Door covering

[Alex]

Breversa pointed out this tactic in his use of the flame thrower, but I think it's important enough to merit its own discussion.

Covering doorways is an art in its own right, but you need to make sure the guy covering the door is able to take down an alien in 1 or 2 shots.

A good way to do it is to have the guy positioned 2 squares away from the door and one square out from the wall, so you can put one soldier either side of the doorway without risking them shooting each other.

[Woreczko]

Recently I played at hard difficulty and here is what I discovered:

Alien weapons, starting with plasma rifle are usually able to kill my soldier with single burst. Thus relying on reaction fire is usually not very smart, because aliens most of the time will get that first shot if they see your soldier in the same moment as he/she notices them. Exceptions:

1. A sniper crouching a healthy distance away is able to reaction-fire without risking his life (plasma is not particularly accurate)
2. If you manage to hide your soldier (behind a corner, on the 2nd square or so), so that he doesn`t come in alien`s line of sight before he "reacts". However often he will have just one shot, so that better be a full auto => close distance needed.

[Alex]

Good point about the plasma fire.  My idea is to have 2 or perhaps 3 people covering a likely doorway to ensure whatever comes through is turned to mincemeat - as long as they all have good reactions that is.

On normal mode I can get through the entire story with a team consisting of 6 snipers, covering each other's backs.

I haven't gone through on the harder difficulties yet, so maybe tactics will change in that scenario.

[Surrealistik]

Using RF is usually a good way to get your soldiers killed on Very Hard. This is because your weapons do about 25% damage (while the aliens do quadruple damage), and the aliens can soak up mounds of firepower consequently (especially the armoured ones), allowing them to retaliate for a kill. If you must do this, the door in question should be camped with at least two people set to discharge the most damaging firemodes (particle cannons on charged mode, plasma blasters/rifles on spray, etc...). Otherwise (that is on lesser difficulty settings), door camping is more often than not useful as you can take most aliens down in an inital salvo, and survive any fire they manage to discharge.

In multiplayer door camping can be effective; as long as you're far enough away from the enterance to avoid getting flashbanged/naded. Any smart player will typically lob a flashbang or grenade salvo into a suspect room before walking in. You should also have at least two men camping a door. This is because:

A: Your chances of firing before the enemy can engage in hostile activity or withdraw are doubled.

and

B: In the event that one of your soldiers dies or is FBed, the other soldier can retaliate and/or cover.

Of course, they should be spread as far apart as possible to minimize the impact of flashbangs and splash weaponry.