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[gregor]

keeping men alive is simple. you have 10 save slots. here is how i use them by saving games:
1 - on surface

2 - touch down near the ship

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - saving each combat turn under different saveslot. if an alien kills my soldier i load the save game and because i know where the shot came from i look up for the alien or try to outflank him. example: lets say i am in turn 4 and everytime i move i get killed no matter what, i can always load previous turn (turn 3) and either move my men differently or dont' move them at all and rather make them duck and wait for the ailien to come out of cover.

9, 10 - these slots i use to save in the middle (not beggining of turn) - example i sucessfully killed an alien i immediatelly save gameunder one of these slots. that way when i move forward and if an alien suddely shoots one of my men i can always load previous position in the turn. if i can't resolve situation i can load begining of the turn from slots above and if that desent help i still have slots from previous turns and i can load one of them. important notice here is that aliens are like your men. they are set in their starting positions across the map and then move arround just like your squad. so if you knwo where the shot came from you can load previous turn and spam the area where alien might be with grenades.

if everyhting else fails you still have the save you made on surface (save slot 1) and you load that one and continue form there on. by avoiding getting you men killed you will train them into officers tha will do the job mostly on their own later in game (high accuracy and reaction time). you will need that as you can't save games in your last mission (in x-com it's consisted of 3 submissions and you can save in the last submission).

this tactics will help you make through the game no matter how crazy your other startegy is. just remember to have enough scientists (100 or more), start with one base and try not to loose any of your men (they bring negative points which will reduce the ending points resulting in funding decrease), and be sure to chek graphs for laien activities. if they show highactivity it means it's a big chance they have a colony near that country and it must be destroyed. to find a colony send ships on patrol arround the country area.

Since i see you had problems with large ship tell me what game you are playing? X-COM or UFO? there are places in those ships where almost always aliens are. like command centers (who have commanders - if you already captured live ones kill them to make others panic) or they also like engines a lot. the larger missions (lie big ships, terrorsites etc) usualyl have from 12-15 aliens. so my guess is in your case you had only one more kill to make. still it's was a bad mission since you lost all men.

If you have problem on the entrance to the ship post men at the entrance turning them towards the door. and just pass a turn or two before opening the door. that way the aliens waiting to snap you in ship (or house, room) will either move arround a bit or maybe they will even try to exit and your men will shoot them with reaction shot.

once you use the save tactics you should do fine. the biggest problem are colonies but with slow movement (reserve time units for snapshot) and using men to cover eachother you should also do fine.