Very, very true. I’m not sure it’s actually possible to win with less than 3 bases. That said, on normal difficulty you’re not in an insane rush to get 3 bases with air coverage. You shouldn’t worry about getting additional bases up before you have armour, lasers and the not-a-MIG. You really should bee-line for all of those things, though.
You should also take advantage of air strikes. They’re basically free, and how you deal with crash sites matters less than that you deal with them.
A potential early money saver is the Hunter Scout Car. Early on it is easily much, much better than the two troopers it replaces, and it is a lot harder to kill for the aliens. The downside, of course, is that it doesn’t gain experience. But if you’re losing troopers every mission, the Hunter both save you money and minimise your losses.
In game 1 I was down to just a couple of hundred grand for my allowance as of November or December; I’m pretty sure it was November. This as due to a variety of factors:
Interceptors were getting outrun a lot. I skipped the foxtrotl I had just completed whatever the next one up is. I was leery about the Foxtrot then because I found missiles ineffective, and laser cannon seemed like a big upgrade. I did get to the alien explosives upgrade a bit later than maybe I should have, which did not help. I was missing potential missions. Also, when intercepting I was not using two planes. Which I don’t always find necessary.
Some weirdly long stretches where there was zero activity in NA and SA. I’m talking 10 days for one, over a week for another. But I only had one positive growth month out of NA and SA. Europe grew increasingly active all the while. Some of this was dumb luck, sure. But it seemed rather strange.
I lost an entire team in one mission (I’m not save scumming, though not playing iron man). Also, I had to miss a terror mission due to the fact that it was (1) really far away (2) the Dropship had just returned from a farther-away-than-normal mission and (3) I was in a weird place with most of my veterans recently dead or wounded and not getting better any time soon. So I got beat up in October and lost a couple of nations as a result.
Still getting comfortable with the research tree. I have no doubt I was sub-optimal over all.
You should also take advantage of air strikes. They’re basically free, and how you deal with crash sites matters less than that you deal with them.
Well, I couldn’t get enough laser weapons to keep an entire squad outfitted; it feels like you might be underselling how much how you deal with them matters. I think I had 4 rifles, 2 pistols, and a sniper (precision). That was along with 4 jackal armor, 2 whatever is next armor (4-6 units of alloy for that I think), and that tier 3 plane (which cost 10 alloy/alenium). I was really alloy pinched.
In game 2 I’ve got maybe 32 alloys, waiting for lasers to open up (armor after). I am doing a bit better, aided by 3 random crash-site missions that popped up in Europe (I didn’t catch any messages indicating what happened but I’m assuming they were shot down by NPCs) and one of those “raid a landed UFO” missions.
Air strikes earn you money. Unless you need to capture a specific alien or technology (eg. its the first UFO of its type you’ve shot down) I’d recommend air striking every crash site.
It’s just not worth risking the soldiers, and unless things go perfectly you’ll almost certainly lose money compared to bombing the site.
Also, if you play every crash site the game will take absolutely forever.
I’m going to guess that doing airstrikes is only ok if you are doing well in the game, if you are out of resources you are going to have to do the ground missions to get as much resources as possible.
What I’m saying is that raiding crash sites usually costs you money, which is the most important resource. If you’re critically low on alien resources, then that’s probably a reasonable tradeoff (although a landed UFO is a better target in that case). Less so if you’re just stockpiling them. You can get by just fine with only the occasional UFO recovery.
Air strikes are a great feature exactly because they let you take on only the crash missions you have a compelling reason to do.
Hiring a soldier is 10k. It’s not cheap, but it’s not crazy expensive either; I’m getting 25-50k for crash sites currently. I had something like 57 alloys when I was finally able to make laser weapons, and that was good for 8 rifles (4 sent to another base) and 2 pistols. I still need armor, and to get the tier 3 jet and make a few, and get some more laser rifles. . .
If I had air-striked half of the sites I’d be hurting a lot more.
To my mind, building 8+ laser rifles is a waste. If you have a more resource-hungry playstyle, you’ll need more resources. That makes sense and I guess everyone has to find their own equilibrium.
I see they’ve actually rebalanced this since I played:
I could get away with it before, but it sounds like it’s better balanced now.
You actually get money as well for taking on missions yourself, more than a airstrike. I have 4 bases and have a real issue with money so I have to take quite a few missions on.
I love the game but it could be 10 hours shorter. I’m trying to capture a Preator now, but I’m not seeing any Battleships or large bases for 2 months. So lots of waiting (and researching). I’m going to say I wish there was less game. I wanted a 23-30 hour experience that I could have over and over again. As is, its taking too long to get to the end, that it might restrict my desire to replay quickly again. I have limited free time. This is the kind of game I would otherwise want to play over and over to have the story experience, such as the local cop saving my bacon or my sacrifice recruit becoming the badass at the end of the game
Well Xenonauts replaces the original X-Com for me, the remake by fraxis didn’t but I like it for separate reasons (like the Bureau). I thought the game played a little long but I just started another game planning on playing ironman. I read every UFOpedia entry and the novel. I’m clearly now a unabashed fan after finishing it.
I loved Rise of Nations and want to play it, but not till I finish another game of Xenonauts. I love the strategic depth of Xenonauts, managing multiple aircraft in dogfights with UFO’s. I didn’t immediately realize the tactical depth in this when I first started playing. I loved the tactical shields, Billy Bob on his farm with a shotgun killing the enemy and sometimes helping me in a fight. The local cop who saved my beacon in a fight. The military that shows up later in the game armed with the laser rifles I supplied them with, now helping my team out (somewhat). I loved my predator armor that could walk through walls and obstacles. I really enjoyed setting off several chain explosions with my explosives and firefights that clears large portions of the map! I’m really impressed with this game! It really is the ultimate X-Com homage. Its going to be tough for me to try other indie efforts after this unless they bring something vastly new to the table.
Others have come close, but Xenonauts gets enough of it right to take the mantle. I hope some aspiring moder converts it to the original X-Com with the included modding tools. I would play that mod. There is also a lot more under the hood that could be used. Some modder created a nice wav collection that realty amped up the tactical combat with lots of military chatter, but it doesn’t work with the latest version. :(
I haven’t played the game yet since my initial test but your post made me want to put other games on pause and give it a try :). I’ve read that the community map pack can cause issues for hunter scout car beacause it’s possible to get a tree in front of the ramp.
Been playing this tonight. The last mission, which was my fourth or fifth overall, and my first scout crash (as opposed to light scout). I lost two people right away to friendly fire. One, the sniper shot the shield guy in the back of the head. And in the other the LMG caused a car to explode, taking out the shotgun guy. I then lost more clearing up the map :( But thankfully only one actually died, the rest were just wounded.
Q: If the shield guy is crouching, can the people stand directly behind him safely? Or should I never actually crouch the shield guy? I’ve had bullets from a plasma rifle go through the shield guy and hit both hi and the one behind, but I’m not sure if thta’s because the shield broke or it just doesn’t stop all hits…
ps: One thing I think this game should have, but wasn’t in the original, is letting the player do the reaction shots, ala jagged alliance. Sometimes in that game I’d want to not shoot some people to later shoot others, or two do multiple weak shots instead of a strong one, etc.
