difference, unless you are trying to compulsively capture as many enemies as possible (but in that case Sleeping Rounds and Verge's upgrades would be much more helpful)

-In order of importance, here's the strategic resources: Cash (on Hard and above, you're going to hurt for it up until the late game...which is a problem because upgrades cost lots of it); Intel (not only you can put down and upgrade Tactical Squads with it, but you can also buy things in the Black MArket. That being said, once you have all neighbourhoods covered, upgrading them all to LEvel 3 for max effect is more of a nice bonus than a necessity); Elerium (once you get past early game, oftentimes you're going to swim in it, and techs don't cost all that much Elerium).

Since I've seen guides that prioritize Intel as highest, how do you spread out teams - that is, how many of each type. I was thinking 5 Intel and 2 each of the other 2. Now I'm thinking maybe 3 of each. Right now on my first game (normal) I have 3 Intel, and 2 each of the others.

I think that you should only keep around 1 Tech field team around overall and split the remaining 8 among Security and Finance, the precise way depending on your style (-2 Unrest every Friday is nice, sure, and you can start a virtous circle where you can gain more intel than you realistically can spend, but -1 every time you resolve a mere Situation and the flow of garaunteed money is very tempting too).

Personally I had to restart once because I assumed that this worked much like X-com, deployed more Tech teams than Money ones and hit a wall when the factions' big guys came in. My successful attempt on Hard had me using 2 Tech teams, 4 Finance Teams and 3 Security Teams.

[wicked lester]

Originally posted by Kwic:

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Since I've seen guides that prioritize Intel as highest, how do you spread out teams - that is, how many of each type. I was thinking 5 Intel and 2 each of the other 2. Now I'm thinking maybe 3 of each. Right now on my first game (normal) I have 3 Intel, and 2 each of the others.

I did my first campaign on hard (to understand the game) prioritizing Intel. I realized in my next Impossible one that Money is more important, because the Anarchy deadline is easy to counter.
Concerning the teams, you can get 3 of each, because you will need all of them. It is more about missions, choose the one that give you the resource needed on the moment.
I agrre that you should get 4 mach weaves and nothing else.

Nothing else in armour, ever? Or just nothing else first? I took 4 suits of Mach in between researching advanced and mastercrafted armour. Do you need to upgrade to advanced or can I go straight to Mastercraft?

[Kwic]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Kwic:

I did my first campaign on hard (to understand the game) prioritizing Intel. I realized in my next Impossible one that Money is more important, because the Anarchy deadline is easy to counter.
Concerning the teams, you can get 3 of each, because you will need all of them. It is more about missions, choose the one that give you the resource needed on the moment.
I agrre that you should get 4 mach weaves and nothing else.

Nothing else in armour, ever? Or just nothing else first? I took 4 suits of Mach in between researching advanced and mastercrafted armour. Do you need to upgrade to advanced or can I go straight to Mastercraft?

My first researches are always: upgrade armor, armor, armor and arrmor again. Between all the suits available I never take anything else than Mach.

You wont have mastercrafted availabal if you didnt research advanced first.

[wicked lester]

Originally posted by Kwic:

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Nothing else in armour, ever? Or just nothing else first? I took 4 suits of Mach in between researching advanced and mastercrafted armour. Do you need to upgrade to advanced or can I go straight to Mastercraft?

My first researches are always: upgrade armor, armor, armor and arrmor again. Between all the suits available I never take anything else than Mach.

You wont have mastercrafted availabal if you didnt research advanced first.

What I meant is, I have Advanced researched but not bought. Can I finish researching Mastercrafted and buy it without buying Advanced?

[Kwic]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Kwic:

My first researches are always: upgrade armor, armor, armor and arrmor again. Between all the suits available I never take anything else than Mach.

You wont have mastercrafted availabal if you didnt research advanced first.

What I meant is, I have Advanced researched but not bought. Can I finish researching Mastercrafted and buy it without buying Advanced?

Ok understood.
Well, actually, that is a question I had myself, but getting the armor ASAP was so important that I didnt want to know...

[wicked lester]

Originally posted by Kwic:

Originally posted by wicked lester:

What I meant is, I have Advanced researched but not bought. Can I finish researching Mastercrafted and buy it without buying Advanced?

Ok understood.
Well, actually, that is a question I had myself, but getting the armor ASAP was so important that I didnt want to know...

I guess I'll find out tonight. I was about to buy advanced and then someone told me that Mach weave was better so I bought 4 of those instead. Now I'm 6 days from finishing MC armour and a mission just popped up that will kill 3 days of it. i can probably manage 3 more days. My first "very difficult" mission went badly - got the Army of One achievement bad and Godmother had 2 or 3 hp left. Then I got MW for everyone and levelled up my guys and every hit on me was a graze.

[Ice-Nine]

I have found that Expanded Magazine is mostly a waste for Blueblood. There are simply not enough scenarios in which Faceoff is the best move to use and it can hit more than 5 targets to justify carrying it in every mission. I prefer Scope + Laser Sight, because then you can completely forget your basic shot and Deadeye everyone at any distance with an almost-guaranteed crit.