The first thing you do is not care, the second thing you do is give all your guys automatic weapons and rush them into battle.

No, the plasma cannon is cheap as free after you have made it. No costs to give it all of its ammo back. So for 30E you could have 7 Fusion Balls (boo!) or 2 Plasma Cannons (Children of the world rejoice!).

Another scummy tactic that I've found is handy when you realise that you've just layed your own trap with Proximity Grenades - I have the solution! Just save and re-load your game and they magically disappear!

Dreadlord, I used to have those tactics. Problem was, most of my soldiers died every mission, which was lame. But the ones who surviced were OK until they also expired.

I don't know if you could call this a tactic or not, but I tend to do the following...

1. Equip all troopers with a decent auto-weapon, an extra clip, power armor/flying suits and an alien grenade.
2. Secure the landing zone (that sounds so dramatic), and make sure there are no aliens with launchers or stunbombs in the surrounding area.
3. Form groups of three and three; two shooters and one runner. The shooters acts as snipers, the runner as a Rambo/scout. If not fighting psykers, one shooter and two runners.
4. Kill all.

Most of my people tend to survive... I find this way of playing very useful in terror sites, especially with flying runners who throw grenades from rooftops :D.

May not be the that good later on... Any advice?

The drawback of this is that you'll end up with an army of only freshly-recruited rookies. Plus, two soldiers killed early during a terror mission or when attacking a large ufo, can make quite a difference, especially if you only have a skyranger for troop transport at that point.

Tip of the day: while most aliens don't strike us as the particularly religious type, some tend to rise from the grave. Especially floaters seem to be good at this.

Allright Axident, thanksfor taking the time man, I will try the spotters sistem wich my base commanders will call "The Axident gambit" :ok: and will let you know how it goes.

As things stand, I am building plasma defenses and mindshields in my base, BUT, I WANT a couple of ships to get by my defenses and invade. I WANT a REMATCH!!! arghhh. One of the things that killed my in the SurafriCOM battle was the fact that my people start the battle SCATTERED all ove the base, taking their sweet time to get to the Hallway. OH! and another, VERY important thing> I only had my Heavy Plasmas to equip my troops, a couple of grenades, AMMO for the blaster launcher but NO blaster launcher. The 80 item thing?

A question on plasma beam and Avalanche missiles> you guys figure its ok to have both on every interceptor? or makes more sense to switch all the way to plasma beams?

Thanks

Plasma beams all the way, but to begin with that can get expensive. Still, Plasma Beams are one of those things which it is the most important to have. More important than armour for your troops even.

Oh and make sure you have actually good stuff in your 80-items limit. If necessary sell everything over 80 items of fighting equipment.

And keep enough soldiers at your base at all times, as it may come under attack while your troops are returning from a mission.

Well, thanks Prejudice Sucks, gotta say though, that 80 items limit sucks. So I should keep my bases empty, regardless of how many general stores I build? I am a pack rat, so I build a lot of stores to keep LOTS of stuff.

Hmm, or does it only take into consideration combat equipment? let me see what my troops carry>

Sky Ranger loadout

8 troops, 1 tank (with 8 misiles). Tank works as a spotter! Troops do the killing.
6 Laser rifles
4 Heavy Plasma
12 Heavy Plasma clips (by the way, micromanaging the HP clips its annoying, a mission sudenly ends and I loose every clip that was used, even if only fired once? sheesh)
8 proximity grenades
2 flares (just in case night missions)
4 medkits
1 Blaster Launcher, 6 bombs


Hmm, I think that's it. A question> the 80 item limit, does it count what you have equipped in the Sky Ranger, or ANYTHING in your stores?

Anothe guest, that IS a problem for me, as I NEVER keep more than 10 fighting troops in any base, and 2 of them end up as perennial rookies while the other 8 go on missions and gain experience. If my base is attacked while the troops are out.... ouch....

Build lots of space in your stores, you will need it for storing the items you manufacture. I personally have 2/3 at every base. By the way, the 80 items limit is only for fighting equipment as I said, so keep enough space for that + all of the alloys/elerium you take from ships and also all of the other stuff that isn't weapons.

Your troops do not armour themselves up, though, you need to give them armour pre-battle (just go to the 'Armour' bit of your Skyranger or whatever and give it out).

There is a reason I like lasers in base defense and your last post showed it perfectly. Why waste all of that space with Heavy Plasma and HP Clips? I send those to bases I probably won't defend (like my first) or sell them pretty quicky.

For the limit, it's stuff in your base, so keep spares of good equipment. TfTD changed this though, so you can't pull that trick off any more. Oh, remember that a tank only counts as one item. Yes, that means if you made 79 tanks and kept one laser rifle in the base you could swamp the aliens with tanks (you must have a soldier in the base, the tanks CANNOT defend by themselves for some reason), although this would be a waste of millions.

I say that if a base is doing well keep 10 spare troops in it and arm them with Laser Rifles. Keep your Heavy Plasmas on the Skyranger, that way you won't waste equipment space on them on a base defense. Think about it, 1 Laser Rifle per soldier = 10 spaces (heavy lasers would do nicely as well). 1 Heavy Plasma + 3 clips as you have it = 40 spaces.

I'd rather have 70 spare, wouldn't you?

Oh and Juan Rayo, you should get yourself an account here, that would be good.