Why is this so goddamn hard?

[Madventurer]

Hi there.
I downloaded UFO couple days back, and I've noticed that it's ridiculously hard.

Okay, playing 2.5 in VERY EASY difficulty, and in the game for couple months.

And the tactical game opponents keep raping my soldiers, no matter the range.
Especially in a recent base defense battle I was in, I lost two soldiers to getting one-shotted by fast-moving enemies either closing to range in a single turn, or just sniping me with plasma rifles. Oh and they were one-shotted at melee range, two-shotted at a bit further range. They all had combat armor.

I personally prefer to auto-fight the battles, but this base raid really got on my nerves, as I couldn't do that for it.

So what am I supposed to do to get ANYTHING after easiest missions done?

[mikehg]

Unless your soldiers are accurate and well armoured, you probably want to avoid straight shooting matches with any aliens. The key is out maneuvering them.

1) Are you using reaction fire? If they walk round a corner and into your squad, guns at the ready, they're dead.

2) Are you using smoke grenades? If there isn't any cover, make some.

3) Try equipping some soldiers lightly. If they're light enough, they get bonus TUs, allowing you to run further, fire more times per turn...

4) A big key to base defence is how you build the base. Use bottlenecks so you can choose where to fight them - I like the power plant, personally.

[TBeholder]

Yeah, armor, medikits and minimum weight otherwise.
Also, crouching helps a lot, especially combined with (bad) other cover. And it improves accuracy, of course, which matters at long range. Kind of funny when occasionally a sniper gets to hit something with reaction fire even despite near-impossible TU requirement.

[Madventurer]

1) Yes, I'm using reaction fire, but it's not really working. My squad got slaughtered by a really fast-moving thing that was resistant to the fire. Yes, they got quite a few shots at it, but it didn't die soon enough.

2) I don't understand how smoke grenades would give me any cover at all against enemies with infrared vision.

3) It doesn't matter how lightly I equip them if they can't get close enough to actually hit the enemy fatally. Plasma rifle reaction fire slaughters them, no matter what I do.

4) I didn't really have a choice with the starting base layout....

And lastly: How do I outmaneuver something that has infrared vision and moves twice as fast as my soldiers? I don't.

[mikehg]

1) It's often really a case of choosing the right weapon (therefore squad member) for the moment. A bit like scissor paper stone in a sense.

All weapons have weaknesses, so figure out what is strong against what. A plasma rifle isn't massively fast, so a faster weapon - like a shotgun or a plasma blaster - will beat it up close on reaction fire. It's not massively accurate either, so something like a sniper or laser rifle will normally beat it at range, though that's riskier.

That said, you'll always lose some soldiers (unless you keep restarting...). It's that kind of game.

2) Yeah, that's a bit of an issue - sometimes the story contradicts the game mechanics. The reality is any soldier who ends his turn in smoke is invisible to any enemy who isn't directly next to him. And if one enemy can see you, they all can - though that's also true for you seeing the enemies.

3) Reaction fire only works in the field of vision (I think it's 120 degrees). So if you throw a grenade from behind something, or attack from behind or the sides, or shoot from within smoke, you won't trigger it.

Also, use bleeding to your advantage. If you can hit a non-robotic alien then safely leave it to bleed to death, do so. Snipers and automatics are both useful for this.

4) You can destroy buildings by right clicking on them, and with a bit of planning you can make the starting base fairly robust. It comes down to reducing surprises, controlling where they meet you. Also, put a guy in the CCTV room of the control centre if you haven't.

[Noordung]

dont do auto mission. you wont get any skills for that and you soliders will be left behind in later game. also dont do light weight. do it full. if strenght is 50 go for 24,9 kilos. the more weight you put on yout soliders the more will their strenght increase and late game weapons/armours are much heavier. just dont give them too much or you will get TU pentalty. you dont want that.

[Madventurer]

My main problem was that my enemies simply walzed in front of my soldiers, closed in, and shot before reaction fire kicked in. And in the rare case it did so before enemy fired, it wasn't enough to kill the enemy and my soldier got slaughtered by plasma rifle.

Also, for the 'don't do auto mission':
I'm not practically fond to losing half of my troops in manual missions instead of the 0-2 of auto mission.
No matter what I do, the aliens keep slaughtering me from behind cover, while I can't even close in without losing half of the team.

[anonymissimus]

Patience.
I need maybe at least 3 hours for a base defense mission or so. Depending on how many aliens there are and how large the base is.
Keep a soldier in the camera room. Watch them move. Keep track of all of them. Keep your soldiers out of range (at least 40 TUs of movement for Sheevar/unarmored Taman with plasma blade/kerrblade). Once they happen to come into movement and/or firing range, rush out, kill, and rush back or cover or block. If any other aliens may attack those soldiers who fought just now.
If the base has only a single entrance, it becomes quick and easy. Block with a few melee units the entrance on the bottom level. All snipers go into the upper level (power plant, crew quarters or small hangar) and shoot through the wall while aliens move in and out.
Shooting from the tower of the large hangar is also nice sometimes, while aliens are moving around far away from that, without a particular target.
It's quite possible to come out of base defense missions with zero losses.

[hoiba]

Yes, patience is the key. Just like anonymissimus said.

I often use the first 2-3 rounds just to rally my troops. Usually around the camera room. If there are single soldiers somewhere in the base, I hide them until I have some more in the vicinity.
These first 2-3 rounds I usually note (on a sheet of paper) how many aliens are present, and where they are.

Then I start to advance very slowly. Step by step from cover to cover. I found it useful to send teams of 2-3 solders. Some teams to attack the enemies front, others to fall to their flanks at the same time.

I have built my bases (not intentionally.. just had luck ^^) to have long corridors. These are guarded by my snipers. They are in cover, leaving it every round to take a look down the corridor and then pop back to cover.

The tactics I use depend on the enemies behavior. If the enemy advances (you can see it through the cameras) I try to trap them somehow: Hide and wait for a good moment to leave cover and wipe 'em out.
If they stay stationary...guarding their spot... then it's up to me to advance with a lot of caution.

I don't use smokes inside the base (besides of emergencies). There is enough cover to hide. But in general smokes help a lot!

But of course there can be some frustrating situations. Hovernets and especially Combat Hovernets are really 'pita'. Having lots of TU and enormous firepower they can easily cover a long distance and still killing 1-2 soldiers.
And sometimes I get surprises because I'm still not very familiar with the buildings inside the base. Some have basements through which the enemy can sneak behind my lines (happend once). This nearly got me a heart attack

All I can say is you have to give yourself a lot of time to defend the bases. If you're not sure whats in front of you just stay where you are until you know. If Hovernets are present, stay away until you know what they are up to and you have a good chance of taking them out. Patience and caution.

[IMBACORE]

Also, put a guy in the CCTV room of the control centre if you haven't.

Wait that's a feature?  I didn't know that! Thanks!!

So you just simply let one soldier stay inside the command center or do you have to place the operative in a specific place in the CCenter? If the latter, where?

[Noordung]

in small room in command center

[Kaleh]

12 soldiers for base defense-all equiped with nades (smoke,frag,plasma), medkit, IR. At the start (if you have one soldier what is weak or sniper) put him in com centar and if your barracks are far, use rest to cover the passages to it (always make sure you put one barrack next to entrance point, and com centar close to them). Also dont be afraid to have 2-3 snipers (combine them with IR for taking hidden enemies trough the walls). And make the aliens come to you, when you get number advantage move to finish them of (groups of 2-3 to support) and if posible from few directions (but make sure there are no friendlies directly behind the enemy)

[madrsihands]

yeah base invasions were always tricky, but the most frustrating part to them is how long you have to wait for alien movement, especially when they are all just pacing back in forth.  I would be scared if they actually tried to converge on my command center and remained in groups, but they kept meandering off around the base.  Typically I always kept one or two guys in the command center, but I was fairly annoyed when I learned the surveillance only extends over certain entrances to the base and not INSIDE the base.

Very quickly my first objective was to prevent aliens from entering my base.  Not that I'm worried about them reaching the command center, or the antimatter chamber, or the missile silo, or the power plant, or the alien containment prison, but just because it takes forever to find them once they get inside your base.  And god forbid they get to a barracks which has like 3 floors they could hide in.

Typically I'd either send my guys surface side through the Workshop, or I'd send them to the radar tower which provides good firing coverage.  The Firebird hanger was always suicide as all the weird corners and openings to the 2nd level provided aliens with all sorts of lines-of-sites I couldn't see.  It would also be nice if the main game could randomize your initial base, so when base invasions do occur you can form different strategize for each game rather than having to dump a ton of money into your base so you don't have to play the same "level" every time you get invaded.

Also how do base invasions start?  Does it happen when I let an alien scout ship go over my base unmolested?  Or when I keep launching and landing aircraft at the same time aliens are entering my base's airspace?  It would be cool to have to struggle with the decision to risk your pilot over risking having your base be the main target of alien attack for the rest of the campaign.

[anonymissimus]

Does it happen when I let an alien scout ship go over my base unmolested?

Possibly, but unlikely. I once had a base attacked with nothing else than entrance, command center and radar. I hope the game isn't so mean that that base location stays known to the aliens after the buildings have been erased, as that would basically force the player to have a very costly emergency defense crew and equipment everywhere.

Or when I keep launching and landing aircraft at the same time aliens are entering my base's airspace?

This seems to be the main action revealing bases.

[pete conway]

I have to agree with the OP as to 'why in hells name is this so hard' even on very easy mode, I loved the original games and was overjoyed whe UFO AI came out, though I wish 2.3/2.4 was still available for download because I could get to 'enjoy' it at medium difficulty level, it didn't matter that it was unfinished, I could get stuck in and ramp up the difficulty to how I wanted.
2.5 seems to have moved it's difficulty level exponentially, it feels that the AI use 'insider information' and in many cases have 'hitbot' stats, and seem to be always faster than the human troops, and some of us are not that keen on having our butts handed to us 'e v e r y  s i n g l e  t i m e' we meet someone from a different planet.

That difficulty has forced me to adopt 'Auto- mission' tactics just so I can enjoy the rest of that game, which is a shame because I really want to enjoy this... without cussin all the time!