Your Tactics

[Captain Bipto]

And here I thought the purpose of a machine gun was pretty well defined...heh heh.

One thing that always gets me in sci-fi are aliens whose defenses trump just about anything humanity can throw at them...but then...just when it looks like humanity is on the brink of defeat...we pull through and turn the aliens weaponry back on them! Completely ignoring the fact that the aliens would be able to defend themselves the best against their OWN weaponry.

That is what I like about this game.

I agree that bolter weapons and coilguns represent the humans' clunky attempt to adapt to a new enemy. I like that the coilgun hits hard and has two shots. I really have yet to fall in love with the bolter though. I'd rather use the missile launcher, if I hit a target I am sure it is gonna die...the bolter seems less accurate and definitely not at lethal.

Perhaps that is not a bad thing, after all the bolter attempts to be both a sniper and assault weapon...so instead of specializing it does two things badly.

[odie]

And here I thought the purpose of a machine gun was pretty well defined...heh heh.

*Snip*

Perhaps that is not a bad thing, after all the bolter attempts to be both a sniper and assault weapon...so instead of specializing it does two things badly.

Well, if we look at one of the VERY old original roadmap of the research, we do have an advance bolter rifle in plan. Though i dunno whats the development of that yet. HEHE..

*Poke Poke developers*.

[blackswan]

In version 2.2.1 my favourite weapon is sniper rifle. Range 250 and damage 120, nothing else to say. All of my troopers are equipped with: sniper rifle, medikit, night visor (not active in version 2.2.1), stunner (when available).

I make squad of two soldiers, moving carefully to maintein the necessary point for the reaction fire.

[thunktone]

My usual squad:
1 Flamer
1 Micro-Shotgun
3-4 Bolters
1 Coilgun
1-2 Heavy Lasers

The flamer and micro shotgun are great for clearing out spaceships with multiple aliens still inside.

Not sure why noone seems to like the bolter. At ranges of less than 15 squares where I tend to engage the enemy they are quite accurate enough, especially with an experienced soldier, and the good armour penetration keeps them deadly well into the game. For sniping they are clearly not as good as sniper rifles or coil guns but that's not my style really anyway. I do like them to work in pairs though or to work with other specialists as the reaction fire is rarely sufficient to deal with more than one alien.

I find the coilgun is most useful in the first round before the enemy dive for cover. It's quite good for area denial on some maps too but I find that if I rely on snipers too much then the civvies get killed too easily.

The Heavy Laser(s) are quite adaptable. They tend to be used to guard the backs of my assault troops or to keep aliens pinned down while my other troops close in for the kill.

Playing in this style I rarely lose a civilian. I also don't use medikits as I prefer to finish the battle quickly and get them back to base.

[odie]

My usual squad:
1 Flamer
1 Micro-Shotgun
3-4 Bolters
1 Coilgun
1-2 Heavy Lasers

The flamer and micro shotgun are great for clearing out spaceships with multiple aliens still inside.

Not sure why noone seems to like the bolter. At ranges of less than 15 squares where I tend to engage the enemy they are quite accurate enough, especially with an experienced soldier, and the good armour penetration keeps them deadly well into the game. For sniping they are clearly not as good as sniper rifles or coil guns but that's not my style really anyway. I do like them to work in pairs though or to work with other specialists as the reaction fire is rarely sufficient to deal with more than one alien.

I find the coilgun is most useful in the first round before the enemy dive for cover. It's quite good for area denial on some maps too but I find that if I rely on snipers too much then the civvies get killed too easily.

The Heavy Laser(s) are quite adaptable. They tend to be used to guard the backs of my assault troops or to keep aliens pinned down while my other troops close in for the kill.

Playing in this style I rarely lose a civilian. I also don't use medikits as I prefer to finish the battle quickly and get them back to base.

Oooo, sounds like to me u r using 2.3 dev version? (coilguns rox)

[Chidar_K_]

My squad layout:

3 SMGs with grenades and gas grenades
3 GLs with flashbangs
2 Snipers with flashbangs and grenades

My strategy is to cover as much land and/or as many choke points as possible with my snipers. Then start advancing with SMGs supported by GLs. I really like grenade launchers because they can do incredible damage in a turn and shoot behind corners/walls. I once shot over 120 grenades in one battle into one building. I won that battle.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Emmanuel Goldstein here.

Frankly, I prefer to equip my troops as best fits the terrain.

For example, in a wide, flat area with little cover, half of my team is snipers and the other half assault-rifle troops. (Well, that's the best loadout I've found thus far - I've only been playing the game since last Saturday, and not particularly often. It is fun, though!)

However, in an environment where I'm likely going to be doing a lot of close-quarters work, I equip my troops with weapons that work best at close range: submachineguns, machine pistols, and/or grenade launchers (though I keep a sniper or two on hand just in case there are some fairly tall buildings to use as vantage points).

Just my $0.02.

[MITSGS John]

I'm still wedded to fire and movement in pairs; bounding overwatch, shoot and scoot, whatever you want to call it. Protecting the civilians is a priority, and is much easier than it looks when when you can stun rod them so that they don't go wandering around drawing fire. And I don't clear a building by firing volleys of grenades into it. Next priority is force preservation; I don't go in assuming that I'm going to lose guys. It's not realistic and if the UFO:AI story line tracks XCOM you'll need lots and lots of veteran soldiers as time goes on.

So far as weapons are concerned I avoid the SMG because I think it's overpowered. I'm not a big fan of firing rockets at individuals, but it would be cool if when you hit, say, an Ortnok with a rocket if the Ortnok would brew up and a smaller alien would bail out and scurry for cover.

I still wish that the game allowed for the two most logical positions in a firefight: Prone and In A Hole.

[Hertzila]

I do know there has been talk about adding prone as a possible position, IIRC when the new models and their animations are done.

What's "In A Hole"?

[MITSGS John]

"In A Hole" means...well...in a hole, a prepared fighting position. Call it "Prone Plus" 

[Sarin]

Speaking about it, it would be nice to have the possiblity to "deploy" machine gun/sniper rifles on bipod, creating a stationary gun platform. Of course, such thing would take a lot of TUs-like 25...

[Hertzila]

On the other hand, that could fit the "suppression fire" some people have wanted. Simply put, give things like machineguns either a preparation choise for a reaction fire bonus or a simple all-around RF bonus that (dramatically) lowers their TU usage for reaction shooting. This gives them more shots against the target and while not really suppression fire it should make the enemy even less inclined to travel through the "RF+" firing zone.

[Legendman3]

Im speaking of my v2.2.1 squad my squad consists of maybe 3 or 4 "sniper" armed with laser rifles. I have 1 flamethrower and the other 3 have a gun that they are best suited to use like one of my troops assault skill is 25 or up hell get a AR and a guy that has 27 in heavy weapons? Gets a bazooka which is extremely good at taking out groups of two or three enemies. I usualy play on easy/very easy since i like to have as little challenges as possible whatever. My guys usually all have stun rods and gas grenades i replace all frags with plasma grenades as soon as i reaserch them and give them alot of extra ammo i produce and find 95% of everything i make in the game.

[con_nor]

I am using 2.1.

I use:
-4 flames
-4 laser rifles

I find that many weapons reaction fire does not work reliably. The reason why I use flamethrowers is that the reaction fire always works[plus the alien is always toast as long as multiple reaction fire is on].
My dilemma is that I have found many weapons to have extremely unreliable reaction fire. Is this normal?
Do the SMGs have good reaction fire?

As to general tactics:
I tend to lose a man or so every mission, but flamethrowers dont need high stats, they just need a gun and ammo. I secure the area and any large firing lines with my snipers, and then the flames sweep building by building. Nice and simple and quick. Lately, I have been augmenting the flames with stun rods, but they dont have solid reactions.

[docwild]

laser rifle, power armour and a couple of grenades for everyone is the strategy I used in the old XCOM game, saving that e-115. The lasers were light so movement range was increased, cheap, profitable and they were good for RF too. Laser Rifles in the hands of veterans were deadly from great distances. Once lots of spare stores and soldier stats were built up I might switch to heavy plasmas which weighed about the same as an AR, IIRC and were fairly necessary for the endgame or leaders.

In UFOAI, I'm not sure yet, i think the grenade launchers are good but I really like the flame throwers. tbh, I haven't been able to play through yet, it seems much harder than XCOM, which is a good thing as XCOM got a bit tedious when you were forced to defend or attack a base every 2 minutes toward the endgame or else lose support. Going through the motions, clearing the huge maps and looking for the last hider which could take hours if done properly. For those who don't remember the game, it was scary to lose soldiers and the battlescape no save bug made it even more so. Its a shame there wont be any attacking the commander from a newly created hole in his wall though. You just had to love firing that blaster around corners and then dumping as much HE as you could through the hole and waiting for the screams.

The best tactic I've found is to keep covered. Dont get into a shoot-out with ET, sneak up on him, snipe him or explode him but don't be standing in his sight, or near him at the end of your turn without proper RF cover. I like to jump in to a building, take a shot at ET and run out. His turn, he comes out to shoot back and 2 others, with flame throwers are waiting against the wall with full TU and already facing the door (at a right-angle of fire to avoid the embarrassment of melting your comrade) resulting in a well done alien and any friends standing behind him.

I do like the auto battle feature but I think there should be a trade between the outcome odds and the value of goods recovered. Perhaps making you fight for earning money or allowing the skipping of battles relatively safely;  precision airstrikes to kill the menace with no ufo or item recovery for example. This would alleviate some of the aforementioned tedium, IMO leaving the balance up to the player.

There used to be some decent strategy guides about for XCOM which would be largely applicable here.