«

[axident]

Originally posted by another_guest+Mar 27 2005, 08:04 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (another_guest @ Mar 27 2005, 08:04 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Juan Rayo@Mar 27 2005, 05:11 AM
... even if I loose the USA.* and If they get a base there, well, it would be close enough to AmeriCOM so I can shoot down their suply ships! So I can maybe turn this to my favor...

I've always had the impression the alien bases are always (meaning: even if you start a new game) at the same locations.
What I don't know is how many alien bases there are at the start, whether they're building more in the course of time, or if they just stick to the bases they started with?
What I mean is, I wouldn't know if they build any bases in countries they've "conquered". [/b][/quote]
I don't know if they're static or not, but in my last game, it took me a while to get Psi Labs without which I refused to assault several Sectoid bases: one in the Arctic circle, one on Cuba or one of those islands nearby, one in Siberia north of China, and one on an island south of New Zealand or something. There have also been bases in Europe and in the USA before. I shot down and assaulted so many supply UFOs and took out some Snakeman bases that despite the large number of alien bases, I still got extremely positive scores each month. You get points just for shooting down UFOs, and I think you get penalized for not visiting crash sites, so sometimes I would shoot down an Ethereal UFO, send a crew over, then take off immediately to get zero points.

Anyway, like I posted a while back, alien bases aren't hard if you just gather your troops in the green rooms and camp the grav lift, waiting for aliens to go to you. This doesn't work if you don't have psi-resistant soldiers and they are fighting Sectoids and Ethereals, hence my avoidance of those Sectoid bases until I could assemble a large squad of psi-resistant soldiers.

Periodically check the UFO Activity graphs to see if there are any spikes; if there are spikes in a region, send a Skyranger to patrol that region for several hours to find the alien base(s).

But so what if you lose some points for alien bases? XCOM sponsors only pay something like 6 million at first, and even if they keep raising it by a million per month, selling alien alloys, corpses, etc. nets you way more in all but the first month or two. And once you get a few hundred engineers and sell laser cannons (or laser rifles or medikits if you haven't gotten laser cannon tech), the cash flow from XCOM sponsors will be almost irrelevant.

Plus, you need to stun an alien Commander at some point, so you HAVE to let the aliens have at least one base.

[another_guest]

** Warning: contains spoiler **

Two other locations of alien bases I remember: North Pole, North Africa (not sure which country, maybe Lybia)

[lethe]

Heck, I don't even bother doing base raids, unless I need elerium. Will only cause retaliation. You can easily compensate it by doing some missions (both points and elerium) on large or if you're lucky very large ship missions, as long as your team is well trained and equipped (laser rifles are not good equipment Juan). Make sure you have heavy plasmas, medikits for the whole team, flying suits, alien grenades, proximity grenades, small launchers, psi-amps and even a tank will be helpful.

Don't bother about losing countries too, get 2 bases manufacturing alien alloys and medikits at high scale and money won't be a problem. As long as you have at least 1 country running, it's all good.


Tip for very large ships: make a hole at the top level of the ufo in the corridor zone with the launcher and get half your crew in there, while the other half is watching the lift and making sure no one is outside.

exception for the tip: if you try this with a poorly trained team and the ship has ethereals, say bye bye to half of your crew.

[another_guest]

Oh well, laser rifles are just fine. Against some alien types, they'll maybe even work better than heavy plasmas.
In addition, you've got infinite ammo (makes quite a difference if you rely much on auto shots, like I did) and they don't require any elerium. Just a matter of taste and much discussion among the addicts

As for losing countries: it's indeed enough to have a single allied country, but that's too much of a risk. In other words, each time you loose a country, you'll getting a little closer to the edge. As long as it's only a handful, no need to worry. But it shouldn't become a trend.

[lethe]

Just let the very large ships land, there's plenty of elerium on them. In the game I'm playing right now, I have nearly 4000 stored.

Besides, most aliens carry plasmas, so you really only need to make a few right in the beggining of the game, when you research it.

[PrejudiceSucks]

No, Laser Rifles are pretty much always better than plasmas. Heavy Plasma is OK, but the others are useless in comparison with Lasers, simply because they are reasonably powerful and have infinite ammo, so you don't waste any TUs on reloads.

Laser Pistols are good for those 'Crack Snipers' who have Heavy Plasmas (the only time I use them) when they need to get a shot off and run. Laser weapons are reliable and completely free to maintain, and sell for a lot more money proportionaly than plasma weapons, and there is not need to stockpile resources such as Alien Alloys to make them.

A Laser pistol sells for 2.5x the money you make it for, Laser Rifles sell for a similar kind of profit.

A Heavy Plasma sells for about 30k more than you make it for and needs Alien Alloys to make it, and if needed, Elerium for the clips. This makes the whole process very annoying, as you need to work out how much Elerium / Alloys to get to use etc.

Also, for a Heavy Plasma to be worthwhile your soldiers need to be quite adept at shooting. You can give a Laser weapon to anyone and they won't waste ammo and on the off-chance that they hit they will still do serious damage.

Also, Plasma weapons never get bonuses against any enemy, only penalties. Lasers are the opposite. A Sectopod (pretty much the most dangerous thing in the game) will get absolutely hammered by a Heavy Laser, whilst it can shrug off Heavy Plasma hits.

Base Defence missions are easy enough if you prepare a good team there. You only have 80 items at your disposal, so what I recommend is about 20 soldiers (you'll thank me if you get attacked by a battleship in your main base) with Laser Rifles (20 items, no need for clips), a med-kit each (another 20) a proximity grenade (20 again) and High Explosive (again 20). So each of those soldiers has very good killpower + enough health packs to remain safe.

On the other hand, try this with Heavy Plasma. 20 Heavy Plasma (20 items) a clip minimum each (another 20) and a med-kit (20). Now you have to have a toss-up between Proximity Grenades, additional clips or High Explosive (I think that stun weapons are not a great idea in base defense). If you choose Proximity Grenades you probably won't have all the killpower you need on the larger creatures. If you choose High Explosive you can't have 'minefields' and if you have 2 clips per soldier you won't have any explosive power.

If you choose to ditch the med-kits, then as soon as anyone gets wounded, they are gonna be useless for a very long time. If you want to cancel this out with armour, then fair enough, but you are still going to be vulnerable to those Heavy Plasma shots.

By the way before you all attack me and go 'What about blaster launchers j00 n00b?!!11!!' or whatever think about this - Power Armour is Laser-Proof, so if a soldier goes berserk or gets MCed, you should be OK. Power Armour is not really Heavy Plasma proof on the sides/rear, which is where you will probably be getting shot from. Absolutely nothing is Blaster Launcher proof and due to their enormous blast radius, no-one is safe. Hence, Laser Rifles are the way to go.

P.S. Sorry about the enormous post.

[dunkellic]

well, i only use laser rifles at the beginning.
then i switch as fast as possible to plasma rifles and a bit later i equip every soldier with heavy plasmas.

i don´t get it why everyone always says: OH NO, safe the elerium, instead of producing plasma clips use laser rifles

i mean, at the beginning you get more than enough plasmarifles + ammoclips from dead aliens at the end of the mission.
and some months later the only thing that aliens drop are heavy plasmas + clips.
i always have my soldier carrying two clips around and until now i never needed to reload. even if you use autofire, at the point where your men use heavyplasmas they should already be enough skilled to hit at least with one of the three autoshots.

i never build any clips during a campaing simply because i get enough from alien crash sites/landing sites/terror sites.
i even have a "emergency"storage at my mainbase with about 120 clips.

the standart equipment for any of my men/women is: amor (as soon as possible flying) heavy plasma + 2 clips and two alien grenades.
of course, at the beginning i switch to laserweapons first then to plasma rifles and then to heavy plasmas


ps: the only enemy where plasma weapons get penalties is the sectopod (and thats the only one as far as i can remember)

ps2: yesterday i tested the lasergun (for aircrafts) and....wow, it´s pretty useless with that range^^

[PrejudiceSucks]

Actually, the Laser Cannon is really handy against the smaller ships (try it with a lightning).

Craft weapons weren't involved, anyone who has played this game will know that plasma cannons really are the best weapon. By a lot.

And Sectopods are the only thing that is worse, but on the other hand, it is very, very dangerous to let them live.

The Laser never has any penalties against anything and is actually better vs a sectopod even than a Heavy Plasma.

[axident]

Originally posted by another_guest@Mar 27 2005, 10:09 AM
** Warning: contains spoiler **

Two other locations of alien bases I remember: North Pole, North Africa (not sure which country, maybe Lybia)

Nigeria has one too

[axident]

Originally posted by PrejudiceSucks@Mar 27 2005, 01:42 PM
No, Laser Rifles are pretty much always better than plasmas. Heavy Plasma is OK, but the others are useless in comparison with Lasers, simply because they are reasonably powerful and have infinite ammo, so you don't waste any TUs on reloads.

Laser Pistols are good for those 'Crack Snipers' who have Heavy Plasmas (the only time I use them) when they need to get a shot off and run. Laser weapons are reliable and completely free to maintain, and sell for a lot more money proportionaly than plasma weapons, and there is not need to stockpile resources such as Alien Alloys to make them.

A Laser pistol sells for 2.5x the money you make it for, Laser Rifles sell for a similar kind of profit.

A Heavy Plasma sells for about 30k more than you make it for and needs Alien Alloys to make it, and if needed, Elerium for the clips. This makes the whole process very annoying, as you need to work out how much Elerium / Alloys to get to use etc.

Also, for a Heavy Plasma to be worthwhile your soldiers need to be quite adept at shooting. You can give a Laser weapon to anyone and they won't waste ammo and on the off-chance that they hit they will still do serious damage.

Also, Plasma weapons never get bonuses against any enemy, only penalties. Lasers are the opposite. A Sectopod (pretty much the most dangerous thing in the game) will get absolutely hammered by a Heavy Laser, whilst it can shrug off Heavy Plasma hits.

Base Defence missions are easy enough if you prepare a good team there. You only have 80 items at your disposal, so what I recommend is about 20 soldiers (you'll thank me if you get attacked by a battleship in your main base) with Laser Rifles (20 items, no need for clips), a med-kit each (another 20) a proximity grenade (20 again) and High Explosive (again 20). So each of those soldiers has very good killpower + enough health packs to remain safe.

On the other hand, try this with Heavy Plasma. 20 Heavy Plasma (20 items) a clip minimum each (another 20) and a med-kit (20). Now you have to have a toss-up between Proximity Grenades, additional clips or* High Explosive (I think that stun weapons are not a great idea in base defense). If you choose Proximity Grenades you probably won't have all the killpower you need on the larger creatures. If you choose High Explosive you can't have 'minefields' and if you have 2 clips per soldier you won't have any explosive power.

If you choose to ditch the med-kits, then as soon as anyone gets wounded, they are gonna be useless for a very long time. If you want to cancel this out with armour, then fair enough, but you are still going to be vulnerable to those Heavy Plasma shots.

By the way before you all attack me and go 'What about blaster launchers j00 n00b?!!11!!' or whatever think about this - Power Armour is Laser-Proof, so if a soldier goes berserk or gets MCed, you should be OK. Power Armour is not really Heavy Plasma proof on the sides/rear, which is where you will probably be getting shot from. Absolutely nothing is Blaster Launcher proof and due to their enormous blast radius, no-one is safe. Hence, Laser Rifles are the way to go.

P.S. Sorry about the enormous post.

I think this is a matter of personal preference, but I had to give up the laser rifles in my last campaign after I started encountering Ethereals and Mutons, which have enough armor to survive a direct laser hit with alarming frequency.

IIRC, Heavy Plasma is more accurate (110% Aimed or something like that; I think laser rifles are only 100% aimed? But who are we kidding, we all use Auto anyway, and I think HP is more accurate there, too.), and one shot is usually enough to kill. It sucks when you go autofire with a laser rifle on an alien only to have it miss, miss, hit--then the alien turns around and reaction fires you to death. (And don't try to NOT autofire, because if you Aimed and hit, the alien might survive it just the same and kill you. At least with auto sometimes you get two or three hits in, preventing such a scenario.)

Also, who the heck reloads Heavy Plasma? I've never had to do that, EVER. It's such a strong weapon that it only needs one hit most of the time to get the job done. Sure you get more shots off with a laser rifle, but it's less accurate and you run a higher risk of the "miss, miss, hit, alien turns around and kills" you scenario.

There is NO NEED to manufacture ANYTHING in the game that requires special materials except: Plasma Beam, armor, Firestorm (many), Avenger (1 at the very end), and maybe Psi-Amp. Just pick up alien grenades, alien Heavy Plasma, etc. after winning missions. Eject Heavy Plasma clips right before a mission is over so that it'll count as a "full" clip and not disappear from inventory. Save your E115 to manufacture armor, plasma beams, and serve as fuel for Firestorms and Avengers.

Someone did an "arms sales" calculation once (look for the XCOM unofficial strategy guide). Laser cannons are more profitable to make than anything other than Fusion Ball launchers, but those require special materials and are barely more profitable, so don't bother. Medikits are a decent second choice. The reason why laser cannons are so profitable: short manufacture time. You don't earn that much per cannon, but you can make a LOT of them in a short amount of time.

Against for Sectopods, I tried everything. Heavy plasma, Heavy Laser (sucks against anything else--no autofire!), Laser Rifles, High Explosives, Alien Grenades, etc. At the Beginner level, you can get away with using any of those and kill a 'pod after a few direct hits, but at the Superhuman level, I've come to this conclusion: if you are fighting in an alien base, let Ethereals and Sectopods come to you by getting all of your soldiers in a small ring around the gravlift. That way you can hit them with as many shots as you need when they get close. If you are fighting them out in the open at a fallen UFO, don't bother with any of the weapons I just mentioned. *Blaster Launchers* are the way to go. It cuts through the insane amount of armor (like what, 70 frontside or something) like butter. Just make sure to give the Launchers to your most mind-control-resistant guys. =) If you are fighting them in your OWN base, see below.

A note about base defense: I posted something a few pages ago about base layout. You don't need prox grenades at all; they just destroy valuable equipment. Use a few "spotters" midway down a long hall and have a firing squad as far away from the access lift as possible. You get to shoot aliens, they can't even see you except your spotters, who only poke their heads around the corner before running back into hiding. A blaster launcher isn't necessary and only destroys equipment. Even Sectopods can't stand six soldiers' firing into the damned thing with either laser rifles or Heavy Plasma.

Lastly, just sack all your psi-weakling soldiers. That takes care of the backstabbing problem, and you can more safely use Heavy Plasma. Oh, and, you CAN cut through Flying Armor with a laser rifle; it takes much more effort, true, but once upon a time, I had a soldier shoot the soldier next to him six times (2 autofires), and the other soldier died.