XCOM UFO Defense: Walkthrough/Strategy Guide

Walkthrough to succesfull game completion assuming you have no previous experience with XCOM. Includes combat strategy, war strategy, and one clear walkthrough to game completion.

Introduction

In this guide I'll explain the basics of gameplay, combat tactics and overall war strategy. I will also provide my main campaign strategy in the form if a walkthrough.

I'll be frank right now and say I'm only interested in the simplest and most effective methods, so this guide may well take all the fun out of the game by trivialising it, if you want the fun of working things out or trying diverse tactics then you'd best stop after I explain the basics. If you're only interested in winning then read on.

I'd also like to recommend you get OpenXCOM before you continue. UFO defense vanilla is so buggy I cant even call it beta, but OpenXCOM fixes the bugs and adds additional features like an options menu to control game speed and volume of SFX and Music. It makes it feel like a well polished game and makes it far more manageable to play.

Basics - Map Mode Part 1

The game, like the most recent XCOMs is split into 2 modes: map mode and battle mode.

On the map mode you manage your bases and UFO interceptions, and build additional bases. Battle begins when you assault a landed or crashed UFO, land at a terror site or the aliens assault your base and you have soldiers on hand to defend it.

Clicking on the bases tab will bring up your bases, and you will see your bases with a basic representation of their layout at the top of the opened base tab. Initially you will only have one.

Base information lays out simply what your base capacities are current usage are such as your max living quarters, how many soldiers/scientists/technicians you have and how full your stores are. You also have more tabs to see how much things are costing in maintenance and staff wages and what's taking up most of your storage space.

The Soldiers tab is useful for naming and vetting soldiers. I like to name my soldiers according to their capabilities or their role and its very important strategically. I also like to look through new recruits and sack ones with low stats in certain areas depending on the stage of the game I'm at, I'll go over this more in war strategies.

Equip Craft is surprisingly complex. You will need to equip new craft as they dont start with weapons. You will also need to upgrade your weapons as you progress. You can also see on this tab how long it takes for them to refuel, rearm and repair damage. Most importantly this tab allows you to manage your troops on the skyrangers, equipping and preparing them so you will be using this tab a lot

To equip your craft click on an interceptor and click on the 1 or 2 weapon hardpoints to select a weapon. Early on you need to make sure you have missiles/ammo in stock for that weapon but later weapons dont need ammo

For your skyranger, click on it and you will see Crew, Equipment and Armour

Your starting skyranger has a max troop limit of 14 but you only start with 10 troops, be sure to fill it ASAP. When adding troops you can see their names before you add them, this is why I always change their names to their most important stats, more on that later. If you lose a soldier in battle or if one is wounded then remember to add new soldiers to the skyranger and give them equipment

Armour is considered a part of your soldiers, if they die their armour is destroyed with them, but you can remove it from this screen if you need to. I'm not sure how this works in base defence because I've only ever been attacked when I havent made any armour yet. Since you can equip soldiers who arent even on the skyranger here then I'd err on the side of caution and equip them from here when you are able to

Equipment is the most important tab here. The number on the left is how much of an item you have in your base and the number on the right is how much is on the skyranger. If you use up or lose an item during a mission the skyranger will automatically restock from your base supplies, the left number, so make sure you keep a stock of consumeables like smoke grenades, explosive grenades and ammo. Another thing to note is that the ammo clips you put on the skyranger includes the clips loaded in the weapon, so if you add 14 assault rifles then you will also need to add 14 rifle clips or your guns wont even have any ammo inside!

You will see an inventory tab at the bottom of the equipment tab. You can equip your soldiers from here, although you also get the option to equip them at the start of a mission. I recommend you do it here so if it turns out you forgot something you can add it now rather than realising when the mission is already about to start! Anything your troops don't equip will be in a pile on the skyranger. I recommend you have extra weapons and items like smoke grenades, explosive grenades, flares, rocket launchers and rockets etc on the skyranger so you can go back and grab more if you need to, better too much than too little!

The Research tab manages your current research projects. This wont start automatically so make starting research your priority, it would suck to lose weeks of research at the start because you didnt begin a project! You can have different amounts of scientists working on multiple projects but theres no point, assign all your current scientists to one project and complete them one at a time.

Manufacture allows you to produce items you have researched. It works very much the same as the research tab except with technicians instead of scientists. Like with the labs, you should always be producing something. The items you make are worth more than their components so even if you dont need anything you can sell your products. There are several items like medkits and laser cannons that dont require materials, just cash to make and sell for more than they cost you to make so keep those technicians working!

Transfer allows you to move personnel, items and craft between bases. It's good for storing excess alien resources, or for supplying a base from one of your manufacturing bases.

Purchase/recruit allows you to buy things that you dont manufacture like ballistic weapons and standard explosives or support items like smoke grenades. This will never change, additional items have to be manufactured. The scientists and technicians you recruit are always identical but soldiers vary a lot in stats so you might want to sack the bad ones and keep buying new ones later in this game

Sell/Sack: You can Sell things you steal from the aliens or manufacture which will be your primary income rather than funding. You can also sack personnel from this tab but I prefer to do it from the soldiers tab, its easier to see what stats your troops have when you decide whether or not to sack them that way.

I decided to leave Build facilities til last. You can delete facilities without clicking on this tab but use this tab to place new ones. It will show you the cost of building each facility, and also the maintenance cost of each building.

Living quarters allows you to recruit 50 extra personnel of any kind. Laboratory allows you to assign 50 more scientists to a project. Workshop allows you to assign 50 new technicians to a project. General Stores gives you 50 more storage space for items. Alien Containment gives you infinite storage space in that base for alien captives, you only need one. Hangars are required for each aircraft, including any advanced aircraft that is in production. Each radar gives a chance to detect an alien craft in a certain area. Only one of each type will function. The larger one gives a wider view range but if you have a small one as well then you have an extra chance to detect alien craft within the smaller area.

Defense turrets have a chance to shoot down alien craft that are attacking the base if you have enough of them. I don't know what the exact number of each you require is but the early ones suck, turrets are expensive, and you need a lot of them to be safe from good alien craft, plus the aliens will keep sending crafts to attack if they detect you until you successfuly repel a ground assault so I just wouldnt bother with them if I were you.

Later you can unlock psi labs which allows you to train or test 10 soldier per month per lab for psionic powers. Hyperwave relays have superior range to wide radars and have a guaranteed detection rate as well as telling you the craft type, it's crew and it's mission. You only ever need one and they render radars obsolete

Mind shields make it harder for alien craft to detect your base, and bombardment shields double the power of your turrets. You can also unlock better turrets for your bases

Basics - Map Mode Part 2

On the Geoscape you will also see other options. Intercept allows you to send out ships but this is an ineffective way of doing it. When an alien UFO is detected you have the option to intercept it from one of your bases. You can click on the UFO on the geoscape to bring up the window again which is nice if you needed a moment to see where it is moving and decided what interceptor to send out. Or you could click on one of your bases, click on a ship and click where you want it to go, which is good for positioning a ship ahead of a UFO in anticipation of where it is heading, scouting for a UFO that has left your radar range, or scouting for an alien base

The Graphs allows you to see where alien activity is occurring. This will allow you to find out where UFOs are appearing early when you lack radar coverage so you can send ships out to find them. It will also indicate where an alien base is, if alien activity is high in a region where there hasnt been any apparent UFO activity. When you have hyperwave relays its easy to see when the aliens are building bases and quickly detect newly made ones, but there migth be some that were built before you acquired hyperwave relays so its good for finding and eliminating them

UFOpedia gives you information on your items, and also on research you have completed. If you want to get technical you can look at weapon/armour stats here

Funding tells you how much cash you are getting at the end of the month. This is VERY important because if your funding is less than your maintenance costs you could go bankrupt if you dont have the cash in stock to pay the difference, be sure to check near the end of the month and be sure you have at least 2 mil cash extra in stock over what you expect your maintenance costs to be just in case a nation randomly cuts its funding. Speaking of which, aliens will launch infiltration missions to make a nation permanently cut its funding. You can stall this but you cant stop it so you need the extra cash in stock in case of this happening

You can also control time from here. Usually the time slows to 5 seconds when something important happens but not always. The 1 button on your keyboard is the hotkey for 5 seconds, keep your finger on it when you're forwarding time and dont forward faster than 30 minutes at a time so you dont risk missing things

This stuff may seem complicated at first but its actually really not, once you know what you need to be paying attention to most of the time.

Basics - Battle Mode

When you land at a UFO or terror site, or begin a base defence you begin battle mode. You have one last chance to manage inventories of your soldiers like on the skyranger so just take a look over to be sure you have everyone equipped properly before you continue. Anything you dont equip will be in your landing craft in a heap

So that panel at the bottom probably looks like the cockpit of an aeroplane. Don't worry about that, its mostly unimportant but I'll go into it here anyway. You only really need to know about the kneel and save TU buttons though.

The man / kneel button is for kneeling. This supposedly reduces the chances of your guys getting hit but it doesnt really seem like it. It also makes them about 5% more likely to hit, and costs a small amount of TU to use. It's not that good for your scouts as it will cost them too much in TU for the benefits but if you have snipers in a good position overlooking the field consider crouching them.

It does have another use though, soldiers crouching behind certain objects cant be hit. I'm not sure of the exact items but while you are advancing your scouts consider crouching behind a 4 foot high wall. I wouldnt bother crouching behind a box as aliens will still see you so long as they have a slight angle to view you from but long, 4 foot high walls are good for this.

The square with a grid behind it is the minimap. I never use this but if you're the type with low spatial awareness you can use this to keep the battlefield in perspective.

The man symbol is for inventory. You use this to change equipments, pick things up or drop them, and to reload. To reload you pick up the soldiers gun, put it on the unload weapon icon to pull out the clip causing the gun to appear in the soldiers right hand and the clip in their left hand, then drop the clip and pick up and drop a new clip onto their weapon. If you are afraid of friendly fire from a panicking or mind controlled soldier than make him take the clip out of his weapon asap, then you just put it back in whenever you need him to fire

You can also click on their rank symbol in their inventory menu to see their stats, but if I were you I'd just change their name to their most important stats to make it easier

The two men with an arrow inbetween next to inventory is next unit. I prefer to click my troops when I want to move them, but this is very good for cycling through your troops to see if you have forgotten anyone

You can also access the options menu, end your current turn, or abort the mission (retrieves any soldiers and items in your skyranger and ends the mission prematurely)

There are options for maneuvering the camera and stuff but the UI is a terrible way of doing that. You can use the arrow keys to move the view around, the mouse wheel to move the camera up and down levels, right click to make your character look around and left click to move him

To fire your weapon, click on your gun and then click on the target, whether it be an enemy or a object such as a wall. You have to select the fire type (snap shot, aim shot or autofire). You can also throw a gun but thats useless really.

Autoshot is very inaccurate but hits surprisingly often. I feel its more effective than snapshots at a medium distance but burns through ammo fast. Snapshot is cheap in TU and more economical in ammo if you are firing an expensive weapon, it's main purpose is to allow you to peak out from behind a wall, fire a low TU snapshot, and have enough TU to get back into cover. Since aimed and autofire cost more TU they also increase the chance of suffering return fire. Pointblank autofire is powerful since most shot will hit and the enemy doesnt get a chance to return fire til after you shoot all 3 shots. Aimed shots are best for people firing from a long distance as snapshots/autofire almost never hit beyond a soldier's viewing distance

To use a grenade or a smoke grenade, prime the grenade and set the turn timer (0 means it detonates at the start of the alien's turn). Then throw it. It costs a lot more TU to prime a grenade than to throw it. A primed grenade cant detonate unless it is on the floor. This means so long as your soldier is carrying it in their hand or inventory it wont blow up. You can prime grenades in advance, and they are a very reliable way of getting kills, though beware that the grenade wont detonate til the enemy's turn and they can still reaction fire in the meantime even with a grenade at their feet which will definetly kill them when your turn ends. They may even shoot the guy who just threw the grenade if his reactions are low or he used too much TU. Beware as if a soldier carrying a primed grenade is killed or KOd the grenade will fall to the ground and detonate!

When your soldiers see an alien for the first time they immediately stop. This is to give you time to decide what to do and not risk further reaction fire. If your soldier sees an alien at the same time it sees him it wont get a reaction shot on that movement, though further movement may provoke a reaction shot. This gives you time to decide how to deal with them. You know they have seen something if a box with a number appears on the screen, clicking it will show you the alien. It is because of this that night missions are so dangerous, aliens can see in the dark and your soldiers cant, so if an alien sees your soldier but your soldier doesnt see it because of the darkness it get a free reaction shot if your soldiers reactions are lower or if he has used a lot of TU!

To open doors, position your soldier right at the door facing it, then right click the floor on the other side of the door. You cannot shut doors, but UFO doors shut automatically at the end of your turn so if a soldier can see a soldier through a UFO door, it wont be able to see him when it's turn starts because the door shut, and it will have used a lot of TU by the time it even reaches him and opens the door.

The key to victory is to clear out all of the aliens on the map. Some will be in the UFO and others will be somewhere outside it. Avoid excessive destruction to the UFO as you get to dismantle and loot whatever is left when the mission ends.

War Strategy Part 1 - Main Actions, Alien missions, Base Locations

Your goal is to find and eliminate the alien leader. To do this you must capture and interrogate alien commanders, which can only be found on battleships and alien bases. You have no chance of doing this with what you start with, and the aliens wont wait for you to be ready, they are already attacking the world so you will need to fight them off, research technology and foil their plans.

There are several useful actions you can be working towards:

1) Building new bases: You can build additional bases for various purposes. Radars let you detect craft over the area the base is in. Hangars let you keep craft to shoot down or raid crashed UFOs. You need stores for your soldier's/craft equipment. You can create research outposts or manufacturing outposts to speed up your rate of tech advancement and produce tech for you to use or sell for more money.
2) Upgrading your bases: Whether you want to prioritise building new facilities in existing bases, or getting additional coverage is up to you. It's also a good idea to specialise bases in specific purposes
3) Shooting down and raiding UFOs for tech/cash and for warscore to prevent the aliens from winning. When you have hyperwave relays and can see what missions the aliens are doing you can prioritise thwarting their plans over general raiding and looting their craft
4) Researching and manufacturing better technology to improve your success rate at interception and raiding
5) Searching an area for an alien base
6) Renaming your troops to their stats, vetting new recruits for superior stats, managing your item stocks etc

The aliens have missions of their own. You can tell what their mission is when you have a hyperwave relay in the base that detected it.

1) Alien Research - As far as I can tell this just reduces your score slightly. Score is important for increasing your funding and you must have a positive score each month, a negative score in 2 months in a row is a game over. However, the score you lose is minor. It might make the aliens advance to better aliens/weapons earlier. I see these ships as cash that the aliens are dangling in my face. They always land so dont shoot them down just tail them with the skyranger and raid them when they land for better loot. If they land when its dark consider sending an interceptor over to shoot it down as soon as it takes off so you can raid it during the day instead at a cost of some of the loot

2) Alien Harvest - Exactly the same as research, a cash cow thats gonna land for you to raid and loot. Minor score loss if you leave it.

3) Alien Abduction - Like research and harvest. Wait for them to land then rob them blind.

4) Alien Infiltration - An alien ship lands in a country for a while then leaves. This happens several times, ending with a couple of battleships and then the country permanently removes funding. You cant stop this from happening but everytime you take one of these ships down it only costs half towards their progress with the infiltration so you can make it take twice as long. Since they always lands you can loot them when they land for lots of items

5) Alien Base - The ship lands, and if it isnt interrupted before it takes off there's about a 50% chances the ship will spawn an alien base. This base will cause continous score loss in the region it was made in. This might not cause you to have a negative score at the end of the month but it might cause the nation it is in the hate you more and remove funding anyway eventually. it also causes more UFOs to appear and the base is more valuable than the alien ship. This makes them potentially very good for farming cash, and you can keep the negative score effect under control by shooting down the additional UFOs over the country they are inside.

However, the bases are hard to handle in the early game and they dont have any elerium. They are a good source or alien commanders for locating the alien HQ though. I prefer to take them down before they make a base to keep the aliens suppressed and avoid a dangerous alien base assault mission. Later in the game its good to keep a few of them around for alien supply mission raids for elerium but early on I'd stop these missions if I were you

6) Alien Supply - If a base is made a supply ship will regularly appear to supply it. Like when making a base it lands, and if it isnt interrupted before it takes off then the alien base becomes stronger. This makes the base more lucrative to raid but also more dangerous to raid. The key thing here is the alien ship is always medium or larger, and it always lands, and you can always tell where it is going to land if you know where the base is so you can have a skyranger ready to intercept it when it lands for good loot. if you don't know where the alien base is located it will let you know by landing there! These things don't mess around, they make a beeline for the base and land immediately so theyre extremely hard to catch before they land. If you dont want the base to get stronger than you will probably have to ground assault every one that lands til you destroy the base and prevent more of these from appearing

7) Alien Terror - An alien terror site appears, and if you fail to land a skyranger there and kill every alien while preserving at least one civilian then you suffer a massive point loss. These missions can be incredibly hard. I recommend shooting these down as your highest priority. If the ship does land, if it was a small ship you can handle it no problem probably, but if it is a large one then this will probably be hell and you might want to just ignore it. Once you have enough good aircraft with good weapons you can hopefully always shoot these down before they land and never have to do a terror mission again

8) Alien Retaliation - A ship appears and flies around randomly before it disappears. If it flies over one of your bases there is a chance it will detect it. if it spots one of your bases then after it leaves another will appear and fly straight to your base, initiating a base defence mission which will destroy your base if you fail. Since they never land and you probably cant afford to defend every single base, you should shoot down every alien retaliation ship if you want to loot them, or if it's a larger ship than you can safely handle throw ships at it if it comes close to one of your bases and just accept that you had to sacrifice some ships to stop it. These ships only appear in retaliation to you attacking the aliens, but you have to do that so these are a problem you just have to be prepared for.

Early on you wont know what each ship is, but if you can get a hyperwave relay in every base by interrogating an alien navigator ASAP and researching it then you can make strategic decisions to thwart the aliens, and to avoid wasting loot by waiting for UFOs to land before you assault them

Building New Bases:

This is my number one priority early game. You need cash to do nearly anything early on, and you get cashes from UFOs, and you find UFOs with radars/Hyperwave relays, and you build them in bases.

You can have 8 bases in total. Build one in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, China, Australia, the North Pole and the South Pole. The latter two can wait til later in the game. Try to get one in North or South America, one in Europe or Africa, and one in China or Australia before you get the other ones. This way you can have at least 3 interceptors in range to shoot down UFOs in those regions ASAP.

War Strategy Part 2 - Base Structure, UFO interception

Upgrading Bases:
My usual strategy is to only spend cash on my main base, and go with a minimalist setting for the others. Each extra base has one hangar, one general store and one large radar. It will definetly be destroyed if the aliens find it, but its not that expensive to replace and it lets me expand very fast.

You can defend these bases but in that case you need living quarters for personnel, you need equipment and armour for them. You will probably need to train them in psionics later to be sure they can resist sectoid/ethereal attacks. And they probably wont even make you any cash til the game is nearly over. I only ever got my bases assaulted twice. Once was my main base at the start of the game, and the other was a base with a single hyperwave relay, a general store, a hangar and an interceptor. It cost me maybe 3M plus a month in building time to replace it which it had more than paid for me in detecting and intercepting UFOs for my main base to raid

I would definetly build a mind shield in each one as soon as it is available though.

I suggest that in the late game when you are bringing down every alien retaliation mission except maybe the battleship ones then you can start building living quarters and workshops in these. They will pay for your high maintenance costs and you will be able to use the cash to produce many of the top aircraft that can even bring down battleships provide you have enough of them around since they take ages to repair

For your main base, first you should build two additional hangars at the top of the base, then delete the two bottom ones when they are done. This is because during a base assault aliens appear at the access lift/hangars and it's best to keep them all in one area than coming at you from all directions.

A good number of other facilities is one of each radar, an alien containment, 3 hangars, 4 general stores, 2 labs, 4 workshops, 8 living quarters, and eventually 3 psi labs. Prioritise the radar, hangars and alien containment at the start. When you have 3 bases with an interceptor in each of them then get the extra lab and 100 scientists total. Then when you have 6 bases (not the poles yet) then get the workshops and 194 technicians. Get the Psi Labs as soon as they are available, although these come mid-game so you will probably finish the rest of the base by the time you can have them

Shooting down aliens:

When your interceptor reaches the UFO it will enter a kind of standoff mode. The top left button will make it close in to it's maximum fire range and shoot, this is the only attack button you really need. You can retreat if you had to attack a dangerous alien retaliation ship by click the bottom right button. The idea there being to attack with 2-3 aircraft in a row to bring it down but have the ship out of commission til repairs are complete

Each ship costs you 600k a week in maintenance. Early game you should only have 3 interceptor max as you can only shoot down small ones anyway. Mid-game when you have access to firestorms I would get 6 in total, and when you have access to avengers just keep making as many as you can and distributing them between all your bases, and you can start building workshops in your other bases for cash since by this point you can shoot down every alien craft and dont need to worry about losing bases anymore

Initially you can only bring down small alien ships. Stingray missiles are bad, sell them all. Avalanche missiles can safely bring down small alien craft without risking retaliation fire, be sure to keep about 18 missiles in stock at all times at your base for reloading craft. Missiles will destroy very small UFOs, but you cant get much from them anyway. If you want to raid very small alien craft early in the game then attack with an interceptor armed with a single cannon, but I would just destroy them after you have 3 bases and sell your cannons

Laser cannons allow you to take down medium UFOs. Plasma cannons allows you to bring down large UFOs.

Firestorms are faster and more durable than normal interceptors but take ages to fire and use small amounts of elerium as fuel. Their durability doesnt really matter as you shouldnt be getting shot at anyway if you use the right weapon, but more importantly they can easily catch fast enemy UFOs before they even slow down. You can bring down battleships if you attack with multiple firestorms in a row, which could be necessary to stop an alien retaliation battleship form finding one of your bases

Avengers are the fastest UFO. They can also carry up to 24 soldiers. This is very important for psionic training, because you can bring 14 soldiers and 3 hover tanks, and use the hover tanks to scout while your soldiers stay in the ship safely and mind control anything the tanks spot for you, preserving the lives of your soldiers. This ship can also single handedly bring down a battleship, but takes 1 day to repair every 2% of damage it recieved meaning a nearly destroy one takes 6 weeks to full repair! However, in the very late game if you have 10-20 of these, being paid for by bases manufacturing hundreds of laser cannons to sell for profit, then you can shoot down every battleship and the repair times wont matter

There is a kind of missile launcher you can research which is the best aircraft weapon in the game, but it isnt much better than the plasma cannon and costs elerium for its ammo, and you can bring down anything short of a battleship with plasma cannons which have infinite ammo so dont bother with it

War Strategy Part 3 - Research

Research and Manufacturing:

To keep on top of the ever escalating alien threat, and eventually surpass them you need to research new tech. You need workshops to manufacture this new tech, and the workshops also pay for your maintenance fees by producing and selling things, the most lucrative of which is laser cannons

Important research is:

Laser Weapons > Laser Rifles (one-shot kill most early aliens and have infinite ammo, and are cheap to make) > Laser Cannons (you have to research all the laser weapons for the cannon research to unlock, these cannons bring down medium UFOs, they have infinite ammo and they sell for a lot of money)

Alien navigator captive > Hyperwave Relay (best radar, detects UFOs instantly and tells you their missions!)

Sectoid Leader/Ethereal soldier captive > Psi Labs > Psi Amps: Until you get Psi labs you cant screen your soldiers for psionic strength. Psionic strength is what affects whether a soldier will be mind controlled or panicked by psychic aliens and a mission can easily fall apart if an alien possesses one of your soldiers and makes him start auto firing at his comrades. Likewise, you can mind control any alien that one of your soldiers, or one of the aliens you already mind controlled can see. It's hard til the soldiers build up skill but after that you can just mind control and disarm every alien then march them ahead of your soldiers to spot aliens for you to mind control and set them up in a long line looking at each other and possess them one by one to see far ahead and inside big UFOs without even having to go inside! It's dangerous not to have psionics, and OP as hell if you have it!

Plasma Weapons > Plasma cannons: Heavy plasmas can bring down late game enemies like mutons and sectopods in only a couple of hits, theyre the best firearm. Plasma cannons are like laser cannons but they bring down large UFOs, dont build them to sell though, they cost you elerium to produce. You can rush straight for plasma but you wont even need it til later in the game and you're better off selling plasma weapons early on for the cash

Alien Alloys > Personal Armour > Power Armour > Flying Armour: Power Armour greatly increases a soldier's survival rate to shots that hit im from the front. Flying armour is even better and makes it easier to get a good firing angle. Very valuable prior to getting psionic research as it greatly increases the survivability of your troops, but it does cost elerium to produce. I've never seen a person in personal armour survive a hit before

Alien power source/computers > Firestorm > Lightning > Avenger: Firestorms are good at catching fast UFOs but it's probably cheaper to just skip them and rush straight to the Avenger research. I'd prioritise plasma cannons over advanced craft though. The lightning is faster than the skyranger and has a door you can open and which shuts at the end of your turn, allowing you to camp inside the ship and keep stepping out to snipe at enemies, but only has a 12 man limit. However, you get the avenger soon after which has 24 troop limit. Getting at least one is essential for having plenty of troops and flying tanks to scout for the troops, but you will want more of them so you can potentially take down battleships if you want to

Elerium > Flying tanks: Flying tanks are great scouts. They have a ton of TU, HP and armour and are fast to produce and not too terribly expensive. However, they take up 4 slots and usually 4 soldiers is more powerful overall. The main value is to scout ahead so your precious psionic soldiers can sit in your ship and mind control the enemy. I would prioritise this research after the avenger, otherwise you wont have the room on board your ships to bring them. They're also wonderful for base defense if you want to be sure your other bases are secure, since theyre powerful without training, and they cant panic or be mind controlled.

Others:

Alien origins etc: You only need these when you are preparing to finish the game, focus on practical upgrades first

Medikits: A lot of people swear by these, but I rarely see soldiers survive wounds early in the game. You should get them after flying armour so if a soldier is wounded you can stop his bleeding, if for no other reason than to save the armour. You wont need them when you have flying tanks as your soldiers will stay on your ship, but you might as well keep a few inside the ship

Motion Detectors: I find these hard to use. They're good for detecting aliens in enclosed areas like UFOs or houses but not in wide open areas. Consider carrying one in the offhand of scouts going into houses/UFOs so they can scan for movement and decide whether or not its safe to enter

Alien grenades: These kickass but I'd rather sell them for the cash, and later you have better tools for beating aliens anyway

Blaster launchers: These are monstrous weapons but a bit excessive. I'd recommend bringing them on the final mission or on base assaults since those missions are quite hard. Theyre like rocket launchers but you can set waypoints for the missiles and they have a huge explosion radius and high damage. Always have your soldiers flying at least one space above the ground on Large+ UFOs so they cant be hit by this, and the same applies to bases which is partly why theyre a horrible place to be since you cant fly in most rooms

Small launchers: These shoot stun bombs! By the time you can get them you probably already have the navigator captive, but theyre good for the sectoid leader or etheral captive. After that its easier to capture aliens just by mind controlling them an making them stand in front of a soldier with a stun rod

Mind readers: These can be very handy, but its tempting to sell them for 300k each. It can tell you if an alien has low TU so you know if its safe to move in front of it. It can also help you identify a sectoid leader when you are trying to capture one from a medium sectoid UFO, so you know which sectoid you can kill and which one you are trying to capture

Alien corpses, captives, cryogenics, entertainment etc: This just gives flavor text for lore.

In terms of priority, I'd go for:
1) Psi Labs/amps
2) Hyperwave Relay
3) Laser Rifles/Cannons
4) Flying Armour
5) Medikit
6) Small Launcher/Mind reader (if you dont have a sectoid leader/ethereal yet)
7) Heavy Plasma/Cannons
8) Avenger
9) Flying tank
10) Blaster Launcher
11) Alien Base
12) Everything else

Ofc you wont actually research in this order since you need captives for hyperwave relay/psionics but you should research them ASAP. Also you can skip mind reader/small launcher if you manage to get a sectoid leader/ethereal captive without them. I'd advocate grabbing a ethereal captive, carrying it to the skyranger and aborting the mission if you get the opportunity, you will struggle to deal with psionics and the moment you successfully research it then you've pretty much already won

War Strategy Part 4 - Alien Bases, Vetting for Good Troops

Finding alien bases:

Supply ships usually give these away. Send a ship to patrol the area it landed in til it appears as a pink square (it can take a few hours of patrolling a single point). Alternatively if a country leaves XCOM then an alien base instantly appears there. It will generate negative score for you and new UFOs, but since the country already left you it doesnt matter if it makes them mad anymore. Since you know a base is out there somewhere you can send ships out to search around and deal with the base before it gets any bigger, or just farm the supply ships that land there

Alien bases are a pain to raid. The aliens have lots of blaster launchers, if its an etheral or sectoid base you're gonna have to deal with mind control, there's always terror units around which can be very tough. The base is very dark meaning you often take reaction fire from far off in the darkness. I'd suggest you just try to hurry your guys from one elevator over to the other so everyone is in one place, then have the highest reaction ones stand on the elevator so nothing can come up and just keep going up and down the elevator, spotting for aliens to shoot

You can also beat them by storming the control room and destroying the computer there, but thats where the strongest aliens are and for all the effort it takes to do that you could've just wiped the base clear of aliens probably

Vetting troops:

After you have at least 6 of your bases, all with hyperwave relays (and thus covering all the funding nations) you should start vetting your troops. You might even want to do this at the start of the game if you just cant stand the dribbling ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you are stuck with

The important stats are bravery, time units, aim, reactions and psi strength.

TU will increase naturally with each mission completed so dont fuss over it.

Aim can be as low as 40 and as high as 70. I'd say this is the most important stat at the very start of the game, you need to be sure you kill every alien you see before they can return fire at you. Early game sack anyone <55 aim

Reactions can be as low as 30 and as high as 60. Due to mutual surprise you can get away with a bit with this stat but sooner or later some sectoid is gonna noscope your 30 reactions autist from the corner of his vision. Having high ref will keep your scouts alive provided they havent burned too much of their TU yet. It's also very difficult to train before you get psionics so assume that even after you get good armour you wont be getting soldiers with high reactions. As such, I'd vet primarily for reactions over aim once your soldiers get armour. Early game dont fuss over this, but mid-game sack anyone <45 ref

Bravery can be as low as 10 or as high as 60, I'd sack anyone with 10 bravery but the rest seem fine and dont panic that often. When you have psionics start sacking anyone with less than 40 bravery, you can easily train aim and reactions by then no matter how bad they are

Psionic Strength: Can only be determined with a psi lab. You'd best keep the first top 20 soldiers from psi lab training and sack the rest. After that only keep soldiers with 80+ psionic strength. Consider skipping through a few months just shooting down UFOs til you have a full set of 14 soldiers with 80+ psi strength and an avenger with 3 hover tanks in it, then you can start training them in preparation for the final mission. Soldiers with high psionic strength have slightly better performance at mind controlling (its mainly determined by psi skill) but most importantly its the main factor in defending against psi attacks against them

Other stats:
TU: Important, but it will increase a lot with each mission a soldier survives provided he either uses psionics or hits at least once with his gunfire
Energy: Annoying if it's low, but it increases easily like with TU
Strength: Also annoying if its low, and also increases fast and you dont really need a lot of it
Melee accuracy: Doesnt seem you miss a lot either way
Throwing accuracy: Maybe consider it in the first few months when throwing grenades, but they never seem to miss by far anyway
HP: You should just assume that if someone is hit then they are dead, and theyre lucky if they live. Either way theyll be out of action for ages, dont vet for this, it rises fast anyway
Psionic Skill: Really easy to raise. Pretty much guaranteed mind controls on your muton small UFO training missions. Make sure you succeed in psi panic at least 4 times per mission to maximise the rate that it improves. Unlike Psi Strength this can be improved over time, and easily too so dont vet for it

Battle Strategy Part 1 - Tactics, Early Game to Mid-Late Game

General tactics:

Use high reaction soldiers to scout while high aim soldiers hang back and shoot what they see to avoid reaction fire and keep your high aim soldiers alive and steadily improving

Throw smoke all over the place, keep priming new smoke grenades in advance. Even if its hard to see through, if a scout spots an alien your other soldiers can now see it and shoot at it, and your scout has a better chance of killing it if he spots it close

Avoid night missions, or at least get flares all over the place if you really must

If an alien sees you it will probably hit you, make heavy use of long walls and keep peaking around them and firing

Keep your guys spread out, your spread out scouts can carry primed grenades and deal with an alien if your snipers cant hit it, and if he dies and drops it then only his equipment will be destroyed, not his friends

Camp like crazy at walls and doorways and keep peaking out and sniping, its really effective when you keep catching aliens in the open while you have high TU and a wall you can hide behind after firing

NEVER leave the skyranger on turn 1, the aliens will have their full TU, increasing their chances of reaction fire and the number of shots that they can take if they do start firing

Don't do large or higher ships early, and if a medium UFO has sectoids in then leave it, you can do it when you have good armour for the sectoid leader capture

Keep plenty of supplies on the skyranger so you can grab more rocket launchers, grenades, smokes and ammo if you need to

Blow up the houses with rockets

Early game:

You've got 14 troops, ballistic weaponry and dribbling idiots for soldiers. Ideally you want the higher reaction soldiers scouting, and the higher aim soldiers in the back firing at what they see (so the aliens dont take reaction fire). Higher strength soldiers should have rocket launchers in their packs

Never leave the craft on turn one, just have your soldier look diagionally a bit to see if they can spot anything. Chuck 2 primed smoke grenades, 1 on the ramp and 1 inside the craft to stop anything shooting in at you.

Turn 2 equip and prime more smoke grenades. Have your front soldiers equip and prime some explosive grenades too.

Turn 3 get the front 2 guys with the primed grenades down the ramp. Don't use all their TU and keep them at least 4 squares apart in case one gets shot and drops his grenade.

Now, if your scouts spot an alien you need to have your soldiers behind them that the are too far for the alien to see, take aimed shots and try to kill the alien. Be sure to have them throw a primed smoke grenade at each scout so they dont get shot at on the alien turn. Try to take control of one corner of the map. Now you can move 2 or 3 scouts out gradually with smoke grenades being dropped on them from behind to sweep the map for aliens

If you fail to shoot an alien that a scout spots then he can throw his primed grenade at it to kill it. This is risky because it might shoot him if he does.

If you spot a house then do yourself a favor and hit it with a rocket. You will be less likely to be ambushed by aliens from it, and if you didnt kill any aliens inside you'll probably see it through the hole and be able to shoot it

You're gonna have a high turnover rate of troops. Just keep throwing smoke grenades, explosive grenades and rockets, and try to keep your high aim troops in the back and keep them alive so they can start to improve their aim and reliably hit shots. The scouts will probably die a lot

Lower Mid Game:

Now you have laser rifles and troops with naturally good aim. Some of them will have good reflexes too so use those as scouts. You'll be much more likely to kill aliens. You can stop carrying primed explosive grenades which will make things much safer and result in less equipment loss from soldiers dying and having their gear destroyed by their grenade. Still use rocket launchers on those buildings though

You should start getting armour before long and your troops will be much more likely to survive

Mid Game:

Now your troops have good armour, you have some troops with good aim as well who are reliably lining up shots and have probably started to get heavy plasma for them to deal with tough mid game enemies like mutons

You will struggle to progress farther til you get psionics. You will probably need mind readers devices and small launchers to pull off a successful sectoid leader capture, here's the setup:
Shoot down a medium UFO. Equip your troops with laser rifles, not plasma. Have your main scouts carrying small launchers in their inventories.

You are gonna need to be very aggressive here. Spread out fast and spot as many aliens and the UFO as fast as you can. Have MC reader soldiers hanging back to scan each alien you see and decide if its safe to kill it or not. The leader is probably inside the UFO though. Have people following behind throwing smoke on your advancing soldiers and into UFO rooms as you rush through

On the enemy turn theyll try to mind control people. Since theyre using laser rifles against good armour they probably wont hurt you, and odds are no one will be possessed right away. Have anyone who has been targetted by a psi attack unequip their weapon immediately if you have control of them still. Give the MC readers over to them and have them equip stun sticks as they struggle to stun armoured people anyway and will stay close trying to stun you rather than run off and potentially get shot

As soon as you spot the UFO make a beeline for it. Get in there and stun that alien leader. Once the sectoid leader is down the mind attacks will finally stop. When a scout spots it, equip the small launcher and immediately blast it to stun it, rather than risk reaction fire. If you dont have small launchers you will just have to get some people to equip stun rods and rush it down, preferably with smoke everywhere to cover the charge

Mid-Late game:

You have psionic troops but no tanks to spot for them and their mind controlling is unreliable. Only do small UFO raids for the time being while they develop. Have everyone get 12 points of psionic practics every mission. 1 point is awarded for a failed psi attack and 3 for a success. Every 2 points gives you a chance for 1 psi skill per mission, for a maximum of 6 possible psi skill points. Mind control becomes pretty common after 30 psi skill, and succeeds 80-90% of the time after 50 psi skill. 100 psi skill is the cap and it means almost guaranteed mind controls even against ethereal commanders!

Battle Strategy Part 2 - Late Game, Grinding Max Stats, Psionic Usage

Late game:

Now you have an avenger with 3 hover tanks to scout for you. I suggest you only do muton missions, theyre tough enemies with weak minds. Find them all quickly with the heavy tanks, mind control and make them drop their weapons, then march them back to your ship. Make them line up with all your troops in a line in front of them armed with pistols. Get your 12 psi skill points per soldier then let the enemies have their turn. They'll try to run and trigger reaction fire. Keep mind controlling them back into position. When your clips are empty you have all 12 reaction fire points. Now have your lowest aim people reload, stand in front of the aliens and shoot them over and over again til theyre out of ammo. You will get a point of aim per hit for 12 in total. This wont count if the aliens are mind controlled it counts them as allies. Wait til after you are done shooting them then mind control the survivors so they dont move and end your turn, then do the same next turn. If they survive til everyone has their 12 points in psi skill, reactions and aiming then just have the tanks execute them

Like this you will soon have soldiers with 80+ psi strength, 40+ bravery, 100 reactions and 120 aim. These guys will never panic or be mind controlled, theyll rarely miss and hardly ever trigger reaction fire while scouting alien bases or the final mission

You can get your alien commander capture by just shooting down a battleship that can have a commander like a floater or ethereal battleship. The final mission is 2 big alien bases but your high resistance to reaction fire will let you run through the dark safely even if you lose the tanks at some point and you can mind control and disarm or suicide via grenade any alien you see

Psionic relays:

You can mind control any aliens that one of your soldiers, your tanks or your possessed aliens can see. This means you can have long relays of disarmed and mind controlled aliens watching each other. It's a pain to have to keep re mind controlling them each turn but any alien they see you can mind control then add to the relay chain. When the alien turns ends instantly (and I mean instantly, a slight hang means theres one more alien somewhere) then you can retract the chain back to whoever can see the first alien in the chain, then line them all up on the map edge near your skyranger/avenger and begin reaction fire/aim practice

Walkthrough Part 1 - Early Game to Mid Game

Early Game

Build your first base in the middle of Africa

Build 2 more hangars at the top of your first base. You will delete the lower 2 as soon as they are ready. Build an alien containment, a living quarter, 1 general store and a wide radar.

Sell the pistols and HE cannons from your skyranger and stores. Put all your remaining rifles and rifle clips on the skyranger.

Purchase 20 more soldiers. Also buy more weapons and items, you will need:
14 rifles total
28 rifle clips on the skyranger and 28 more in stock
20 smoke grenades on the skyranger and 20 in stock
14 grenades on your soldiers, 14 more on the skyranger and 28 in stock
30 flares on the skyranger (just in case, you really should avoid night missions though)
5 rocket launcher on the skyranger, 3 on your strongest troops in their inventories
20 rockets on the skyranger, 1 spare per rocketeer
14 stun rods on the skyranger

Equip one interceptor with an avalanche and a stingray launcher for small ships
Equip one interceptor with a single cannon for very small ships

Purchase 3 more avalanche launchers. make sure you have 18 more avalanache rockets in stock. Equip your first interceptor with another avalanche launcher and sell the stingrays when you are done.

Begin laser weapons research and progress to laser rifles and laser cannons

Shoot down every UFO that is small or very small and raid it. Sell everything but try to get 100 elerium and hold onto it. Also keep one of each plasma weapon. When you have alien containment ready be sure to equip everyone with stun rods when you are ready to storm the alien craft, and get lots of smoke in there to cover your assault. Eventually you will capture an alien navigator. Research it immediately for hyperwave relay

Purchase more soldiers and sack anyone with <55 aim. Rename your soldiers according to their reactions and aim e.g. 46Ref 67Aim and update their names after every mission

The aim of this stage is to get the Hyperwave Relay research, Laser Rifles and Laser Cannons, and your 2 extra interceptor bases.

Early-Mid Game

After hyperwave relay and laser rifles/cannons, focus on armour research, medikit, then mind reader/small launcher, then heavy plasma and plasma cannons

Meanwhile build 2 more bases, 1 in the USA and 1 in China. Each base should have a access lift on the third row down. Build a hangar above it, a wide radar and a general store. When the hangar is ready equip the second interceptor with avalanche launchers and transfer it to the base. The second base will have to buy an interceptor and new avalanche launchers. Make sure both bases have missiles for them. Upgrade to laser cannons ASAP.

When construction on the third base and it's facilities is underway, purchase another living quarter and another lab at the main base and make sure you have 100 scientists and 44 engineers

Build bases in South America, Europe and Australia. Same layout as the other 3 bases but dont bother buying any interceptors yet, still build the hangars and general store though theyre cheap and you can use them as a backup if you lose a base this way

Be sure to always shoot down UFOs on terror and retaliation missions. Let everything else land and then raid it. You need laser cannons for mediums UFOs, plasma cannons for large UFOs, and an avenger with plasma cannons for a battleship and then the avenger will take weeks to repair so do it only as a last resort!

The goal of this stage is to have your other 3 radar bases, have hyperwave relays in all 6 bases, and armour for each of your troops.

Mid Game

Build 3 more living quarters and workshops in your main base, and 2 more general stores. When the workshops are ready make sure you have 194 engineers. Whenever they arent making things you need they can make and sell laser cannons for a profit.

When Hyperwave Relay research is complete build a hyperwave relay in every base you have built, and remove the radar when construction is complete. Be sure to upgrade your ships ASAP to plasma cannon

Don't shoot down aliens on research, abduction, harvest, infiltration or supply missions. Wait for them to land and then raid them. Only shoot them down if it's night over there and you want to wait til its day

When you have good armour start purchasing new soldiers who have 45+ reactions and 55+ aim. Reactions is most important as aim can be trained and your armoured soldiers will be much more likely to live now

When you have good armour and some mind reader devices do a sectoid medium UFO. You are aiming to capture the sectoid leader. Use the mind readers to find out what each sectoid is and kill it if it isnt a leader. Only bring laser rifles, stun rods and small launchers. Don't equip the small launchers til you are about to shoot the sectoid leader with it. If someone is getting mind attacked then unequip their weapons and try to keep them following your troops so the aliens keep mind attacking him instead of anyone closer

The goal of this stage is to capture the sectoid leader, allowing you to research psionics.

Walkthrough Part 2 - Mid-Late Game to End Game

Mid-Late Game

Research the alien leader and psionics. Build 3 psi labs and start training your soldiers in psionics. After plasma cannons are researched you can shoot down large UFOs. Research alien power sources and computers, and then get the advanced aircrafts. Aim to get Avengers asap. Vet for soldiers with 40+ Bravery and when psionic training is finished every month sack anyone with <70 psionics til you have at least 20 soldiers, and then sack anyone without <80 psionics. You can stop attacking landed UFOs til you have a full team of 80+ psionics soldiers. Make sure to keep getting more high psionic strength soldiers just in case.

When you have plasma cannons you can start building additional living quarters and workshops in your other bases for money. Just be sure to spread them out though, you can be sure a battleship wont spot and destroy a base and it would be awful if it had 5-6 workshops on it.

Build your first avenger a a troop transporter.

Research hover tanks and get 3 of them to bring with you as scouts

The goal of this stage is to have plasma cannons on all your interceptors, an avenger, and 3 plasma hover tanks to facilitate easy psionic soldier training, and to begin construction of additional workshops in your radar bases to fund your avengers and allow you to skip UFO landings while you wait for your soldiers to finish psi lab training

Late Game

Make avengers whenever you can. Keep attacking small UFOs and training psionics on your soldiers. When they have 50+ psionic skill equip all of them with pistols and an extra clip each. Do small muton ships for training, but also raid landed medium, large and very large UFOs for more materials to make additional avengers so you can shoot down battleships if you need to. Mind control and disarm every alien then use them for reaction fire and aim training. Try to get 14 soldiers with 100 psi skill/reactions and 120aim

If you are playing superhuman you should probably try to get 24 of these super soldiers.

To finish the game you need to research alien origins and interrogate a captured alien navigator, leader and commander. Most races have these but mutons don't. You can definetly get these from floaters. Consider shooting down a floater battleship and raiding it for the commander capture.

The goal of this stage is to get at least 14 high psi strength soldiers with maxed out TU and psionic skill, and preferably high/max reactions. Meanwhile you should try to get as many avengers worldwide as possible to guarantee protection of your manufacturing bases, prevent any retaliation and keep the aliens completely locked down.

End Game

Research blaster launchers and finish training your men. Launch the mission to the alien base. Scout as usual with the tanks and use blaster launchers to deal with mechanical enemies. In fact you can kill any melee enemies and psionic enemies with blaster launchers as well just to be certain

Kill every alien in the first area so you can bring your tanks through to the second area. Find the strange orb creature and blow it up with a blaster launcher or a possessed alien's grenade to end the game

Conclusion - Main Points

In the early game, people die so much the game of thrones cast look like sheltered little flowers

In the early game before you have laser/plasma weapons and power/flying armour, you can handle every problem with grenades and rockets if you just keep missing. Just keep them primed and in hand, and spread out a lot, and throw smokes here, there and everywhere as you advance

After you have a few bases you should start vetting your troops for above average aim and reactions, and at least 2 bravery. It makes a massive difference and is worth the cost, especially since they wont die nearly as often from reaction fire or missing all their shots like the dribbling noob soldiers do

Its not worth spending a lot to protect bases, its more cost efficient to only have radars and a single interceptor in each satellite base. When you are spotting every UFO and raiding them then you get MASSIVE amounts of cash very quickly and can afford to lose the occasional base

Even basic interceptors can bring down anything short of a battleship with plasma cannons. Hyperwave relays let you know what ships will land so you can raid landed ships and shoot the ones that wont land for early air dominance

With 100 scientists early on you progress quickly in tech and can keep up with higher level enemies. If necessary you can skip ethereal ships and any medium or larger sectoid ships and still make a ton of cash

When you have good tech its not that hard to get a sectoid leader capture for psionics, only bring laser rifles so you dont hurt each other too much, and be ready to disarm anyone who becomes a target for psionic attacks

Psionics are absolutely ridiculously broken

Use relay chains of mind controlled aliens, extending across the map to spot and absorb every alien into the chain

A disarmed alien is effectively a dead alien unless they can psi attack or melee. They're pretty much your allies after that

When you have good psionic troops you can easily do medium or higher landed ships and get lots of components for avengers. This allows you to even bring down battleships and have plenty more ships to stand in for the ones that need repairs. It means you can build as many workshops as you like and your undefended bases will never be destroyed, meaning infinite cash and meaning you dont need to do landed ships anymore

Later in the game when you have enough avengers to shoot everything down you can just have your 80+ psi strength psi soldiers grinding their psi skill, reactions and aim to the cap in preparation for final mission

Honestly such high reactions and aim arent needed for final mission, but all it takes is some unlucky reaction fire to kill those tanks. Better safe than sorry.

When you make it through the early game you've pretty much won already. Even if you make terrible mistakes it almost certainly wont cripple you.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Though sometimes they only stop for a split second, but if you have your skyranger following them then thats enough to start a ground attack, the only issue is if you run out of fuel before they land, and sometimes the UFO never lands at all

[✚ Mariel ✚]

I think most of the time they stop anyway

[*Xenolord]

I think I actually found a way, and it's the craziest thing. Don't shoot them down. I've been playing a lot of UFO Defense recently, and I've tried a few tactics to avoid shredding the UFOs... and I've found that 99% of my tests; whenever I shoot the UFO with a single Sidewinder, then pull to standoff range and minimize the window, the UFO will land shortly after (I'm assuming for repairs). I can then send the Skyranger to scoop it up.

I don't know if this works on larger UFOs (like Terror Ships you intercept before they reach their intended destination) but on a Large Scout (the cross-shaped UFOs) and lower, it seems to work most if not every time.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

It's been so long I really can't remember. As I recall, I always shredded UFOs if I shot them down so I preferred to just send the skyranger at them to follow them and then if they landed even for an instant I got my ground battle.

[*Xenolord]

Do you happen to have any advice on Interception Missions? Specifically about not shredding the damn UFOs every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥' time, no matter what I use on them? 'Cause the only way I'm ever able to salvage power cores - and by extension Elerium - is by getting lucky enough to catch a landed UFO.

[BenRichards843]

Don't sack your bad PSI defense units. They are can be used to nullify psi attacks. Don't give them anything other than electro flares.

Basically, let an alien see them. Two work well. Then have your other squad members kill that alien.

As long as you don't move these two units, the aliens will "see" the for the rest of the mission. The will continue to be attacked because the AI sees them as easy targets.

This basically nullifies the alien's PSI advantage.

This makes the final mission (or any base/battleship with PSI aliens) a cakewalk.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Because I like it

[Elkstone]

Why does it have the NewCOM picture if this is for OldCOM

[Xitilon]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Kdosda Hegen]

I think so, anyway, I have unlocked the Hyperwave decoder. I got a bit ahead, I already found the Ethernal Leader. I believe I'll probably manage the rest of the game on my own. Yea, it's all obvious now, just that I wouldn't call live alien research an "interrogation" myself.