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Much thanks for everyone's tips. My biggest obstacle so far have been missions where I shot down a UFO and go to salvage it...I am playing my 12th game right now due to restarting again, and in the first mission where I needed to salvage the UFO, I lost all my squad so the mission failed. I lost South Africa and some other nation's support. I kept playing, completed a couple missions, and another UFO shot down and I tried to do the mission again.
This time it went fairly good, I had two deaths, (one of them died to poison from the Thinmans, and other was shot by another soldier who went panicked due to this  (( )
When the pure energy guy came, I just tried to flank him, got lucky and didn't get one shot this time (he also missed) and I was able to finish him off with a combo of frag grenade and rocket launcher. Still lost two soldiers though.
My question is:
1) It can't be too good to keep losing soldiers like this. I am playing on Classic Ironman, so I assume it is supposed to be difficult. How many more of them can I take though? As I said this is like my 4th mission or so, so I am at the beginning of the game. Can I recuperate these losses)
2) What should I equip my guys with? Medkits, frag grenades, nano suits and s.c.o.p.e are all I have right now. How should I prioritize these?
Much thanks to all.
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Early game I go grenades on everyone except snipers. Once I have a support at sergeant, I buy a medkit for him to carry.
Losing a few soldiers a month is less than ideal, but probably manageable. It sounds like you're already doing better, and should continue to get better with practice. As for tactics, I always try to prioritize keeping my soldiers alive over taking offensive actions. Hunkering in cover is generally better than taking a 40% shot.
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Thanks all for tips. I started a new game and I kept moving my squad in one moves, never dashed unless I was sure I wasn't gonna get shot at. I kept moving and kept myself in full cover as long as possible, and I kept people on overwatch after the move. It worked really nicely, Only one of my squad got shot at but thankfully he didn't die. I kept moving this and I flanked them. Eventually I got to a door behind a group of two aliens, I just opened the door, threw a nade and bam, it was a kill. Only one was left and I kept flanking to the other side of the building and then I noticed the last one was inside the building. So I did the same thing inside, and the alien popped from a corner and one of my soldiers got him from the overwatch.
Much thanks for tips guys, it seems playing slow really makes it work. I'll try my first UFO salvage mission with this style, however full covers are prevelant much less in those missions. Would this tactic still work?
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You shouldnt need much cover in the first ufo mission as you will go up against just 4 sectoids and the outsider (energy guy).
Just try not to activate all sectoids in the same turn and you should be fine. Imo the first ufo mission is the easiest of all missions in the game.
I use grenades only in the first month when all aliens have low hp. Later on when aliens get tougher grenades get pretty much useless.
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Canada8033 Posts
Aliens have improved accuracy on classic and impossible. If you're not gonna take the shot, you're better off removing your soldiers from line of sight completely. After all, if they can't see you, they can't shoot you. Hunker down also doubles your cover bonus. It's superior to overwatch in many situations at low levels since your rookies have terrible aim, and overwatch imposes a 15% hit penalty.
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Played the first UFO salvage mission again, went fine until the Outsider showed up, then he one shots 3 of my squad members again. I was trying to flank him by going around but he just got my squad from behind cover and I couldn't do anything.
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Canada8033 Posts
You can use explosives to break his cover. And if you have squadsight snipers, just abuse the crap out of that.
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On November 25 2012 05:59 Spazer wrote:
You can use explosives to break his cover. And if you have squadsight snipers, just abuse the crap out of that.
Ahh I forgot about that...yea I could break his cover I guess.
I guess there's no need to load that save and try to kill him alone with one sniper...Better start another game again
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On November 25 2012 04:02 DaCruise wrote:
You shouldnt need much cover in the first ufo mission as you will go up against just 4 sectoids and the outsider (energy guy).
Just try not to activate all sectoids in the same turn and you should be fine. Imo the first ufo mission is the easiest of all missions in the game.
I use grenades only in the first month when all aliens have low hp. Later on when aliens get tougher grenades get pretty much useless.
Grenades are still useful, they just switch to cover removal (that happens to do damage) instead of primary damage dealers.
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Germany25657 Posts
The outsider is my nemesis. I ALWAYS use my heavy's rocket for that guy. Otherwise he always kills one of my guys because i just can't hit him 
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I honestly never have any problems with him. I just run through the door and flank him.
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Germany25657 Posts
Yeah, it is possible that I respect him far too much. Still, better safe than sorry
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The outsider is really dangerous, i think he got some bonus to critchance cause he always fucking oneshot my dudes. easiest way to deal with him is if you can get close without him activating, like going in from a door he's a piece of cake and really easy to capture that way too. However if you activate him due to vision from a broken piece in the ufo if you play on ironman you better just rocket him 
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What difficulty you guys playing on? I had issues with him on classic, but after playing impossible for a while and improving my tactics, the outsider isn't much worse than a normal sectoid/thin man (imo). Slightly higher odds of hitting than a sectoid (5%) and 5 more movement... not a big deal. Especially since the rest of the aliens are usually wiped out before he spawns, so it's not that difficult to flank him with run and gun assaults.
If you overwatch from a mile away, I could see that being an issue.
Edit: Right as I start up an ironman classic run, an outsider obliterates my entire squad from ridiculous distances lolol. Oops.
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Here are my tips for classic ironman (passed it from second try):
- never dash unless you are 100% sure you wont triger any packs : only soldiers I lost were due to dashing (end turns with overwatch if no enemies present)
- grenades only on rookies. Why? Because you can risk losing them, later on grenades have too low range, if you are able to throw a grenade on a ranged enemy, you are doing it wrong.
- if you trigger a group for the first time they will never fire on you at that moment (even if its their turn). So you can be nude in a desert while ending turns if no groups are triggered.
- snipers with squad sight are imba
- when dealing with ufo crashes(small ones), 99% of the time all aliens but the "boss" (like outsider) are outside of the craft, so when you clear outside, just position all your crew in front of the boss room door. That why you have an easy kill next turn. Acctualy when dealing with doors its almost allways good to open them while having full move on your whole squad parked in front of the door
- dont be afraid to run, actually do it often cuz enemies will follow you into your overwatched team (use a scout- defensive assualt is best)
- keep your main snipers alive cuz they are the carries of this game
- ditch shotguns, waaay to risky - sometimes tirggering an extra pack means full wipe - thats why you never go close range.
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I disagree on the shotgun part.
On higher difficulties you often need to deal out a ton of damage to kill the aliens and the shotgun or scatter laser is perfect for that, especially on terror missions.
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The game is really hard early game, because you get one-shotted often, and you have terrible aim, but when you get higher ranks and armor it gets easier.
I probably restarted 10 times on my first run, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, usually stopping after 1-2 months, after losing a country or too many soldiers, and this helped me develop better tactics.
Don't engage with the outsider (the ufo boss) in a shootout. Be defensive, and get your units hunkered down or out of range with overwatch. Atleast two soldiers (preferably Assaults) should park outside, and hug the ufo walls, and preferably they should not be standing next to an opening, as that would make them targets. If you can get into that position he's pretty much dead, although you should be careful if he's on overwatch.
But anyway, if you want to make this mission a lot easier, make sure that you don't spawn him too early. You spawn him if you run too close to the opening of the ufo. So, when you're ready, move your assaults into position, without spawning it. Then when you have them both hugging the wall, make one of them use up 1 move to spawn him. Then it should spawn and run and hide somewhere. The key is that at this point he won't have overwatch on, so you can freely just use run and gun and try and flank and finish him off.
In the future engagements with this thing, the ufo designs will differ, and those designs actually makes it easier to control when he spawns, so he gets ridiculously easy as the time goes on.
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Another game, another completed UFO mission. Three casualties this time, first one lost in the attemp to flank the outsider. The second panicked due to this and ran into open ground with no cover and he got one shot aswell..The third one I used to run n gun him at close range with 85% hit change with a shotgun...but the shot missed and he died.
Had to finish him off with a grenade. I only had 1 ranked soldier in the mission tho, the rest were newbies and my other squad was wounded so I couldn't bring them in. Overall not bad I think?
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On November 25 2012 18:18 Bleak wrote:
Another game, another completed UFO mission. Three casualties this time, first one lost in the attemp to flank the outsider. The second panicked due to this and ran into open ground with no cover and he got one shot aswell..The third one I used to run n gun him at close range with 85% hit change with a shotgun...but the shot missed and he died.
Had to finish him off with a grenade. I only had 1 ranked soldier in the mission tho, the rest were newbies and my other squad was wounded so I couldn't bring them in. Overall not bad I think?
Don't flank him straight. Look, try always to approach to the UFO withouth getting LOS inside the UFO (use its walls for this) when you have 3-4 guys there (and you only do this after clearing the map of roaming aliens), spot him with one, grenade with another to remove cover, and then get everybody at pointblank and shoot.
Anyways, you can keep going. Losing soldiers doesn't mean you already lost. Hell, i had a impossible ironman run where i lost 7 soldiers the 2 first months and i could still complete it.
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Outsiders are pretty agressive. Once you triggered him you can retreat to full cover outside of the ship and he will usually come out ready to be flanked.
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EPT
