WIP Guide for each dificulty

This is a guide for each difficulty (WIP). Hi I am Toby, I am an XCOM Nerd, I am currently attempting to 100% the game, so I know a decent amount, so if you need info, this guide should help.

Update Log (So I can see how lazy im being)

I keep being a lazy git and not updating this, so I'm adding an update log, so you guys can call me out for being a lazy git (Please tell me to finish it if I don't update it for a while)

30/07/2020
Change log
Fixing spelling mistakes
Updating aliens sections

26/08/2020
Change log
Finished second wave options

Intro

Hi i'm Toby and this is my guide on what to do while playing XCOM, I have played nearly 200 hours and have been working my way through all the achievements, most of which where gained on my Classic ironman play through, in which I missed out on the all researches achievement by floater interrogation, so I believe it is safe to say I know how to play the game at a semi decent level,

Number of aliens/Pods per mission

On different difficulties there are different numbers of aliens and pods per missions, a pod is a group of aliens that all activate at once when discovered.
Game

Aliens

Sectoid:

The grunts of the invasion, Aliens use sectoids how you use rookies in the older Xcom games, these little buggers have a few nasty surprises that make them a little scary early, but absolute pushovers later.



Health: 3

Damage: 2-4

Abilities: Mind Merge

Mind merge boosts the targets will by 25 and crit chance by 25, however if the sectoid doing the mind merge dies, both die

How to deal with: When you come across a pod of sectoids, they tend to group up after their initial "discovery move" so that is a opportune time to grenade them as a group as it will kill all 3, however, if you do not kill them before their turn they tend to split up, one will move for a flank, one will fall back and mind merge, and the one that is mind merged tends to push aggressively towards your team, your best bet, is to kill the mind merger, and the flanker, as that will finish off the entire group. General rule of thumb, if you have more soldiers than there are sectoids, you are fine, if there are more sectoids, move back and overwatch, or use grenades.

Thinmen:

Like sectoids, not exceptionally dangerous, however you need to be careful of their poison cloud on death, and their poison spit



Health 3

Damage 2-4

Abilities: Leap, Suppression, Poison Spit

Leap just allows thinmen to jump onto roofs of things without ladders

Suppression locks down one of your soldiers, giving them a -30 to hit, and allowing the thinman an overwatch shot if you move

Poison spit, the thinman spits a poison cloud at and area covering a 3x3 section, and poisoning units within the cloud, a poisoned unit loses 1 health per turn for 3-5 turns, unless they have poison immunity from one of the sources that can give it.

How to deal with: thinmen like high ground and spitting poison at clustered soldiers, so dont group your guys up too much, and try to make sure you dont have anyone in an adjacent tile to the thinman when it dies, because it leaves a cloud of poison spit. grenades are you friend, and any soldier with good aim should also be useful. Do not let the thinman numbers get to more than half your squad size, as they become very dangerous very fast.

Floaters

These tend to be the 3rd kind of alien you encounter, They float, which makes them rather irritating, as they will allways have a high-ground bonus to hit, their accuracy is not great, however the bonus they get from being high up makes up for that normally



Health: 4

Damage: 4-6

Abilties: Airborne, Launch, Evasion

Airborne, or float as I like to call it, just means that they fly, however that also means they will allways have the highground and can fly, which means they have a better range of movement the most of the early game aliens.

Launch, is the bane of your existence early on, the floater launches itself into the air, then lands, (Usually in cover) behind your squad, if you cant deal with them before their turn, you will lose a soldier, no matter the difficulty, due to the bonuses they receive from flying and the flank bonus they will almost definately hit, and almost definately crit.

Evasion is a passive skill, which means you have a -20 to hit floaters if they are flaoting.

How to deal with: rockets, blow them up when you first see them, then they never become an issue, if not just make sure you dont have a massive flank they can take with launch, in which you cant kill them the turn they do it. Thats it.

Outsider

You will encounter these once you down a ufo, so you will actually encounter these before both Floaters and thinmen I wont consider them aliens, as they are never mentioned by the uber etherial, meaning that it is not something made to fight you, and is actually just a communications relay On easy they have the same stats as sectiods but with light plasma rifles, they have above average base accuracy meaning they are a little scarier than most things you can fight at that stage.



Health 3

Damage 4-6

How to deal with: treat them like a sectoid that does big damage, kill it the same way you would a sectoid.

Chryssalid

Typically the 4th type of alien you encounter, usually happens on the first terror mission, or, the mission I will refer to as newfoundland. On terror missions these are a pain, because they make zombies when they kill things, then, those zombies become chryssalids, meaning that civilians can be more trouble than they are worth on terror missions.



Health 8

Damage 8

Abilities: Leap, Poisonous Claws, Implant

Leap is the same as the thinmen.

Poisonous claws also the same as thinmen poison except happens on a melee hit.

Implant, Turns things they kill into a zombie which reanimates on the next turn, then after 3 turns, a chryssalid comes out of the zombie.

How to deal with: stay back and overwatch, do not let them close, or you die

Zombie

Spawned by chryssalids, they have their own stats before they become chryssalids



Health 10

damage 6

abilities

Chryssalid spawn, stun immune

Chyssalid spawn, implanted Chryssalid eggs hatch into Chryssalids after 3 turns if the zombie is not killed

Stun immune, cant be tased

Cant move particularly far

Seeker

Robo squid with a build in plasma pistol, it will suffocate your guys if it manages to latch on, so dont let it, allways triggered in pairs, and prefers to target isolated units, although keep in mind you cant bait them by leaving someone isolated, because the may choose to attack someone else. shows up in the second month same as floaters and chryssalid, likely seen before either, but depends on the types of missions you get.



Health 4

Damage 2-4

Abilities: Airborne, Stealth, Strangle, evasion, Robotic, stun immune

Airborne, same as floater

Stealth, goes invisible can attack from stealth if using strangle, but must unstealth to shoot pistol

Strangle, it occupies the same space as the unit, and paralyzes them, it deals 2 damage and 1 per turn after, if the seeker is shot while strangling it is "Dislodged", and the unit it was strangling will suffer a turn "Catching breath" -75% movement and -50% aim.

Evasion, same as floater

Robotic, Immune to fire, poison and most psionic abilites

Stun immune, cant be tased with arc thrower.

How to deal with: if only seekers triggered, overwatch as a cluster of soldiers, over and over till they reveal and die, or equip chitin plating, respirators or titan armour to become immune to strangulation, then instead of trying to strangle they will shoot at you with the pistol.

Different stats on different difficulties

Some aliens have stat changed depending on your difficulty, this is what they are, and if, and if so, how it changes how you fight them

More Numbers

Easy

Your strategy doesn't particularly matter on easy, but the basics still apply.
Retreating is an option, Fall back using the blue movement and then overwatch.
Dont leave your guys out of cover (Unless its the last alien and your trying to arc thrower them)
During your first 2 months, bring at-least 2 rookies on every mission, so you have backup troops incase Xcom decides it dosen't like you.
Losing soldiers is FINE it happens, just try to learn from it.
Don't sprint you last guy in a turn, it may be ok if he only runs into 2 sectoids, but anything bigger will punish you, hard.
Keep track of the aliens you find, if one runes back into fog of war, remember, or you will run into an overwatch, and it will hurt.

Normal

On normal, you need to be more careful, the game is a little less forgiving than easy, large numbers of aliens with lower level soldiers will result in casualties, try to avoid taking on too many pods at once, on normal, a good rule of thumb, is 6 sectoids, 4 thinmen, 4 floaters, and less of anything else, (Until you have colonels) you will need to be a little more careful when trying to arc thrower an enemy on this difficutly as whiffing an arc thrower shot can be utterly tragic

Classic

Soldiers will die, anything less than full cover is insufficient, Your odds get worse, aliens get better aim, some aliens get more health, and a few hit harder too. on this difficulty, the rule of thumb for fights, is you can fight one pod, but make sure the fight is never fair, have height advantage, cover advantage, numbers advantage, whatever you can get, if you don'd have any advantage, blue move back then overwatch, repeat till you find an advantage. Explosives are your best friend, Vahlen may complain, but better to lose some research/engineering materials than a soldier, and when you can use one grenade for a full pod of sectoids, you will be thankful.

Impossible

Why would you do this to yourself, just why. Sectoids now have 4 health, so 2 grenades per pod, and thats only if they group up, every alien has better odds to hit, and all aliens have a natural crit chance now, so getting hit normally means death, do not, I repeat, do not play aggressive, do not leave a gap to be flanked, do not stand behind destructible cover, and do not stand by cars, all of these will get you killed.

Advanced Options

Tutorial, Enables / disables the Tutorial

Meld Tutorial, Enables / disables the Meld Tutorial

Operation Progeny, Enables / Disables Operation Progeny missions

Operation Slingshot, Enables / Disables Operation Slingshot missions

Ironman, Enable / disable ironman mode

Reduce Beginner voice over, reduces comments made by Vahlen and shen, typically about the use of explosives XD

iron man
/ˈʌɪənman/
noun
noun: ironman
(especially in sporting contexts) an exceptionally strong or robust man.
TRADEMARK
a multi-event sporting contest demanding stamina, in particular a consecutive triathlon of swimming, cycling, and running.
noun: Ironman

Ironman mode uses a single save file and over writes with autosaves constantly, meaning you cant save scum the game, the term ironman comes form the sporting event as it is a long haul race requiring stamina.

Second Wave

Second wave options are in the game to change the experience, this could make the game different, or harder.
The Second wave options available depends on whether or not you own the Enemy within Expansion

By default you have access to 4 second wave options and 3 additional if you have enemy within

Default

Damage roulette (Oh god More RNG)
All weapons damage range is now between 1 and 150% base damage
Crits add base damage to the random damage

New Economy (Can be a godsend, Can cause a restart)
Randomizes funding from council member betwenn 10% and 400%

Not Created Equally (God Rookies or Cannonfodder)
Will can be 25 - 59 (Normal 40) increments of 2
Aim can be 50 - 80 (Normal 65) increments of 5
Move distance can be 11 - 14 (Normally 12) 1/3 to get 11, 1/3 to get 12, 1/6 to get 13, 1/6 to get 14
Health Will stay the same

Hidden Potential (From god to useless or the other way round)
Soldier stat increases are random

Complete game on normal

Red fog (Ouch)
Combat wounds lower aim and movement for the rest of the mission (Does not effect aliens)

Absolutely critical (Good for you, better for them)
A flanking shot is a guaranteed crit

The greater good (The greater good (Tell me if you get the reference))
Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien

Marathon (Budget long war)
Delays deployment of alien types
Triples research time
Doubles build time
Doubles recovery time
Double engineering cost

Beat the game on Classic

Results driven (Dont chose this on classic or impossible unless your a sadist)
Funding is based on panic level
+25% at panic 1 +0% at panic 2 -25% at panic 3 -50% at panic 4 -75% at panic 5

High stakes (Can be good can be not)
Random rewards for stopping abductions

Diminishing returns (Game is hard)
Increased cost of satellite construction

More than Human (Blue pill or red pill)
The psionic gift is extremely rare

Beat the game on Impossible

War Weariness (Not like america)
Council funding decreases over time

E-115 ( E-1337)
Elerium degrades over time

Total Loss ( Lose man get crippled)
Lose all gear on death

Alternate sources (Turn those lights off)
Doubles power requirements

Xcom EW Seccond Wave

Default

Aiming Angles (Slide to the left, Slide to the right)
Units receive aiming bonuses the closer to flanking an enemy they are

Save scum (Scum)
Loading a saved state resets the random number seed

Training roulette (Can be good, can make you good soldiers suck)
First rank with give normal ability everything else will give different abilities (cant give abilities that are reliant on another ability or weapons specific (Those can only be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in their respective classes))

Beat the game on Normal

Mind hates matter (Oh god why)
Psi soldiers can be gene modded and gene modded soldiers cant be gifted

Beat the game on classic

Itchy trigger tentacle (You know that one map with a terrible glitch where the pod starts active, thats basically a feature now)
Non-cover aliens have a 50% chance of firing at soldiers upon being spotted (Robo units enter overwatch like normal) (Spotted soldiers will finish moves before the shots are fired, so cover bonuses will be in effect)

General Tips

Exalt

Exalt are like anti XCOM XCOM
They look a bit like you, act a bit like you, but have more units and less tech options

If you are on the same tech as them they can be kinda scary, as they have more units than you, however once you out tech them, they aren't too bad

Exalt Medic

Like your supports


Standard assault rifle damage

6 hp on easy
7 hp on medium and classic
8 hp on impossible

They have the XCOM perks
Covering fire
Field Medic
Smoke grenade

0% crit on easy and normal
10% crit on classic and impossible

Exalt Operative

Like a rookie


Standard assault rifle damage

6 hp on easy
7 hp on normal
8 hp on medium
9 hp on impossible

No abilities

0% crit on easy and normal
10% crit on medium and impossible

Terror missions

Scripted missions

Within XCOM there are a few mission that will allways go the same way, (Except maybe on impossible) but it has specific enemy spawn, and also (Usually) specific enemy drops.

Class Guide

What classes to use, when to use them, how to use them, and what team comps to use

Sniper

Squaddies get Headshot, it improves crit chance, use it when you need the crit to kill.

Take Squadsight, it is how you win the game. However, although most people will not reccomend this to you, I personally might train up a snapshot sniper, this is an unusual choice, however for me there where times where I had to move my sniper throughout the mission, and when they are squadsight, that sucks, you want to keep them stationary. However if you think your sniper has a chance at being a psi soldier, take squadsight, then they can move the Psi attack if needs be.

At sergeant take damn good ground, You will almost never be using the pistol, although there is one exception I will explain later.

Then at lieutenant, take disabling shot, it helps with bigger aliens like sectopods and Muton elites battle scanner will not help much.

At captain, take opportunist, executioner sounds great, however, you will rarely be shooting at an alien with less than 50% health with your sniper, they will normally be taking the first shot, as they may just oneshot the enemy.

At major you get low profile, it is a godsend.

At colonel, you get to pick between in the zone and doubletap, now, this comes down to personal preference, Double tap allows you to shoot twice if you dont move, with a one turn cooldown, and in the zone allows you to potentially shoot as many shots as it takes you to run out of ammo on no cooldown, however the requirement of the enemy not being in cover sucks, only good in terror missions and the final mission, as most enemies take cover.
Double tap is usually the better option, however as mentioned before about the squad sight PSI sniper, you may chose to give them in the zone if they will be your "Candidate"

Support

As a squaddie, support gets smoke grenade, its is not, I repeat, it is NOT a substitute for cover, it gives +20 to defence, that is the same as low cover, however you can recieve that bonus while in cover, and while in high cover, you become extremely hard to hit, low cover + smoke = high cover, high cover + smoke = insanely hard to hit.

At corporal, you get to chose between sprinter and covering fire, sprinter is good, at allows 3 additional tiles of movement, this can be great if they are your medic, however, covering fire is amazing, the ability to react to shots is a godsend, as sometimes an enemy will walk just into vision, then take a shot, making you unable to take overwatch as they didn't move far enough within vision, however with covering fire, you will still get the shot.

At sergeant you get the options of Field medic and smoke and mirrors, make sure you allways have a field medic on a team. Any additional support can have smoke and mirrors for the extra smokes as smokes are excellent.

At lieutenant you can pick between revive and rifle suppression, there are good arguaments for either, if you took smoke and mirrors, allways take rifle suppression, however, if you took field medic then you have the option of taking revive, rifle suppression is pro-active, while revive is reactive, rifle suppression is great, it reduces odds for aliens to hit you, that is great, and allows you to keep an alien in place, however, if you have someone go into bleed-out, and don't have revive, you are now down a soldier, for the rest of the mission, now, dont get me wrong them not being dead is amazing, but the fact that you now have one less troop than you started with can cause issues, and revive has prevented many a squad wipe in its time, however if the mission goes well, you shouldn't need revive, so if you find missions going poorly alot, take revive, if not rifle suppression is more often than not better.

At captain, the choice between dense smoke and combat drugs is relatively hard, dense smoke gives high cover value while in the smoke cloud, making your guys almost impossible to hit in full cover, even on impossible difficulty, whereas combat drugs gives bonus will and crit chance, the question is, are you running an aggressive psi based squad, or a defensive cover based squad, if it is the first, take combat drugs, drop it where you are running too, then use the will bonus to use psi abilities, make sure the enemy isnt in the smoke too, or it will cancel itself out, by giving the enemies a bonus too, and if you are playing defensive, dense smoke is a godsend.

At major, you get deep pockets, this gives more smokes or medkits.

At colonel, you get 2 option, savior or sentinel, savoir gives 4 more health on medkits, which is incredible, combine that with the healing bonus medal, and the foundry upgrade, and you can heal for 12 per medkit, sentinel allows for 2 overwatch shots, if your support is not running field medic, take sentinel.

Assault

As a squaddie, Your assaults get run and gun, this is a great ability, as it allows you to push for a flank, its what allows the assault to utilise shotguns properly, otheriwse they would never get within range.

At corporal, you get to choose between tactical sense, and aggression, tactical sense is a more defensive option, making it so your assaults get high cover values while in low cover (Only if there are 4 aliens around) this makes this perk extremely valuable against aliens that flank easily, as the defence is a natural bonus, meaning they even get it against flank shots, however aggression gives bonus crit chance for up to 3 enemies visible, this is incredible later on, however early game, tactical sense is the objectively better choice, where the defence is a lifesaver.

At sergeant, you can choose between lighting reflexes and close and personal, now this one is a lot more of a how you want to use you assault, either as an overwatch breaker, or as an enemy shredder, if you want to use them as an overwatch breaker, lightning reflexes is the way to go, the issue is, it only applies to the first reaction shot, if you want to break multiple, run and gun sprinting is more effective, however the guaranteed miss is amazing when only one alien goes into overwatch, close and personal, (In enemy within) grants a free shot within four tiles of an enemy, (Not use-able after run and gun) this can be a game winner, in the right possition, however I found it only to become useful later in the game, once I had alloy cannons, as until then I was using my assaults as riflemen, however against later enemies there is a nasty combo you can use with this and 2 other abilities to shred aliens.

As a lieutenant you can chose between flush and rapid fire, this is not a choice, this is a take rapid fire, flush causes the enemy to move out of cover, (Normally to new cover) the only way to theoretically use this is to overwatch everyone then flush the enemy out, and even then its nothing compared to rapid fire, rapid fire allows you to fire twice, with a -15 penalty to aim, however the downside can be almost entirely mitigated by equipping a scope that cuts it down to a -5 on each shot, for 2 shots on an alien, now, if you get close, its gets ever better to hit, one of the good combos is this and close and personal, you can take the free shot, then rapid fire, for 3 shots on the same enemy in one turn.

As a captain, you get two option that are both valid, close combat specialist outshines bring em on slightly, as you get a free shot if anything moves within 4 tiles, which means that against beserkers, you can have 4 shots in a turn for free, yes you have to reload after, but if you have an alloy cannon, it will die.

At the rank of Major, you get extra conditioning, you get bonus health based on armour, useless early, incredible late.

When you get to Colonel, You can chose between killer instinct and resilience, killer instinct is meh, its nice and all, but unless your building for a crit assault, which is risky, because your playing with numbers, just take resilience, immunity to crits is the best thing ever, you stay alive through everything, and getting flanked is no longer as horrific, as that grants aliens better crit chance.

Heavy

As a squaddie, you get what is probably the best early game ability, fire rocked, 6 damage, will kill sectoids, thinmen, floaters, drones, in one shot, without upgrades.

At the rank of Corporal you can "chose" between bullet swarm and Holo-Targeting, this is not a choice, bullet swarm lets you shoot twice in a turn, or shoot then move, this is insane, the damage output you can have with a heavy is incredible, holo targeting gives your other soldiers a bonus to hit, and sure this may have one other ally hit, but why have that when you can just shoot twice with this guy.

Sergeant gets shredder rocker or suppression, shredder rocket causes enemies take more damage, but only does 4 damage instead of 6, but more rockets are more rockets, removing cover, or weakening an enemy to then slaughter them with the rest of your guys, supression is meh, its usable, but why waste a turn on this when you could just kill the alien.

as a lieutenant, you can chose between heat ammo and rapid reaction, let me just say, there is a great reason why it got nerfed in enemy within, even 50% more against robotics is incredible, mechtoids, sectopods, cyberdisks all things it gives bonuses against, rapid reactions relies on the first shot hitting, so not worth taking.

Captains get grenadier or danger zone, grenadier can be amazing if you want to try a cheese strat, but otherwise the AoE on rockets being increased by 2 allows you to hit more aliens per rocket, its amazing.

Majors have will to survive, reducing damage is amazing, a shot that could put your soldier out of the game, may just not, the survivability this gives you is insane.

Colonel lets you choose between rocketeer and mayhem, rocketeer gives you 1 more rocket, this means you have 2 rockets, meaning you effectively have double damage, whereas mayhem gives bonus damage to a singular rocket, this could take out an alien in one turn, or you can shoot 2 rockets and kill a slightly higher health enemy. personally I take rocketeer.

Mec

Mecs can be made of any class, but not rookies.

Assault gives you shock-absorbent armour, the damage reduction from within 4 tiles means you have to give them the kinetic fist, otherwise they wont spend enough time in 4 tiles.

Heavy Gives body shield, -20 to aim and an inability to crit for the nearest visible enemy is great, its takes the pressure off you if you have few enemies within vision, and it helps keep the mec alive.

Sniper gets Platform stability, making them like a sniper, so its better to shoot then move, however this only becomes possible later, so its more of a shoot or move, if you want the bonus.

Support class has my personal favourite, distortion field, near by allies in cover receive 10 defence, this can be huge with smokes and dense smoke this and full over, you can have 80 defence while in full cover.



As a squaddie, you get collateral damage, it dosent do much damage, but can be used to finish off a tightly grouped pod after a rocket, grenade or similar.
Corporal lets you take either advanced fire control (AFC), which is nice, or automated threat assessment (ATA), which I personally believe to be the superior option, while AFC lets you overwatch without penalty, however ATA gives you +15 defence while in overwatch, which, being that you cant put your mec in cover, is nuts, and is almost as good as putting someone is half cover.

At sergeant you can either have Vital point targeting or damage control, now vital point targeting sounds great on paper, and truly, it is pretty good, but damage control can be used to cheese the game, which makes it a better choice almost 100% of the time, 2 damage against an alien can be good, however I dont see any situation where it outshines -2 damage taken per hit for the next 2 turns.

Lieutenant see you able to take Jetboots or one for all, jetboots, allows you to take highground with a mec, or save your sniped that just got ambushed while on the roof, one for all turns your mec into full cover, which is just not great, you want the aliens dead before they take a turn, so something that uses an action to become full cover, that stops being full cover when you take another action, just isnt great.

Captain comes with repair servos or expanded storage Repair servos lends itself to the cheese strat, but only 6 hp regen per mission isnt great, expanded storage on the other hand can be a godsend, equip your mec with the restorative mist addon and you can heal for that much, in an aoe, on multiple soldiers, multiple times, and you can also use the other addons more, the extra 50% ammo is nice too but it dosent stack with ammo conservation, meaning that part isnt as useful later.

Majors gain overdrive, its bullet swarm from the heavies, but on a mec.

Colonel gets some amazing abilites, absorption fields (Take this) or reactive targeting sensors (RTS) (Meh), absorption fields is amazing, not only is it the last part of the prevoiusly mentioned cheese setup, it also means the mec takes minimum 3 shots to kill, and combind with damage control that makes it 4, however RTS just gives one hit per turn, that's it, no where near as good.
The cheese build known as warden tanking, is to leave the mec at tier one so it dosent have a large health pool, take damage contol repair servos and absorption fields With the mecs low health with that, the absorption fields mean they only take about 4 damage per shot, and with damage control that gets cut to 2 after the first, meaning they heal back most of the damage they take, its not the best strat, but it gets good value out of t1 mec suites, however you need to kill things like drones, which will ironically kill the mec faster than the sectopod its with.

Shiv

The S.H.I.V or the Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle is a favourite amongst some players of XCOM, as they are functionally expendable soldiers with a 3 day construction time,

Exalt stealth Operative

Gene Mod guide

Psi Guide

Team Compositions

Research Guide

Equipment Guide

Base Layout

Refernces

Alien images from the XCOM wiki.
Tables also from the XCOM wiki
https://xcom.fandom.com/wiki/

[toniwidmo]

Interesting guide. I am going to guess the sniper class exception for having good pistol skills that you hinted at is going to involve Exalt infiltration missions, where a pistol is all the infiltrator gets, so any extra pistol skill is very welcome, especially since the operative being extracted will have no armour.

[Thomb]

Thank you ChaoticNeutralZerg, Very cool!

[cringe]

Very useful, now my dad will come back because of my super xcom skills

[pukescabies]

@ bunies

Depends on your team build. if you are running a squad based around snipers you don't need the bonus from holo targeting because they will usually have a 90-100% tohit, and paired with Adrenal Neurosympathy and Hyper Reactive Pupils bullet swarm is superior in many ways.

@octavius_maximus

I didn't build a single MEC in my impossible ironman run. There are a ton of viable strategies for this game, even in the higher difficulties.

@ spokesman

Thinmen are dangerous early in the higher difficulties, but you can avoid them until they're easy to deal with as aside from the occasional pod on a UFO mission, they are only present on council missions.

If you must fight them, you can load out with medkits to nullify poison. If you are hunkered down behind full cover it will be a 1% hit chance unless they are very close or elevated, so if you have medkits they will be virtually unable to damage you if you are able to maneuver / retreat your way into a defensible position.

[muntaqeen]

No worries ! I will stick with this guide till it's completed ! Any updates you make I shall help with, and good luck with the course ! Going to Uni myself and I know how tough it's gonna get xD

[TobyPSG_TTV]

Greatly appreciated, This is useable for me as party of my college course :) so feedback is actually great as it is something my college wanted me to get too XD But the feedback was great and I will try to get this updated ASAP

[muntaqeen]

Final 2 have to be EXALT and Gene Mods, for the former just give pointers onto their tactics and what they throw against XCOM interms of leeching and even losing a country by falsely accusing a country for having the EXALT base and much more, and maybe remove Exalt stealth Operative section and just clump them into or atleast next to the EXALT section. As for the latter, just talk about how to use certain genes unless they are self explanatory and how certain gene loadouts/genes complement certain classes ( Like hyper reactive pupils for assault class with rapid fire or muscle fibre density and depth perception for snipers with damn good ground ).

~fin~

[muntaqeen]

Finish up all pre-victory and post-victory second wave options, just add descriptions and opinions, won't be hard. Terror missions are REALLY important, so make sure you add all the information needed, otherwise people may ignore them without knowing how bad it affects the doomsday counter, speaking of, get to base layout and speak about adjacency bonuses and optimal base layouts ( There is a guide out there for it but I never used it because it comes with experience and isn't difficult to layout afterwards ).

[muntaqeen]

Maybe also add a section for the exploitable bugs that exist in the game for those cheese-masters out there, though I am not completely a saint as I myself use the move-with-sniper-overwatch-with-pistol-then-press-x-to-manually-switch-to-sniper-to-use-that-for-overwatch-instead. Remove the general tips section as you've already perfectly incapsulate the basic tactics you'll need at every difficulty level. Finish up the scripted mission section and DEFINITELY highlight Site Recon.... goddamn the first time I went up against it I got my bum handed back to me.

[muntaqeen]

Okay, first off, just gonna say I am giving some pointers at a first glance of what is missing and not taking any previous comments you've made into consideration, so take all this advice with a grain of salt ( Also If I don't talk about a certain section that you have in the guide then either I am leaving it up to you to complete or I find that those sections are good enough ). Add health changes side by side for enemies on different difficulty levels, also add a tiny section for xcom operative health on each level aswell.