X-COM: Complete Pack available on STEAM

[luderbamsen]

Wow, when year did this game come out exactly? I see this download is part of the collectors edition which came out in 98. Also, is there any kind of manual/guide available somewhere?

As I recall, it came out in 1994. This was actually one of the first game reviews I ever read (in a local newpaper). It was trashed for it's lousy graphics and clunky gameplay

Besides the manual, there are some good walkthroughs availible online. Be warned though: They include certain tips that are really exploits and makes winning a lot easier.

Too bad I don't know what the hell I'm doing though.

That makes two of us I always felt I was behind the curve when playing, always trying to catch up. But my main problem was that I didn't have a plan; I just rolled with the punches. Careful planning helps. A lot. Plenty of tips online, but here are a few basic hints:

Countries pay you to keep the aliens off their back, so place your first base(s) where the wealthy countries are. Intercepting UFO's has a lot in common with real-life air defense: You want to detect the UFO's early and catch them on the inbound; a small base with a radar allow you to spot them early and be ready to launch fighters. Aircraft with UFO technology are very expensive, so until late in the game you're better off upgrading your standard aircraft with bigger weapons - buy new planes when the UFO's start outrunning you.

Keeping bases running smoothly is much like any other resource management game. There is no point in having a huge production factility if you don't have the raw materials to build stuff. Alien artifacts are a great source of income. You only need to keep one item to research it, so sell off any surplus, as it just takes up storage space. Be careful not to sell off raw materials though. You may not need them now, but you will later. If your workshops are not building weapons and gear for your troops, they should build stuff you can sell (profit=low cost, short production time and high price). Again, don't waste precious resources on this, you'll need them later.

As your organisation grows, you won't be able to fit everything (research, production, aircraft, troops) into a single super-base. But try to concentrate your valuable installations on a few bases. These should recieve protection (anti aircraft and cloaking) first. You should also try to have a number of soldiers there at all times, in case of an alien raid. Lesser bases are more expendable.

When on a crash/terror site, think tactical. Move your men out slowly and carefully (leapfrogging - moving half the team each turn - is good) and make sure they have overlapping arc's of fire (but don't bunch them up so a single explosive will kill them all). And (almost) always reserve turn points to shoot. Not too different from Combat Mission really. You don't have to worry about snatching artifacts or aliens for research until late in the game. Just kill anything in sight. However, towards the end you'll probably need to bring stun weapons to catch some specific alien species alive (you'll need all of them to complete the research tree).

The stats of each soldier improve most when they make a kill. This can lead to a vicious circle where the same soldier has the best aiming stats, gets the kill and the stat improvment, so you end up with a handful of super soldiers and a big bunch of gomers. This is bad, so you should try and improve all troops equally. Give your best troops a regular rest and try to help the rookies to get the kill. Why? See below.

As soon as you get mind control technology, test all your troops. You will find that some are completely useless at it, and usually they are some of your best warriors. Get rid of them, no matter how good their other stats are (you can sack them, but it's more fun to use them as suicide troops, armed only with a grenade or demolition charge). Otherwise, they will end up being mind-f...ed by the aliens and start killing their team mates (and one guy with top-notch stats can do an awful lot of damage).

Use the save feature, a lot. Unless you enjoy starting over again and again, you should save many times during each mission until you get the hang of the basics. Standard save/load tricks apply, like saving just before a major decision (shoot, launch interceptors, start research) so you can reload if you mess up.

Of course, you'll learn all of this eventually (and hopefully a lot quicker than me). But my best advice is really to make a plan and do your research before making a decision (like where to build, what to research, what to manufacture e.c.t.), rather than just go with gut-instinct. It really does make the game experience more enjoyable, and the taste of victory more sweet.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I'll not spoil it by giving tips on what to do except for this one: Never, ever, under any circumstance sell Elerium 115.

[MeatEtr]

Wow, thanks for the hints luderbamsen, I certainly need them. Yeah my first ground assault had me lol, it was a wholesale slaughter. I am slowly but surely getting better at it.

Oh and Elerium 115, duely noted, thanks.

[hoolaman]

Having now lost most of the last 3 days to Xcom I can add a few more tips.

If you don't move your fire support guys during the turn, have them kneel and they can take full aimed shots at enemies. Your soldiers have a short spotting range even in broad daylight, but once spotted by your scouts aliens can be shot by these distant fire positions. Long distances don't seem to adversely effect accuracy.

No matter how good your soldiers are, they are going to get nailed D-Day style when the ramp goes down. Sending out some rookies to scout out the land and pay the ultimate sacrifice is a good way to go.

The initial rifles are pretty weak. Research and build laser rifles ASAP, and then get into the alien heavy rifles to make sure you kill first shot preventing a return opportunity shot. Cool little extras like flares and proximity grenades can give you a bit more tactical flexibility, and don't neglect the motion detector.

One of the hardest things I find is SWAT style opening the door of a ufo and facing 3 aliens inside. You have to step into the room to open the door, and if you fire, the other aliens opportunity fire will get you, same if you try to turn around and walk out to clear a LOF for your mates. So Rookies are good to be first in the door too on what is usually a suicide mission.

I've been taking a very Darwinian approach to combat, I regularly go home with only one or two men out of an original 12, and I have to make sure the next roster of cannon fodder is ready to go when my ship gets back. Once your tech level gets up though your guys have a better chance of killing and surviving hits with body armour, medikits etc.

[luderbamsen]

Wow, thanks for the hints luderbamsen, I certainly need them. Yeah my first ground assault had me lol, it was a wholesale slaughter. I am slowly but surely getting better at it.

Oh and Elerium 115, duely noted, thanks.

De nada . The first many missions I saved every time before taking a shot, and immediately after making a kill. Otherwise I would have played the first crash site mission over and over again. And Elmar's advice is pure gold: Do anything to make room for any Elerium you get. Build a new base and storage, sell other stuff even if you need it. Anything. Along the same lines: Try not to build things that require Elerium unless you really need them.

Like hoolaman, my two toughest hurdles was the D-Day type slaughter off the ramp and surviving going through doors. For the first one, a tank is an excellent scout that gives your guy a chance to get off the ramp (rather like the Sherman DD's actually). However, try to limit the tank's kills to those aliens about to slaughter your troops. Tank stat's don't improve with kills. The best remedy against the Doors of Death is to make your own doors: Grenades and demolition charges work. And when you get flying armour and bigger guns, you can shoot your way through the roof.

Unlike hoolaman, I go to great lengths to keep my troops alive. Not that I give a hoot about them, but their improved stats will come in handy later. Even if a mission is a great success, I sometimes reload the last bit so save that one trooper. But for crissake remember to check them all out when you get mind control tech! BTW: Those gomers with useless mind control stats are perfect for direct door assaults: Strip them of amour and all kit. Issue them a demolition charge or a grenade. Set the charge timer at 0. Send them through the door (keep your other guys at a distance); the alien shoots and kills the gomer, gomer drops charge, charge (with timer set at 0) goes off immediately, alien is vaporized.

One more thing I'd forgotten (but someone on another forum hadn't): Avoid night missions like the plague. You'll be almost blind but the enemy won't. Try to time the deployment of your shuttle so it arrives in daylight. Alternatively, if it arrives shortly before dawn, have it fly to a waypoint nearby rather than the target itself. Then when the sun reaches the site you can redirect the transport to the target. Sometimes the target will dissapear before you can get to it in daylight. I generally choose to accept that defeat rather than fight in the dark. If you must fight in the dark, make sure all your guys have lots of flares.

Also, terror sites take priority over crash sites. Terror sites have a very negative effect on your income and customer satisfaction, leading to countries bailing out and surrendering to the aliens.

[Soddball]

Lots of good advice here, particularly about not selling off Elerium. Research laser weapons and medical stuff early.

Interesting that some of you don't like night missions, I really enjoy them. I always had 24 flares loaded on my craft so that each soldier had at least 2. Toss them out as the doors open, then each soldier should throw one as he moves out of the transport.

Did anyone else find the rocket launcher useless? I never got on with it. The autocannon with incendiary ammo, though, I heartily recommend. HE's pretty good, but incendiary is awesome. Do not be afraid to lay down firepower, especially grenades. Early in the game I'd equip my squad with laser rifles and autocannons in an 8/4 ratio, with the autocannon guys carrying a laser pistol for when they ran out of ammo.

City terror missions - now they are a dog. Anyone got any bright ideas how to do a good job on those, because I'd usually lose a third to a half of my squad on them.

Later in the game, you'll find that your craft do so much damage to UFOs when they shoot them down that the engine and elerium are destroyed. I tended to keep a fighter loaded with 6 long-range missiles at my bases, so that I could use it to drop the smaller UFOs and capture their engines and elerium intact.

[luderbamsen]

Lots of good advice here, particularly about not selling off Elerium. Research laser weapons and medical stuff early.

Interesting that some of you don't like night missions, I really enjoy them. I always had 24 flares loaded on my craft so that each soldier had at least 2. Toss them out as the doors open, then each soldier should throw one as he moves out of the transport.

Did anyone else find the rocket launcher useless? I never got on with it. The autocannon with incendiary ammo, though, I heartily recommend. HE's pretty good, but incendiary is awesome. Do not be afraid to lay down firepower, especially grenades. Early in the game I'd equip my squad with laser rifles and autocannons in an 8/4 ratio, with the autocannon guys carrying a laser pistol for when they ran out of ammo.

Night missions? Respect!

I rarely bothered with the rocket launcher. Doesn't kill enough aliens to be worth it. The guided missile launcher is huge fun though. I often kept the autocannon in use well after more advanced weapons were availible becaue i liked it so much, but it is definately a useful weapon in the early missions (prefer HE myself). And as you say, grenades are your friend.

City terror missions - now they are a dog. Anyone got any bright ideas how to do a good job on those, because I'd usually lose a third to a half of my squad on them.

They're definately the worst. Not only are the loads of aliens, but some of their most powerful species are there. Basically, you can do the Charge of the Light Brigade to get it over with before the aliens wreak too much havoc and take the losses that goes with it (if they don't wipe you out entirely).

Me, I take it slow and let the aliens rampage. Not good for the score but for me it's better than loosing a full load of well trained soldiers. Just like crash sites, my tactic is to take it slow, reserve points for snapshots and keep the squad close enough for mutual cover. Once I've cleared the immediate area around the transport, I tend to go through the map systematically and only deviate if aliens pop up in the immediate vicinity. That way there is less chance that a lone alien will be hiding somewhere, forcing you to run all over the map to find him (and then he'll usually kill the guy who spots him, grrrr!).

Later in the game, you'll find that your craft do so much damage to UFOs when they shoot them down that the engine and elerium are destroyed. I tended to keep a fighter loaded with 6 long-range missiles at my bases, so that I could use it to drop the smaller UFOs and capture their engines and elerium intact.

On my first games, I pulverized all the smaller UFO's when I got bigger weapons, and ran woefully short on resources as a result. The only real solution is to keep more interceptors than needed, and keep some armed with less powerful weapons. It's a real grind when you know you can just blast it out of the sky and be done with it in 30 seconds, but damn if you don't need those raw materials.

[hoolaman]

Unlike hoolaman, I go to great lengths to keep my troops alive. Not that I give a hoot about them, but their improved stats will come in handy later. Even if a mission is a great success, I sometimes reload the last bit so save that one trooper.

CHEATING SPOILER WARNING: When I got the game the first time around, I would save and reload to save EVERY man, and even save and reload after I landed on a crash site to make sure the Elerium and the power source were intact. You could get a randomly generated UFO crash each time so I just reloaded until I got the power source. Another cheat, the mouse cursor shows up the sprites even on blacked out tiles like whether a UFO has an intact power source or a whether a door has been opened by a mystery creature (hint: aliens were born in a barn).

In my current game I just couldn't be assed with that kind of cheating. Hanging on by the skin of your teeth has an appeal of its own.

Did anyone else find the rocket launcher useless? I never got on with it. The autocannon with incendiary ammo, though, I heartily recommend. HE's pretty good, but incendiary is awesome. Do not be afraid to lay down firepower, especially grenades. Early in the game I'd equip my squad with laser rifles and autocannons in an 8/4 ratio, with the autocannon guys carrying a laser pistol for when they ran out of ammo.

There's actually an interesting rock paper scissors thing going on if you stick with the early weapons, and read the UFOpaedia. AP and Incendiary ammo is good against certain aliens and weapon platforms. When you get to the harder races you kind of have to abandon this sort of stuff for heavy plasmas all round.

City terror missions - now they are a dog. Anyone got any bright ideas how to do a good job on those, because I'd usually lose a third to a half of my squad on them.

The only trick I can recommend is shooting out walls to get LOF, and a bit of haste to make sure not too many civilians get killed.

[Subvet]

I still hear X-COM sound effects popping up in other games and movies from time to time (presumably taken from the same standard sound effect library).

I do too. I remember watching the movie "Wag the Dog" and recognizing the civilian female scream from X-Com. I still remember that scream like I heard it yesterday. I still hear it once in a while on TV too.

[Ssiissuu]

The big threat with psy powers is aliens gaining control of your troopers, for a turn. I don't recall if aliens can berserk your troops or if that's only from morale loss, but they certainly can panic them. A panicked trooper who runs the wrong way is a dead trooper.

When you start running into psy powers, be very careful. An alien can only psy attack a trooper that is within the alien side LOS. Mostly they'll just attempt to panic your troopers, but for those times that they use mind control on your squaddies you'll want to be more aware than ever of trooper spacing. Often, especially in terror missions, I'll either advance very slowly with all my troops together to limit my exposure to more than a few psy attacks at any given time or I'll split most of my troops up to limit the amount of damage one mind controlled trooper can do. A mind controlled trooper counts towards the alien sides' LOS. So whether that trooper fries a couple of his buddies while under alien influence or not, one mind controlled trooper can lead to a cascade of psy attacks against your side if you have troops within LOS of the mind controlled trooper.

Luderbamsen makes some excellent points. It is imperative that you build a psy lab ASAP. The first few species you run into are pests when it comes to psy powers. The more advanced races will use your weaker squaddies as perpetual puppets, losing you a squad member and gaining them another set of eyes and hands to tote around a weapon. With the psy lab, whether you're interested in harnessing psy powers for your own side or not, it's very important that you pass every single trooper through the initial training. By doing so you'll discover their psy score. Troopers, no matter how good, with a low psy score should be sacked. For the most part they'll just be a liability. I've always weeded out recruits who have lower than 20 bravery and lower than 20 in their psy score. This will greatly reduce the incidence of soldiers behaving in a way which compromises their buddies, unless directed by you to do so.

A quick tip for those who do go the psy route with their soldiers, gaining control of an alien means that you can't directly access his inventory. So no pretty alien grenades for you. Unless you select one of your soldiers, enter his inventory screen and then use the next trooper button to tab through all of your troops, including the alien. He won't have proper graphics and will look like an unarmored human but otherwise he'll function. So now you can make him unload his weapon, drop ammo, load up a grenade, whatever. A fun game is to force an alien to drop everything but a primed alien 'nad and send him around scouting. With luck he'll trip a couple of his fellows to use opportunity fire, killing him and resulting in a big bang.