This is super helpful. I tried playing and had no idea what was going on. On my first move out of the skyranger my dude was immediately shot in the face, cue everyone else in the skyranger panicking and shooting each other. Game over.
Tip, don't move the first turn. All the Aliens start with full action points meaning they can reaction fire basically limitless. So first thing is to press end turn, make the Aliens move using up their movements = less reaction fire. It does sound counter intuitive, but it's the best strategy. Also make any soldier holding a rocket launcher or grenade launcher to do push ups to use their action points, so no one shots a rocket in the skyranger. Or just make em drop it.
The button below the "soldier rotation" button does not "bug out." It tells the interface to "forget and skip" the currently selected soldier. It's used when you won't be moving a soldier anymore that turn. When you keep pressing it, skips all the soldiers.
Dunno if you guys cares but if you guys are stoned like me during the covid times you can stream pretty much all the new movies and series on instaflixxer. Have been watching with my gf for the last few months :)
Other tips: - Always screen your rookies stats before employing them on the field. A naming system can thus be used based on your preferences. - Rookies with high reaction/ high TU but low accuracy are best used as scouts which spot enemies for the squad and will help be useful bullet sponges when opening the door to a enemy ship. - Explosives = your friend and should always be used, especially to light up the night or to root enemies out of buildings. - (live)Grenades can be passed in the same turn if a troop in the front has run out. Just be careful because not everyone is a good thrower. - Civilians during terror missions are stupid and can get you killed or hurt your score. always stun them when when spotted because the enemy wont target them. - Always keep some troops with enough TUs for a reaction shot when advancing because you never know... - The enemy will always attack though the hangers during a base Defense, so its recommended to adjust you default base unless you have the Openxcom mod -Night missions are extremely hard without psychic troops because the enemy is not limited by the reduced Line of sight night produces - Play UFO Defense before playing Terror of the Deep because its about 100% more difficult.
Night missions are merely more tedious, if you just bring and use electroflares. Keep in mind you can pick up electroflares and rethrow them so you run out of being able to light up dark areas. If you don't use electroflares, yeah, night missions are horrific.
AFAIR if the enemy stuns civilians, they count as killed. Not sure what happens if your troops do it, or if you revive them before the mission ends. I recall if you mind control civilians to get them to safety, they become hostile.
6:07 No, it is not glitching out, but it removes the current soldier from the list, so that you won't cycle on that soldier again. So if you are out of TU, it's recommended to use this button, so than this same soldier will not selected again when you loop back at the end of the list.
10:20 That is some dangerously incorrect advice. As long as an alien has vision on one of your units, including a HWP, ANY of your units can be mced even if they are in a room by themselves with no windows and a closed door. My tactic to dealing with MC aliens before I have unlocked my own psionic facilities is to identify psionic weaklings, usually through losing a better soldier, and then disarming them in all future missions with hostile MC. This means that the aliens will always MC them first but gain nothing in the process. I have agree with MarkuS, weapon research should be prioritised over armour research and maybe over medi kits. Your units will probably be dying like flies anyway until you at least get laser rifles. Personal armour wont help when your peashooter causes a floater to reaction kill your soldier for the third time that mission. Lastly I don't think you mentioned that for people more familiar with the newer version (which lets be honest, nearly everyone picking up this game is), everyone has squad sight so preferably you want one person to spot the alien and then have a fireteam take it out at range. This prevents the alien from retaliating as reaction shots only work when the person triggering them is within the aliens vision. This may sound like a finickity point but scout/sniper maneuvers are the bread and butter of this games combat. Other than those 3 points, this is a spot on guide that should prevent first mission squad wipes! I can't help one more point, but you make the avalanche sound like an, "it'll do weapon" when really it's the best AA weapon until you unlock plasma cannons.
I think it's more people don't realize how it's done, not even youtube gives a text format guide and I only learnt how to break the text into paragraphs solely by word of mouth (and it's shift+enter if anyone is wondering)
Very good advice, this is almost exactly how I do it. Against Ethereals, I always let all soldiers drop their guns on the ground at the end of each turn except for those with high psi skills. It only costs 2 TU's and the AI is too dumb to pick them back up when they MC your units, so they can only run around and throw grenades. That can even be usefull if they only carry smoke grenades and thus cover your team in smoke for you. When it's your turn again, MC your rogue units back (pretty high chance of success) and let them scout. Then pick up weapons with your other soldiers and snipe whatever your scout has found. Rinse and repeat. Even on higher difficulties, Ethereals rarely shoot themselves, they will almost always prefer to waste their TU's on psi attacks. Just be carefull when they have sectopods. Kill those with laser weapons or blaster bombs.
I bought this game on the PS1 with some birthday money. Reading the manual was a ritual then for all games you used to buy, used to love it. I always read them in the car on the way home 😅
I remember my friend was flipping out that this game is bullshit because we didn't have the manual and he had no idea that you have to click "end turn" sometime. Good old days of 199x.
The option to throw a gun isn't because you can throw gun at enemy. I've killed many aliens in a way that one guy was out of bullets but had timeunits and another guy wasn't in reach but had a gun with ammo.. so i threw my gun to my teammate. Especially i like to do this with grenades (thanks Yogscast! i learned this from them). One guy sets timer to grenade, then leaves it to ground and moves one step (or tosses to another guy if he has enough timeunits). Then another guy picks it up and goes in throwing range.
i know this is old, but i keep a commander on the skyranger, stood over the ammo pile, everyone above 40 Strength gets a missile launcher in their backpack with 1 large missile loaded. the commander, throws them spare missiles across the map, when they use up their missile
6:05 It's not a glitch! What it does is a single cycle between all your soldier, just once at each one, so you are sure that you have seen everyone. Good for checking if you forgot to move someone. The other button wraps around and just keep cycling forever.
The arrow button with the two men, with the one of the left seeming like he's disappearing, that button doesn't "glitch out." That button is for putting a soldier on "ignore" when using the cycling button above it. It "stops working" because you put all the soldiers on "ignore." But you can still select the soldiers with the mouse button.
I like the way you illustrate the least accurate shot mode (snap shot) with a one-shot kill, and the most accurate (aimed shot) with a miss. That won't confuse anyone.
actually don't even bother researching the stuff you can do from the beginning. just do the first mission with stock equipment and research the plasma weapons after that. at least that's my strategy, and i never really had any problems because of that. because lets be honest, motion scanner is useless anyway, and i've yet to encounter a situation where the medikit is really necessary for the sake of the mission. laser weapons are rendered useless by the eary researching of the plasma weapons.
@@briankenney9528 Yup, I always bring some laser rifles just for sectopods. When I first beat UFO as a child, I didn't use plasma weapons at all, as mind controlled soldiers with laser weapons can't harm armored soldiers that much. Not sayin' that this is a good strategy, but it definately works.
You are a saint and a hero. I didn't actually need the advice you've given here, I was looking for some more advanced tips, but it's awesome that you made this introductory video for people new to the game, because it's an absolute gem that I played for the first time in 2016 and continue revisiting every few years, thank you for making this masterpiece more accessible to new players.
Let us all salute to this very old game because without it we wouldn't have the best strategy game today this is truly where the heritage of XCOM came from and let's make sure that we never forget it ❤❤
Don't know why I feel the need to say this... The second unit cycling button removes the soldier from the cycle, you use it to reserve a soldiers time units or to hold them back if say their stamina is too low or you need to cover someone.
You are a saint my friend. I just grabbed the x com pack off steam for cheap since I liked the aesthetic, I ended up a bit lost, especially when it came to missions at night. Thanks for the explanation!
Pro tips: - The most important technology to research first is Laser Rifle(after Laser Weapons..). It's a good early auto shoot weapon. Helps you train your soldiers. Medikit is very slow to research do it after that, not at very begining. - The first key enemy technology to research is Plasma pistol. Not rifle, pistol. It's a very good snap shoot weapon. And you can miss it. don't sell it until you've researched it. - The first key structure to build is Alien containment. So you can capture live aliens. Get your stun rods. - Don' build large radar at begining! Build a second small one. They are different in principle and the large is NOT a upgrade of the small. - Don't use avalanche. It breaks the ufos way too much and you won't get ellerium. Use double stingrays. They are more accurate anyway. If you score a bunch of hits you should follow the ufo and let it land then go with your soldiers. This is how you get ellerium. If you destroy the power source you don't get ellerium. - Don't chase very small ufo's. They don't have a power source. - Making money by building laser cannons doesn't work, because you actually have to pay for the engineers and base. It can work as support, but it's not a money maker. - You make money in this game by selling alien alloys from medium and large ships. Like 3-10mil credits per mission twice a day money from month 3 onwards. Also by selling heavy plasma canons... - You need a second base immediately at beginning (same continent preferably). In second base get only a sky ranger and later two interceptors. Don't make any more hangars in main base as you will run out of space, which can be better used for other things. In general moving your interception planes to second base and leaving only two sky ranger(2 hangars) in initial base is a good idea so you can build stores, containment and research labs. - Sky rangers are good and so are interceptors through the entire game. You only need one or two better transport ships and two - four better interceptors rest of your "fleet" can be conventional and it can work well against up to large UFOs. - You generally don't need more then 3 bases... but you can fill them up for radars and interception. - In general any ufo you destroy in the air costs you money and any one you capture makes you money. In the first few months every one counts. Later do as you wish. - When it comes to squad size 7-9 is a good size initially. For alter game 4-6 hardened commandos are good enough for most missions. - Training happens when your soldiers participate. I.e. shooting trains accuracy. Facing the enemy trains bravery. Running with weight trains your strength. Reactions are trained be interrupts. You can't train psi defense. I.e. sack anyone with low psi defense. Train your soldiers. Jagged Alliance style... WARNING: There is a bug in the game if you go over 255 on any of those stats it gets to 0. Byte overflow... When you have power armor or better you can train noobs by setting up ambushes and giving them laser pistols. Laser pistol is the fastest firing weapon in the game. You can use that to train. It won't do much damage... which lets you shoot more against some helpless enemy, which trains your accuracy. So if you have a harmless enemy available bring your noobs for target practicing. - Tanks/drones can work, but are inferior to soldiers. I generally use them with noob teams. They are expensive early game and inferior late game. - Different alliens are restistent to different weapons. Mutons and Crysalids are resistent to laser weapons. Early game use HE projectiles on them. Plasma weapons work on all. In general keep different types of weapons available. - Vision control is key in this game. You need to scout and use cover efficiently. Armor won't help you if you fail on that and if you succeed you don't need the armor. - Alloy armor is pretty weak. Power armor is not terrible, but you can generally research and start producing Flying suits before you can outfit your soldiers with lower class armor so I only use about 4 of each alloy and power armor as transition. - Mind control is the name of the game late game. It becomes alien suicide fest. Lots of fun. You can win whole alien bases with a single agent and mind control... which I don't do. I send two agents.. - I don't use rockets in this game. Close quarters combat and psi work way better, with much better rewards. There are some uses initially if you can't handle something but in general the use of rockets and disruptors is not rewarding. - Ellerium economy in this game is key. You can only capture it from UFOs and bases with power sources you didn't destroy. So prioritize non destructive methods, capture and use wisely. Ellerium in consumed by Avenger,
A few replies Never rely on ships you built. The avenger/firestorm:lightning take far too long to repair. Also uses elerium to fuel so do not delete your interceptors if you run out of elerium, you’re screwed. Tanks are good for scouting. Especially early game when you’re weak also late game when you don’t want to lose your best. But other than that your points on tanks are valid. Also of note. The big missiles you can control can punch holes into ships. You can then fire another missile inside l. Or use the hole you’ve made as an entrance.
You are wrong about alot of this. Been playing since '95 and still load up new games once every year or two. -Two reason to go after every Very Small UFO: 1.) letting them go un-attacked lowers government view of your monthly success, and 2.) They only carry commanders, capturing one will allow all end game research to be available. -Building laser cannons purely for sale works better than any other source of income. 194 engineers can make over 10Million a month. the monthly cost of them is a fraction of that and the building maintenance even lower. I usually hit 50million in expendable income by July 1999 -Building a second base on the same continent is pointless and wastes resources that could be better used keeping more countries from selling out to the aliens. No continent will have more than what 1 skyranger and 2 interceptors/firestorms can handle at once no matter the difficulty. A north American base, Asian Base, and South African base combination will have you rich in elerium very early on, wait until you have 7-10million expendable per base as by the time you have a second base with full compliments of everything you will be outspending your monthly income. -Squads should always be max amount (14)skyranger/(26)avenger as just being in the mission and taking a single action such as spotting an alien adds to their experience and rapidly increases your promotion rate -Psi attacks, while admittedly fun, are completely unnecessary. Game can be beat by August on any difficulty setting, first psi training rounds will barely be started by then. -While most aliens do have specific weaknesses the heavy plasma rifle is all you need for anything with the exception of the ethereals which are very weak against laser weapons. No pistol of any type is useful at anytime for any reason when compared to the heavy plasma and laser rifle. on that note, no terran weapons are worth anything aside from the laser rifle and all starting equipment should be sold except the rifles until laser is researched. -Alien grenades and blaster launchers make short work of any mission except terror attacks, just be careful not to destroy any elerium. -If you use good tactics and utilize a full skyranger load the only reason an avenger will ever be needed is the final mission of the game, the firestorm can catch and shoot down everything using far less elerium.
@@moribundxix Actually pistols tend to be used by some people vs lightly armored units. The amount of shots you get is massive and statistically it's better. Also plasma rifle is also the superior one when used in medium to long range shots vs the heavy plasma. More accurate and less TU's to fire.
@@krzysztofpaszkiewicz1274 You are right except if you factor in customizing units based on base stats... it doesn't hurt to play the game a bunch of ways, mine just tends to be high accuracy soldiers over other stats which makes the heavy plasma better... I have definitely noticed the plasma rifles usefullness but the pistol is only really good against sectoids... Snake men and Ethereals are weak against lazers but their side units are not... Good luck taking down a muton with anything short of heavy plasma Just load up 6 people with blaster launchers and blow up the map sometimes lol Cheers for enjoying such a good game!
You're mostly wrong. E.g producing laser laser cannons is very effective. 255 engineers can make 20 or 21 laser cannons daily. So it's profit 580k or 609k USD. It's mothly 17,748k USD. When it's 30 day. In months when is 31 it's even 1 day profit more. Mothly maintenance cost of engineers is 6,375k USD, 6 workshops is 210k USD, 6 living quarters is 60 USD. So pure profit is 11,103k USD for 30 day month. Of course one needs hire 255 engineers first for 12,750k USD. After 33 days one pay off this. One can use them to build armors, avengers etc. But if don't invest You don't profit. At the end little tip for You. I hire engineers 71 hours before end of a month. They come 1 hour after start of a month. Thanks to that i pay maintenance after full month only. The most of your tips are rubbish.
One of my favourite games. Now I'm playing it again as the OpenXcom version :) And the game definitely is not difficult. Right from start you should sell all stupid equipment, keep only long range missiles for interceptors, sell all those cannons and other junk. First develop laser weapons as quickly as possible as laser rifle is the main workhorse for whole game consuming no ammo and add heavy laser for tough Mutons. As soon as you find some small launcher, investigate it and build the cell. Then try to catch some ethereal as soon as possible. Once psionic control is developed, psi-amps deployed to team... suddenly you are the master of all missions. For lighting in dark area gattling with incendary ammo is best. Blaster bombs can use 9 guidance points, not 3. Updated game version has even more. It is perfect weapon to open any enemy craft. Best for battleships where you can quickly devastate room filled with high ranking aliens which puts other into panic quickly. Only good weapon for interceptor planes is plasma beam. Hovertanks are just nice toys.. 4 guys in flysuit instead are better. But for most missions even 10 guys are plenty enough. If you have 3-4 guys with psi-amp and rest are spotters, missions are easy :D
Great video manual man, except you haven't read the manual. ;) The "bottzom button" which switches between soldiers does not "stops working" as you said, this button simply means "switch to another unit and DO NOT return to this one even if he still have time units left". It is very useful when you want to leave the unit at the specific place at the end of the turn, and not just charge forward like a madman.
6:05 The bottom button is for I'm finished moving this unit, do not show it again this turn. Cycle to the next unit. It doesn't "glitch out" when it stops "working" it means you've used this button on each of your units. Note you can still manually reselect these units again.
Some more beginner's tricks: Alien artefacts - items, that aren't researched yet - add to the mission score. Higher score at the end of the month means higher funding. It actually pays not to research plasma weapons and their ammo clips in the early game to gain higher score from your missions. If possible, remove ammo clips from weapons found in alien corpses. Otherwise they won't count as separate objects, they won't add to your score and you can't sell them. Lesser number of soldiers train faster to higher accuracy and reaction times. You will sack most of them though to replace them with psionists later in the game. Save your game often in the overworld and monitor your graphs frequently. You can spot the alien presence even though it is out of your radar reach. Many times you can shoot down enemy craft on the opposite side of the planet like that. Ufo that is landed yields more score points and money since nothing is destroyed and you will kill all aliens by yourself. You can harvest a ton of money from enemy bases if you don't destroy them on your first visit. You just need to move enemy corpses, weapons and clips to the landing zone manually. This tactic may not work for everyone since fighting the base is dangerous as hell. If enemy base happens to pop near yours, you can farm the enemy supply ships instead. You just need to let them land to avoid material losses. If you don't reduce number of enemy bases though, things can spiral out of your control very quickly and you will lose the game. Right after you begin your mission, you can scout the area with your cursor instead of your soldiers. Knowing where the area borders are will save you some turns.
Use Smoke Grenades to give your Guys some Cover Build a Storage, the Starting one fills up quickly Research Medkit; Laser->Pistol; Alien Alloys->Personal Armor Laserweapons dont need to reload. Plasma is a better choice Get like 5 Research guys, they are Expensive but youll need them anyway A "grenade/Stunbaton Guy" (Support/Scout) is actually a good Idea. Holding anything in your Hand whlie also holding a Weapon reduces Accuracy. So he can use a Medkit or throw Smoke/grenades/light or Scout if you need to. Usually Aliens shoot before your Soldiers can do a reaction shot. Every Soldier is unique. TimeUnits, Hitpoints, Stamina, Morale, etc differs so check the Stats and equip them appropriately. They gain better Stats when theyre promoted to a higher rank. This also means that rookies go first Stamina regenerates each turn by a small amount. More Stamina: more accuracy Separated Units have less morale. Same thing when mates get killed nearby. They may panic (shoot) or flee (drop what they hold) at some point And all the things i forgot to mention ... One last thing: Get the Patch to 1.4 ! You may also want to use the openXCom Mod which adds many quality of life Elements to the game It also lets you play without DosBox/ScummVM/whatever and provides tons of options
this game is near perfect ( for me ) I've been binging on this game for 5 hours a night for a week. The ammount of damage you can do with flying armor and blaster launchers! Edit time, Save scumming will get you more experience with the mechanics of the game. Travel in (loose) groups of 5 because rookies suck at aiming, hence groups of 5. Medi kits and Laser weapons early on are game changers, a powerful weapon with no ammo and being able to heal soldiers shot is great. Alien Alloy for personal armor should be next.
Laser weapons should be your top priority in the classic game. Unlimited ammo and decent damage, much better than your pea shooters. The first armor offers meager protection against the widespread use of Heavy Plasma and Plasma Rifles from the aliens, and rookies are disposable anyway, so use them as bait. I always went from Laser to Plasma, never been a fan of Gauss and plasma can be researched quickly enough (plus you have plenty of Heavy Plasmas stocked. Do not sell them, btw). Never move on your first turn. Use it to have your front guys prime and throw a smoke grenade at the ramp (and flares if its a night mission. I just throw them everywhere). Smoke doesnt impair hit chance, just visibility (diminishes the effective visibility radius), so afterwards, have a sacrificial scout (rookie) look outside the smoke and shoot from inside the smoke with your main guys. If you see an alien right at the start from the ramp, shoot without disembarking. Not sure in the base game, but at least in Open Xcom you can kneel the 2 front guys and the 2 guys right behind then can safely shoot while standing up. Personally, I make a path of smoke right to the UFOs. Dont throw smoke at the UFO door, you wanna see aliens popping out. If your guy is being psi attacked and his purple morale bar is very low, drop or put his weapons in his backpack. Its likely he will be enemy controlled next turn, but with no weapons they cant shoot you and you dont have to kill a soldier. Also, identify the ones being constantly attacked and use them as bait for psy attacks while you move the rest of the team. You can attack a UFO with multiple interceptors, and they do it at the same time. Good to tackle heavyweight ships as they will switch targets and the damage will be spread on all your jets. The graphs on UFO activity can help you decide a good spot to patrol for UFOs (to find alien bases or even UFOs) or choose a place to build a second etc base. In terror missions, dont bother with civilians. Just take it easy. and it will be fine. Rushing things can spell doom for your entire team. Just let the civvies tank the aliens for you. Unless you hear Chryssalids, then you better hurry up before they convert all civilians into zombies.
The lower of the two soldier select buttons will only switch away from a unit once. You can use this to ensure you have moved all of your units. Once it stops going to more units, you have moved them all--assuming you moved each unit before selecting past them with that button.
I don't know if it was mentioned before, but the first thing you should do in your base is to tear down 2 hangars. When aliens attack your base they can only enter through the hangars and the access lift. The starting base has a defense power of a swiss cheese. By changing the layout you can create a bottleneck and almost trivialise those attacks. "Almost" because of the blaster bombs, of course..
It's not that they are more aggressive, they just have night vision. So you're troops can't see them, but they can see you. And Electro Flares suck having to play hot potato with.
Why throw an electro flare when you can throw a high explosive? I loved leveling the entire place down with high explosives in night missions. It would reveal the aliens pretty quickly, or their corpses.
Or just cover your approach with smoke grenades, since it creates a smoke density 3 times the strength of normal explosion smoke, meaning the aliens basically can't see/hit you in there (Unless you're unlucky and they throw a bunch of grenades in the smoke cloud). Sure if you end a turn with a soldier in it and keep them in there for a few turns there is a chance they'll fall unconscious, but not die I think. This won't happen if you have power armor btw.
Fell in love with this game because of Ben and Lewis of the Yogscast. Honestly, currently playing xenonauts because I love its air combat, but UFO Defense's ground war is so much more satisfying imo. Something just feels grittier and more meat-grindy about it
That looks like the cdrom intro. I used to have it but returned it because I thought I had a faulty copy of the cdrom. Turns out my drive got burnt out (I used to go through many optical drives back in the day).
Awesome video. I would just add to use heavy cannons and rocket launchers for those that are strong enough. sell the auto cannons and ammo for them that you start with as they are insanely inaccurate. Buy more heavy cannons and HE ammo for them as soon as possible as well as plenty of small rockets and some incendiary ammo for both to light up large areas at night. Riffles for those who cannot use heavy cannons or rockets. Use AP ammo when at close quarters with enemies HE when enemies are farther away so you don't blow yourself up.
Only allowed 80 items on your ship, so I like lasers because no ammo clips needed. Auto shot is great. Some enemies are resistant to different types of damage though. need different weapon types to be effective. most have poorer under armor as do your troops. That makes grenades great, especially with large ground opponents. Stun weapons and smoke can knock out enemies for capture.
7:57 That's usefull to throw a weapon to a near soldier that is out of ammo or to throw a better weapon taken in an alien enemy. That make sense at least.
Awesome video of one of my childhood favorites. One question. Any tips to protect your solders from mind control. I'm getting pretty much wrecked when I'm up against those aliens.
high bravery is the key. Recruit a lot of soldiers and dismiss anyone with less than 50 bravery. You can even go 60 if you have the money and patience. A smaller team levels up faster, and I like to play the game with the Skyranger half full.
@@neildavis2999 I didn't know a smaller teams level faster. Is it still worth bringing a mentally weak guy without weapons to soak up the mind control?
4:49 This isn't true, there is a chance (100% for supply ships) for any reactor to have elerium spawn on top of it, however, the reactors of alien craft have a high chance (75% IIRC) of being destroyed upon being shot down, which destroys both the reactor and the elerium. It's possible to find undamaged reactors and elerium on any shot down alien craft. 6:06 That button ends the soldiers "turn" while going to the next soldier. You can still use the soldier, it just won't show up on the next soldier cycle for that turn. 8:30 Enemies can also return fire when facing the opposite direction, there's just a lower chance of them reacting. 10:07 Panic (morale) has no effect on whether a mind control will work, only Psi Strength, Psi Skill and the type of attack (Panicking a unit is easier, Mind Controlling is harder) factor in. 10:17 The enemy only needs to spot one soldier or tank to be able to psionically attack your entire squad. 10:46 Do not start with medikits. Generally speaking, the priority for research should go Psionics, hyperwave decoder, Plasma Cannons, Laser Cannons, Plasma weaponry, armor.
Watching these videos, I decided to dust off X-Com and give it another spin for old times sake. Midway through the first month, I get a terror mission. With Cyberdisks, which destroy my crew of rookies that have been on three missions total. All I had was the basic assault rifle, which just tickles the disks. I forgot how fucking unfair this game was.
@@itiswhatitis235 as a veteran of over decades ... You actually want to jump straight to plasma to save time and $ and actually be able to shoot down UFOs with plasma beams and ignore laser altogether until you have time to spare. U need hv plasma and plasma beams asap if u want to max your score, or performance.
@@ngtony2969 from a veteran to a veteran then. with all due respect. i have a different strategy, centered around intercepting only landed ufos. i always sell my 2 interceptors day 1, and buy 2 skyrangers instead. all craft have detection range, as you surely must now. so i watch the graphs and send my skyrangers where the activity is, spread them to cover as much as possible out of that region, the aliens come and land, and i'm there to collect the bounty (aliens are never interested in more than two regions in one particular month, and your starting region is guaranteed to have at least 3 landing ufo's first month, so it's actually easy to predict the AI). i finished alot of games without using a single craft rocket or beam. anyways, the reason i'm so adamant about researching lasers first is that they 1. help with above strategy since sectoids and floaters are 1shot 80% of the time with a laser rifle, and 2.cyberdisks. the best thing that can happen to your campaign is a sectoid terror in the first month. that means a squad leader. which means psy labs operational at the start of the 3rd month. so that's my reasoning. lasers, and then mind probe to identify my sectoid squad leader. i actually don't use plasma weapons untill later in the game, i find laser rifle enough. it makes me a ton of money( selling the plasma weapons and the manufactured laser rifles). money it's not an issue after the 3rd month anyway, when they come to establish their first base. my skyrangers are there waiting. they always send 3-4 large ufos and 2 very large. they all land several times. it's like taking candy from a baby....sort of. but yeah, i guess this is why we love this game, there are so many ways to beat the game, and so many strategies. if only we had as much time to waste as we had 20 years ago...damn
@@ngtony2969 it's a computer game. A game should be something that entertains, and there needs to be a balance of realism and enjoyment. If you had a CRPG where your character suddenly drops dead of a brain aneurism, that may be realistic but it's not a lot of fun to play.
im a bit late :) but... this is one of the best games EVER made! also for any new players out there... get OPENXCOM... it not only expands the basic game, but it makes it easier to run on modern machines... also there are plenty of mods etc. and its free :)
I absolutely adore Enemy Unknown and XCOM2, I've wanted to get into the original XCOM for the longest time but it's age and design makes it difficult for new players. Thanks for doing this, gonna give the original another try and see if I can get into it.
I know it's been a while but is there a chance for a guide to tftd? I think it's just different enough to justify one. I find myself getting back to this one every now and then if i haven't played x-com for a while. Having the same for it's sequel would be neat!
Terror From the Deep is virtually identical game play wise. They just renamed the weapons and reskinned everything. Plasma weapons = Gauss weapons. Thats it. Everything has an equivalent replacement weapon or species. I actually didn't like this game at all despite the original X-Com being an all time favorite (I still revisit the original to this day). The one thing they did change was they made all the maps and bases much bigger. Way too big in fact. Every mission took FOREVER to end because there's always one last alien hiding that took ages to find. They would just sit in a corner and not show up on the motion scanner. Most of the game (time wise) is just sweeping the ENTIRE map trying to find the last guy to move on. I played (and won) it once, and just remember hating it.
Hey nooby question I know how to play but how to save civilians I really don't know not like 2012 xcom or xcom 2 you can walk up to them but in this game I don't know how and they just die plz tell how to rescue civvies
2018 Finally a simole yet incredibly usefull video to understand the classic xcom, specially the movement since its the main reason why i sucked at it too much and had no more time units to atack or reach cover.
probably worth mentioning that autoshot is your friend. for the cost of just a couple of extra TUs you can have 3 shots with only a marginally worse chance of hitting compared to the snap shot. But with auto shot the % chance is per shot - 3 shots at 25% per shot is way better than 1 shot at 30% also - research lasers first - medikits are completely useless until you have some decent armour that will allow your soldiers to actually suffer and survive wounds instead of just dying instantly as soon as they are hit. Wait until you have at least personal armour, if not power armour. Autocannons loaded with high ex rounds are great for the early game - drop 2 or 3 soldiers out of the skyranger under cover of smoke and use hi-ex autoshot to clear out cover, walls, buildings, terrain that slows your soldiers, obvious ambush points etc etc They're horribly inaccurate but they'll give you a nice clear battlefield to move through and spot enemies. The first terror mission is usually sectoids - try as hard as you can to capture a sectoid leader on the first terror mission - you'll be able to start researching PSI abilities in the first month.
The steam or GoG XCOM set that has all the old XCOM games will be a lot cheaper, but you will need tutorials to figure out how to play them as they don't have any in game. If you preferred the controls of Enemy Unknown, then XCOM 2 plays much the same.
get this, it's only a few pennies, and it has much more decision making that firaxis decided to streamiline, not that the remakes and the sequel to the remake is bad, it's very good in t's own way, but why they didn't make this a dlc spinoff or expansion doesn't make sense other than the fact they are trying to appeal to a larger audience, but the remake and sequel despite being great they don't even look similar in concept to the original
XCOM 2 is much more beginner friendly. There's much less micromanaging, fewer variables, and is a great way to get ones foot in the door. It also will not put you into situations you're not ready to handle. Don't expect to see Sectopods until you can handle them, for instance. UFO Defense is MUCH harder and about ten times as complex, but it feels much more like a complete package that doesn't try to shoehorn anything in. Barring the cheesy dated visuals and stock sound effects, it still plays phenomenally well once you get over that somewhat intimidating learning bump. Beware, however, that you will occasionally be tested that you "know when to fold 'em", especially in regards to terror missions. One of my first experiences with UFO: Terror mission about one month in, first assignment I get. First rookie steps out of the dropship: Three steps out, cyberdisk. NOPE. Walk right back in, abort mission. Sorry India, but I can't help you there. But not long after that, I tailed a small UFO, shot up the sectoid crew when it landed and got lots of good loot from an intact craft. Good war stories, man.
I would argue the original game is more of a preference than it is comparing Xcom of today and the one from the 1990s. After all, the glaring flaws with the game is the information vomit UI and the fact that a good chunk of the game can boil down to it being less about strategy and more on how good you are at minesweeper with explosives since conventional weaponry is rarely used and discouraged.
Thank you soooooooo much for this!! I think some people forget how completely lost new players are when confronted with all those buttons and options etc. Just got this on Steam, and thanks to this video I can start with a basic knowledge and strategy 😊
Infamouslemur2 Channel If you got this on steam, you should download OpenXcom. It essentially makes it compatible with newer computers and fixes most bugs in it. It's a MUST HAVE for the game, and us free. Nightly Version should auto install, so try that
Good review! I love this game..I love it for its faults actually. I played it since day one then years would pass and Id fire it up. Trying to play the original DOS version on newer versions of windows was difficult, then Steam bought the rights to sell it. Problem solved there! I wish they could do an update to 'enhance' the images and clean up the geoscape views and features, but I know they wont spend the time to do so. I watched a few videos on the Xcom 2 stuff and tbo, I'm not impressed. I wish more people would give older games a try. They were the first of their kind, and appreciating the simplicity yet difficulty involved makes them better than most new games these days. I just wish the game didnt win 90% of the time by deploying higher level aliens and technology on your first few missions...I mean come on..a large proximity grenade on the first turn stepping out of the ship is pretty stupid lol
I disagree on the research order. Always go for Laser weapons first! If you get missions with Cyberdisks early on, you're screwed without laser weapons. Also, you can't research personal armor without alien alloys. Going for medkits first isn't neccessary, cause your soldiers are still noobs and you can easily replace them. Just let 'em die!
lol a huge one, this game has tons of decision making and strategy and rts elements than the streamlined remake and sequel to the remake, this one lets you have 8 bases in whatever countries you want and you get to choose where you're intercceptors go and what countries they patrol plus you have to buy ammo and different kinds of them and different kinds of guns for your soldiers plus you can decide not to intercept a ufo without it messing up the entire game, you can throw your weapons to teammates or at enemies you can search the aliens to recover and research artifacts from the aliens to use their weaponry and gadgets, plus you can pickup your passed out teammates and evacuate them from to the skyranger without them dying in 3 turns unless you have a medikit, and in this game it is a medi-kit, plus it's called X-Com, instead of XCOM, and healing your teammates isn't just pressing a button you have to know where they're fatal wounds are and administer the right doses to them, plus this game uses turn units to fire and move and take items in and out of your inventory instead of 2 turn units and you can move and shoot then move again in this game, shooting does not end your turn, making it MUCH more like a strategic chess shooter than a shooter that feels like well a shooter but that's turn based, not that the new ones aren't great, they just didn't stay true to the original, so yeah there's a lot of huge differences you'd have to see a lot of videos to know all the intricacies
Personal opinion really, I have played most xcom games and while they are both good I wouldn't try comparing them to each other directly. I still prefer the original more than the reboots. The reboots are much tighter squad management games compared to the original xcom, much easier to control each soldier but I personally don't like the whole skill thing as they rank up. At the end it is more a puzzle game of how to use each skill to get through engagements with minimal damage. Seeing the aliens health and managing everything perfectly to kill them doesn't fit well for me. But like I said, they shouldn't really be compared directly, they are different enough that you can enjoy each for their differences.
Fair enough, to be honest your right they are too different, speaking as someone who played the reboot then the original I personally prefer the newer style focusing on special abilities and positioning. For me at least the older one was too clunky and it was hard to figure out how many TU's and EU's you were using when moving from point A to point B, making combat frustrating when your 1 TU off firing all because you mis cliked and rotated your solider. Still both are great games and have their own pros and cons
"it was hard to figure out how many TU's and EU's you were using when moving from point A to point B," While I agree the implementation was clunky, Open Xcom has a TU counter, as well as other quality of life upgrades like saving your soldier's loadout. I prefer TU because you can tailor your movement to your needs. For example, in the new XCOM the soldier will always move through the shortest path from point A to B, but that is not always preferable because a certain path might wake up another pod, get through acid, pass by LOS of an OW enemy and so on. Old XCOM has no such problems since you could choose the path you would take. I also liked how you could go step by step and reveal aliens while still being both in range to shoot as well as being able to shoot with your reserved TUs. I also prefer the old X-Com UFO interception. Being able to send multiple aircraft to down a single UFO sounds both more realistic while giving the air combat more deph and gameplay (micromanaging multiple interceptors). Base building is another gripe I have. I liked how in the old one I could build new bases anywhere and populate them however I liked. It's weird that in the new game you can only have one skyranger, for example. The maps were also better, since in the new game everything starts to look samey after playing for a while. I do like a lot of the changes in the new game, though, and I agree the game is more dynamic that way. I didn't play the base game, though, only with Long War installed from the get go, and at least with Long War, it feels like this is a harder game than the older one (though, to be fair, I've been playing the old one since it came out, so I'm a lot more used to it).
thank you these tips have helped me a lot but I still lose a lot of men ( this is not like new xcom were you don't lose anyone lol) I have been studiing for days and days but I should be studiing for school.
Close, but you're very inaccurate here...... - The "glitched" progression button deselects the soldier from rotation. Use it when they are out of time or positioned where you want them. It is extremely useful to ensure you didn't miss anybody at the end of the turm. Always do a final cycle with it before ending your turn. - Left click walks you to the square. Right clicks has them look in that direction. You can open doors this way (right clicking inside when standing next to the door) without stepping in. Still puts the person at risk of an ambush, but much safer than blindly stepping in. - Alien Alloys have the highest return for dollars per time to manufacture (without consuming any other materials). Build and sell that (not laser canons). - PSI can be used by anyone on the map so long the alien is in sight by someone. I usually just leave my PSI specialists in the ship so you don't have to armor or weapon them (until you have resources to do so). - I also leave my blaster bomber at the ship door (standing on the unallocated gear square). It can actually aim up to 9 waypoints, and hit anything anywhere. This also gives him "unlimited" shots without having to lug the missiles everywhere (see stamina below). They are also great at blowing holes in the sides of buildings and enemy ships so you don't have to enter blind at the door (often an enemy trap point). - if it's not clear, the inventory menu also shows whats on the ground on the square you're on. Dead aliens or soldiers, gear that has been dropped. - You lose your ship (and everything) if you abandon the mission with no one in it - you need someone to fly it home. Always leave someone in there, especially in the early missions when you're often overpowered. They are also good for running extra gear and ammo to the front if needed. - Shot accuracy decreases if they have objects in both hands. - Throwing weapons is to disarm aliens under your control. Knowing they no longer pose a threat if you lose control on the next turn (when you scout them out beyond your current line of sight). It's also useful to reload soldiers with another weapon or gear from across the map. You can also drop items from the inventory menu for a fraction of the time units. - Don't overload the soldiers with gear. They also have stamina gage, and that'll greatly reduce their range even though they have time units available. - Your base design is REALLY bad! During alien invasions, they will only enter from the hangers and lift. So build the base (and redesign the starting base) with all the hangers together, and ONLY connecting to the other rooms with the lift. This bottlenecks all the aliens there, and saves from searching the rest of your base to find them all. It will leave up to 3 unused spaces, but its more than worth it. Having everything connected like you did turns those missions into a total cluster f***. Especially when trying to find the last surviving alien who's hidden somewhere. - Tanks suck. Their only value is they don't panic and are immune to PSI attacks. But they are too big to find cover, can't explore ships, take up too much troop space on your ship, and cost too much. Don't waste your time with them. You're so much better off with 4 independent soldiers vs 1 stupid tank. - If you are trapped or cornered - you can arm a grenade and not throw it. The grenade will then go off when they die (regardless of how many turns have past since arming it), and can take out enemy near them. Or if you're feeling mean, just straight up kamikaze them that way. - Disarm your soldier if they are panicking or being PSI attacked. This way they can't harm others if they wig out and start shooting. - Unclip ammo before you end the mission / kill the last alien. Partiality used clips are lost from the inventory if they are loaded. Unload but partially used clips (and full clips) get added back into inventory as if they were full. Very important when you are resource starved early on. - You can fire enemy weapons if you've researched it. You just can't reload it until you research the weapon's clip. But this does mean you can pick up enemy weapons in the field and use them against them before fully unlocking them. - Don't waste your time taking aliens alive until you have the stun bomb gun. It works way better than the rod. And you don't need live aliens until later on anyway. - Stun civilians on terror missions. It gets them out of play. They don't run into enemy fire and they won't be actively attacked. And it doesn't impact the score because they are still alive at the end. - Flying armor is a game changer. Explosions from grenades or blaster bombs only impact the level you're on, so you're imune if you are above it. You are also imune to melee attacks - most importantly the zombie species. I guess that would be a positive for hover tanks too - but I still hate them.
And lastly, the base game is outdated so better get Openxcom extension to fix all the common issues. Also this guide is 6 years old by this time. I'm sure there's better guide out there.
4:45? That's the loadout screen, also reached by the loadout button described at 5:43. In case you need to pick up, reload (drop a magazine on the weapon), or drop stuff.
give everyone above 40 strength a missile launcher in their backpack with 1 large missile loaded. makes every mission much easier. if half the squad can lay it down with missiles. for bonus fun, keep your commander on the skyranger, on the ammo pile, and have him throw your guys spare missiles across the map when they use their missile launcher
Smoke is one of least used tools, suicide makes no sense and if the mission is not terror mission with civilians, the easiest way is to simply blast everything around with rocket launchers, incendary gattling fire and heavy explosives. That is very effective method in the beginning.
@@xmeda Smoke is extremely useful, it makes the effective sight range is about 6 blocks of smoke. You can cover your part of the map with smoke, peek out with your scouts, then take your shots with snipers and the enemy cannot return fire, then on their turn they cant shoot at you unless they sprint all the way into the smoke to find you. It's a bit less useful in cramped areas like in alien bases since you get enemies suddenly coming through doors or around corners, but it's excellent for open maps. You can level the landscape with lasers as well so they cant even hide from you anymore! It just takes some patience, but lasers dont produce smoke for the aliens to hide inside, and they have infinite ammo
@@kiriseraph9674 Instead of carrying smoke grenade I prefer to throw real grenade on alien :D Takes same space but actually does damage/kill. Later in the game they are usualy armed with heavy plasma only and sometimes they have insane hit-bonus even through smoke or if your units are in dark place. AI has advantages. But if you blow heavy explosive near them, thats another story.. with some damage taken their accuracy drops significantly + it creates some smoke anyway that lasts 1-2 turns. But yes, everybody has his own strategy :) But as it is quite easy to develop psi-amp, it makes little sense to use anything else in alien base. 2-3 psionic guys and you are almost invulnerable. All you need is to spot some alien and then use him to discover others. And if you have guided blaster bombs.. well.. those combined with psi-amp can deal with alien battleship in 14-15 turns. Just blow a hole into alien commander compartment, kill him with his comrades. Then blow some holes in side, peak in, control some alien, march them towards you and shoot them or bomb them. After cca 10 turns I'm usually just trying to find the last panicked ones hidden somewhere :D
... a fantastic game ! Every time you click "New Game", the scenario is different, so there can actually be no real walk-through. Every "New Game" is different, as it develops on the go, as you play ...
I still wish that somebody can combine this game with Jagged Alliance 2 (v1.13 modpack), give it better graphic (but not ugly 3D shit), large/huge maps, multiple floors. Make soldiers into agents on different missions and it will be superb thing. Start with some smaller anti-terrorist missions to gain some money and equipment, then remove some dictators like Deidranna on some island and end it with alien invasion and some sci-fi weapons :D It would be perfect to shoot Muton with .50BMG sniper rifle into head, bomb Hadoms with mortar or to spray some other aliens with HK G-11 rifles :D
Best game to mod! you could have a 2,568% chance to hit and still miss a muton soldier with a heavy plasma in the arctic at point blank range in a hover tank and hit your own ally! I am speaking from experience..
As it should, I am speaking from using my brain. Your accuracy is based on a certain distance on an immobile target. In reality, in combat, you should never be able to reach 100% no matter what. Being as real as possible is also one of the best thing about this game.
![30 Years Of UFO: Enemy Unknown And I Still Hate Chryssalids [X-COM: Enemy Unknown]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/h6tI-HhO6oo/mqdefault.jpg)
![30 Years Of UFO: Enemy Unknown And I Still Hate Chryssalids [X-COM: Enemy Unknown]](/img/tr.png)
This is super helpful. I tried playing and had no idea what was going on. On my first move out of the skyranger my dude was immediately shot in the face, cue everyone else in the skyranger panicking and shooting each other. Game over.
Servebotfrank IT has been said many, many, MANY times on forums: Drop smoke bombs at the foot of the Ranger ramp
Tip, don't move the first turn. All the Aliens start with full action points meaning they can reaction fire basically limitless. So first thing is to press end turn, make the Aliens move using up their movements = less reaction fire. It does sound counter intuitive, but it's the best strategy. Also make any soldier holding a rocket launcher or grenade launcher to do push ups to use their action points, so no one shots a rocket in the skyranger. Or just make em drop it.
It would not surprise me if every player started out that way, Servebotfrank. I know I did.
That's X-COM, baby!
Or just buy tanks and let them take the reaction shots. They can survive a few hits so they are nice ablative cover.
The button below the "soldier rotation" button does not "bug out." It tells the interface to "forget and skip" the currently selected soldier. It's used when you won't be moving a soldier anymore that turn. When you keep pressing it, skips all the soldiers.
Actually, the second squad button deselects your current unit when you press it, so you only cycle to a unit you haven't used yet.
Exactly. It marks the unit as done for the current turn. hence the icon...
I unliked this comment just so I could like it again.
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@Bo Rene yea, I've been using instaflixxer for years myself :D
@Bo Rene definitely, I have been using InstaFlixxer for since december myself :D
Other tips:
- Always screen your rookies stats before employing them on the field. A naming system can thus be used based on your preferences.
- Rookies with high reaction/ high TU but low accuracy are best used as scouts which spot enemies for the squad and will help be useful bullet sponges when opening the door to a enemy ship.
- Explosives = your friend and should always be used, especially to light up the night or to root enemies out of buildings.
- (live)Grenades can be passed in the same turn if a troop in the front has run out. Just be careful because not everyone is a good thrower.
- Civilians during terror missions are stupid and can get you killed or hurt your score. always stun them when when spotted because the enemy wont target them.
- Always keep some troops with enough TUs for a reaction shot when advancing because you never know...
- The enemy will always attack though the hangers during a base Defense, so its recommended to adjust you default base unless you have the Openxcom mod
-Night missions are extremely hard without psychic troops because the enemy is not limited by the reduced Line of sight night produces
- Play UFO Defense before playing Terror of the Deep because its about 100% more difficult.
lmao it never occurred to me to stun the civilians! Then again, I wasn't exactly a strategic mastermind in my teen years. (or now, for that matter)
Night missions are merely more tedious, if you just bring and use electroflares. Keep in mind you can pick up electroflares and rethrow them so you run out of being able to light up dark areas.
If you don't use electroflares, yeah, night missions are horrific.
AFAIR if the enemy stuns civilians, they count as killed. Not sure what happens if your troops do it, or if you revive them before the mission ends.
I recall if you mind control civilians to get them to safety, they become hostile.
6:07 No, it is not glitching out, but it removes the current soldier from the list, so that you won't cycle on that soldier again. So if you are out of TU, it's recommended to use this button, so than this same soldier will not selected again when you loop back at the end of the list.
10:20 That is some dangerously incorrect advice. As long as an alien has vision on one of your units, including a HWP, ANY of your units can be mced even if they are in a room by themselves with no windows and a closed door. My tactic to dealing with MC aliens before I have unlocked my own psionic facilities is to identify psionic weaklings, usually through losing a better soldier, and then disarming them in all future missions with hostile MC. This means that the aliens will always MC them first but gain nothing in the process.
I have agree with MarkuS, weapon research should be prioritised over armour research and maybe over medi kits. Your units will probably be dying like flies anyway until you at least get laser rifles. Personal armour wont help when your peashooter causes a floater to reaction kill your soldier for the third time that mission.
Lastly I don't think you mentioned that for people more familiar with the newer version (which lets be honest, nearly everyone picking up this game is), everyone has squad sight so preferably you want one person to spot the alien and then have a fireteam take it out at range. This prevents the alien from retaliating as reaction shots only work when the person triggering them is within the aliens vision. This may sound like a finickity point but scout/sniper maneuvers are the bread and butter of this games combat.
Other than those 3 points, this is a spot on guide that should prevent first mission squad wipes! I can't help one more point, but you make the avalanche sound like an, "it'll do weapon" when really it's the best AA weapon until you unlock plasma cannons.
Props to you for paragraphing your comment. People don't do this anywhere near as much as they should. (Ex. Walls of text.)
I think it's more people don't realize how it's done, not even youtube gives a text format guide and I only learnt how to break the text into paragraphs solely by word of mouth (and it's shift+enter if anyone is wondering)
That is what I do too. Since the aliens always try to control the same people, I put a note in their name and use them as lightning rods.
Very good advice, this is almost exactly how I do it. Against Ethereals, I always let all soldiers drop their guns on the ground at the end of each turn except for those with high psi skills. It only costs 2 TU's and the AI is too dumb to pick them back up when they MC your units, so they can only run around and throw grenades. That can even be usefull if they only carry smoke grenades and thus cover your team in smoke for you. When it's your turn again, MC your rogue units back (pretty high chance of success) and let them scout. Then pick up weapons with your other soldiers and snipe whatever your scout has found. Rinse and repeat. Even on higher difficulties, Ethereals rarely shoot themselves, they will almost always prefer to waste their TU's on psi attacks. Just be carefull when they have sectopods. Kill those with laser weapons or blaster bombs.
@@NinjaContravaniaManX honestly for ethereal terror missions I just U turn and run. On my superhuman ironman run I lost everyone but 5 guys in 4 turns
I bought this game on the PS1 with some birthday money. Reading the manual was a ritual then for all games you used to buy, used to love it. I always read them in the car on the way home 😅
I remember my friend was flipping out that this game is bullshit because we didn't have the manual and he had no idea that you have to click "end turn" sometime.
Good old days of 199x.
Hahaha Nice to see you here
Dude, Xcom was easy to decipher. Civ 1 without any manual meant no clue what does what. And I still loved it.
Not having a manual must have sucked
The option to throw a gun isn't because you can throw gun at enemy. I've killed many aliens in a way that one guy was out of bullets but had timeunits and another guy wasn't in reach but had a gun with ammo.. so i threw my gun to my teammate.
Especially i like to do this with grenades (thanks Yogscast! i learned this from them). One guy sets timer to grenade, then leaves it to ground and moves one step (or tosses to another guy if he has enough timeunits). Then another guy picks it up and goes in throwing range.
Kummo (RRM) yep, same with medkits. If someone is wounded and no one nearby has one, you can throw the med kit between your soldiers
Use laser weapons :)
Throwing medikit is better idea. But you can also mind-control an alien and throw his weapon out :)
i know this is old, but i keep a commander on the skyranger, stood over the ammo pile, everyone above 40 Strength gets a missile launcher in their backpack with 1 large missile loaded.
the commander, throws them spare missiles across the map, when they use up their missile
@@masterofthedeathwing2839 LOL!
I have to try that one! Thanks!
This game is so much fun:)
6:05 It's not a glitch! What it does is a single cycle between all your soldier, just once at each one, so you are sure that you have seen everyone. Good for checking if you forgot to move someone. The other button wraps around and just keep cycling forever.
The arrow button with the two men, with the one of the left seeming like he's disappearing, that button doesn't "glitch out." That button is for putting a soldier on "ignore" when using the cycling button above it. It "stops working" because you put all the soldiers on "ignore." But you can still select the soldiers with the mouse button.
I like the way you illustrate the least accurate shot mode (snap shot) with a one-shot kill, and the most accurate (aimed shot) with a miss. That won't confuse anyone.
It's accurate, tho
Auto shot is best shot since more shots means more Chance to roll high dmg since you can roll 0 dmg
No, don't get the med kit first, get laser weapons and amour as fast as you can, but hey, that's just my strat
actually don't even bother researching the stuff you can do from the beginning. just do the first mission with stock equipment and research the plasma weapons after that. at least that's my strategy, and i never really had any problems because of that.
because lets be honest, motion scanner is useless anyway, and i've yet to encounter a situation where the medikit is really necessary for the sake of the mission. laser weapons are rendered useless by the eary researching of the plasma weapons.
while heavy lasers are indeed best sellable manufactured item in the game, med kits are good priced too and takes significantly less time to research.
@@Hobbit98LP I think medikits are very useful, they helped me revive a teammate many a time.
Since laser weapons have no ammo concerns, they are sometimes more useful than plasma.
Also sectopods are weak to lasers
@@briankenney9528 Yup, I always bring some laser rifles just for sectopods. When I first beat UFO as a child, I didn't use plasma weapons at all, as mind controlled soldiers with laser weapons can't harm armored soldiers that much. Not sayin' that this is a good strategy, but it definately works.
You are a saint and a hero. I didn't actually need the advice you've given here, I was looking for some more advanced tips, but it's awesome that you made this introductory video for people new to the game, because it's an absolute gem that I played for the first time in 2016 and continue revisiting every few years, thank you for making this masterpiece more accessible to new players.
Let us all salute to this very old game because without it we wouldn't have the best strategy game today this is truly where the heritage of XCOM came from and let's make sure that we never forget it ❤❤
This is my favourite game of all time. Absolutely love it.
Why isn't there any gameplay of it on your channel? Don't you stream your playthroughs?
Don't know why I feel the need to say this... The second unit cycling button removes the soldier from the cycle, you use it to reserve a soldiers time units or to hold them back if say their stamina is too low or you need to cover someone.
Probably been mentioned before, but the bottom of the two 'cycle unit' buttons didn't glitch out, it is used to end turns of soldiers
You are a saint my friend. I just grabbed the x com pack off steam for cheap since I liked the aesthetic, I ended up a bit lost, especially when it came to missions at night. Thanks for the explanation!
Thanks for the run-down of the gameplay, I can already see my victory against the alien menace.
Pro tips:
- The most important technology to research first is Laser Rifle(after Laser Weapons..). It's a good early auto shoot weapon. Helps you train your soldiers. Medikit is very slow to research do it after that, not at very begining.
- The first key enemy technology to research is Plasma pistol. Not rifle, pistol. It's a very good snap shoot weapon. And you can miss it. don't sell it until you've researched it.
- The first key structure to build is Alien containment. So you can capture live aliens. Get your stun rods.
- Don' build large radar at begining! Build a second small one. They are different in principle and the large is NOT a upgrade of the small.
- Don't use avalanche. It breaks the ufos way too much and you won't get ellerium. Use double stingrays. They are more accurate anyway. If you score a bunch of hits you should follow the ufo and let it land then go with your soldiers. This is how you get ellerium. If you destroy the power source you don't get ellerium.
- Don't chase very small ufo's. They don't have a power source.
- Making money by building laser cannons doesn't work, because you actually have to pay for the engineers and base. It can work as support, but it's not a money maker.
- You make money in this game by selling alien alloys from medium and large ships. Like 3-10mil credits per mission twice a day money from month 3 onwards. Also by selling heavy plasma canons...
- You need a second base immediately at beginning (same continent preferably). In second base get only a sky ranger and later two interceptors. Don't make any more hangars in main base as you will run out of space, which can be better used for other things. In general moving your interception planes to second base and leaving only two sky ranger(2 hangars) in initial base is a good idea so you can build stores, containment and research labs.
- Sky rangers are good and so are interceptors through the entire game. You only need one or two better transport ships and two - four better interceptors rest of your "fleet" can be conventional and it can work well against up to large UFOs.
- You generally don't need more then 3 bases... but you can fill them up for radars and interception.
- In general any ufo you destroy in the air costs you money and any one you capture makes you money. In the first few months every one counts. Later do as you wish.
- When it comes to squad size 7-9 is a good size initially. For alter game 4-6 hardened commandos are good enough for most missions.
- Training happens when your soldiers participate. I.e. shooting trains accuracy. Facing the enemy trains bravery. Running with weight trains your strength. Reactions are trained be interrupts. You can't train psi defense. I.e. sack anyone with low psi defense. Train your soldiers. Jagged Alliance style... WARNING: There is a bug in the game if you go over 255 on any of those stats it gets to 0. Byte overflow...
When you have power armor or better you can train noobs by setting up ambushes and giving them laser pistols. Laser pistol is the fastest firing weapon in the game. You can use that to train. It won't do much damage... which lets you shoot more against some helpless enemy, which trains your accuracy. So if you have a harmless enemy available bring your noobs for target practicing.
- Tanks/drones can work, but are inferior to soldiers. I generally use them with noob teams. They are expensive early game and inferior late game.
- Different alliens are restistent to different weapons. Mutons and Crysalids are resistent to laser weapons. Early game use HE projectiles on them. Plasma weapons work on all. In general keep different types of weapons available.
- Vision control is key in this game. You need to scout and use cover efficiently. Armor won't help you if you fail on that and if you succeed you don't need the armor.
- Alloy armor is pretty weak. Power armor is not terrible, but you can generally research and start producing Flying suits before you can outfit your soldiers with lower class armor so I only use about 4 of each alloy and power armor as transition.
- Mind control is the name of the game late game. It becomes alien suicide fest. Lots of fun. You can win whole alien bases with a single agent and mind control... which I don't do. I send two agents..
- I don't use rockets in this game. Close quarters combat and psi work way better, with much better rewards. There are some uses initially if you can't handle something but in general the use of rockets and disruptors is not rewarding.
- Ellerium economy in this game is key. You can only capture it from UFOs and bases with power sources you didn't destroy. So prioritize non destructive methods, capture and use wisely. Ellerium in consumed by Avenger,
A few replies
Never rely on ships you built. The avenger/firestorm:lightning take far too long to repair. Also uses elerium to fuel so do not delete your interceptors if you run out of elerium, you’re screwed.
Tanks are good for scouting. Especially early game when you’re weak also late game when you don’t want to lose your best. But other than that your points on tanks are valid.
Also of note. The big missiles you can control can punch holes into ships. You can then fire another missile inside l. Or use the hole you’ve made as an entrance.
You are wrong about alot of this. Been playing since '95 and still load up new games once every year or two.
-Two reason to go after every Very Small UFO: 1.) letting them go un-attacked lowers government view of your monthly success, and 2.) They only carry commanders, capturing one will allow all end game research to be available.
-Building laser cannons purely for sale works better than any other source of income. 194 engineers can make over 10Million a month. the monthly cost of them is a fraction of that and the building maintenance even lower. I usually hit 50million in expendable income by July 1999
-Building a second base on the same continent is pointless and wastes resources that could be better used keeping more countries from selling out to the aliens. No continent will have more than what 1 skyranger and 2 interceptors/firestorms can handle at once no matter the difficulty. A north American base, Asian Base, and South African base combination will have you rich in elerium very early on, wait until you have 7-10million expendable per base as by the time you have a second base with full compliments of everything you will be outspending your monthly income.
-Squads should always be max amount (14)skyranger/(26)avenger as just being in the mission and taking a single action such as spotting an alien adds to their experience and rapidly increases your promotion rate
-Psi attacks, while admittedly fun, are completely unnecessary. Game can be beat by August on any difficulty setting, first psi training rounds will barely be started by then.
-While most aliens do have specific weaknesses the heavy plasma rifle is all you need for anything with the exception of the ethereals which are very weak against laser weapons. No pistol of any type is useful at anytime for any reason when compared to the heavy plasma and laser rifle. on that note, no terran weapons are worth anything aside from the laser rifle and all starting equipment should be sold except the rifles until laser is researched.
-Alien grenades and blaster launchers make short work of any mission except terror attacks, just be careful not to destroy any elerium.
-If you use good tactics and utilize a full skyranger load the only reason an avenger will ever be needed is the final mission of the game, the firestorm can catch and shoot down everything using far less elerium.
@@moribundxix Actually pistols tend to be used by some people vs lightly armored units. The amount of shots you get is massive and statistically it's better. Also plasma rifle is also the superior one when used in medium to long range shots vs the heavy plasma. More accurate and less TU's to fire.
@@krzysztofpaszkiewicz1274 You are right except if you factor in customizing units based on base stats... it doesn't hurt to play the game a bunch of ways, mine just tends to be high accuracy soldiers over other stats which makes the heavy plasma better... I have definitely noticed the plasma rifles usefullness but the pistol is only really good against sectoids...
Snake men and Ethereals are weak against lazers but their side units are not... Good luck taking down a muton with anything short of heavy plasma
Just load up 6 people with blaster launchers and blow up the map sometimes lol
Cheers for enjoying such a good game!
You're mostly wrong. E.g producing laser laser cannons is very effective. 255 engineers can make 20 or 21 laser cannons daily. So it's profit 580k or 609k USD. It's mothly 17,748k USD. When it's 30 day. In months when is 31 it's even 1 day profit more. Mothly maintenance cost of engineers is 6,375k USD, 6 workshops is 210k USD, 6 living quarters is 60 USD. So pure profit is 11,103k USD for 30 day month. Of course one needs hire 255 engineers first for 12,750k USD. After 33 days one pay off this. One can use them to build armors, avengers etc. But if don't invest You don't profit. At the end little tip for You. I hire engineers 71 hours before end of a month. They come 1 hour after start of a month. Thanks to that i pay maintenance after full month only.
The most of your tips are rubbish.
Thanks man, I was so lost as far as combat. Appreciate all the help!
One of my favourite games. Now I'm playing it again as the OpenXcom version :)
And the game definitely is not difficult.
Right from start you should sell all stupid equipment, keep only long range missiles for interceptors, sell all those cannons and other junk. First develop laser weapons as quickly as possible as laser rifle is the main workhorse for whole game consuming no ammo and add heavy laser for tough Mutons. As soon as you find some small launcher, investigate it and build the cell. Then try to catch some ethereal as soon as possible. Once psionic control is developed, psi-amps deployed to team... suddenly you are the master of all missions.
For lighting in dark area gattling with incendary ammo is best. Blaster bombs can use 9 guidance points, not 3. Updated game version has even more. It is perfect weapon to open any enemy craft. Best for battleships where you can quickly devastate room filled with high ranking aliens which puts other into panic quickly.
Only good weapon for interceptor planes is plasma beam.
Hovertanks are just nice toys.. 4 guys in flysuit instead are better. But for most missions even 10 guys are plenty enough. If you have 3-4 guys with psi-amp and rest are spotters, missions are easy :D
Great video manual man, except you haven't read the manual. ;) The "bottzom button" which switches between soldiers does not "stops working" as you said, this button simply means "switch to another unit and DO NOT return to this one even if he still have time units left". It is very useful when you want to leave the unit at the specific place at the end of the turn, and not just charge forward like a madman.
6:05 The bottom button is for I'm finished moving this unit, do not show it again this turn. Cycle to the next unit.
It doesn't "glitch out" when it stops "working" it means you've used this button on each of your units. Note you can still manually reselect these units again.
Some more beginner's tricks:
Alien artefacts - items, that aren't researched yet - add to the mission score. Higher score at the end of the month means higher funding. It actually pays not to research plasma weapons and their ammo clips in the early game to gain higher score from your missions.
If possible, remove ammo clips from weapons found in alien corpses. Otherwise they won't count as separate objects, they won't add to your score and you can't sell them.
Lesser number of soldiers train faster to higher accuracy and reaction times. You will sack most of them though to replace them with psionists later in the game.
Save your game often in the overworld and monitor your graphs frequently. You can spot the alien presence even though it is out of your radar reach. Many times you can shoot down enemy craft on the opposite side of the planet like that.
Ufo that is landed yields more score points and money since nothing is destroyed and you will kill all aliens by yourself.
You can harvest a ton of money from enemy bases if you don't destroy them on your first visit. You just need to move enemy corpses, weapons and clips to the landing zone manually. This tactic may not work for everyone since fighting the base is dangerous as hell.
If enemy base happens to pop near yours, you can farm the enemy supply ships instead. You just need to let them land to avoid material losses.
If you don't reduce number of enemy bases though, things can spiral out of your control very quickly and you will lose the game.
Right after you begin your mission, you can scout the area with your cursor instead of your soldiers. Knowing where the area borders are will save you some turns.
Use Smoke Grenades to give your Guys some Cover
Build a Storage, the Starting one fills up quickly
Research Medkit; Laser->Pistol; Alien Alloys->Personal Armor
Laserweapons dont need to reload. Plasma is a better choice
Get like 5 Research guys, they are Expensive but youll need them anyway
A "grenade/Stunbaton Guy" (Support/Scout) is actually a good Idea. Holding anything in your Hand whlie also holding a Weapon reduces Accuracy. So he can use a Medkit or throw Smoke/grenades/light or Scout if you need to.
Usually Aliens shoot before your Soldiers can do a reaction shot.
Every Soldier is unique. TimeUnits, Hitpoints, Stamina, Morale, etc differs so check the Stats and equip them appropriately. They gain better Stats when theyre promoted to a higher rank. This also means that rookies go first
Stamina regenerates each turn by a small amount. More Stamina: more accuracy
Separated Units have less morale. Same thing when mates get killed nearby. They may panic (shoot) or flee (drop what they hold) at some point
And all the things i forgot to mention ...
One last thing:
Get the Patch to 1.4 !
You may also want to use the openXCom Mod which adds many quality of life Elements to the game It also lets you play without DosBox/ScummVM/whatever and provides tons of options
this game is near perfect ( for me ) I've been binging on this game for 5 hours a night for a week. The ammount of damage you can do with flying armor and blaster launchers! Edit time, Save scumming will get you more experience with the mechanics of the game. Travel in (loose) groups of 5 because rookies suck at aiming, hence groups of 5. Medi kits and Laser weapons early on are game changers, a powerful weapon with no ammo and being able to heal soldiers shot is great. Alien Alloy for personal armor should be next.
Laser weapons should be your top priority in the classic game. Unlimited ammo and decent damage, much better than your pea shooters. The first armor offers meager protection against the widespread use of Heavy Plasma and Plasma Rifles from the aliens, and rookies are disposable anyway, so use them as bait. I always went from Laser to Plasma, never been a fan of Gauss and plasma can be researched quickly enough (plus you have plenty of Heavy Plasmas stocked. Do not sell them, btw).
Never move on your first turn. Use it to have your front guys prime and throw a smoke grenade at the ramp (and flares if its a night mission. I just throw them everywhere). Smoke doesnt impair hit chance, just visibility (diminishes the effective visibility radius), so afterwards, have a sacrificial scout (rookie) look outside the smoke and shoot from inside the smoke with your main guys. If you see an alien right at the start from the ramp, shoot without disembarking. Not sure in the base game, but at least in Open Xcom you can kneel the 2 front guys and the 2 guys right behind then can safely shoot while standing up. Personally, I make a path of smoke right to the UFOs. Dont throw smoke at the UFO door, you wanna see aliens popping out.
If your guy is being psi attacked and his purple morale bar is very low, drop or put his weapons in his backpack. Its likely he will be enemy controlled next turn, but with no weapons they cant shoot you and you dont have to kill a soldier. Also, identify the ones being constantly attacked and use them as bait for psy attacks while you move the rest of the team.
You can attack a UFO with multiple interceptors, and they do it at the same time. Good to tackle heavyweight ships as they will switch targets and the damage will be spread on all your jets.
The graphs on UFO activity can help you decide a good spot to patrol for UFOs (to find alien bases or even UFOs) or choose a place to build a second etc base.
In terror missions, dont bother with civilians. Just take it easy.
and it will be fine. Rushing things can spell doom for your entire team. Just let the civvies tank the aliens for you. Unless you hear Chryssalids, then you better hurry up before they convert all civilians into zombies.
Stopped reading. I want to discover the tricks for myself! :)
Just had a mission..didn't realize they were there. No losses but 12 humans 1 i saved for a 4 point ok mission lol
The lower of the two soldier select buttons will only switch away from a unit once. You can use this to ensure you have moved all of your units. Once it stops going to more units, you have moved them all--assuming you moved each unit before selecting past them with that button.
I've been learning it's never too late to pick up a brilliant game no matter how old it is.
I don't know if it was mentioned before, but the first thing you should do in your base is to tear down 2 hangars. When aliens attack your base they can only enter through the hangars and the access lift. The starting base has a defense power of a swiss cheese. By changing the layout you can create a bottleneck and almost trivialise those attacks. "Almost" because of the blaster bombs, of course..
Warning: Night is Very dangerous because the Aliens are more Agresive and Doing more Reaction shots
It's not that they are more aggressive, they just have night vision. So you're troops can't see them, but they can see you. And Electro Flares suck having to play hot potato with.
Why throw an electro flare when you can throw a high explosive? I loved leveling the entire place down with high explosives in night missions. It would reveal the aliens pretty quickly, or their corpses.
Gatling with incendary can turn night mission into daylight :D
Or just cover your approach with smoke grenades, since it creates a smoke density 3 times the strength of normal explosion smoke, meaning the aliens basically can't see/hit you in there (Unless you're unlucky and they throw a bunch of grenades in the smoke cloud). Sure if you end a turn with a soldier in it and keep them in there for a few turns there is a chance they'll fall unconscious, but not die I think. This won't happen if you have power armor btw.
Fell in love with this game because of Ben and Lewis of the Yogscast. Honestly, currently playing xenonauts because I love its air combat, but UFO Defense's ground war is so much more satisfying imo. Something just feels grittier and more meat-grindy about it
That looks like the cdrom intro. I used to have it but returned it because I thought I had a faulty copy of the cdrom. Turns out my drive got burnt out (I used to go through many optical drives back in the day).
Awesome video. I would just add to use heavy cannons and rocket launchers for those that are strong enough. sell the auto cannons and ammo for them that you start with as they are insanely inaccurate. Buy more heavy cannons and HE ammo for them as soon as possible as well as plenty of small rockets and some incendiary ammo for both to light up large areas at night. Riffles for those who cannot use heavy cannons or rockets. Use AP ammo when at close quarters with enemies HE when enemies are farther away so you don't blow yourself up.
Only allowed 80 items on your ship, so I like lasers because no ammo clips needed. Auto shot is great. Some enemies are resistant to different types of damage though. need different weapon types to be effective. most have poorer under armor as do your troops. That makes grenades great, especially with large ground opponents. Stun weapons and smoke can knock out enemies for capture.
7:57 That's usefull to throw a weapon to a near soldier that is out of ammo or to throw a better weapon taken in an alien enemy. That make sense at least.
Awesome video of one of my childhood favorites. One question. Any tips to protect your solders from mind control. I'm getting pretty much wrecked when I'm up against those aliens.
high bravery is the key. Recruit a lot of soldiers and dismiss anyone with less than 50 bravery. You can even go 60 if you have the money and patience. A smaller team levels up faster, and I like to play the game with the Skyranger half full.
@@neildavis2999 I didn't know a smaller teams level faster. Is it still worth bringing a mentally weak guy without weapons to soak up the mind control?
4:49
This isn't true, there is a chance (100% for supply ships) for any reactor to have elerium spawn on top of it, however, the reactors of alien craft have a high chance (75% IIRC) of being destroyed upon being shot down, which destroys both the reactor and the elerium. It's possible to find undamaged reactors and elerium on any shot down alien craft.
6:06
That button ends the soldiers "turn" while going to the next soldier. You can still use the soldier, it just won't show up on the next soldier cycle for that turn.
8:30
Enemies can also return fire when facing the opposite direction, there's just a lower chance of them reacting.
10:07
Panic (morale) has no effect on whether a mind control will work, only Psi Strength, Psi Skill and the type of attack (Panicking a unit is easier, Mind Controlling is harder) factor in.
10:17
The enemy only needs to spot one soldier or tank to be able to psionically attack your entire squad.
10:46
Do not start with medikits. Generally speaking, the priority for research should go Psionics, hyperwave decoder, Plasma Cannons, Laser Cannons, Plasma weaponry, armor.
Where can I download UFO defence or one of its modded versions?
Throw smoke everywhere. Helps massively
This game is on sale on steam for like $1.24, go get it now!
This video deserves way more views. Good job with the explanations mate, really helps a new X Com player like me.
*X-Com, now it's XCOM though now that it's been remade
Watching these videos, I decided to dust off X-Com and give it another spin for old times sake.
Midway through the first month, I get a terror mission. With Cyberdisks, which destroy my crew of rookies that have been on three missions total. All I had was the basic assault rifle, which just tickles the disks.
I forgot how fucking unfair this game was.
ALWAYS! RESEARCH! LASERS! FIRST!
It's the opposite of unfair actually. In a real war would you always just push ahead no matter what? You forget there's a flee button.
@@itiswhatitis235 as a veteran of over decades ... You actually want to jump straight to plasma to save time and $ and actually be able to shoot down UFOs with plasma beams and ignore laser altogether until you have time to spare.
U need hv plasma and plasma beams asap if u want to max your score, or performance.
@@ngtony2969 from a veteran to a veteran then. with all due respect. i have a different strategy, centered around intercepting only landed ufos.
i always sell my 2 interceptors day 1, and buy 2 skyrangers instead.
all craft have detection range, as you surely must now. so i watch the graphs and send my skyrangers where the activity is, spread them to cover as much as possible out of that region, the aliens come and land, and i'm there to collect the bounty (aliens are never interested in more than two regions in one particular month, and your starting region is guaranteed to have at least 3 landing ufo's first month, so it's actually easy to predict the AI).
i finished alot of games without using a single craft rocket or beam. anyways, the reason i'm so adamant about researching lasers first is that they 1. help with above strategy since sectoids and floaters are 1shot 80% of the time with a laser rifle, and 2.cyberdisks. the best thing that can happen to your campaign is a sectoid terror in the first month. that means a squad leader. which means psy labs operational at the start of the 3rd month. so that's my reasoning. lasers, and then mind probe to identify my sectoid squad leader.
i actually don't use plasma weapons untill later in the game, i find laser rifle enough. it makes me a ton of money( selling the plasma weapons and the manufactured laser rifles). money it's not an issue after the 3rd month anyway, when they come to establish their first base. my skyrangers are there waiting. they always send 3-4 large ufos and 2 very large. they all land several times. it's like taking candy from a baby....sort of.
but yeah, i guess this is why we love this game, there are so many ways to beat the game, and so many strategies. if only we had as much time to waste as we had 20 years ago...damn
@@ngtony2969 it's a computer game. A game should be something that entertains, and there needs to be a balance of realism and enjoyment.
If you had a CRPG where your character suddenly drops dead of a brain aneurism, that may be realistic but it's not a lot of fun to play.
im a bit late :) but... this is one of the best games EVER made! also for any new players out there... get OPENXCOM... it not only expands the basic game, but it makes it easier to run on modern machines... also there are plenty of mods etc. and its free :)
I absolutely adore Enemy Unknown and XCOM2, I've wanted to get into the original XCOM for the longest time but it's age and design makes it difficult for new players. Thanks for doing this, gonna give the original another try and see if I can get into it.
Did you end up giving it a try?
When a person says “I’ve been wanting to get into it for the longest time” yet they don’t get into it, that means they didn’t want to get into it
I know it's been a while but is there a chance for a guide to tftd? I think it's just different enough to justify one. I find myself getting back to this one every now and then if i haven't played x-com for a while. Having the same for it's sequel would be neat!
Terror From the Deep is virtually identical game play wise. They just renamed the weapons and reskinned everything. Plasma weapons = Gauss weapons. Thats it. Everything has an equivalent replacement weapon or species.
I actually didn't like this game at all despite the original X-Com being an all time favorite (I still revisit the original to this day). The one thing they did change was they made all the maps and bases much bigger. Way too big in fact. Every mission took FOREVER to end because there's always one last alien hiding that took ages to find. They would just sit in a corner and not show up on the motion scanner. Most of the game (time wise) is just sweeping the ENTIRE map trying to find the last guy to move on. I played (and won) it once, and just remember hating it.
Congrats on 50 subs! I really liked the video, helped me alot.
Hey nooby question I know how to play but how to save civilians I really don't know not like 2012 xcom or xcom 2 you can walk up to them but in this game I don't know how and they just die plz tell how to rescue civvies
7:37 - 7:50
Aimed is for Accuracy, right
Yes
Hey I’m on my first encounter how do I get inside the ufo at the centre of the map
There should be a door on the bottom right side. If it's a tiny single occupant UFO maybe you can use the hover up button to get in.
This man deserves way more subs
Thanks man, now i could start my first mission
2018 Finally a simole yet incredibly usefull video to understand the classic xcom, specially the movement since its the main reason why i sucked at it too much and had no more time units to atack or reach cover.
probably worth mentioning that autoshot is your friend.
for the cost of just a couple of extra TUs you can have 3 shots with only a marginally worse chance of hitting compared to the snap shot.
But with auto shot the % chance is per shot - 3 shots at 25% per shot is way better than 1 shot at 30%
also - research lasers first - medikits are completely useless until you have some decent armour that will allow your soldiers to actually suffer and survive wounds instead of just dying instantly as soon as they are hit. Wait until you have at least personal armour, if not power armour.
Autocannons loaded with high ex rounds are great for the early game - drop 2 or 3 soldiers out of the skyranger under cover of smoke and use hi-ex autoshot to clear out cover, walls, buildings, terrain that slows your soldiers, obvious ambush points etc etc
They're horribly inaccurate but they'll give you a nice clear battlefield to move through and spot enemies.
The first terror mission is usually sectoids - try as hard as you can to capture a sectoid leader on the first terror mission - you'll be able to start researching PSI abilities in the first month.
Thank you. This helped a lot.
Underrated Channel
should i get this or xcom 2?
The steam or GoG XCOM set that has all the old XCOM games will be a lot cheaper, but you will need tutorials to figure out how to play them as they don't have any in game. If you preferred the controls of Enemy Unknown, then XCOM 2 plays much the same.
get this, it's only a few pennies, and it has much more decision making that firaxis decided to streamiline, not that the remakes and the sequel to the remake is bad, it's very good in t's own way, but why they didn't make this a dlc spinoff or expansion doesn't make sense other than the fact they are trying to appeal to a larger audience, but the remake and sequel despite being great they don't even look similar in concept to the original
XCOM 2 is much more beginner friendly. There's much less micromanaging, fewer variables, and is a great way to get ones foot in the door. It also will not put you into situations you're not ready to handle. Don't expect to see Sectopods until you can handle them, for instance.
UFO Defense is MUCH harder and about ten times as complex, but it feels much more like a complete package that doesn't try to shoehorn anything in. Barring the cheesy dated visuals and stock sound effects, it still plays phenomenally well once you get over that somewhat intimidating learning bump. Beware, however, that you will occasionally be tested that you "know when to fold 'em", especially in regards to terror missions.
One of my first experiences with UFO: Terror mission about one month in, first assignment I get. First rookie steps out of the dropship: Three steps out, cyberdisk. NOPE. Walk right back in, abort mission. Sorry India, but I can't help you there. But not long after that, I tailed a small UFO, shot up the sectoid crew when it landed and got lots of good loot from an intact craft. Good war stories, man.
“The bottom button seems to glitch out and stop working.” Lol. It’s definitely working correctly, haha!
Best game ever! Used to play it till 4am as a child. Oh and that blaster launcher was the shiz
I would argue the original game is more of a preference than it is comparing Xcom of today and the one from the 1990s. After all, the glaring flaws with the game is the information vomit UI and the fact that a good chunk of the game can boil down to it being less about strategy and more on how good you are at minesweeper with explosives since conventional weaponry is rarely used and discouraged.
10:18 once they see one of your unit's they can attack any of your units.
Thank you soooooooo much for this!! I think some people forget how completely lost new players are when confronted with all those buttons and options etc. Just got this on Steam, and thanks to this video I can start with a basic knowledge and strategy 😊
Infamouslemur2 Channel If you got this on steam, you should download OpenXcom. It essentially makes it compatible with newer computers and fixes most bugs in it. It's a MUST HAVE for the game, and us free. Nightly Version should auto install, so try that
Good review!
I love this game..I love it for its faults actually. I played it since day one then years would pass and Id fire it up. Trying to play the original DOS version on newer versions of windows was difficult, then Steam bought the rights to sell it. Problem solved there! I wish they could do an update to 'enhance' the images and clean up the geoscape views and features, but I know they wont spend the time to do so. I watched a few videos on the Xcom 2 stuff and tbo, I'm not impressed.
I wish more people would give older games a try. They were the first of their kind, and appreciating the simplicity yet difficulty involved makes them better than most new games these days. I just wish the game didnt win 90% of the time by deploying higher level aliens and technology on your first few missions...I mean come on..a large proximity grenade on the first turn stepping out of the ship is pretty stupid lol
I disagree on the research order. Always go for Laser weapons first! If you get missions with Cyberdisks early on, you're screwed without laser weapons. Also, you can't research personal armor without alien alloys. Going for medkits first isn't neccessary, cause your soldiers are still noobs and you can easily replace them. Just let 'em die!
This game is one of the best.
Want to play it, but too much micro managing. 😢
Under FIFTEEN?, Chris Handsome would like a word!.
OpenXCOM is the way to play, also plenty of HUGE mods out there. The X-files, xPiratez, 40k and a lot of others that just expand the originals
What is the actual difference between this and Enemy Unknown?
+9ElevenGamer This is the original game released in 1994. XCOM Enemy Unknown is a remake of it and XCOM 2 is a sequel to the remake
lol a huge one, this game has tons of decision making and strategy and rts elements than the streamlined remake and sequel to the remake, this one lets you have 8 bases in whatever countries you want and you get to choose where you're intercceptors go and what countries they patrol plus you have to buy ammo and different kinds of them and different kinds of guns for your soldiers plus you can decide not to intercept a ufo without it messing up the entire game, you can throw your weapons to teammates or at enemies you can search the aliens to recover and research artifacts from the aliens to use their weaponry and gadgets, plus you can pickup your passed out teammates and evacuate them from to the skyranger without them dying in 3 turns unless you have a medikit, and in this game it is a medi-kit, plus it's called X-Com, instead of XCOM, and healing your teammates isn't just pressing a button you have to know where they're fatal wounds are and administer the right doses to them, plus this game uses turn units to fire and move and take items in and out of your inventory instead of 2 turn units and you can move and shoot then move again in this game, shooting does not end your turn, making it MUCH more like a strategic chess shooter than a shooter that feels like well a shooter but that's turn based, not that the new ones aren't great, they just didn't stay true to the original, so yeah there's a lot of huge differences you'd have to see a lot of videos to know all the intricacies
Not to nitpick, but it's a consistent differentiation... the older games are "X-COM" (with a dash), while the newer 3D games are "XCOM". Just FYI. ;)
11:00 - A Transformers fan I see. Niiiiice.
enemies can reac shot even with their backs to you
also research plasma weapons first , because you should have picked some up fomr your fights
and plasma weapons clips to use them
MarkuS this happen most time when you shotet the alien
Im a glad the reboot simplified as this is way more complicated than it needs to be
Personal opinion really, I have played most xcom games and while they are both good I wouldn't try comparing them to each other directly. I still prefer the original more than the reboots. The reboots are much tighter squad management games compared to the original xcom, much easier to control each soldier but I personally don't like the whole skill thing as they rank up. At the end it is more a puzzle game of how to use each skill to get through engagements with minimal damage. Seeing the aliens health and managing everything perfectly to kill them doesn't fit well for me. But like I said, they shouldn't really be compared directly, they are different enough that you can enjoy each for their differences.
Fair enough, to be honest your right they are too different, speaking as someone who played the reboot then the original I personally prefer the newer style focusing on special abilities and positioning. For me at least the older one was too clunky and it was hard to figure out how many TU's and EU's you were using when moving from point A to point B, making combat frustrating when your 1 TU off firing all because you mis cliked and rotated your solider. Still both are great games and have their own pros and cons
"it was hard to figure out how many TU's and EU's you were using when moving from point A to point B,"
While I agree the implementation was clunky, Open Xcom has a TU counter, as well as other quality of life upgrades like saving your soldier's loadout. I prefer TU because you can tailor your movement to your needs. For example, in the new XCOM the soldier will always move through the shortest path from point A to B, but that is not always preferable because a certain path might wake up another pod, get through acid, pass by LOS of an OW enemy and so on. Old XCOM has no such problems since you could choose the path you would take. I also liked how you could go step by step and reveal aliens while still being both in range to shoot as well as being able to shoot with your reserved TUs.
I also prefer the old X-Com UFO interception. Being able to send multiple aircraft to down a single UFO sounds both more realistic while giving the air combat more deph and gameplay (micromanaging multiple interceptors).
Base building is another gripe I have. I liked how in the old one I could build new bases anywhere and populate them however I liked. It's weird that in the new game you can only have one skyranger, for example. The maps were also better, since in the new game everything starts to look samey after playing for a while.
I do like a lot of the changes in the new game, though, and I agree the game is more dynamic that way. I didn't play the base game, though, only with Long War installed from the get go, and at least with Long War, it feels like this is a harder game than the older one (though, to be fair, I've been playing the old one since it came out, so I'm a lot more used to it).
My beginning strategy was always to immediately sell all weapons that use ammo and buy laser weapons and a stun rod for every soldier.
My x-com from dos have the sound a bit different that this one.
thank you these tips have helped me a lot but I still lose a lot of men ( this is not like new xcom were you don't lose anyone lol) I have been studiing for days and days but I should be studiing for school.
Close, but you're very inaccurate here......
- The "glitched" progression button deselects the soldier from rotation. Use it when they are out of time or positioned where you want them. It is extremely useful to ensure you didn't miss anybody at the end of the turm. Always do a final cycle with it before ending your turn.
- Left click walks you to the square. Right clicks has them look in that direction. You can open doors this way (right clicking inside when standing next to the door) without stepping in. Still puts the person at risk of an ambush, but much safer than blindly stepping in.
- Alien Alloys have the highest return for dollars per time to manufacture (without consuming any other materials). Build and sell that (not laser canons).
- PSI can be used by anyone on the map so long the alien is in sight by someone. I usually just leave my PSI specialists in the ship so you don't have to armor or weapon them (until you have resources to do so).
- I also leave my blaster bomber at the ship door (standing on the unallocated gear square). It can actually aim up to 9 waypoints, and hit anything anywhere. This also gives him "unlimited" shots without having to lug the missiles everywhere (see stamina below). They are also great at blowing holes in the sides of buildings and enemy ships so you don't have to enter blind at the door (often an enemy trap point).
- if it's not clear, the inventory menu also shows whats on the ground on the square you're on. Dead aliens or soldiers, gear that has been dropped.
- You lose your ship (and everything) if you abandon the mission with no one in it - you need someone to fly it home. Always leave someone in there, especially in the early missions when you're often overpowered. They are also good for running extra gear and ammo to the front if needed.
- Shot accuracy decreases if they have objects in both hands.
- Throwing weapons is to disarm aliens under your control. Knowing they no longer pose a threat if you lose control on the next turn (when you scout them out beyond your current line of sight). It's also useful to reload soldiers with another weapon or gear from across the map. You can also drop items from the inventory menu for a fraction of the time units.
- Don't overload the soldiers with gear. They also have stamina gage, and that'll greatly reduce their range even though they have time units available.
- Your base design is REALLY bad! During alien invasions, they will only enter from the hangers and lift. So build the base (and redesign the starting base) with all the hangers together, and ONLY connecting to the other rooms with the lift. This bottlenecks all the aliens there, and saves from searching the rest of your base to find them all. It will leave up to 3 unused spaces, but its more than worth it. Having everything connected like you did turns those missions into a total cluster f***. Especially when trying to find the last surviving alien who's hidden somewhere.
- Tanks suck. Their only value is they don't panic and are immune to PSI attacks. But they are too big to find cover, can't explore ships, take up too much troop space on your ship, and cost too much. Don't waste your time with them. You're so much better off with 4 independent soldiers vs 1 stupid tank.
- If you are trapped or cornered - you can arm a grenade and not throw it. The grenade will then go off when they die (regardless of how many turns have past since arming it), and can take out enemy near them. Or if you're feeling mean, just straight up kamikaze them that way.
- Disarm your soldier if they are panicking or being PSI attacked. This way they can't harm others if they wig out and start shooting.
- Unclip ammo before you end the mission / kill the last alien. Partiality used clips are lost from the inventory if they are loaded. Unload but partially used clips (and full clips) get added back into inventory as if they were full. Very important when you are resource starved early on.
- You can fire enemy weapons if you've researched it. You just can't reload it until you research the weapon's clip. But this does mean you can pick up enemy weapons in the field and use them against them before fully unlocking them.
- Don't waste your time taking aliens alive until you have the stun bomb gun. It works way better than the rod. And you don't need live aliens until later on anyway.
- Stun civilians on terror missions. It gets them out of play. They don't run into enemy fire and they won't be actively attacked. And it doesn't impact the score because they are still alive at the end.
- Flying armor is a game changer. Explosions from grenades or blaster bombs only impact the level you're on, so you're imune if you are above it. You are also imune to melee attacks - most importantly the zombie species. I guess that would be a positive for hover tanks too - but I still hate them.
And lastly, the base game is outdated so better get Openxcom extension to fix all the common issues. Also this guide is 6 years old by this time. I'm sure there's better guide out there.
Great stuff, sir :)
I know there is a way to view a close up of units... HOW?!
4:45? That's the loadout screen, also reached by the loadout button described at 5:43. In case you need to pick up, reload (drop a magazine on the weapon), or drop stuff.
A year late but middle clicking in open x com allows you to do that.
8:02 Death Note reference Detected
I wish someone would make this game into something like Fallout 76
it would be so cool
I don't had any issues with the most buttons on the screen.. But the balance of this game looks strange
Wish the PC version had the smoke detail like the Playstation version, smoke grenades dont look like smoke like on the Playstation
give everyone above 40 strength a missile launcher in their backpack with 1 large missile loaded. makes every mission much easier. if half the squad can lay it down with missiles.
for bonus fun, keep your commander on the skyranger, on the ammo pile, and have him throw your guys spare missiles across the map when they use their missile launcher
How to play UFO Defense: Smoke bombs, suicidal scouts, and high aim snipers in the back :P
Smoke is one of least used tools, suicide makes no sense and if the mission is not terror mission with civilians, the easiest way is to simply blast everything around with rocket launchers, incendary gattling fire and heavy explosives. That is very effective method in the beginning.
@@xmeda Smoke is extremely useful, it makes the effective sight range is about 6 blocks of smoke. You can cover your part of the map with smoke, peek out with your scouts, then take your shots with snipers and the enemy cannot return fire, then on their turn they cant shoot at you unless they sprint all the way into the smoke to find you. It's a bit less useful in cramped areas like in alien bases since you get enemies suddenly coming through doors or around corners, but it's excellent for open maps. You can level the landscape with lasers as well so they cant even hide from you anymore! It just takes some patience, but lasers dont produce smoke for the aliens to hide inside, and they have infinite ammo
@@kiriseraph9674 Instead of carrying smoke grenade I prefer to throw real grenade on alien :D Takes same space but actually does damage/kill. Later in the game they are usualy armed with heavy plasma only and sometimes they have insane hit-bonus even through smoke or if your units are in dark place. AI has advantages. But if you blow heavy explosive near them, thats another story.. with some damage taken their accuracy drops significantly + it creates some smoke anyway that lasts 1-2 turns.
But yes, everybody has his own strategy :) But as it is quite easy to develop psi-amp, it makes little sense to use anything else in alien base. 2-3 psionic guys and you are almost invulnerable. All you need is to spot some alien and then use him to discover others.
And if you have guided blaster bombs.. well.. those combined with psi-amp can deal with alien battleship in 14-15 turns. Just blow a hole into alien commander compartment, kill him with his comrades. Then blow some holes in side, peak in, control some alien, march them towards you and shoot them or bomb them. After cca 10 turns I'm usually just trying to find the last panicked ones hidden somewhere :D
... a fantastic game ! Every time you click "New Game", the scenario is different, so there can actually be no real walk-through. Every "New Game" is different, as it develops on the go, as you play ...
i played the OG version on ps1 and the manual, all english was as thick as the CD case.
Didnt know u had to read the manual for this one, maybe the 1 page labelling what pictogram buttons in battle are for
God I love this game!
love this game
This could have been a great video about UFO, but it literally spoilers everything that will happen in the game.
You can throw your weapon at the enemy, if you're a moron. @ 7:58 Ha ha ha.
7:57 I LOL'd.
I've played 3d version of it - good tactics
There is no comparison of 3D version with this game... all versions after this one and sequel was a big disappointment for me.
I still wish that somebody can combine this game with Jagged Alliance 2 (v1.13 modpack), give it better graphic (but not ugly 3D shit), large/huge maps, multiple floors. Make soldiers into agents on different missions and it will be superb thing. Start with some smaller anti-terrorist missions to gain some money and equipment, then remove some dictators like Deidranna on some island and end it with alien invasion and some sci-fi weapons :D
It would be perfect to shoot Muton with .50BMG sniper rifle into head, bomb Hadoms with mortar or to spray some other aliens with HK G-11 rifles :D
Best game to mod! you could have a 2,568% chance to hit and still miss a muton soldier with a heavy plasma in the arctic at point blank range in a hover tank and hit your own ally!
I am speaking from experience..
As it should, I am speaking from using my brain.
Your accuracy is based on a certain distance on an immobile target. In reality, in combat, you should never be able to reach 100% no matter what.
Being as real as possible is also one of the best thing about this game.
Laser Pistol is best money making. Biggest profit for less work, $2000 to make and $20000 to sell. Every 50 you make a million.
Im starting to think that this game is too complicated. Oh well, the whole batch of old XCOM games was only 3 dollars and change on Steam anyways.
Play xpiratez! its the best xcom mod ever made, and its amazing!
Lol he named his soldiers after death note characters xD
I looked through the comments just to see if someone else noticed xd
@@OfficialCptAJones tell me your discord right now 👉