Xcom Enemy within FAQ/Walkthrough

Note from the author: I apologize but this is the first time I have ever done 
a walkthrough/FAQ. If there are any mistakes or things you believe I can 
improve feel free to contact me at my email [email protected]. I am also 
not fluent in copyright law but assume that people will credit me when credit 
is due and not shamelessly copy other people's work.

X-com Enemy within relies on many randomly selected pre-generated maps, which 
means that any attempt to tell you exactly what moves to make would be futile 
and even pointless. As a result, I can only give broad tips as to how to play 
the game and explain important concepts such as the satellite system, Exalt, 
Mec's and genemod as well as general methods to tackle the game without 
casualties. I will be assuming that you have not previous played the original 
X-com enemy unknown game. If you already know how the play the game then odds 
are this walkthrough will be very boring for you to read. And likewise, if you 
are so experienced with the game that you only struggle with impossible 
difficulty, then I'm sorry but impossible difficulty is so random that any 
attempt to give a sure-fire way to win is impossible and Sisyphean. At best I 
can give tips and explain why impossible mode is difficult and why you are 
likely to lose on that difficulty. This guide is here to help player beat 
normal and classic without losing any nations or soldiers. On impossible its 
guaranteed you will lose soldiers and countries.  There are no tips for 
Ironman mode aside from 'don't screw up', the use of difficulty increasing 
second wave modifiers or for randomly generated missions.

Index:

You can find the section you need by using the search function CTRL + F and 
typing in the title of the section or its codeword in brackets

Section 1A Setting up a game (TLFX)
Section 1B Second wave mods (ZXFW)
Section 2A Picking a country (PICK)
Section 2B Managing the world and long term strategy (STYU)
Section 2C The tactical plan (BLWU)
Section 2D The situation room (SMUY)
      Summary for section 2 (1S3D)
Section 3 Tactical combat (BLAT)
      Unit health and movement (HPMV)
      Half and full Cover and hunker (COHU)
      Moving out and recon (LQQK)
      Fighting the Bad Guys (IKIU)
      Combat and general tactics (SDKT)
      Alien Landings, Alien Crash sites and the dreaded terror mission (WOPR)
      Council missions (generic variants) (TLMN)
      Interceptor Armaments and Air combat (TMLO)
      Summary for section 3 (ATUR)
Section 4 Specific Information (UTIE)
      Dealing with Exalt
      Xcom soldiers
      The aliens
	


		

****Section 1A: Setting up a game**** (TLFX)

Assuming you haven't hit the bug that causes the main menu to freeze, you can 
start a new game by clicking on the start new game button. This should open up 
a menu that asks you what features you wish to include in your new game such 
as the ability to randomize soldier stats, choose DLC packs to enable, allow 
save scuming to work, make the game harder, avoid that horrible tutorial and 
last but very important, would you like Dr.Valen to shut up? If you are new to 
this game I would recommend selecting second wave and selecting the option 
save scum as well as the option to turn off the tutorial. For the purpose of 
this guide, I will be assuming that you are playing on classic, with all DLC 
enabled and no difficulty increasing second wave modifiers activated. In case 
you are wondering here are the second wave mods you could have enabled, just 
remember that turning on the modifiers such as High Stakes or any of the mods 
available after you beat the impossible difficulty could make following the 
instructions on this FAQ/Walkthrough a losing strategy (i.e War Weariness 
makes it so you pretty much have to beat the game as soon as possible but I 
recommend in this guide that you take your time)

****Section 1B Second Wave Mods available**** (ZXFW)

1. Exclusive to Enemy within: These mods are new to the game and don't 
necessarily make the game harder but they can cause problems (note some people 
have modded the game so they have full access to generally restricted second 
wave mods. I will be assuming you don't turn any of the difficulty affecting 
ones on)

-Save Scum: This mod allows for the game to reset the seed when a game is 
loaded. I would recommend having this enabled just because random number 
generator of X-com can be fairly broken. For those you un-experienced with 
making a random number generator, know that it is very hard  to make one that 
really works. X-com's hilariously sadistic random number generator can and 
will let ridiculous crap happen and you will be forced to take it if you don't 
turn this mod on. The game auto generates whether your soldiers (or aliens) 
will hit or miss before the shot is even calculated and thus saving and 
reloading is pointless (unless you do something different) as the result will 
always be the same. Turning this on causes the game to re-simulate every-time 
the game is reloaded thus making situations where all 6 soldiers shoot 12 
times with 90% chance to hit and miss each shot (this has happened to me six 
times on six different occasions) an occurrence that can be undone. The name 
of this mod is a reference to the term Save scumming which means to reload a 
game in the hopes of a more favorable outcome. If you plan to take casualties 
and accept them in even the most outrageous circumstances then it might not be 
necessary to turn this mod on.

-Aiming Angles: This mod gives soldiers and enemies a bonus to aim based on 
how close they are to flanking an enemy. In other original X-com enemy unknown 
an alien can be getting shot at by a heavy machine gun but for some reason all 
the bullets get magnetized and hit the tiny trashbin in front of the alien. 
This was major problem that critics complained about as the system often 
failed to take into account how exposed the enemy really is (sometimes the 
alien won't even be hiding behind cover when your agent takes the shot) as the 
game only accepts two factors: Flanks or not flanked. With this mod on, combat 
is much more tactical and give you more leniency to understand what counts as 
flanked and what doesn't. Just remember that turning this on is a double edged 
sword as this also means that aliens who haven't quite flanked your soldier 
gets a bonus to shooting him.

-Training Roulette: Every soldier class has its skill tree randomized 
(excluding the Mec trooper, because that would be stupid). This essentially 
means that the barrier between classes is mostly non-existent but it also 
means that you will have soldiers who just aren't built for the job (i.e heavy 
with close combat skill, sniper with close combat skill, Assault with 
gunslinger). I wouldn't recommend turning this on simply because the game 
doesn't need anymore randomness and that it also makes certain classes almost 
worthless (i.e Heavy's do not get good aim, therefore a sniper with bullet 
swarm and squadsight would make a heavy fairly useless. Likewise any soldier 
who gets gunslinger or saviour is one unlucky soldier). Any soldier who 
reaches squaddie (the first rank attainable aside from rookie) has all the 
possible skills he can get shown on his skill tree, thus if it's a bad skill 
tree then you can dismiss the soldier right away.

-Itchy Trigger Tentacle: Not available until you've beaten the game. Mod makes 
Mechtoids, Cyberdisks, Sectopods open fire half the time instead of activating 
overwatch. The soldier who spotted the aliens is allowed to finish his move 
(and thus reach cover if you planned for that). This is a mod you activate if 
you want the game to be harder... Nuff said
-Mind over Matter: Not available until you've beaten the game. Giving a 
soldier a Gene-mod disqualifies them from psionic potential. This essentially 
means you can't make psionic genetic supersoldiers and have to settle for 
regular psionic solders. I find psionics useless in general so I don't see how 
this increases the difficulty.

2. Mods from the original X-com Enemy unknown: these are mods from the last 
game.

-Damage roulette: Makes guns do random damage. Fairly harmless but it does 
make the game more like Ufo defense where even a pistol could randomly do 
double damage and kill someone

-New economy: Council nations give random amounts of funds. Not very 
interesting, not very deadly either

-Not Created Equally: X-com rookies will have random stats. So this 
essentially means that you could get soldiers who panic at the first shot AND 
can't hit for beans. Enable this if you want a more random game. This is a 
much nastier mod then it looks as it doesn't just randomize aim and will, it 
also randomizes the movement speed of your soldiers. I've noticed that your 
soldiers will either have normal movement with a speed of 7 tiles max per 
action bar and going as high as 7 tiles of movement per action bar. Thus you 
can win by having high movement and high aim and will (relative to a rookie) 
or lose by having average movement, weak aim and low will. 

-Hidden Potential: X-com soldiers gain stats at random when they rank up. This 
means your sniper can get less aim bonus then a heavy gets. Useful if you like 
randomness and the random number god likes you for some reason.

-Red Fog: Only available after beating the game on normal. Combat wounds 
reduce soldier ability. So you can no longer have a near dead soldier shooting 
everyone dead. This mod forces you to not get soldiers shot. It also makes 
units who are meant to get shot such as SHIVs and MECs reduce capability to 
fight.

- Absolutely Critical: Only available after beating the game on normal. Any 
thing that gets flanked gets a critical hit if the flanker manages to hit the 
flanked target. This essentially makes getting ambushed deadly and ensures 
that you must understand and pay careful attention to the cover system

-Greater Good: Only available after beating the game on normal. Psionics can 
only be learned from capturing a psionic alien... WHAT? I thought that was the 
only way to do it! Well either way killing psionic aliens will prevent you 
from getting psionics if this mod is on. It's not a major game changer 
considering that you should be capturing aliens anyway and if you are fighting 
psionic aliens (and are forced to kill them or lose good troops) then you 
clearly either rushed the game or you got unlucky. By the time you fight 
psionic aliens you should have enough fire power and squad size to reliably 
kill squads of aliens and enough tactical sense to fight the aliens one squad 
at a time.

-Marathon: Only available after beating the game on normal.  Everything takes 
longer to complete. Because you clearly wanted to play the game even longer 
after already beating the game

-Results Driven: Only available after beating the game on Classic. Nations 
give less money the more insecure they feel. This makes playing on harder 
difficulties even more difficult as those stupid alien abduction missions 
ensure you have less money due to more panic.

- High Stakes: Only available after beating the game on Classic. You receive 
random rewards for completing Alien abduction missions. Now you can no longer 
farm for engineers!

-Diminishing Returns: Only available after beating the game on Classic. 
Satellites cost more to construct as you make them. Say good bye to a few 
continents while you're at it too! 

-More Than Human: Only available after beating the game on Classic. Psionic 
soldiers are hard to come by. Don't you just like dragging out the late game?

- War Weariness: Only available after beating the game on impossible. Nation 
funding goes down as the game drags out longer. Finish the game before there's 
barely any money left!

- E-115: Only available after beating the game on impossible. Elerium supplies 
degrade over time. Well at least you'll have more reason to shoot down those 
alien ships

-Total loss: Only available after beating the game on impossible. A soldier 
who dies also breaks his equipment. Those aliens designed their weapons to 
self-destruct therefore we as humanity should plagiarize this concept by 
bricking our guns when we die. I'd like to see those sectoids pull out the 
tazers!

-Alternate Sources: Only available after beating the game on impossible. Power 
generating facilities cost more to make... it's a shame nuclear power isn't an 
option.

*All second wave modifiers can be altered at the pause menu for the game. 
Remember that doing this may disqualify from achievements.

****Section 1C: The tutorial**** (TUTO)

*I would seriously suggest turning off the tutorials as while it guarantees 
that you get a heavy class soldier, it also guarantees you will lose several 
soldiers and waste precious time and resources on things you don't really need. 
The Meld Tutorial seems to have a random effect and in fact some veteran 
players have reported that there are no set variables for meld tutorial but 
rather Dr.Valhen will just explain how to handle Meld when you encounter it. 
Note that turning off the tutorial will give the player a starter mission in 
which they fight Sectoids based on the difficulty level (impossible has 8 
sectoids, class has 6, normal and easy have only 4)*

The tutorial: After the opening cutscene follow Bradford's terrible 
instructions on how to tackle the alien infested building in Germany. Because 
Bradford sucks at the game, you'll lose 3 soldiers and then the game proper 
will begin (you'll also have a heavy). 

****Section 2: The Actual Game****

This section will discuss basic principles on how to structure your base and 
what long term goals you should have in mind.

******Section 2A: Picking a country***** (PICK)

Choose where you want your base to be located, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT as the 
continent you start with will give you a permanent bonus; a bonus which you 
can only earn if you have complete satellite coverage and no withdrawn nations 
These bonuses are hard to earn and most players tend to get only 2-3 of them 
at best. I would recommend starting in South America or Africa. The following 
are the starting locations you can pick and the bonus offered.

North America - 'Air and Space' Aircraft and Aircraft weapons cost 50% less to 
make and maintain. 
Diagnosis: Fairly useless, You should attempt to acquire this lategame, 
otherwise cheaper aircraft when you shouldn't be ordering more than a single 
interceptor is kind of pointless.

South America - 'We have ways' Interrogations and autopsies complete instantly
Diagnosis: Extremely useful, the sooner you can pick apart aliens, the sooner 
you get research credits. Research Credits let you research things faster. In 
addition, interrogated and autopsied aliens give you gene mods and also let 
Mec troopers do more damage (with the right skills).

Asia - 'Future Combat' Foundry projects and Officer training school programs 
cost less. 
Diagnosis: Mostly useless, as a first bonus, this isn't something you'd want. 
Foundry projects take research to get to and only pay off late game. Officer 
training school programs aren't too expensive and you can hold off on things 
like 'rapid recovery' 'Iron will' and 'wetwork'

Europe- 'Expert knowledge' Laboratories and workshops cost 50% less to 
maintain and build. 
Diagnosis: Useless, unless you are planning to build a large elaborate base 
with many laboratories and workshops with money you won't have to protect 
nations which have already withdrawn you shouldn't pick this ability as your 
first bonus. You will probably build about one or two workshops at best. 
Laboratories are useless (even though they can prevent Exalt research raids)

Africa- 'All in' All nations give you more 30% money because you are awesome
Diagnosis: ABSOLUTELY USEFUL, ever heard of the magikarp syndrome? It's when 
you take something weak and near useless on its own but keep contributing to 
it until it becomes a massive dragon and starts killing everything you want it 
to. That's the principle here when you pick this country and as will be 
explained in section 2B more money = more satellites and base building = more 
nation coverage = less withdrawn nations = More bonuses = even more money = 
weapons and research = Big guns = Happy soldiers = Dead aliens = You win the 
game

****Section 2B Managing the World and long-term strategy**** (STYU)

If you are reading this FAQ to get help on how to kill aliens then skip to 
section 3A. This is the second that involves management and long-term planning 
over short-term planning. This section of the FAQ assumes you are not playing 
a game with difficulty settings that prevents you the player from playing the 
game with a long term strategy in mind (i.e High stakes mod, impossible 
difficulty, Iron Man mode). The key to having an easy time with X-com Enemy 
within is to take your time. If you don't do this than the enemy will simply 
get stronger and you're soldiers won't have the time to get the weapons or 
armor or experience they need to kill aliens. For example, refusing to capture 
the crystal energy alien (I know the name but I'm going to assume you don't 
know yet) will result in your advisor yelling at you but if you did capture 
that alien then the game will ramp up the difficulty. Of course refusing to 
capture the energy alien for a prolonged period of time will result in him 
showing up in larger groups to max of 3 (meaning you have 3 boss characters 
running around) but by that point you should have enough weapons and training 
to kill these characters en masse. In short I would just like to note that the 
strategy that this FAQ will propose is one that puts your soldiers at risk 
early game but ensure that little to no nations should leave due to high panic.

The Strategic plan: This section is for people who have never played X-com 
enemy unknown and don't understand which aspects of the game are important. If 
you already understand the key concepts behind the game then you should 
probably skim to the section labeled "too long didn't read" keyword (1S3D) 
using the search function

*for information on how to handle panic, see the situation room*

As soon as you enter the base menu and your advisors have stopped talking, you 
should click the engineering button at the top and click build Facitilites. 
From this menu you can build structures and excavate ground for later use. You 
will notice that your base is divided into two sides with the access lift 
dividing the base into two.

 When designing your base you should designate one area of the base to hold 
nothing but satellite uplinks (usually the side that already has a satellite 
uplink) as buildings gain bonuses when the same type are lumped together. 
Immediately build an Accesslift and start excavating.

 Your late game base is going to have 3 floors to it (I know mine did). 
Remember that a facility gets a bonus if its horizontal or diagonal to a 
similar facility. Since base layout can be randomized, build a satellite 
uplink next to the one you already have, cue up 2 or 3 extra satellites for 
when the satellite uplink completes. Remember that satellite uplinks are 
limited by power and more importantly, the number of engineers you have 
available. 

When the game first starts you aren't able to use or send satelites, you are 
however allowed to build them, doing this step early is important.  

Note: you should not have to demolish any buildings and you especially 
shouldn't be building laboratories and emphasis should be made on getting 
satellites, you should not be buying upgrades for your soldiers unless 
absolutely necessary or if there is excess cash for some reason. Should you 
shoot down UFOs, you should capture the power sources and flight computers 
intact and then sell them for money (its more important to get cash to build 
you base and prevent nations from leaving then it is to stockpile them for a 
manufacturing item you can't make until mid game)

Power generators should be built on the side of the base that you are not 
planning on to put satellite uplinks on. This side should also include the 
officer train school, Cybernetics lab or Genemod labs and depending on which 
you picked, this will be dominating strategy for your game. But more on that 
later in the section 2C.

 In order to set a research project, you need to click the button labeled 
research at the top and select start new research project. As for what to 
research, it depends on what you want. Go for the Alien materials pathway if 
you want to increase your soldiers hp (unfortunately you must progress the 
plot to get the best armor in the game) or the Weapon fragments pathway if you 
want to get better weapons. In my experience it's a better idea to get weapons 
due to how the combat system works. This philosophy will ensure that soldiers 
will be like tissue paper should the aliens manage to get a hit but it also 
ensures that if you are playing properly the aliens will never be able to 
shoot. 

 Researching weapon fragments also allows you to go research experimental 
warfare (and plasma weapons should you capture any and you probably won't if 
you are following the plan outlined in this FAQ). It's not very important to 
research xeno-biology as capturing live aliens isn't very rewarding early game 
as plasma pistols are horrible loot (though the light plasma rifles some 
enemies carry can be very useful) and while interrogation leads to tech 
credits, it's not worth it unless you have the South America continent bonus. 
Capturing late game aliens gives you stronger plasma weapons and you spend 
less time researching  topics in the plasma weapon tree if you research those. 
Therefore you should wait until Mutons (armored green aliens who are 
specifically introduced as combat type aliens) have become common before you 
start capturing aliens. If you wait until Muton Elites (Armored red aliens 
with machine guns) are running around then perhaps you waited too long but if 
you can capture one and research its gun then you've essentially gotten all 
the benefits of plasma tech tree (except the plasma rifle but there should be 
some regular Mutons running around).

Once you have finished building facilities, recruiting soldiers (you should 
rarely do this) and setting things to research. Then you are ready to begin. 
Click the globe and then click the scan button. Time will pass and the 
consequences (positive or negative) of what you have planned will work out. 
Depending on how the Random Number God is feeling, you can either get an 
abduction mission, a council mission, an alien ship passing through your 
monitored air space or later on; Alien terror attacks and Exalt missions. 
Council missions are random except for the ones that are specifically DLC 
missions. These will be discussed in section 4. For tips and hints on how to 
handle tactical missions  see section 3.

UFO Interception: The standard interceptor (the raven) with basic missile is 
more than capable of fighting off most types of alien craft with just the 
basic missile and later on you'll find that one interceptor with a laser 
cannon is more than enough to fight every UFO short of a battleship (and 
battleships are rare and usually only show up if you intentionally let UFOs 
get away). Failing to intercept UFOs can cause Battleships to come in and 
shoot down the satellite that spotted the initial scout.  On any difficulty 
lower than impossible, UFO interception is easy and generally just keeping one 
or two basic interceptors at each continent is enough to protect the continent. 
You'll have plenty of time to get new fight craft assuming you didn't rush the 
game and cause a tougher UFO type to show up. See section 3B on interceptor 
armaments and air combat.

***** Section 2C The Tactical plan***** (BLWU)

*For actual combat and how to manage units see section 3. This is meant to 
outline how to make a squad and what kind of plans you should be making*

No matter how you look at it, X-com Enemy within is mostly a macro-management 
game, you can win all the tactical battles and still lose the game because you 
didn't have enough satellites or didn't deploy them in a proper fashion. But 
tactical game play is arguably the most interesting part of X-com Enemy Within 
and while it's a shame that the majority of the game is Sim Satellite 2000 it 
could be a lot worse. 

In order to kill the aliens, you are going to need a good tactical force. In 
order to have a good tactical force you are going to need a long term plan as 
to what kind of a force you want. One of these decisions is whether or not to 
build a Genetics Lab or a cybernetics lab. Neither are exclusive and you can 
build both but it's a waste of resources to do so and there's only so much 
Meld to go around. It is therefore in your best interest to only build one of 
the two based on what you want. Do you prefer to use the rather squishy 
infantry or do you want the large but easy to hit MECs? You can spend some 
time procrastinating on the issue but the longer you wait the more time you'll 
spend being outgunned (especially when Exalt hits the scene). Cybernetics lab 
gives MECs but MEC requires the permanent conversion of a soldier while 
Genetics can give soldiers upgrades such as the ability to regenerate health 
(not armor). 

Picking the Genemod lab means you don't have to remove soldiers to get Mec 
troopers but its more meld intensive with less bang for your buck (a single 
near useless ability can cost 10 points of meld). Of course these abilities 
are passive and couple with the abilities your soldier already has (and if 
s/he's a colonel s/he'll have a lot of abiliites). You will get at most 20 
meld on missions that give meld (excluding meld from kills but those are rare 
early and mid game). Buying one soldier a upgrade can easily cost this amount 
and the ability probably isn't as useful as the soldier itself. A list of the 
Genemod abilities can be seen in section 4. Despite these abilities being 
cheap, they're only marginally useful and half the time I find they're useless 
(though many would beg to differ). I would recommend the cybernetics lab since 
MECs are fairly cheap and cost effective for what they do. They cost $35 and 
50 meld to outfit a MEC for combat ($10 and 10 meld for the pilot, $25 and 40 
meld for the MEC) but it is totally worth it. MECs are extremely effective 
units even into the late game and having a squad of them is much cheaper than 
outfitting a regular squad with genemod upgrades. You don't need to be 
upgrading the MECs to their higher forms as the kinetic strike module, its 
high Hp, high weapon damage or the flamethrower completely justify the price 
of admission for these monstrous weapons. A high level MEC trooper (they're 
called troopers even though they should be called pilots) can repair himself 
and must take at least 3 consecutive hits to be killed (in a game where a 
regular soldier is lucky to survive one). Upgrades to the MEC give the MEC 
more Hp unfortunately the abilities offered when you do upgrade these things 
aren't as useful (more on this in section 4). Each Mec you build should have 
the kinetic strike module (unless you already have more than 3 Mecs, then it 
wouldn't hurt to devote one MEC to flamethrower use for diversity) because the 
kinetic strike module allows for the Mec to move farther and thus better flank 
enemies and more importantly, capture Meld canisters before they explode 
(thereby letting you have more MECs even sooner). 

Another tough decision to make is who to include on your squad? You can at 
most have 6 units in your squad, this arrangement can be composed of any 
different number of unit types. Early game you want to use as many rookie 
soldiers as possible as early missions are easy (unless there are thin men in 
them in which case use Veterans!) and thus you can immediately figure out how 
many of each class you have and order more if you don't have the class you 
want. The key to this decision is to decide what team would be best fit your 
playstyle. Read the following brief descriptions below and decide what units 
you'd think are best for how you want to tackle the alien menace:

 Heavy troopers are a great all round soldier because they come with powerful 
explosive weapons that hit 90% of the time (and tend to hit even when they do 
miss)  can be customized so that they can shoot twice a turn and get a 50% 
bonus versus mechanical enemies. They carry a machine gun and thus do more 
damage than other rifle wielding opponents. Their downside would be that they 
use up a lot of ammo and have poor aim. This class is capable of suppressing 
(see section 3 for more details about suppressing). If turned in a MEC they 
give the bonus effect 'body shield' making the first alien they see have -20% 
chance to hit them (aka +20 defense for the MEC) and that alien is also unable 
to score a critical hit.

 Assault  troopers can shoot after they've moving a full turns worth of 
movement and can be customized so that the first over-watch fire misses them, 
up to 20 defense for each bad guy in sight, extra armor Hp and a free shot at 
any enemy who moves close to them (essentially giving the assault an advantage 
over melee enemies). The assault has lethal abilities which allows him to 
shoot two shots in rapid succession and one ability that allows him to do 
light damage to an enemy and force that enemy out of cover. The Assault can 
carry either a shotgun or an assault rifle but most of his abilities are for 
the shotgun. That assault tends to have the highest critical rate over other 
classes but the downside is that the assault needs to get close in order to 
kill his targets but that usually just results in more enemies being spawned 
(see section 3). If converted to MEC, they gain the special ability Shock-
Absorbent Armor causing enemies within 4 tiles of them  (a very short 
distance) to do 33% less damage to them.
  
 Sniper troopers have the highest Aim stat than any other class in the game. 
They carry a long range sniper that has so such a long range that most maps do 
not actually exceed its range. They can be customized so that they can shoot 
at any enemy the other teammates see, head shot aliens for increased damage or 
even disable their weapons. The final ability of the Sniper can either let 
them kill exposed aliens as a free action or take two shots at any enemy. The 
downside is that they lose accuracy at close ranges as the fact that they 
can't move and shoot in the first turn (without the appropriate skill). If 
converted to MEC trooper, they gain the special ability platform stability 
which gives +10 aim and +10 critical chance if they don't move before shooting.

 Support troopers carry only rifles but get decent Aim and can equip two 
accessories immediately as well as use accessories more than other classses. 
This means that this class is great you like using grenades (smoke or 
explosive) and thus this class is great for supporting offensive actions and 
keeping soldiers from dying if things don't go your way. The smoke grenade is 
exclusive to this class and they can be customized to provide smoke grenades 
that give an even greater defense bonus, revive soldiers, and use med-kits 
multiple times. Later tech upgrades can make this class even more useful. This 
class is capable of suppression. The downside of this class is that it relies 
only accuracy or overwatch fire to kill enemies having little to no offensive 
skills. If converted into a Mec trooper, the gain the special ability 
distortion field which gives all allies in cover +10 defense.

 MECs are mechanized troopers given power suits made from the special resource 
introduced in this expansion, Meld. The MEC itself has its own set of ability 
and Mec trooper can get his own abilities too. MEC's also carry guns that are 
stronger than any other weapon for their tier. The downside is that this 
requires you to permanently convert one of the above classes to make them 
eligible to pilot a MEC. In addition MEC troopers have their own aim stat 
growth system but it is only marginally better than Heavy's aim stat growth 
system. These means that if you want to have a good Sniper MEC trooper, you'll 
have to wait until your sniper becomes a colonel before you permanently turn 
them in a MEC. But that's where the problem arises, A colonel sniper has so 
many abilities and skills that there's no reason to turn them into a MEC 
because skills like 'in the zone' and 'double tap' aren't necessarily replaced 
by giving the sniper a strong weapon and making them a walking tank (and of 
course a MEC trooper without MEC can't fight). This means that MECs aren't 
just expensive in terms of meld and money but also the human resources 
department. For this reason I recommend using only squaddie Heavies as MEC 
pilots, this actually easy to do as the game automatically gives you classes 
that you have less of so if you remove heavies from the pool you have, then 
you'll get more rookies turning into heavies. You won't be able to use rocket 
launchers or heat ammo, but the high speed boost from the kinetic strike 
module should let them get close and thus be more accurate. The stat growth as 
MEC is better than the stat growth as Heavy so in regards to aim you're 
actually improving the character. A specific MEC build discussed in section 4 
is designed for maximum surivability and offensive power and it requires the 
Heavy class to be turned into MEC Trooper. 

S.H.I.V: SHIVs, standing for Super Heavy Infantry Vehicles, are mechanical 
units that require research and foundry projects to acquire and make useful. 
The first S.H.I.V isn't very useful and doesn't have great skills. The second 
S.H.I.V. available allows soldiers to take cover behind it but the vehicle 
itself isn't very impressive (though it has a 30 defense). The third S.H.I.V 
does not allow soldiers to hide behind but gets a ridiculous 40 defense and 
can fly thus giving it the ability to have 60 defense all the time. S.H.I.V's 
excel at simply outgunning and attacking the enemy head on. They can suppress 
enemies but it requires a foundry project to be purchased before they can do 
so.  The S.H.I.V can be considered the best unit (tied with colonels and MECs) 
in the game but the obvious drawback is that these units are expensive 
(costing over $100 not including materials like Elerium and alloys) and that 
they can glitch and lose their weapons (but this has been fixed on PC). 

A good squad is one that best fits your play style, there's no real right or 
wrong here as many players have been able to get some of the most absurd 
combos to work as a powerful squad. I have managed to get a squad of nothing 
but Heavies to work extremely well despite the fact that they have poor 
accuracy. Another player I know is fond of using only snipers and he managed 
to beat the game just fine using leap frog tactics. Unfortunately, the early 
game of X-com Enemy within can be random in regards to what you'll classes 
you'll have access to so you may have to occasionally have to use a class that 
doesn't fit what you want because all the soldiers you like are either dead or 
in the hospital. In section 3 I will talk about how to command forces properly 
in battle and section 4 I will elaborate on the stats of the classes listed 
above. Now that we understand the basics of unit classes and what classes we 
can hope to use its now time to look at what possibly is the hardest challenge 
of the game, managing panic.

******Section 2D The situation room****** (SMUY)

At the start of the game, the situation room is locked and doesn't do anything. 
In fact you can't access it. As soon as a UFO gets downed though (or a 
specific date passes and you haven't shot anything down) then you will finally 
get access to this room. This room keeps track of the panic of every nation in 
the game. This denoted by the bars located underneath the nation's name. Each 
nation is lumped together and by clicking on the nations name you can figure 
out which continent it is a-part of. Losing a nation is as simple as allowing 
the bars underneath it to fill up and then waiting to the end of the month. If 
the bar is full when the funding report is sent, then the nation will withdraw 
permanently. If 8 nations reach full panic and leave, the game is lost.

 What causes panic? Well that depends on your difficulty level, if you're 
playing on easy or normal then panic only increases by one bar in nation that 
experiences a successful alien mission (i.e you didn't help them when an 
abduction occured). The nasty part occurs if you're playing on classic or 
impossible in which case every other nation on that continent gets a panic 
boost too with the continent getting 1 bar on classic or two bars on 
impossible (this means that the target nation will get 2 bars of panic on 
classic or 4 bars of panic if ignored on impossible!). Given that up to 3 
continents can be the target of an abduction at the same time and you can only 
do one mission before the others are considered ignored, this means you have 
carefully pick what abduction missions you pick (and if on impossible 
difficulty, choose which continents you're fine with losing). In addition to 
abduction missions, losing satellites to UFO incursions will cause 2 bars of 
panic (but if you're following this guide then that will NEVER happen), 
letting a landed UFO leave will cause 2 bars of panic, letting a UFO do a fly 
by will cause 1 bar of panic and ignoring/failing a terror mission results in 
immediate withdrawal  of the target nation. 

How do you reduce panic? The biggest and easiest way is to use lots and lots 
of satellites. Putting a satellite over a country immediately lowers panic by 
2 bars and the longer that satellite stays over the country, the lower the 
panic will drop. To launch a satellite go to the situation room and click 
launch satellite at the top right, then click on the nation you wish to deploy 
it to (its best to use it only on nations about to leave) and then click 
launch satellite. If you have no intercepts stationed there you will be warned 
that the satellite is defenceless. Of course this means you should have a 
interceptor there so make sure to order one from the hanger menu when the game. 
Satellites can be shot down if a UFO does a successful fly by but interceptors 
with avalanche launchers (the basic missile you get at the start of the game) 
is more than capable of dealing with most UFOs (unless you run the game for 12 
months straight without bothering to research new fighter craft and even then 
you have to progress the story for stronger UFOs to show up). Of course 
massing satellites is difficult since you need uplinks to get satellites and 
to get uplinks you need engineers. To get engineers you can either wait till 
the end of the month and each nation with satellite coverage will give you 
engineers, build workshops to get 5 engineers or do abduction missions.

When an abduction mission occurs, you get to choose from 3 nations you wish to 
aid with the other 2 getting panic because you didn't help them. The key here 
is that each nation is bribing you with something you might want, one might 
give you a soldier of a specific class ranked major, another might give you 
$200. Unless a nation (or nations) is going to reach max panic (and you have 
no free or soon to be free satellites available), you generally can chose 
based on reward alone. Usually, there will be nation offering 5 engineers if 
you help them, you must absolutely pick this nation. Getting more engineers 
makes everything cost less and in addition allows you to get more satellite 
uplinks. More satellite uplinks means more satellite coverage and therefore 
more engineers and thus you're well on your way to getting even more coverage. 
Shooting down UFOs will also reduce panic in a nation as well as intercepting 
landed UFOs. 

The situation room will also inform you if there is a council mission (see 
section 3 for tips on how to do these missions) which come in forms of:
Bomb defusal: There are nodes on the map that your troops can trigger to 
increase the amount of time they have to find the big bomb. Finding the big 
bomb and triggering it will disarm it. Mission ends when all aliens are dead 
and big bomb is defused
Target extraction: There is an unarmed NPC on the map, upon approaching this 
NPC you are given control and aliens will drop down from nowhere and engage 
overwatch. Take out the aliens and bring NPC to the skyranger landing site.

Target Escort: Same as Target Extraction except NPC is already under your 
control and there are enemies already on the map. More enemies will drop as 
NPC gets close to the extraction zone.

Asset Recovery: Kill all aliens on the map. Some items (or in one case no 
items to worry about) are identified as important and blowing these up will 
fail the mission (you are usually warned when you are about to blow it up). 
Aliens do not attempt to destroy or steal the assets you are assigned to 
protect.

In addition there a special scripted missions, these will be discussed in 
Section 4.

*****Summary for section 2 (1S3D)*****

This is the strategy you should be using in order to beat X-com in an easy 
fashion:

- Build enough satellites to fill out your satellite uplinks as soon as 
possible, use the grey market to ufo power sources, ufo flight computers to 
fund the expansion of your base. You should start stockpiling ufo power 
sources and flight computers only when your troops have good guns, and your 
base is just about finished in terms of construction (fourth month). 

- Laboratories are useless, do not build them.

- Built the genetics lab if you want to further increase the abilities of your 
soldiers and spend less meld doing it or build the cybernetics lab for MECs, 
just be aware the MECs are more meld intensive than gene mods. It is not 
recommended for you to build both.

- Research should be offensive oriented because aliens don't get to shoot 
first in most circumstance and therefore your troops are much safer with 
better guns then they are with good armor. You may wish to use Carapace armor 
though.

	-Weapon fragments => Beam weapons => Lasers rifle (research heavy lasers 
for the laser machine gun and MEC railgun)

	-Alien materials => Carapace armor(4 hp) => skeleton suit (6 hp) 
(heavier armor becomes available when you've studied alien power cores and 
subsequently Elerium and the best armor requires you to progress the plot)

	-Research Xenobiology after you have good weapons and armor as capturing 
aliens alive progresses the plot and thus increases the difficulty. In 
addition, unless you like plasma pistols or light plasma rifles to the point 
of wasting good research time to unlock them you're better off waiting until 
Mutons show up

- Your squad can have whatever composition you like, but heavy troopers are 
very good for beginners and Heavy troopers also make the best MEC troopers.

- Take as many rookies as possible for your first missions as you want to get 
as many classes unlocked as possible. This way you can guess how many heavy 
troopers you have and whether or not the squad composition you had planned 
earlier will work. Most players have a dream team that fits their play style 
perfectly. Experiment with the soldiers and classes available and find what 
classes you like and what you don't like.

- Hover SHIVs are one of the best frontline combat units you can get unless 
they glitch

- You should do alien abduction missions that offer engineers as a reward 
since engineers are incredibly important in this game. Only do this if you're 
sure no nation will ditch the cause if you ignore them.

******Section 3 Tactical combat ****** (BLAT)

*This section will state basic tactics you can employ to kill aliens and Exalt 
soldiers. Spoiler information and unit stats can be found in Section 4*
(A1) The controls and basics (Section 3 will conclude the section of the FAQ 
that does not contain spoiler information about the contents of the game. 
Though it should be noted that most aliens that are present in the game have 
been publically revealed)
*I'm going to assume you know how to use the camera... if not then scroll by 
moving mouse to sides of screen. Zoom in and out by sliding the middle mouse 
button up or down. Different levels of zoom may be necessary to tell the game 
exactly which tile the you're trying to move to. Use the rotation buttons on 
the bottom left to rotate the screen. *

*****Unit health and movement***** (HPMV)

Assuming you skipped the tutorial like I asked you to (because it really sucks 
to have 3 soldiers dead just to explain a basic concept) know that every 
soldier regardless of class has Hp and two actions per turn. The small 
numerous rectangular bars represent soldier Hp while the large pair or 
rectangular bars represent the number of actions the soldier can take. When Hp 
bars are depleted, the unit dies (or gets critically injured, critically 
injured units, receive a permanent will penalty when they return to base). The 
larger rectangular bars represent the units available actions and generally 
denote the number of times the unit can move per turn (its always two). Note 
that the use of abilities (unless the ability says it won't end the units 
turn) will end the units turn regardless of how many action bars are available. 
A soldier can either move twice, move once and use an ability/shot (unless 
sniper without relevant skill) or perform one ability/shot. Some classes with 
specific abilities (the heavy class) can shoot twice a turn while others can 
move twice and shoot (the assault class). Overwatch and hunker are abilities 
that most classes have and using these also ends the movement for that turn. 
When a unit is capable of movement (i.e not unconsious, out of movement, 
panicked) the ground will have a colored transparent layer over it. There two 
distinct colors, blue and yellow, blue indicates that moving to an area within 
the field will use up one bar and thus allow for further movement or the use 
of an ability. Yellow indicates that the field will use up two bars of action 
and thus end the units turn. Moving in the yellow portion as a first move is 
known as dashing and is only useful for making overwatch weaker. Note that 
movement any amount of space regardless of how short will use up a bar of 
action so making a soldier take one step twice consecutively in a manner 
similar to what you would do in X-com: UFO defense will end the units turn 
(don't let complacent gaming syndrome get the better of you!). If you hold 
down the left mouse button a grid will appear showing you how many tile's you 
are moving. In addition, holding the cursor over any given area will produce a 
line of movement displaying the path that the soldier will move (this is 
important as soldiers always go the shortest route... even into fires and 
poison gas). Moving also allows you to reach cover and take cover.

********Half and full Cover and hunker***** (COHU)

There are two kinds of cover: half cover which gives 20 defense, and full 
cover which gives 40 defense. When you click on a soldier (or the game selects 
one for you) you will see little blue shield icon will show up depending on 
whether is cursor is need a waist or person sized object. If the shield is 
half full, then telling the soldier to move to that spot will give half cover 
in the direction of that shield. If the Shield is fully colored, then telling 
the soldier to move to that spot will give the soldier full cover in the 
direction of that shield. The direction of shield is very important, and 
assuming you know the basics of firearms and fights with guns, a wall that 
gives full cover to the north isn't useful if you are getting shot at from the 
south. A soldier can be positioned so that he has cover from multiple 
directions but the soldier will only receive the defense bonus of the side he 
is being attacked from. You can tell which direction the shield gives cover to 
using logic (i.e if my soldier moves up to the south side of the car, s/he 
will be protected from attacks from the north) or checking which direction the 
shield leans to relative to the center of your cursor. A soldier must be next 
to a piece of cover to receive its bonus as intervene objects do not add to 
the soldiers defensive bonus. This means that aliens can happily shoot through 
6 solid walls of subway car and kill your soldier who is standing out in the 
open. Unless the alien cannot get line of sight and thus line of fire on your 
soldier, there is no benefit to positioning large objects between your 
soldiers. They must be next to the object to receive its cover bonus. In 
addition, if the unit still has actions left when they're in cover you are 
given the option of using the hunker down ability. Using hunker down ends the 
units turn and reduces the units sight but gives the unit double its cover 
bonus and immunity to critical. 

Now assuming there is an enemy in plain sight, and you want  to keep your 
soldier alive. If you move your cursor to a piece of cover that is not facing 
the direction of the enemy, then the shield icon will be red indicating that 
moving soldier here will cause them to be 'flanked'. A flanking bonus is 
awarded to the attacker when the attacker is positioned in such a way that 
they have a direct firing solution to their target. To figure out if this is 
the case, get a bird's eye view and draw a straight line from the target to 
the shooter. If the line does not cross through the object(s) of which the 
target is getting a  cover bonus from then target is considered flanked and a 
bonus to critical hit chance and chance to hit is issued. When a soldier 
shoots from high cover they briefly side step (people can't shoot through 
walls!), so when considering whether a unit is flanked when the attacker is in 
high cover consider the attacker to the left and the right of his position. 
Remember that height is not a factor in whether cover is considered 'flanked' 
as you can have a soldier standing over the ledge at which an alien is hiding 
behind and the alien will still be considered in cover. X-com Agents have 
trouble shooting downwards for some reason. And that's how the cover system 
works, there's not much else to the system other than reminding yourself that 
soldiers need to lean on objects to get cover bonuses and that intervening 
objects that aren't being leaned on apparently don't get in the way of bullets.

Next on the list is actually shooting things. When you encounter enemies 
little alien heads will show up at the bottom right of the screen. These heads 
represent the aliens that the soldier can see and shoot. Heads that are red 
are ones that are in cover, heads that yellow are aliens that have been 
flanked. Clicking on the heads cause the screen to move to the alien that the 
head represents. If your soldier is a sniper, additional icons ,may appear 
around the alien head like a crosshair. When you select the shooting icon (you 
can click or press the number button written underneath, usually the number 1) 
your soldier will enter shooting mode and you will see percent chance to hit a 
given target and the chance that hit will be a critical. The chance to hit the 
target is based on range (with all guns except sniper rifles getting bonuses 
are close range) and the attackers Aim stat. If you click the more info button 
you'll see a complete breakdown of the factors affecting the shot as well as 
the targets stats if the target's class has been autopsied prior to the 
current mission. You can change the target (if possible) by pressing the arrow 
keys or clicking on other alien heads. You can then tell your soldier to fire 
by clicking the fire button (or by pressing the button 1 again) or you can 
cancel by pressing escape or clicking the cancel button. 
Using offensive abilities or accessories (grenades) is generally self 
explanatory. Throwing a grenade, using flush or firing a rocket will end the 
units actions for that turn (unless the ability specifically states that it 
will not). To use an area of effect ability like grenades,  click the ability 
icon and then select the are at which you wish to deploy the ability. The game 
will show what areas and objects will be effected by covering the effect 
targets with a red filter with ability itself being represented as a bubble. 
You can change the height of the bubble using the middle mouse button (useful 
for firing rockets over enemies or at flying enemies). If friendly fire is 
detected (caution! sometimes it won't!), the bubble will turn yellow and you 
will be asked to confirm the attack if an ally or critical object is in area 
of effect. Some area of effect abilities like restorative mist or death-
blossom activate around the unit using that ability but the game display the 
radius of the ability before you use it.

Overwatch is an ability that all classes have access to. To use overwatch 
simply select the unit and then select and confirm the overwatch command. When 
a unit is in overwatch, they are capable of firing at enemy's who attempt to 
move in their line of sight. Excluding a console only glitch involving a late 
game heavy tank, overwatch may only occur once per turn from the unit on 
overwatch. Thus if the unit on overwatch fires at one enemy it can't fire at 
anymore for the rest of turn. Thus overwatch has no priorities aside from 
shoot the first enemy who moves and so you (or the aliens/Exalt) can easily 
have a guy shoot at a fast drone instead of the giant hulking monstrosity that 
walks right in front him shortly after the drone shows up. There is an aim 
penalty for shooting enemies using overwatch. Enemies receiving overwatch fire 
are counted as being in half cover (as in they have 20 defence in addition to 
any defence they already have). Not only that but enemies who don't move but 
can shoot can do so without overwatch triggering at all (There are two 
abilities which cause enemies who fire to take overwatch fire). Thus its still 
better to flank enemies and use overwatch only when you can't get a good shot 
or to prevent the enemy from flanking you. Overwatch does use slightly less 
ammo then an actual attack despite doing the same damage. Keep this in mind. 
Should the enemy dash through your overwatch, the enemy is considered to be in 
high cover (40 defense) and thus even harder to hit. Of course dashing to 
dodge overwatch still ends the units turn so its a win-win in this situation.
Last but not least, there's the squad activation system. Though this is not 
the official name for the system, its a fairly accurate name. In UFO defense 
and other X-com games, levels can be tense because the aliens are always on 
the move and screwing around can result in them surrounding your start 
location and forming a concentrated defense bubble which you could never 
breach without severe effort and luck. In Xcom Enemy within... aliens (and 
Exalt) spend their time picking their noses, occasionally making a few steps 
in a general direction and only really get their act together when they see 
your guys coming at them. All Alien and (Exalt squads) start inactive even on 
terror missions. You can tell that alien/Exalt squad is activated when the 
game's camera focuses on them (a repetitive cutscene MAY occur BUT IT DOESN'T 
HAVE TO) and then the aliens/Exalt will get two free moves (or go on overwatch 
if taking cover is impossible for that unit). Enemies who drop in will also 
have the camera focus on them and they will usually go on overwatch 
immediately; Enemies who have dropped in are considered active. Note that the 
free moves that the enemy gets when activated can trigger overwatch and they 
still get 2 free moves even if they moved in and spotted your squad during 
their turn. Likewise enemies who drop-in almost always activate overwatch and 
after activating overwatch any of your units on overwatch will then proceed to 
shoot them if possible. 

The good news with this system is that it means that there's no real pressure 
for you the player to blitz through maps especially since the action point 
system is too restrictive on the number of times you can fire and move (in UFO 
defense a good player will generally have his elite soldiers killing 2-3 
aliens a turn). If the aliens were organized then you'd be screwed! Good luck 
beating 18 enemies at once! In addition it's made so that the aliens never get 
to shoot first (unlike UFO defense where plenty of soldiers would get plasma 
to the face before seeing anything). Thus by moving your squad carefully so 
that they advance but still have action bars left over, you can kill aliens 
squads before they even get a chance to shoot. Unfortunately this penalizes 
gamers who like advance quickly through a map (i.e the gamers who want to save 
as many civilians as possible in a terror mission) and screws over the assault 
class because they have to approach enemies and the map you reveal the more 
likely you are to spot an enemy squad (and thus activate them). In addition, 
the game doesn't seem to do a good job choosing where the enemy actually is 
and I often find that the enemy spawn locations seem to operate on a 
probability equation as opposed to being a actual set locations determined in 
advance. 

******Moving out and recon***** (LQQK)

When you first enter the tactical map quick save by pressing F10 Take a quick 
look around to see how large the map is. The larger it is, the less danger you 
have of triggering 2 or more alien squads and having to fight them in a battle 
of attrition. Small maps are generally the deadliest and it is for this reason 
that bomb defusal missions can be the deadliest missions in the game. You 
generally want to advance every turn especially now that all missions save for 
Terror, Council and Exalt missions will have Meld present on them. You want to 
keep your squad close (but not bundled up) and move from cover to cover. It is 
a good idea to not dash through the level and to avoid making soldiers use up 
both their actions for movement as this means that an alien squad can be 
spotted and you do not wish to spot aliens without actions available. You will 
on most occasions want your squad facing the direction they are advancing 
(aliens will never attack from the rear unless you activated them earlier and 
then let them run away). The tactical combat difficulty of Xcom enemy within 
generally consists of how unlucky you are with your map wide search. Running 
into a single squad at once and having short periods to reload and regroup is 
ideal. Running into 3 squads at once generally calls for liberal application 
of grenades, rockets or the loading of a save file. I am assuming that you 
have not selected Ironman mode and are planning to reload your game whenever a 
soldier is killed. This guide is made to minimize the amount of times you'll 
have to reload a game because a useful soldier was killed. Some players are 
okay with letting soldiers die and I too am okay with that but you will 
maximize your odds of winning the game if you reload when soldiers die. 
Walkthroughs and FAQs are made to inform players of method they can use to 
increase their chances of winning the game. If you're reading an 
FAQ/Walkthrough, it's because you want to know how the play the game better 
and most definitions of playing the game better involve the words 'winning the 
game'. There's not much shame in reloading the game when things go massive bad. 
Some unseen alien squads have tendency to teleport into sight range meaning 
that if you reload the game, there's a chance that scouting place they used to 
be at will show that somehow they're no longer there. I don't know if this is 
glitch or not but it can be frustrating to have happen to you. Quicksave early 
and often when scouting and turn on autosave if you don't mind having a few 
extra saves around.

As mentioned near the end of section 2, a spotted enemy squad will activate 
and then proceed to move to cover (or move near your soldiers, if the AI 
detects that you can't fight back). There are instances in which enemy squads 
will not activate when spotted; this tends to occur when the aliens are just 
outside of visual range (there's another guaranteed method to ensure enemy 
squads do not activate when spotted but that involves a late-game ability that 
can be considered spoiler material *section 4*). There is one rare occasion 
involving a certain DLC mission where a Cyberdisk is pre-activated and will 
shoot on the turn you first see it (see section 5 if you're okay with 
spoilers). 
The squad activation system essentially gives you the advantage of shooting 
first (unless you did something stupid like have your squad dash for an entire 
turn). While the enemy does get to take cover, there's nothing stopping you 
from destroying the cover the aliens hid behind with rockets and grenades, 
flanking them, sniping them dead (most snipers can shoot through half cover 
with ease), or moving your own soldiers to better positions. In addition, the 
AI isn't exactly the smartest bulb when it comes to these two free moves (to 
be fair, imagine if you were the aliens and hostile force that killed everyone 
before it is now right in your face, would you do something smart? Note: you 
may be a slave to an alien overmind) doing wonderful like running into xcom 
soldier's faces when they still have moves left, bunching up when you've 
already established you like exploding things, or taking cover in manner that 
already makes them flanked or in a position that makes them really easy to 
flank. On one occasion I had a Beserker who couldn't climb the stairs.

So once you've taken a good look at the size of the map, consider what kind of 
map it is (i.e what is setting, which buildings appear to be accessible and 
useful for cover?) and which area you would like to be in when firefight 
occurs. For example of the map consists of a large building, do you want skim 
the outside of that building or be inside it? Another example, a trainyard, 
two trains, which train do you want to explore the length of? There's no right 
or wrong answer (except on ironman impossible difficulty, everything a wrong 
answer) and in either case you 1. Choosing a direction to explore and 2. 
Choosing which side of the map you will explore. This limits the chances of 
fighting multiple enemy squads and increases the likely hood all your units 
will be ready to fire when they do encounter an enemy group. By doing this you 
have already taken one step towards ensuring that you won't get casualties 
during the mission and have guaranteed that losing Meld will be a rare 
occurrence. 

If you do find that you having trouble finding and aquiring meld remember that 
meld is timed based on its distance from your starting position. It is even 
possible to see a meld container through the black of the fog of war. Just 
look for the spinning motion of the meld container. Meld is generally located 
in hotspots of the map anyway and its rare for meld to be a relatively boring 
area of the map and even rarer for it to be in a corner. Later on there will 
be plenty of opportunities to get meld by killing enemies so don't worry too 
hard about getting meld containers.

When exploring the map, move as a group, I can't stress this enough especially 
when you are underpowered and have a small squad. Every soldier should move to 
a location where he is in-cover and can support his comrades. In addition you 
should ideally end each soldiers turn with overwatch or you're fine with 
fighting the interface, move each soldier in the group once leaving each with 
a free action point (this free action point allows you to either move again or 
start shooting when you bump into enemies). If you are having trouble finding 
enough good cover for your soldiers then either the map sucks or its time to 
include supports with smoke grenades or some SHIVs and MECs. I heavily 
recommend against dashing as its only really useful against overwatch. You may 
be motivated to move quickly to get meld, but if you so willing to risk 
personnel to get meld then you should spend the 40 meld you got from meld 
recombination (and any additional meld you probably already have) to just 
build a full squad of MECs so your entire squad can move 12 spaces a turn 
without compromising their own security. Tier 1 MECS don't have the health or 
abilities of tier 2 and 3 MECS but they have the same speed and gun that they 
do. A tier 3 MEC has more health and some extra accessories but it can only 
dish out so much damage a turn. You could have spend the 160 meld you used to 
get that tier 3 MEC to outfit 4 more MECs that makes meld gathering even safer. 
If you're not rushing for MECs, then you don't need to worry too hard about 
getting meld. Genemods are just passive benefits that you can easily do 
without and there will always be plenty more occasions to get meld. Focus on 
killing the enemy and you'll find that getting meld is really only a secondary 
objective.

*****Fighting the bad guys**** (IKIU)

When you encounter the enemy and active them, you should strive to do as much 
damage as possible. Alien equipment always breaks when they die and weapon 
fragments are only lost when an explosion is the direct cause of death. Use 
grenades and rockets to soften enemies so you can finish them off with basic 
fire (only applies when the enemy won't die in one shot). If you find that you 
can't finish off the enemy when you spotted them (i.e they ran away or found 
too much full cover to hide behind) then move your squad to good cover and use 
suppression or smoke grenade abilities to reduce the chance that aliens can 
hurt you. These are non-spoiler tips as to how to deal with certain enemy 
squads (these are guys that have been in the series for a long while now. They 
should show up within two hours of gameplay. They also had heavy focus in 
promotional material for the game). Spoiler heavy tips can be found in section 
4.

Sectoids: unless you are playing on impossible, sectoids should be easy to 
hand and can be killed in one hit. If playing on impossible, use grenades to 
soften them up before killing them with bullets. Sectoids can perform mind 
merges with each other (they apparently can do this to other units but that 
tends to only happen in multiplayer) and if they use this ability the unit 
will be seen forming a blue aura link with the aura clearly flowing in the 
direction of the receiving unit. The receiving unit gets 1 extra hp, 25 extra 
will, and a greater chance to critical hit. Killing the unit that us casting 
the mind merge will result in both the receiving and the casting unit dying. 
Kill the casting unit only when convenient because its not worth sending 
soldiers in to hazardous positions just because one unit has extra Hp.

Mechtoids: When Mechtoid squad is spotted, you'll see sectoids (usually 2) and 
a giant bipedal mech with large gun arms known as the Mectoid. The mectoid 
will go on overwatch as soon as its sighted while the sectoids will general 
run around. This unit is one of the hardest units to fight early game because 
it does 9 damage on classic (11 on impossible, 7 on normal, 6 on easy) and 
gets to shoot twice (it will generally distribute the pain when possible but 
don't rely on this!). This unit is also one of the first to have a defence 
bonus attached to it. The key here is that by time you will fight this unit, 
you should have either lasers, MEC(s) and soldier classes available (the time 
for rookies should be over). Assuming you have this, it shouldn't be too much 
trouble to shoot the mechtoid dead as soon as you see it (two hits from a tier 
2 Mech weapon should kill a mechtoid. The tough part however is that the game 
loves spamming these guys (I had a mission on large scout UFO that had 6 
mectoid squads... but my 5 MECs and one heavy had no problems) and should you 
fail to kill the mechtoid on its first turn the sectoids accompanying it will 
mind merge with it giving it +6 hp and a shield that reduces damage to it by 
half. Unlike mind merged sectoids, killing the mind merged unit only damages 
the mechtoid by 3 points (it has 22 hp on classic!) and thus its imperative 
that don't let this happen since the shield merge gives the mechtoid even more 
time to shoot at your troops.  No other tips for this unit other than to use 
full cover as much as possible and to have your squad focus fire on the unit. 
If this unit really gives you trouble, consider having more heavies with the 
'heat ammo' upgrade or field more MECs (and give these MECs tier two weapons)

Seekers: Seekers are flying octopuses that cloak when spotted and then proceed 
to move next to soldiers, decloak and attempt to strangle them. There is 
generally a one turn delay between strangling attempts (i.e the seekers come 
in pairs but they don't attacking at the same time). A unit that gets 
strangled will lose 2 health per turn with additional hp lost for the number 
of turns they've spent strangled. When freed, a unit will be 'short of breath' 
and suffer 75% move penalty and 50% penalty to Aim (but not rocket aim for 
some reason). Seekers are not very deadly unless you've got heavily wounded 
soldiers or you've made everyone immune to strangling. If everyone is somehow 
immune to strangling then the seekers will go nuts and start shooting plasma 
bolts all over the place. These bolts aren't very powerful (3 damage) but you 
need to remember that these guys cloak when spotted and thus that a guaranteed 
point blank plasma shot. While you can't see the cloaked seekers, your 
soldiers can still bump into them (this will not decloak them however) and 
area of effect lockons still occur. Hitting them with a grenade while cloaked 
causes them to decloak and damages them. Getting a unit strangled only does 2 
damage and thus if you aren't fighting another squad you can either have the 
entire squad go on overwatch while near each other or simply shoot the seeker 
when it is strangling someone. Careful though as getting strangled always 
results in 2 damage the instant it occurs so if your wounded soldier has 2 hp 
and a seeker makes him the target then he'll be instantly killed. I don't see 
Seekers as a major threat, I only see them as another excuse to get carapace 
armor early.

Thin Men: I really really really hate these guys. The problem with Thin Men is 
that they're really strong in terms of stats for how early they come in the 
game. Thin men on classic already have a base accuracy of 75 (they fortunately 
do not get buffed on impossible, they just get more health...) and have a 
light plasma rifle that gives them +10 aim. They are one of the few enemies in 
the game that use light plasma rifles exclusively and thus its not rare for 
these bastard to kill a guy in high cover (45% chance to hit is bad) and to 
make things really annoying, thin men tend to appear in crowded small maps. 
What makes thin men difficult is that they tend to run away and jump to roofs 
when encountered. Should you chase them down, you'll probably activate yet 
another squad of thin men because the map is so cramped. Only laser weapons 
can kill a Thin Men in one shot and at this point in the game you probably 
only have 4 guys with average accuracy trying to shoot enemies who ran far 
away (range penalty), jumped to a high ledge and are hiding behind cover 
(cover penalty) giving you a wonderful chance to hit of 0 to 20%. MECs have 
low defense while Thin man have a fairly high damaging weapon and ridiculous 
critical hit chances, so its entirely possible to lose a mighty MEC to these 
guys. Since the Thin man has easy access to high ground, he gets a 20 bonus to 
aim from elevation bringing his aim to 105 the kind of aim only colonel 
snipers get! If thin man feels he can't hit your guy, he can always just use 
an insta-hit poison which reduces the aim of the victim and 3 hp over several 
turns. The best strategy to fight thin men is to have snipers with opportunist 
go on overwatch so that those thin men will get shot running for cover when 
you activate them. Snipers with squad sight can also provide excellent fire 
support for killing entrenched thin men. Mecs with jump jet boots can get good 
vantage points and their high movement can let them move closer to thin men 
(but not too close) in order to kill them. Supports can save the squads bacon 
with smoke grenades. Heavies can always resort to just plain blowing them up 
(soldiers are always more important than weapon fragments). Assaults are 
unfortunately useless here as thin men have high movement prevent Assaults 
catching up and you definitely don't want your assault charging and activating 
another thin man squad. Strategically you should be planning to have a 6 man 
squad when Thin men arrive.

Mutons: The only tough about these guys is that they have a high health and 
(mid game) the best assault rifle in the game. Once they get the best assault 
rifle in the game, they then get the best offensive grenade in the game and 
they will use it liberally. Mutons have above average accuracy (80 on classic 
or impossible, 70 on normal or easy). When hit and not killed the Muton will 
thump its chest, scaring soldiers with low will (this is why you buy the 'lead 
by example' upgrade from the officer training school as soon as possible. With 
the introduction of MECs (and their wonderful tier 2 weapon) mutons tend not 
to live very long. They show up in groups of 3, when your squad should 
definitely have 6 guys in it, have relatively low movement speed (slightly 
less than average xcom human infantry) and are merely fodder to MEC punches 
and Railguns. Strangely, the AI for Mutons can be somewhat dumb, making Mutons 
retreat even though they can't move very far or outrun mecs (and not using 
cover as they retreat) other times Mutons are content with not using cover at 
all! Mutons can be dangerous opponents if you let them live but their poor 
mobility (I've noticed they can only move 6 tiles at most per action bar) 
prevents them from being a major threat unless you forgot to take good 
cover/let them get the good cover (and didn't blow them up because they got 
lucky). Hilariously enough, their macho attitude and slow and steady movement 
is their biggest weakness as encounters with mutons will usually result in 
them not taking good cover because their too slow and intimidate only really 
works on rookies. As long as you concentrate fire to cause causalities and 
blow up cover when it proves a hindrance you shouldn't have trouble with 
mutons. Remember that mutons move slow and have the same range as rifle men 
thus you do have the option of running away yourself and setting up an ambush 
(assuming you don't care about the meld or meld isn't on the map/you already 
got the meld). All in all, mutons are hard if you forgot to bring lasers or 
MECs, and are easy because they're stupid. The stupidity that Mutons exhibit 
is only slightly balanced by the fact that they have 10 defense (in addition 
to cover bonuses).

Beserkers (with his escort): Beserkers are great compliments for mutons simply 
because the Beserker is a damage sponge and an  excellent distraction for the 
low speed of its escort mutons. The Beserker does melee damage of 10 (he never 
misses) and can use his bull rush skill to body slam a soldier. The beserker 
also has 20 defense which means that he is always in half-cover for the 
purposes of shooting. Overwatch isn't particular effective since that means 
you are getting a 40 aim penalty to shoot. The weakness of the Beserker is 
that its even dumber than the mutons and has a built in quirk in that if its 
hit it will move towards the unit that hit it (also uses intimidate). The 
introduction of MECs makes this unit almost a joke. Simply shoot the unit with 
other units and get him to move close (remember that explosives will also 
trigger his movement so feel free to rocket the entire enemy squad) within 
punching range of the MEC (i.e the range at which the mec can spend one action 
bar on moving and the second on punching). The tough part about berserkers is 
that it takes 3 men out of your squad to kill one (excluding the use of plasma 
weapons or Heavies and MECs with their shoot twice skill). If you find that 
you can't kill the Beserker and a soldier is in danger (and s/he is the only 
one in danger) of being killed simply have the soldier dash at max movement. 
This works simply because the berserker can only move 9 tiles before he loses 
his ability to attack (beware of bullrush though but the range of bullrush is 
short and its rarely used). Because its movement is only marginally better 
than Xcom soldiers (the support with sprinter can officially move faster than 
the beserker) MECs and SHIVs and run rings around the Beserker without fear. 
Beserkers also can't climb high ledges (i.e building walls) and thus must use 
pipes and hover elevators like everyone else. Blocking these off will prevent 
the Beserker from ever being a threat and thus allows you to focus on killing 
the mutons. While the Beserker is deadly when ignored, its the mutons that are 
probably the dangerous one's here as they can lock down the human elements of 
the squad with suppression and they get free shots in while your busy dealing 
with the berserker.
 
Boss (energy dude): There's no alien called bosses in the game and they're 
aren't called that in actual game but its pretty clear who these guys are 
supposed to be. At every ufo crash landing site, there will be only one boss 
squad. The boss squad may have an escort or if the game has been going on long 
enough, the boss may even be duplicated. The only way to change the boss unit 
is to advance the storyline. The first boss you'll meet is one that 
materializes when you see him. This guy will be called the energy alien for 
the purposes of avoiding spoilers. He is the only boss in the game with a 
decent gun, carrying the light plasma rifle and on classic and impossible he 
has 5 hp (3 on normal or easy). When met alone, he's fairly weak and you can 
easily kill him with rifles and rockets. The only dangerous part is if you let 
him live in which case you will find that his 80 base aim + the +10 aim bonus 
from the light plasma rifle will quickly kill one your rookies. On impossible 
the energy alien has increased ability to move.

Boss (orange head): you can see this guy in the tutorial. Anything more would 
be a spoiler see section 4 if you're okay with that

Boss (Robed dude): A classic badguy from UFO defense. Anything more would be a 
spoiler. See section 4

Everyone else: See section 4, spoilers abound! 

****Combat and general tactics**** (SDKT)

Well you've spotted an enemy and they've taken cover. Now comes the part where 
you try and do as much damage as possible. If you moved some soldiers and 
ended their turn with overwatch (as I said to earlier in this section) and the 
enemy squad activated on another person's move, odds are one enemy is likely 
dead or wounded. You should then take whatever soldiers you have left with 
free actions and either take a shot at the enemy or use explosives to dislodge 
them from cover. Unfortunately the circumstance in which you encountered the 
enemy can make combat ever so much more painful for your soldiers. If you 
encountered the enemy after your entire squad had just dashed then you're 
clearly screwed (this is why you don't dash, dashing is for overwatch fire or 
for snipers to meet up with the team). On the other hand if the enemy squad 
walks in on their turn, activates and your entire squad is on overwatch then 
you're in a very good situation. 

Fortunately you can generally control the advantage that your squad will have. 
This is the manner at which you choose to move your squad across the map has 
so much importance. As a general rule you should explore and take high ground 
first as this gives you accuracy bonuses. In urban settings this will usually 
mean buildings and in forest settings, this usually means hills. Hills in Xcom 
enemy unknown are for some reason square shaped and thus if the enemy at the 
top of the hill you can screw them over by taking the high cover at the bottom 
of the hill. If the enemy isn't at the top of the hill then you've got a great 
vantage and spring board for attacks. Likewise for buildings, if enemies are 
on the top, there's usually air conditioners that act as high cover; if no 
enemies at the top then you easily scout most of the map from the high ground.

Actual combat involving shooting and flanking is fairly simplistic. Shoot from 
high cover when possible and walk around the enemies cover when you ever you 
can. Turn on Aiming angles second wave mod if you're having too much trouble 
with the games draconian definition of flanked and not flanked. The beginning 
of this section described flanking and shoot mechanics in depth so there's no 
reason for me to repeat this especially since there really is little that you 
can do about soldiers with poor aim or the Random number god being a jerk and 
making all your shots miss. Aside from moving soldiers to high ground, giving 
them s.c.o.p.e.s, using explosives on the target or its cover or moving 
soldiers closer for range bonuses (Snipers can only get penalty so don't move 
them close), there really isn't any way to increase the chance you have of 
hitting an enemy. There's a reason why there's a quick save button and why the 
Heavy is a good all round class. Remember that explosives and already 
manufactured items have unlimited usages. That alien grenade you managed to 
salvage will not be lost if you use it during a mission. The only way to lose 
equipment is to have your soldier die with total loss mod enabled. There is no 
reason to be frugal with ammo and explosives, if anything you should liberally 
apply them, especially on troublesome enemies. You want to kill enemies before 
they get a chance to attack and so its absolutely okay to lose a few weapon 
fragments here and there because you blew up a group of thin men with a rocket 
or two.

Lastly there's suppression mechanic, Supports and Heavies (as well as SHIVs 
with the suppression upgrade) can use the suppression ability on any enemy 
within range. A suppressed enemy who moves gets a free overwatch shot from the 
suppressing unit. An enemy who doesn't move and tries to take a shot will have 
a 30 aim penalty to that shot. Suppression is only useful when you want to 
prevent an enemy from hurting any of your units (and all of your units are in 
cover) or when you want to capture an alien alive and thus don't want that 
dumb boss alien to run away. Suppression takes a lot of ammo out of the unit 
using it generally forcing Heavies to have to reload after a single 
suppression use but the effects of suppression can easily help you survive 
situations where your entire squad was unable to kill one or two enemy units 
and thus you suppress them so they aren't able to do anything during their 
turn (and since the aliens aren't organized and rarely call for help...). If 
you can't kill the enemy on the turn you spotted them, suppress them, it'll go 
a good way to ensuring that they don't do damage. Just keep in mind that the 
thin man poison gas ability isn't stopped by suppression nor are grenades or 
rocket attacks. Likewise if the enemy has a high aim stat and there's an easy 
target for them to shoot, suppression will generally not be helpful.

****Alien Landings, Alien Crash sites and the dreaded terror mission****(WOPR)
Alien landings can only occur in countries you have satellite coverage in. 
Just like the original game UFO defense, Countries you're not watching will 
not penalize you for alien operations. Once you do have a satelite up though, 
UFOs will be spotted and ignoring flying UFOs or landed UFOs will result in a 
panic increase (2 for landed UFO and 1 for fly-by UFO). Flying UFOs must be 
shot down to create a Crash Site tactical mission while landed UFOs 
automatically result in tactical mission. Apparently crashed UFOs lose squads 
and have less enemies but I haven't really noticed or seen dead alien bodies 
lying around. Crashed UFOs may have damaged power cores or flight computers 
but if they're not damaged then you can sell them for even more money. 

Alien Landings and Crash Landings both feature Meld and both have roughly the 
same strategy to beat (i.e the one outlined in the previous sub section, move 
at a steady pace and kill things before they shoot back). Meld containers can 
be placed in the UFO or even on the roof of the UFO so keep that in mind. Last 
but not least, all UFOs have a boss character in them, the so called leader of 
the aliens (or at least that UFO). For the first few months, I advised that 
you skip xeno biology to get better guns and armor, and thus the boss 
character will stay the same and remain a relatively easy to kill alien. When 
you do progress the story however, expect to fight boss characters who 
literally require the entire squad to focus fire in order to kill. Some of the 
bosses have abilities that if allowed to use, will guarantee someone is going 
to the hospital. That said, they shouldn't a be a problem if you take the time 
and effort to ensure you engage the leader bosses alone and with good 
equipment.

Alien Terror Missions: The premise is that there are 15 people scattered 
around the map who can be rescued if an xcom soldier (or machine) moves within 
the rescue radius of the civilian. Each civilian saved goes on the score board. 
Meanwhile the Aliens will be playing for keeps to and shooting civilians to 
score points on their end. I never really understood why people view these 
missions as extremely tense. Maybe its because there are 15 innocent people on 
the map who behave as dumb bricks who happily stand still while aliens walk up 
to them and shoot them in the face? How difficult you find Alien Terror 
Missions depends on how much of a optimistic and empathic commander you are. 
If you're like me and just don't care about non-living pieces of human trash 
too dumb to run from giant killing machines then you'll do just fine as you 
won't make changes to your tactics and thus advance steady and kill squads 
before they fire back. If you do like saving these dumb bricks of flesh, then 
you'll be in for a hard time. Civilians often take cover in the dumbest of 
places and its rare for you to be able to move a soldier to rescue a civilian 
and shoot aliens at the same time. If you are having trouble with terror 
missions and by this I mean getting your squad through the mission in one 
piece, then you need to put more emphasis on killing the aliens and advancing 
steadily in a single direction. I've seen too many optimistic commanders split 
their squads in an attempt to rescue as many of the 15 Darwin award recipients 
as possible. DON'T DO THAT. Avoid fanning out as that increases the likelihood 
of getting more aliens squads activated. Forming a concentrated spearhead 
let's you focus fire on the alien threat and you should strive to fight the 
aliens while civilians are still around (aka advance steady and as group). If 
you advance too slow, a lot of civilians are going to die and you'll have 
nothing to show for it. Likewise civilians who haven't been rescued will often 
be shot instead of your own soldiers. 

Thus the key to beating terror missions is to jeopardize civilian lives as 
much as possible (yup you heard that right!). Rescue only one civilian (the 
bare minimum to have a panic reduction) and then group advance in the 
direction of your choice. Fight the enemy squads one by one and don't worry 
about the civilians even when they are in the crossfire (feel free to blow 
them up with rockets when you have to!). By focusing on minimizing the amount 
of time the aliens spend alive, you will manage to save more lives while 
reducing the risk posed to your squad. Its a win win for everyone... except 
for the civilians blown up in the crossfire. 

****Council missions (generic variants)**** (TLMN)
Every now and then after the situation room is unlocked, you will receive a 
message from the council you are forced to take. Ignoring bomb disposal and 
other missions typically results in a lower rating on the council report but 
no increase in panic(the continent the country takes place on). However, 
ignoring DLC council missions will result in the entire DLC campaign not 
taking place and given that these missions can be very mission and highly 
rewarding (on classic or below, on impossible you might have trouble with thin 
men) you should be careful when ignoring missions named "Friends in low 
places" and "progeny". You can safely ignore later missions of the slingshot 
DLC and Progeny DLC (except for the mission named gangplank). These missions 
will not be covered in depth because it would be a spoiler however the names 
of the missions will be given.

Missions denoted as *can't skip* are missions you can't skip or they will 
never appear again and the mission chain will lock.
Slingshot DLC: Friends in low places (can't skip), Confounding light, 
Completing confounding light causes Gangplank to occur shortly after (can't 
skip gangplank)

Progeny: Progeny (can't skip), The other two missions, deluge and furies can 
be skipped but only show up after the story has been progressed.

Bomb disposal- Oh boy, these are the hard ones. You start off on one of 5 maps 
(a trainyard, a train station, a graveyard, a butcher and a bridge). You start 
with a set number of turns until the bomb goes off (its usually 3) and are 
tasked with finding the bomb (a person sized green container) while disabling 
nodes for extra time (half cover green container). To disable a node/bomb, 
position a soldier next to the node/bomb if the soldier still has action 
points you can then click on the bomb/node to disarm it. If not, then you'll 
have to wait until the next turn to do so (there used to be a glitch in which 
a soldier who's used both moves can trigger a node/bomb, but its been removed). 
Thin men are very abundant and since the game rushes you here you must advance 
at a steady pace while killing enemies. Unfortunately, maps tend to be small 
so its possible to activate multiple squads at once. Regardless of how well 
armed your soldiers are remember that Thin men can easily perform criticals 
and hit soldiers for decent damage even under adverse conditions. Combine this 
multiple thin men running around because there's just too many of them to kill 
and you've got a real situation in which good well-armed soldiers can get 
killed. If you take too long and advance cautionously, the bombs is going to 
activate. If this happens you will have 3 turns to get all soldiers to the 
extraction zone, failure to evacuate by the end of the 3rd turn means everyone 
dies (and if you do evacuate anyone who didn't make is dead).  Fortunately, 
MECs make this mission much easier as their playstyle is to advance 12 tiles, 
then go on overwatch or shoot. This gives you plenty of mobility to advance, 
disable nodes and kill aliens at the same time. If you don't have or don't use 
MECs, then make sure to bring a squad that covers each other very well (i.e 
snipers to take out thin men when they run away, Heavies to blow up groups, 
Supports for grenades and healing, Assaults for advancing quickly). 

Target Extraction (aliens can vary from thin men to mutons): You start off in 
one of 3 maps (In front of museum, A highway or a quiet neighbourhood with a 
fountain in the middle). The target is always in the same spot and the highway 
extraction will have a soldier near the start location who will tell you where 
the extraction target is. There will be one or two aliens already present on 
the map generally near where the extraction target is. When you pick up the 
extraction target, more aliens will show up. As you move the extraction target 
to the extraction point, more aliens will show up. Thus the key here is to not 
pick up or move the extraction target (ignoring their incredibly annoying 
habit of talking and preventing you from executing commands) until your 
soldiers are ready. Therefore only pick up the NPC when all aliens on the map 
are already dead and you soldiers have set up overwatch around the NPCs 
position. Likewise only move the NPC towards the extraction zone when soldiers 
have already set up overwatch covering the area within the NPCs dashing radius. 
As stated in an earlier section about alien drops, aliens go on overwatch when 
they arrive but will be immediately shot by any soldier on overwatch within 
range. These missions are easy and the only reason you could lose is because 
you didn't anticpate aliens dropping a certain area (its generally common 
sense) or you tried to rush the NPC to the extraction zone.

Target Escort (aliens vary from thin men to mutons): Same as Target extraction 
but the NPC is already under your control and usually very very annoying. 
Target escort can occur in an alley, docks or observatory. The same rules 
apply for Target extraction apply for Target Escort. The only difference is 
that aliens will drop on the first turn and around your starting position. 
Expect at least one alien to drop from the rear of your starting position. 
Just like before form an overwatch perimeter and kill any alien who doesn't 
die from this perimeter before advancing. Always have a forward overwatch 
perimeter set up before moving the NPC. Easy unless you don't know how to use 
overwatch properly, practice and common sense is everything.

Asset Recovery (aliens vary): This is a simple kill everything everywhere 
mission. Each map has its own valuable object that you must not accidentally 
destroy with your own misuse of explosive or because you goaded the aliens 
into using explosives and they hit the valuable object (i.e parked soldiers 
next to valuable crates). It's very hard to get this object blown up and as a 
result you clearly must be trying to fail the special objective of this 
mission. Can take place on a highway overpass (wreckage of helicopter must be 
saved), an office (really old computer from 1970s must be saved), Harbour 
(grey crates), Truck stop (crates in truck), Graveyard (nothing important) and 
an observatory (don't blow up the large observatory scope). These missions are 
easy since you can take your time and thus you should be engaging aliens one 
squad at a time. 

****Section 3B Interceptor Armaments and Air combat**** (TMLO)
When a UFO in flight is spotted, you will be asked to send an interceptor in 
to take down the UFO. You can then click scramble and pick the interceptor you 
wish to send. The interceptor will then engage the UFO and based on its 
weapons and the enemy UFO, it will either win, lose contact, or explode. You 
can withdraw at any moment should you decide that interceptor was going to 
lose and you may launch another interceptor (if you have a free one) to try 
again. Equipping your crafts is as simple as going to the hangar menu at the 
top of the screen, selecting a craft and giving it a weapon. You can also 
dismiss interceptors from the hangar screen or transfer them to another 
continent. 

Ironically this will be a very short section because of how utterly simply air 
combat is in Xcom Enemy within. In UFO defense, you practically had to rush 
for plasma cannons and the means to manufacture them for 4 interceptors in 
order to make a single region UFO proof. In Enemy Within, the interceptor with 
avalanche is more than a match for small and large scouts (that's 2/6hs of the 
ufos in the game! 1/2 if you count the UFOs that generally show up!). An 
interceptor with laser cannon (something you should have by the end of the 
first month or so) can handle every other naturally occurring UFO in the game 
(on classic). Difficulty effects the hitpoints of the UFOs with the UFOs on 
impossible having drastically more hp then on classic. By the fourth or Fifth 
month you should have new fighter craft researched and should be planning on 
capturing aliens for their plasma technology. Researching light plasma rifles 
will give you the second strongest armament in the game the plasma cannon and 
when combined with the new fighter craft, will ensure that no UFO in the game 
survive an interception. Air combat is really easy and while the game offers 
modules to make the game even easier, its unnecessary to use these. Late game 
each hanger should have one advanced fighter each armed with a plasma cannon. 
If you're paranoid then have two in each hanger. Later in the game you can get 
the best interceptor armament in the game, the fusion lance (craftable only 
from alien battleship components), but its not necessary. If you find yourself 
stressed for UFO components (because you've selling them for money and now you 
need them for fighters), try equipping your crafts with emp cannons. The list 
of weapons their range and their effectiveness is shown below.

Name                    Range     effectivness
Avalanche missile       long        low
Phoenix Cannon          short       low
Laser cannon            short       medium
Plasma Cannon           long        high
EMP cannon              short       High (disables craft intact)
Fusion lance            long        Very high (overkill)

The fusion lance can only be equipped on the new fight craft and Plasma Cannon 
or EMP are weapons that can handle any UFO threat in the game.


****Summary for section 3 (ATUR):****
- Always have your troops in cover and ready to defend themselves. Use 
overwatch liberally or move your soldiers one at a time reserving an action 
point for each one (This way they can shoot if they spot enemies).

- High cover gives 40 defense, Half cover gives 20 defense, elevation gives 
only an aim bonus of 20, close range bonus ranges from 0 to 52 and snipers get 
a negative close range bonus. Unit in flight also receive 20 defense. 
Hunkering doubles the defense bonus the cover gives

- Overwatch fire has a -20 aim penalty for normal movement and -40 aim penalty 
when target is dashing. 

- Suppression confers a -30 aim panalty for the unit being suppressed. 
Suppression takes a lot of ammo and should only be used when you are 
attempting to capture that unit or are sure you won't be able to kill that 
unit at the end of your turn. 

- Dashing should be done sparingly and should never be done to explore or to 
perform recon

- Thin men are usually the most hated and most dangerous unit the in the game 
even when you can reliably kill them. They're no match if you face them one 
squad at a time however

- Seekers generally do not attack on the turn after they activated. 

- Fight the enemy one squad at a time. Avoid battles that involve even numbers.

- You should accept council missions that aren't bomb disposal because they 
can be very easy and don't involve high levels of difficulty. You may wish to 
ignore bomb disposal missions. Never ignore missions called gangplank, friends 
in low places or progeny. If you do they will NEVER come back.

- Take your time on all missions. Advance only when your squad has ample ammo, 
no enemies in sight and can all move in the same general direction (i.e every 
member of the squad should advance at the same time). As long you advance 
slowly, you should be able to get Meld containers on time.

- Usable items are replenished after missions. Don't be afraid to use grenades 
and rockets as you don't have to pay for them. Ammo expenses are also non-
existent. Go nuts!

- Later on, there will be enemies who drop meld upon death. These enemies will 
become common place.

- MEC kinetic strike is powerful enough to kill most enemies in the game in 
one hit. Upgrading it allows the MEC punch to kill some of the advanced 
enemies in the game. It also never misses.

- Alien terror missions only requires you rescue one civilian to have a 
positive result. There's nothing stopping you from saving more though. Treat 
this like a normal mission. DO NOT MAKE CHANGES TO YOUR TACTICS JUST TO SAVE 
SOME USELESS PEOPLE

- Once you've researched weapons and armour to the full extent possible (tier 
2), research xenobiology and capture an alien holding a plasma rifle. Research 
the plasma rifle and complete the plasma research tree to get the second best 
interceptor armament in the game 

- Interceptors with laser cannons are fairly good. Interceptors with plasma 
cannons are really good. 

******Section 4 Specific information(UTIE) *****
*this section will contain spoiler information. If you want to surprised then 
don't read any further*

How to win the game?
1. Capture the energy boss alien that shows up in landed or crashed Ufos 
(alien known as the outsider)
2. Research the boss alien. And build the key.
3. Assault the Alien base, win and then wait 2-3 weeks and have your own base 
assaulted.
4. Build the hyperwave relay building. Shoot down an overseer UFO (this will 
generally require the new fighter craft aka Firestorm)
5. Finish tactical mission at overseer UFO and research the psi-link. Build 
the Gollop Chamber and the psi-labs. Get a psionic soldier with psi armor and 
commence the final battle by selecting the Gollop Chamber and selecting the 
appropriate option.
6. Kill the final boss, the uber ethereal.

Section 5 will contain exact data on missions that don't change and offer tips 
on missions that are scripted but do change.

****Dealing with Exalt**** (LOJN)
The Exalt are first referenced during the DLC mission progeny (see section 5 
for details on specific mission that never deviate). Progeny involves 
escorting an Exalt soldier for interrogation from
 Thin Men but nothing much is learned about Exalt from this mission other than 
they're idiots with an inflated sense of self importance. By the time Exalt 
shows up you should have most countries soon to be covered by satellites and 
thus Exalt is one of the few threats in the game that could theoretically 
cause a country to leave from panic. Ironically, Exalt is a good source of 
money and comedic relief.


When Exalt become active, you will gain access to the covert operations 
section of the situation room. When you access this room you will see a prompt 
at the top right of the global screen that says intel scan and displays a 
value of money that denotes the cost of the san. Clicking intel scan will 
cause a worldwide scan for Exalt cells and deduct the amount of money that the 
Intel scan required. The intel scan will reveal any active cells and these 
will be denoted by an Exalt symbol popping up next to a country's name. You 
can then send a soldier (pick a support class) and that soldier will begin 
extracting information about the cell as well as preventing that cell from 
causing damage. Note that the covert operative will only have items and a 
pistol so a support class can go around bombing everyone and using smoke to 
screw over Exalt. After a short while, you will be asked to send an extraction 
team with the message stating that if you ignore the soldier you sent will be 
killed. So send your extraction team that should contain as many MECs as 
possible and you begin either an Exalt data recovery mission or an Exalt 
target extraction mission.
 
The data recovery mission an encoder and a transmitter are placed at a set 
location on the map that requires protection by your squad. The covert 
operative is placed by the transmitter. The encoder can be hacked (or blown up 
by you) if Exalt forces are allowed to occupy the encoder for a set number of 
turns (usually 3). If the encoder is hacked, the transmitter that is also 
present on the map can then be hacked if an Exalt soldier occupies its area. 
If that gets hacked then the missions fails. To help you, the covert operative 
can run to Exalt com relays (placed out in the open... surely no one noticed 
the weird turret like structures?) and hack them (click on the transmitter) 
and this will prevent Exalt from shooting (but not from using abilities). 
These missions are extraordinarily easy as Exalt is just poor at shooting and 
just aren't very deadly (more on that later).

The Extraction mission will have your squad spawn while the covert operative 
is placed in a secluded area of the map. The objective here is to get the 
covert operative to the relay stations in the middle of the map. DO not move 
the covert operative, have the operative hunker until your squad has explored 
the map. There will be inactive Exalt squads on the map so your squad should 
engage them one at a time (easy since there's at most 3 squads on the map). 
Once the a clear path from the operatives position to the relay station is 
established, move the operative close to the relay station and position your 
troops in positions that will allow them to overwatch the outer edges of the 
map (leave one or two units by the relay station). Exalt soldiers should start 
coming in from the edges of the map, with the occasional guy coming in from a 
helicopter. Regardless you should be able to kill Exalt operative easy and 
these missions don't get any harder even when the elite show up. 

Why is Exalt a joke?
Their stats... 
Here's a short table (add 5 to aim if on impossible, -10 if on normal or easy)
Hp varies between difficulty and has no definitive pattern. Health values 
based on classic difficulty settings
All Exalt soldiers can move as fast a muton (6 spaces an action bar).

Name           Aim     Hp    
Sniper          75     6
Heavy           60     9
Operative       60     8
Medic           55     7
Elite Sniper    80     8
Elite Heavy     65     11
Elite operative 70     10
Elite Medic     65     10

Now allow me to remind you that mutons have an Aim of 80, Thin men get 85, 
Mectoids have an aim of 80 and this well after you've fought these guys and 
won. Exalt is like the game's way of saying "hey I know I gave a lot of crap 
with those thin men and their 105 aim killing guys through cover with high 
ground and a gun that is worthless as loot so I'm giving you a chance to do 
the same thing to me". Exalt operatives have stats that are worse than ROOKIES. 
Only the elites carry laser weapons so expect the regular Exalt soldiers to be 
completely non-threatening. If you have a soldier in high cover Exalt will be 
hard pressed to get you of it. If you were fighting aliens, high cover just 
wouldn't be very reassuring (hence why the best armour in the game gives you a 
defence buff) but you're fighting Exalt and they can't hit you unless you let 
them. To top it off their low damage capability (highest damage possible is 
7... and that's from elites!) is way too low so if you are using MECs you've 
got an easy win simply because the MECs can afford to get shot and if you have 
Heavy as a pilot, the reduction in aim gives a good chance that Exalt will 
miss anyway! Exalt also doesn't drop in and use overwatch (they may do it but 
its rare) so you get first shot at Exalt soldiers who have to walk their way 
onto the scene. The only way that Exalt could be threat is if they use their 
grenades or rockets as those will hurt if they hit you but likewise by this 
point you should be relatively prepared to take damage around this level. 
Exalt isn't capable of hurting your troops or even killing one of them, if you 
get one killed you're either the most unlucky person I've every heard or just 
decided to get overconfident and forgot to make good tactical moves. If you 
are still having trouble remember that MECS with kinetic strike and a tier 2 
gun can kill Exalt easily, the guns MECs get are more than capable of one-
shoting Exalt personnel.

Last but not least there's the Exalt base. Every Exalt mission you complete 
gives you a clue as to the location of Exalt headquarters. Clues such 'Exalt 
is not in canada' or ' The Exalt base is in a country you can play in 
Civilization 5' will automatically remove the indicated countries off the list 
(a small symbol of Exalt with a cross mark through it will denote that the 
headquarters isn't there). Once you have enough clues, you can accuse a 
country of harbouring the headquarters (except the one's proven not to have 
one). If you're wrong, the country leaves permanently and if the nation has 
already left then mass panic will occur on its continent. If you're right then 
you will launch an invasion on the Exalt base (see section 5 for tips on this 
mission). The clues that can be found are the following:

The Exalt base is not in the United States
The Exalt base is not in Russia
The Exalt base is not in Canada
The Exalt base is not in France
The Exalt base is not in Argentina
The Exalt base is not in a country with any territory in the Arctic Circle 
The Exalt base is not in Germany
The Exalt base is not in Asia
The Exalt base is not in China
The Exalt base is not in India
The Exalt base is not in Europe
The Exalt base is not in Mexico
The Exalt base is not in Japan
The Exalt base is not in Australia
The Exalt base is in a country you can play in Civilization 5
The Exalt base is not in Brazil
The Exalt base is not in Egypt
The Exalt base is not in South Africa
The Exalt base is not in Nigeria
The Exalt base is not in North America
The Exalt base is not in the United Kingdom
The Exalt base is not in one of the world's 5 most populous countries
The Exalt base is not in an English speaking country
The Exalt base is not in an island country
The Exalt base is east of the Atlantic Ocean
The Exalt base is not in South America
The Exalt base is not in Africa
The Exalt base is not in one of the two Cold War superpowers

Just remember that the game will automatically exclude countries so if you 
don't know what countries you can't play in civilization 5 then don't worry 
the game will do the work for you. The same list can be found here 
"http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Covert_Operations_%28EU2012%29"

****How long should I put up with Exalt? Especially if they're a joke?****
Well first things first is that if you get enough clues to the point that 
there's only a single nation left to accuse, then you should probably do it 
because Exalt can be fun to absolutely murder but it doesn't change the fact 
the game is going nowhere if you waste time fighting these losers and the 
aliens aren't going to slow down just because Exalt is doing something. As 
much as the rewards are for killing Exalt and completing their missions they 
don't give too much exp and in fact its seems that only the covert operative 
sent will get a lot of exp. Its entirely up to you if you want to kill off 
Exalt for the rest of the campaign but I recommend that you do their missions 
to the point that you have only one nation left to accuse because saving and 
reloading to find the Exalt base is just pathetic and you could do with a cash 
injection here and there.

****Movement speeds and the wiki.**** (SEZC)

 After extensive testing I can safely say that I've figured out everything 
aside from the movement scores of enemy aliens (only useful for multiplayer), 
XP requirements (which you don't really need to know). I would like to point 
out that X-com wiki 'ufopedia' has an excellent stats page for x-com soldiers 
and XP. I have not confirmed this data and will not be shamelessly copying and 
pasting the data they made as that would be plagiarism. You can see the data 
here.

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Soldiers_(EU2012)

In addition there's also the xcom wiki but the information within tends to be 
buried. Important charts are getting placed randomly and there isn't alot of 
attempt to interpret game play mechanics (as of this reading). A definition is 
always good but its better to let players know how they can use a mechanic. 
The wiki is still useful though and don't let my condescending description 
hide the incredibly useful value of that wiki. If you want the stats of the 
aliens, they've got them and they are accurate.
As I have said before, I cannot confirm if the data on the ufopedia is 100% 
true (though I have confirmed that the stat growth table is 100% true) as the 
movement speed variation for Not Created equal modifier is listed as 11-14 
when it appears to be 14-18. I could be wrong though as they don't list what 
the movement score even means. I interpreted it as max amount of movement 
possible per turn. 

I would like to add that unless the Not Created equal modifier is on, every 
soldier can move 7 tiles (or 14 if they dash). If not created equal is on, 
then units can move 7-9 tiles per action bar (or double that number if they 
dash). The speed of a MEC with flamethrower is 9 per action bar (thus 18 if 
the MEC dashes). A MEC with the kinetic strike module has a speed of 12 per 
action (thus 24! movement per turn). I have noticed no difference between 
classes based on movement (except for supports with the sprinter skill). There 
are reports that turning on the hidden potentials modifier can result in 
movement speed changes as units level up, I have not found any evidence of 
this. You can test the above information by giving the unit a straight flat 
stretch of land to run over and counting the number of tiles that they can run 
over without dashing.  See the table below for the movement speeds of the 
various classes (Alien speeds not included because they change depending on 
difficulty + its difficulty to calculate in singleplayer).

Soldiers (rank does not matter) = 7 tiles per action bar

Support class with Sprinter = 10 tiles per action bar

Soldiers with not created equally active = 7-9

Support class with max speed from not created equally + sprinter = 12 (not 
confirmed, needs testing)

MEC with flamethrower = 7 *9 with servomotor upgrade*

MEC with kinetic strike = 10 *12 with servomotor upgrade*

SHIV: 10 *12 with servomotor upgrade*

Hover Shiv: 11 *13 with servomotor upgrade*

Last statement on the Wiki: The wiki's can be a good source of information 
however all information compiled in this guide are the things I have directly 
observed and thus are correct from my view. The wiki's also tend to get 
vandalized and lose information over time. Not to slam on the hard work of 
editors and wiki contributors, but its just be wary of information that can be 
edited over by a jerk instantly and without anyone even knowing.

****The Xcom soldiers**** (XSDL)
The following are the stats and descriptions in detail of basic soldiers. The 
Xp requirements for leveling up have been changed and its currently unknown as 
to the actual requirements for leveling up. Skills and what they do will be 
listed here. The final stats of the units for aim will be given (this is the 
aim that unit will have when they reach the final rank, colonel). Will values 
cannot be given as these are randomly increased on level up.

Note: for Hp values (+1 for normal, +2 for classic, -1 for impossible). I will 
only list the ranks for Heavy soldier as its the same for the rest so there's 
no reason why I should write 'rank 6 Major:' all the time when its same for 
everyone.

Rookie: The rookie doesn't have a lot going for him/her. No skills aside from 
basic hunker and overwatch. Rank 0 for all soldiers. You can't even turn these 
guys into MECs.
Aim = 65
Hp = 4
Skills:

Heavy: The heavy gets many direct damage skills and is good all-round attacker
Aim = 75 
Hp = 8
Skills:
Rank 1 Squaddie: Rocket (no other skill may be taken)
Fire rocket: Does 6 damage in a large radius. (Can do more damage if rocket 
launcher has been changed to blaster launcher or with mayhem skill). Just keep 
in mind that enemies killed by rocket fire will not drop fragments or any 
items they were carrying.
Rank 2 Corporal: Bullet swarm or Holo-targeting
Bullet swarm: shooting as the first action does not end turn. VERY useful.
Holo-targeting: Shooting at a target gives +10 aim to all other units 
attempting to shoot the same unit. Mostly useless.
Rank 3 Sergeant: Shredder Rocket or Supression
Shredder Rocket: fire a rocket that does 4 damage in a large radius. Enemies 
hit by the shredder rocket take 33% more damage. Not particularly useful but 
its good for team use.
Supression: Causes an enemy to have -30 aim and grants a reaction shot against 
the enemy should they move. Very useful, even when not supported by actions 
from other teammates
Rank 4 Lieutenant: Heat ammo or rapid Reaction
Heat Ammo: Causes 50% more damage to mechanical enemies. Very useful albeit 
nerfed from 100% boost it gave in the vanilla game
Rapid Reaction: Causes a second reactions shot if the first manages to hit. 
Near useless, Heavies have poor aim, how is this going to help?
Rank 5 Captain: Grenadier or Danger Zone
Grenadier: Allows for two grenades to be carried in a sinle inventory slot and 
causes grenades to do +1 extra damage. Mostly useless as you're more likely to 
just use rockets because they have more range though with this perk alien 
grenades now do equal damage to basic rockets.
Danger Zone: Increases Radius of Rockets and suppression. Suppression can now 
hit multiple enemies causes them all to get the same effect. Still mostly 
useless as this ability cannot be turned off once purchased so its entirely 
possible that picking this perk might cause you to be unable to fire rockets 
in circumstances where you would normally be able to without friendly fire. 
Multiple Suppression is nice but it rarely every happens because aliens don't 
bunch up very often.
Rank 6 Major: Will to survive (no other options)
Will to survive: All damage taken while in cover and not flanked does -2 
damage.
Rank 7 Colonel: Rocketter or Mayhem
Rocketeer: Allows for the firing of an extra rocket per battle. Very useful 
especially since rockets can soften targets up and thus being able to do this 
twice a battle is certainly very useful.
Mayhem: Causes supression, rockets and grenades to do damage equal to the tier 
of the gun s/he is carrying. Regular gun +1, Laser +2, Plasma +3. Very deadly 
as this means that basic rocket and grenades now do even more damage!

Sniper: Killing enemies from long range and doing it through cover. Nuff said
Aim: 105
Hp: 7
Rank 1: Headshot (only available perk)
Headshot: Adds 30% extra chance to cause critical damage. Does more critical 
damage based on tier of sniper rifle used (+1 if bullet, +2 if laser, +3 if 
plasma). Critical damage tends to vary a lot so don't expect this ability to 
be an 'I win' button.
Rank 2: Snap Shot or Squad Sight
Snap Shot: Allows the sniper to move and shoot their sniper rifle. This is the 
only way to get a sniper to move and shoot. Causes a -10 drop in Aim however. 
Buffed from its previous iteration where it had a -20 drop in Aim. More useful 
this time around but only if you don't intend to make your sniper a team 
player. Remember that Snipers has slightly less HP than others and range 
penalties to close range shots, they shouldn't be moving and shooting as a 
result.
Squad Sight: Allows the sniper to shoot any enemy that the team sees as long 
as they is a line of fire to that target. Has been nerfed so that only the 
headshot ability can cause criticals to targets being squad sight sniped. Very 
useful as this allows the sniper to shoot from across the map, through several 
windows, the back of truck and into the head of a really annoying sectoid. 
Highly reccomended, just don't expect your sniper to pull off one hit critical 
kills with this skill. Also keep in mind that you can overwatch your sniper if 
they've moved (though this is a glitch) by selecting the sniper, switching to 
pistol and going on overwatch. Assuming that turn hasn't ended because 
everyone has already moved, reselect the sniper and tell him/her to switch to 
sniper rifle. The sniper has now moved and is now overwatching with a sniper 
rifle.
Rank 3: Gunslinger or damn good ground
Gunslinger: Adds +2 damage to pistols. Useless, not even on a covert operative 
Not even if you have plasma pistols. Not even if you upgraded the pistols. If 
you actually had to use a pistol to kill an enemy you are either a tactical 
genius or really really bad at this game.
Damn Good ground: Adds +10 Aim and -10 aim to enemies below (in terms of 
elevation) the character with this skill. If you're sniper has a jetpack and 
squadsight this means that they get the +10 Aim and +10 defense while having 
free range to shoot everyone on the map. This ability stacks with elevation 
bonuses
Rank 4: Disabling Shot or Battle Scanner
Disabling Shot: Causes enemy to have to reload and thus preventing them from 
shooting or otherwise hurting members of your team. Very useful since it 
stacks well with squad sight and essentially allows your team to focus on 
killing enemies that can still shoot back. Does low damage and can miss though.
Battle Scanner: Reveals enemies where it was thrown. Causes Cloaked Seekers to 
be spotted and become shootable. Can be used twice. Mostly useless since 
there's no reason to have snipers do scouting now is there?
Rank 5: Executioner or Opportunist
Executioner: +10 aim against targets that have less than half Hp. Mostly 
useless as +10 aim is fairly weak.
Opportunist: Removes penalties on overwatch shots. Very useful as it means 
that Snipers can go on overwatch on the chance that the enemy spots you first. 
Stacks with squadsight to mean that enemies are now pinned because if they 
move, they're highly likely to be shot dead by the sniper.
Rank 6: Low profile (only choice)
Low Profile: Half cover gives full cover bonuses. Can be stacked with memetic 
skin gene mod to give constant free cloaking.
Rank 7: In the Zone or Double Tap
In the Zone: Shots that kill enemies out of cover do not count as an action. 
Allows snipers to kill enemies in massive chains. It does however require one 
hit kills which can be hard to chain and any misses will end the turn. The one 
hit kill may also be done with a pistol but it can only happen once. I guess 
its hard to be in the Zone when you're shooting people with a pistol. Remember 
that you can always blow up your enemies cover to satisfy the conditions of 
this ability.
Double Tap: Shooting as the first action does not end the turn. Has a cool 
down of 1 turn. This means you can headshot one alien and then disable 
another!

Assault: Close range badass with a shotgun or assault rifle. The shotgun has 
greater range penalties for mid to long range shots while doing more damage 
and having a massive critical chance for close range shots. I would recommend 
giving the assault a shotgun unless of course you don't have the funds or 
research to give him a shotgun of the appropriate tier (i.e don't send an 
assault with a ballistic shotgun when everyone else is fighting with plasma 
rifles). 
Aim: 89
Hp: 8

Rank 1: Run and gun (no other choice)
Run and Gun: Allows for the assault soldier to dash (move two whole movements 
at once) and then fire. This means that the assault is the best for getting 
into people's faces and firing. It also means that the assault is also the 
riskiest and one of the most difficult classes to use seeing as how dashing is 
so risky in this game. Dashing towards an activated enemy squad could either 
activate another squad or activate several. This is definitely not the class 
you want to take on Thin man missions.
Rank 2: Tactical Sense or Aggression
Tactical Sense: confers +5 defense for each enemy in sight for a total of 20. 
Useful but not too useful since that means your assault is now being shot at 4 
times and that bonus of +20 isn't going to help much. I'd only pick this 
because aggression is fairly worthless.
Aggression: Confers +10 critical chance for each enemy in sight. While this 
will help the assault do critical's against hardened enemies. The assault 
generally doesn't need it. But if you want to guarantee a critical, then this 
is the perk you'd want to have for your assault
Rank 3: Lightning reflexes or Up close and personal
Lightning Reflexes: Causes the first overwatch shot to miss. Very situational, 
may or may not be necessary considering that dashing give you full cover 
defence for any overwatch shots and the rarity of enemies going on overwatch.
Up Close and personal: First shot against an enemy that is 4 tiles in terms of 
distance to the assault will not count as an action. Cannot be combined with 
run and gun and thus is mostly freaking useless. Maybe just maybe if your 
having trouble with chrysalids and couldn't be bothered to use MECs. Given 
that the assault is slow just like everyone else, the only other time this 
ability will be used if the enemy positioned themselves in such a manner that 
your assault can move using the blue field (1 action bar) and end up right in 
front of them.... that will rarely happen.
Rank 4: Flush or Rapid Fire
Flush: Ah here's where the good abilities start coming in. Fire a shot that 
does half damage but has a +30 aim (chance to hit) and will cause the target 
to move out of cover if hit. This is a team player ability and combine this 
with snipers with 'in the zone' or Heavies and their low aim and you've got 
one hell of setup to knock the enemy firmly into the ground.
Rapid Fire: Fire a special shot that is essentially two shots at once but each 
shot gets -15 aim. Very very deadly since it can be combined with run and gun 
and there's no reason why a -15 aim will offset the massive close range bonus 
a shotgun gets. If you want your Assault to be soloing the enemy, this ability 
is the one you want.
Rank 5: Close combat specialist or Bring em On
Close combat specialist: Get a free reaction shot to any enemy who walks 
within 4 tiles of the assault. Deadly to melee type enemies but just remember 
that melee type enemies were built to survive a hit or two so its entirely 
possible for you to shoot and critical hit them only to still lose the assault. 
This ability is also useful when the enemy decides to hump your squad when 
activated (this happens when the AI detects that everyone has no action bars 
left to shoot or overwatch with). Fairly useless but not exactly the worst 
ability/perk either.
Bring em On: Adds one critical damage for each alien in sight up to a max of 5. 
Oh great another ability that literally asks the player to get his squad into 
suicide territory. Because that's what you want right? To have 5 aliens 
shooting at you because you wanted to get +5 extra damage on a critical hit 
(which won't happen when you're assault is dead)? Useless, even when you are 
fighting 5 aliens at once.
Rank 6: Extra conditioning (no choices here)
Extra Conditioning: Gives extra Hp for the armor they're wearing. Heavy armor 
gives +4, medium armor gives +2 and light armor gives +1. Considering that the 
assault is most likely to be shot. This is just false reassurance for the 
unlucky assault trooper.
Rank 7: Resilience or Killer instinct
Resilience: Confers immunity to critical hits. Useless because you don't want 
to get shot! Definitely not going to help when your assault is taking a plasma 
minigun to the face. Get killer instinct instead because you need to 
prioritize killing people in order to keep assaults safe and not dead.
Killer Instinct: Using Run and gun will give a +50% critical hit chance bonus. 
Hey its better than immunity to critical hits. Not very stellar but still 
fairly devastating:

Support: Dudes got grenades, starts with two inventory slots, can heal better 
than anyone else (with the appropriate skill) and still puts out decent damage 
and suppressive fire. 
Aim: 89
Hp: 8
Rank 1: Smoke grenade
Smoke Grenade: Throws a grenade that provides +20 defense to all within its 
radius. Smoke cloud lasts one turn. This effect can target MECs, SHIVs, 
everything... even the enemy so be careful!
Rank 2: Sprinter or Covering Fire
Sprinter: Allows support to move 3 extra tiles per action bar, making him just 
as fast as a flamethrower MEC. Not particularly useful since if you are using 
a support, then there's no point in making him go faster than the rest of the 
squad. Though the support can assist MECs with his smoke greandes.
Covering Fire: Overwatch now yields a reaction shot if the enemy attempts to 
shoot (remember that overwatch only triggers on movement without this ability). 
Keep in mind however that the same penalties apply and if the enemy is in 
cover when they take the shot, covering fire is likely to miss.
Rank 3: Field Medic or Smoke and mirrors
Field Medic: Medkits can be used three times instead of just once. Useful but 
your strategies should be to not get shot. Useful in the unlikely event a 
soldier does get shot. Very useful for supporting MECs if they're in a 
bulletsponge role
Smoke and Mirrors: Smoke Grenades can be used three times. Even more useful 
then field medic since not getting shot is a reward on its own!
Rank 4: Revive or Rifle supression
Revive: Critically injured soldier (the one's that didn't die immediately when 
HP hit zero) can be revived if a medikit is used on them (at 33% health). Note 
that soldiers who are critically injured would only stablized without this 
ability. Either way the critically injured soldier takes a massive will hit so 
its not worth it in the long run to use this ability.
Rank 5: Dense Smokes or Combat Drugs
Dense Smoke: Smoke grenades now yield +40 defense. Useful!
Combat Drugs: Smoke grenades give only 20 defense as usual but give +20 will 
+10 critical chance and +20 aim. Not as useful as dense smoke because the 
reason you throw smoke is because your squad couldn't kill the enemy squad 
before they got to shoot.
Rank 6: Deep Pockets
Deep Pockets: All items can be used one more time. Combine with smoke and 
mirrors and you've got more smoke grenades then you could possibly need
Rank 7: Saviour or Sentinel
Saviour: Medkits heal +4 extra Hp. Mostly useless but its the difference from 
healing for 6 or healing for 10.
Sentinel: Overwatch fire now have 2 shots in them as opposed to 1. Mostly 
useless but you never know when overwatch fire could randomly prove itself 
lethal.

MEC trooper: Mec Troopers require the permanent conversion of a soldier class 
(other than rookie) and provides a perk based on the class converted. I 
already listed these but I'll list them again:
Heavy: +20 defense and immunity to critical hits.... but only to the first 
target the MEC sees
Assault: Take 33% less damage to attacks within 4 tiles... yawn
Sniper: Any shot taken in a turn where the MEC has not moved will have +10 aim 
and crit chance. Useful but not that useful especially since you should wait 
until you've got a colonel sniper before turning them into MEC troopers
Support: All other units in cover get +10 defense... USELESS unless you aren't 
using multiple MECs or SHIVs.

*MEC troopers retain their rank and thus you get to choose their abilities 
afterward. They also retain their Aim but not the growth rate and thus its 
detrimental to turn other classes aside from Heavies into MEC troopers before 
they've reached colonel because that means they'll have less Aim. There are 
also reports that MEC troopers get less XP for kills *

Aim: 77 (slightly more than a Heavy)
Hp 8

Rank 1: Collateral damage
Collateral Damage: Fire a high ammo expending shot that hits in a small radius 
doing damage equal to the tier level of the weapon and demolishing any 
destructible cover in the area. Useful in team situations. 
Rank 2: Advanced Fire control or automated threat assessment
Advanced Fire control: Overwatch shots have no penalty. Pick this if your MEC 
trooper used to be a colonel sniper. Otherwise pick the other because it 
increases survivability
Automated Threat Assessment: Overwatch confers +15 defense bonus to your MEC
Rank 3: Vital Targeting or Damage Control
Vital Targeting: Enemy classes/races that have been autospied before take +2 
damage. Useful and deadly for sure.
Damage Control: Upon taking damage, any further damage is reduced by 2 for 
next few turns. Not very useful but it can help the MEC tank more damage.
Rank 4: One for All or Jetbook Module
One for All: Turn into a high cover block that allows for other Xcom soldiers 
(not MECs or SHIVs) to take cover behind the MEC. MEC cannot shoot or move 
without cancelling the effect. Useless, even if you wanted to make a 
transformers joke. Sorry Xcom soldiers get your own cover because it certainly 
wasn't worth taking an entire heavy hitter out of action just so one guy could 
hide behind him.
Rank 5: Repair Servos or expanded storage
Repair Servos: Heal +2 hp per turn up to a max of 6 damage healed. Useful and 
definitely helps the MEC survive more damage. 
Expanded Storage: Gives the MEC more ammo (+50% more), and one extra use of 
all limited abilities of the MEC. Useful but only if you regularly use the 
limited abilities. Increased ammo may seem useful, but MECs need to reload 
often anyway so increasing the ammo they have isn't as much of a buff as you'd 
think it is.
Rank 6: Overdrive
Overdrive: MEC can now go to town on alien butts by shoot twice a turn 
(assuming no other moves were made). This doubles the damage output of the MEC 
and is useful for killing tough enemies quickly. 
Rank 7: Absorption Field and Reactive Targeting Sensor
Absorption Field: Any damage about 33% of the MECs total Hp is reduced to that 
number. OH my god, this ability turns the MEC into a gamebreaker. The tough 
part about XCOM is that leaving an Alien alive typically means that he can 
send one your guys to the memorial hall at worst or the hospital at best. This 
ability guarantees that the MEC must be shoot 3 times in a row to be killed. 
Extremely useful, especially when the high fire power of a MEC squad fails to 
kill the enemy fast enough.
Reactive Targeting Sensor: Confers a reaction shot to any enemy shooting at 
the MEC as long as ammo is available. Reaction shots do not take much ammo but 
it should be noted that the retaliatory shot will occur after the MEC has been 
shot at. So this ability doesn't prevent damage, it merely gets revenge for 
any damage that has been done (unless its a miss, then its win for you!). Just 
remember that MECs have a low 10 defense (not including abilities, like the 
one the heavy gives) and thus your MEC will be shot alot and so its probably 
better to get absorption Field because at least your MEC will take less damage 
as opposed to more damage. The MEC is already an aggressive fighting machine, 
its not really necessary to punish the enemy for shooting at your MECs. A MEC 
can do far more damage if it lives longer.

Last but not least there's the MEC itself which as 3 ranks. Unique in that it 
costs money to upgrade and XP is not a factor
Mec-1 Warden +8 hp(armor) and can have kinetic strike or Flamethrower. Costs 
$25 and 40 meld to make.
Kinetic Strike: Increases speed of MEC by 3. Allows for melee attack that does 
12 (18 with research) practically insta-killing any enemy in the game aside 
from bosses and sectopods. 
Flame Thrower: Shoots a 6 tile triangle of flame that causes any organic 
enemies caught in the radius to take 6 damage and panic.
Mec-2 Sentinel +12 hp(armor) and you get to choose between restorative mist or 
grenade launcher. Costs 60 meld and $32 to make. 
Restorative Mist: Heals all friendly targets near the MEC for 4 hp (or 6 with 
research). Comes with one use (unless abilities add to it).
Grenade Launcher: Fires grenades that do 4 damage. If alien grenade project 
has finished, grenade launcher fires alien grenades that do 5 damage. Grenade 
Launcher can be used 2 times not including abilities that extend this value.
Mec-3 Paladin +16 hp(armor) and you get either Electropulse or Proximity mine 
launcher.
Electropulse: Does 5 damage to all around the MEC and disables robotic targets. 
The ability says it stuns organic enemies but it kills them just the same. Can 
hit allies! Very useful for killing sectopods
Proximity mine Launcher: Fires mines that do 8 damage. Carries 3 mines not 
counting ones gained via abilities.

SHIVs: Tough frontline mini tanks who kill everything and have nothing to 
lose! Researching SHIV Laser arms the SHIV with a laser and +10 aim. 
Researching SHIV Plasma  arms the SHIV with a plasma and +15 aim. The Aim 
bonus stacks so its necessary to research the SHIV laser even if you already 
have SHIV plasma to get the most Aim you can get. The armament the SHIV has 
will not be replaced by a lesser weapon (i.e researching laser upgrade after 
you've applied plasma upgrade will not result in a weapon downgrade). 
Foundry projects affecting SHIV:
shaped armor (Mectoid must be autospied): add 3 hp. 
Advanced Servomotors (Mectoid autopsy): increases movement by 2 per action bar. 
Sentinel Drone (drone autospy): Heal 2hp per turn (unlimited uses) and free 
reaction shot towards anyone within 4 tiles.
SHIV suppression: Gives SHIV suppression ability
SHIV repair: Arc throwers can repair SHIVs
Advanced Repair: Speeds up time SHIV spends getting repaired after a mission
Advanced Flight: Allowing Hover Shiv to fly twice as long. 
Advanced Construction: Speeds up build time of SHIV
SHIV Laser: +10 Aim equips laser unless plasma is equipped (does 8 damage a 
shot)
SHIV plasma: +15 equips plasma (does 10 damage a shot)

Shiv: Shiv on treads. Defense of 20
Aim: 70
Hp: 10

Alloy Shiv: Shiv on treads and heavy armor. Defense of 20 and can be used as 
half-cover by Xcom soldiers
Aim: 70
Hp: 18

Hover Shiv: King of the battlefield. Has 40 defense which can be augmented by 
its ability to fly really high up. Fly high and attack from long range to 
ensure that your Hover Shiv has a defense over 80 and an aim of 105 
(70+10+15+10) at all times. It's like a flying tank sniper!

Hp: 18
Aim: 70

Shiv's do not get XP or level up. All SHIV will scores are ZERO! So that means 
that abilities that the Ethereal has can kill a SHIV easily.

Psionic class: Any class other than SHIV or MEC can be become a psionic. MECs 
have high will to compensate for their lack of finesse. To get a psionic 
soldier you must perform test on soldiers to determine if they are in fact 
psionic. Soldiers with high will are more likely to be psionic. Operation 
Progeny will yield you 3 psionic gifted soldiers should you beat the DLC 
missions. These soldiers do not come psionic but will be psionic if tested. 
Psionic soldiers only rank up their psionic abilities by using their psionic 
powers. This can be a downer to level up simply because mind-fray and other 
abilities are near freaking worthless in a straight fight involving tier 3 
guns. They are the only class capable of wearing the psi armor.

Rank 1 Psionic: Mind fray
Mind Fray: Does 5 damage and causes a -25 aim and will penalty on the target 
(penalty lasts for 2 turns). 1 turn cool down.
Rank 2 Specialist: Psi inspiration or Psi Panic
Psi inspiration: Remove panic and Mind Fray debuffs on any allied units. +30 
will for all in range. Lasts 2 turns but has a 4 turn cool down
Psi Panic: Causes enemy to panic, has a slighly reduced chance to hit based on 
Will levels of the soldier and the enemy. 2 turn cool down
Rank 3 Operative: Telekinetic Field or Mind Control
Telekinetic Field: Forms a barrier around the area that gives +40 defense to 
all allies in the barrier. Useless unless your psionic has low Will scores
Mind Control: Technique that if successful takes over the enemy target. The 
game has buffed this ability so that it is more likely to be successful even 
when Will scores are not lopsided.
Rank 4 Volunteer (only the psionic sent on the final mission gets this): Rift
Rift: Causes a rift to appear in a large area doing massive damage though less 
damage to those with High will. 4 turn cool down.

****Inventory, Items and Genemods**** (6YJO)
The following is a list of the items soldiers can use and what the 
requirements are for getting these items. Note that costs for manufacturing 
are not included because prices are reduced by the number of engineers you 
have.

*available at start unless noted otherwise. Mid range weapon unless noted*

*Early game weapons*
Assault Rifle: Basic piece of crap. Does 3 damage but usually does 2.
Shotgun: Does 4 damage and is a close quarters weapon
LMG: Does 4 damage and has an awesome sound.
Sniper rifle: Does 4 damage, long range weapon.
Minigun: MEC gun does 6 damage. 
Pistol: Laughable piece of crap, useful only for weakening aliens. Does 1 
damage, may cause 2 if the alien starts laughing.
Plasma Pistol: Does 3 damage. Not worth the research it takes to use the 
weapon.
Grenades: explosive that does a weak but useful 3 damage. Cannot be reloaded
Rocket Launcher: Basic Rocket that does 6 damage. Cannot be reloaded
 
*Mid Game Weapons*
Laser rifle: UFO defense soldiers can be heard rolling their graves. Weapon 
needs reloading and does 5 damage. Useful for fighting mid game enemies
Scatter Laser: Close range laser gun, does 6 damage. Requires Scatter laser 
research.
Heavy Laser: Laser LMG, does 6 damage. Requires Heavy Laser research.
Laser Sniper Rifle: Long range weapon, does 6 damage. Requires Precision Laser 
research 
Railgun: MEC tier 2 weapon. Does 7 damage. Requries Heavy Laser research
Alien Grenade: Does 4 damage in a small radius. Earn by capturing it on the 
field or doing the foundry project that replaces all regular grenades with 
alien grenades. Cannot be reloaded, item is not lost when used.
Ghost Grenade: Grenade that cloaks all targets within a small radius. Cloaked 
units cannot be shot and grenadier can also cloak himself if he is in the 
radius. Very powerful but requires seeker autospy and is expensive to 
manufacture. Requires seeker corpses to make.
Needle Grenade: Requires Chryssalid autospy. Does 3 damage in a large radius. 
Very useless very fast. Requires Chryssalid corpses to manufacture. 
Gas Grenade: Requires thin man autospy. Poisons targets so they take 1 damage 
per turn for a possible total of 3 turns. Also Causes a -20 aim penalty to the 
poisoned target. Useless especially when you could have thrown an alien 
grenade. Requires Thin man corpse to make.
Flashbang: Causes all within the effect radius to have -50 aim and halved 
movement for the duration of their turn. Robots and psionic enemies are immune. 
Useful for when you've failed to kill the enemy squad before they can shoot 
back. Its a shame its useless against the robot enemies since they're the ones 
that are most likely to be shooting anyway. Requires experimental warfare 
research.
Light Plasma Rifle: Does 5 damage but gives +10 aim to the wielder. Powerful 
but usually not worth the fragments it takes to research.

*Late Game guns*
Plasma Rifle: Does 7 damage. Must manufacture (by having researched light 
plasma first) or acquire in the field. Requires research to use.
Alloy Cannon: Does 9 damage. Requires Alloy Cannon Research. Must be 
manufactured
Heavy Plasma: Does 9 damage. Requires heavy plasma research. Can be acquired 
by stunning Muton Elites.
Plasma Sniper Rifle: Does 9 damage. Requires Plasma Sniper rifle research. 
Must be manufactured
Particle Cannon: Does 10 damage. Requires Heavy Plasma Research.
Blaster Launcher: Does 9 damage in a large area. Upgrade for basic rocket 
launcher. Requires fusion cores to manufacture.

*armor*
Basic armor: gives +1 hp... HEY ITS FREE
Carapace armor: Available for research after researching alien alloys. Gives 
+4 hp. Useful
Skeleton suit: +3 hp but comes with grappling hook for fast travel to elevated 
areas. Also gives +10 defense. Not very useful. Researchable after carapace 
armor has been researched
Titan Armor: +10 hp. Immunity to poisons. Useful until you get ghost armor. 
Researchable after carapace armor and elerium have been researched.
Arch Angel Armor: +8 hp but comes with flight capability. Not too useful but 
not too bad either. Gives +10 defense. Researchable after new fighter craft 
and titan armor have been researched.
Ghost Armor: +4 hp but allows soldiers to cloak (named 'ghost' in this game) 
four times a battle. Cloaked soldiers cannot be shot and get a +30 chance to 
critical hit if they cloak and fire. Cloak is best used defensively as it 
means you get a full turns worth of free shooting at the enemy. Requires 
hyperwave communication and titan armor to be researched before it itself is 
available for research.
Psi Armor: +6 hp, gives the wearer 20 will, +1 movement per action bar and +10 
defense. Only wearable by psionic class. Mostly useless unless you really need 
that +20 will or want to launch the final mission.

*Gene mods*
Modifying an eligible soldier with genemods takes 3 days for each mod you 
install at once. The gene lab can modify 3 soldiers at once so take advantage 
of this. There are five spots available for modding with two options each

Brain: Neural Dampening or Neural feedback
Neural Dampening: +20 will when under psi-attack, immunity to panic. If mind 
controlled, unit is stunned for 1 turn instead. Costs $35 and 20 meld. 
Unlocked by researching berserker Autopsy.
Neural Feedback: Does damage to enemy psi-attackers based on the units will. 
The damage done is based on the units will divided by 10 + 1 (i.e 100 will 
does 100/10 = 10+1 = 11 damage). Costs $35 and 10 meld. Unlocked by 
researching sectoid commander autospy

Heart: Secondary Heart or Adrenal Neurosympathy
Secondary Heart: Guarantees that unit is not instantly killed when HP reaches 
0. No critical injuries or will loss due to those injuries. Does not work 
against Chryssalids. Bleed out timer is extended by two turns. Costs $75 and 
15 meld. Unlocked by researching Cyberdisk autospy
Adrenal Neurosympathy: Getting a kill causes the unit to emit phermones that 
inflicts 'combat rush' on nearby allies. Combat rush gives +10 aim, +5 
critical chance and a random amount of extra movement. 5 turn cool down. Does 
not stack with other units with Adrenal Neurosympathy. Combat Rush removes 
panic from soldiers who are panicking. Costs $10 and 25 meld. Unlocked by 
researching Muton Autospy.

Skin: Bioelectric skin or Mimetic Skin
Bioelectric skin: Reveals nearby enemies and shows them as blue electric 
signals. Works through walls. Cost $35 and 15 meld. Unlocked by researching 
chryssalid autospy.
Mimetic Skin: Soldiers who are in full-cover and have not been spotted by 
enemies will be cloaked aka ghosted. This effect does not hold if the unit is 
spotted moving to full cover or if the soldier shoots or uses weapons. Mimetic 
Skin prevents ghost armor from using its ghost ability or ghost grenades from 
doing its special effect. Stacks with the sniper's low profile skill. I am 
honestly surprised people find this ability useful. Costs $75 and 35 meld. 
Unlocked by researching Seeker Autospy.

Eyes: Hyperreactive pupils or Depth perception
Hyperreactive pupils: +10 aim to next shot should the first one miss. Costs 
$15 and 5 meld. Unlocked by researching meld recombination aka available as 
soon as you can start modding.
Depth Perception: Height advantage gives +5 aim and +5 critical chance. Costs 
$15 and 5 meld. Available as soon as you can start modding.

Legs: Muscle Fiber density or Adaptive Bone Marrow
Muscle Fiber Density: Allows unit to jump to elevated positions meaning that 
it no longer needs ladders, pipes or inclines. Costs $60 and 25 meld. Unlocked 
by researching thin man autospy.
Adaptive Bone marrow: Allows unit to regenerate 2 hp a turn but only to the hp 
max without armor. Unit spends 2/3 less time recovering from wounds taken in 
the field. Costs $30 and 15 meld. Available as soon as you can start modding.

****The Aliens**** (XAYI) 
*all Aim, defense and Hp stats are for classic*
*Abilities are also listed*
*Toughest Aliens are listed first*

Sectopod: One of the biggest changes is how overwatch works on this unit. 
Before it was guaranteed that it used overwatch regardless of whether or not 
it devoted actions to overwatch. Now the unit doesn't have overwatch unless it 
devotes its moves towards overwatch. Sectopods are now harder to kill in a 
straight fight because they half all the damage done to them (and thus have 
twice their HP). Their counter, heavy trooper with heat ammo, has been nerfed 
as heat ammo only gives the heavy a +50% bonus to robots instead of a +100% 
bonus. The key to beating them now is to run away and plan an ambush. 
Sectopods are dumb... I mean really really dumb. If you run away after you've 
spotted one, the drone escort will leave the sectopod to hunt down your troops 
and while the sectopod will either attempt to bombard you (very easy to dodge 
this attack) or chase after you on their slow stubby legs. By the time you've 
encountered a Sectopod, you should either have hover shivs or a tier 3 MEC 
with EMP (I managed to have this on classic difficulty and I spend most of my 
meld on other MECs so there's no excuse if you don't have an EMP MEC). An EMP 
MEC can run in and EMP the sectopod (now easier because the sectopod doesn't 
have overwatch all the time) and prevent the sectopod from using its next turn 
(a sniper with disabling shot can also work but its not guaranteed). If you 
somehow have a squad of tier 3 MECs, you should avoid EMPing the sectopod more 
than once a turn. The EMP does full damage to the sectopod in addition to 
disabling it (a massive advantage indeed). From here you can either shoot the 
crap out it or have another MEC run up and punch it. During the next turn have 
that same MEC punch the sectopod twice (this should kill the sectopod). 
Punching the sectopod to death will result in 5 damage to MEC doing the 
punching(and anyone in the immediate vicinity) but its definitely easier than 
shooting it to death. A punch without close combat upgrade will give you only 
6 damage (the same as a particle cannon shot) while a punch with the upgrade 
will cause 9 damage. You should have met the mechtoid a long time ago so 
there's also no excuse for slacking on MEC upgrades, especially when this 
expansion pack is defined by them. A squad of Hover Shivs can beat the 
Sectopod simply by hovering high above it, shooting it and then having 
someone/something Suppress it. It'll take a while but with the high defense of 
a flying hover shiv, the odds of the Sectopod winning out is nil. If you don't 
have Hover Shivs or a MEC with EMP, then all you can do is throw everything 
you've got at it (which probably won't work because of the Sectopod's 
outrageous Hp and defense). At this point you may want to restart and 
reconfigure your long term plan to have MECs and Hover SHIVS (as well as good 
snipers with disable shot and squad sight). 

Aim= 90 
Hp= 30
Defense = 40 (does not take cover)
Abilities
Fire cannon: Fires the main weapon of the sectopod the Sectopod can fire twice 
at the same target but will generally disperse fire between mulitple targets. 
Does 10 damage and chance to hit is the accuracy score - defense. Firing its 
gun automatically puts it on overwatch.
Barrage: Sectopod goes into an artilery stance that ends it turn. On the next 
enemy turn, the sectopod will unleash a missile barrage on the area that will 
cause 6 points of damage per hit. Does not miss unless you move your units out 
the way. The camera may briefly focus on the area about to be bombarded. 
However this may not happen or the Sectopod could be positioned in such a way 
that the artillery hits an obstacle instead of the intended area. Keep your 
troops moving and they shouldn't be getting hit by artillery.
Reinforced Armor: All attacks that hit this unit cause only half their damage. 
This effectively doubles the HP of the sectopod while not giving many counters 
to it.

Ethereal: This robed jerk shows up during the base defense mission 
(occasionally, but not always) and will show up in the place of any other boss 
alien squad once the overseer UFO has been shot down and raided. There is good 
news and bad news, the good news is that this guy only comes in groups of 1 
but can be accompanied by mutons or muton elites. They are the primary reason 
why you don't want to rush the game's plot along before you have plasma or a 
good squad composition. Ethereal's have a shield that can reflect missed 
attacks back at the attacker as well as potent psionic abilities guaranteeing 
a successful mind control. In addition they explode when killed dealing damage 
to anyone around them (this effect does not apply when killed by kinetic 
strike from a MEC). In short there are few tactics that can be applied here 
other than using area of effect attacks (which can't be reflected) to do the 
initial damage to the Ethereal. Taking hp damage reduces Will and thus a 
significantly injured Ethereal can be killed by basic weapon fire without a 
large risk of reflection. Reflection is random and can happen regardless of 
the Ethereal's hp or the chance to hit. The Ethereal can also use Block which 
negates the attack but does not send it back. Its random as to whether a shot 
gets reflected or blocked but it does seem that missed shots are more likely 
to be reflected by good shots are more likely to hit the ethereal or be 
blocked. The Ethereal was built to be a tough guy and there's no specific 
strategy aside from the standard 'throw everything you've got' that can get 
rid of this guy. As long as you have a good squad and a little luck you should 
be able to take this guy (and his escorts) out. Note: While the abilties this 
boss alien has can make short work of a Shiv, the high aim, movement and 
defense of the Shiv means that it can generally ignore the escorts of the 
Ethereal to deal directly with the Ethereal. So while the ethereal can easily 
kill a Shiv, a squad of Shivs making a cordinated assault will utterly 
decimate an Ethereal and his escorts.

Hp: 20 
Aim: ? never misses
Defense 40 (does not take cover)

Abilites
Psi-lance: Shoots a bolt that does 10 damage to a target or less if the 
target's will check is successful (or more if the will check fails).
Block/Reflection: Randomly blocks or reflects enemy attacks. Reflection sends 
attacks straight back to the attacker. The ethereal becomes less capable of 
blocking or reflection when injured and this ability does not affect area of 
effect weaponry like rockets and grenades. (note: this ability is not listed 
officially).
Mind Fray: Do 5 damage to a target and that target takes a -25 aim and will 
penalty. Movement reduced by a quarter. Chance to hit based on will values of 
attacker and target.
Rift: Does massive damage to all targets within a large radius. Its like the 
alien counterpart to the human rocket launcher. Generally does around 13 
damage but can do more or less based on will values.
Mind control: Take control of an enemy unit for 3 turns. Control is reverted 
as soon as caster is killed or turn limit has been reached.
Psi-Drain: Steal Hp from an ally. 
Hardened: Chance to critically hit this unit is reduced by %60.

Muton Elite: Red cousin of the Muton and homage to the red guy in the ufo 
defense intro movie. Carries a heavy plasma and has high defense and high aim 
stats. Just shoot these guys dead using standard tactics. The problem arises 
in that these guys are very punishing if you don't kill them right away. Low 
will and thus easy to mind control and assault psionically. Generally comes in 
packs of two muton elites.

Hp: 18
Aim: 90
Defense: 30
Abilities
Supression: Slaps the target with a -30 aim penalty and grants a reaction shot 
against the target should it move.
Bombardment: Throw a grenade at long distance.

Cyberdisk: Flying disk that can transform and shoot. Transformed mode can be 
hit with critical hits. Closed disk mode cannot be critically hit. Can fly. 
Comes with drone escort

Hp: 20
Aim: 80
Defense: 10 (does not take cover)
Abilities
Grenade: Throws an alien grenade that does 5 damage
Death blossom: Rarely used area of effect attack that hits all around the 
cyberdisk 
Hardened: -60% chance to be critically hit
Cyberdisk cannon: does 8 damage successful shot.


Heavy Floater: Flying guy that shoots and gets annoying defense bonuses for 
flying. Low will and can be assaulted psionically. Generally carries a plasma 
rifle. Yields 5 meld when killed

Hp: 14
Aim: 80
Defense: 10
Abilities
Bombard: throw an alien grenade at a long distance
Launch: Instantly move to any area on the map, ends turn

Thin Man: Most annoying and deadly unit for the early to mid game. I swear 
that these jerks never miss. Blow these guys up with explosives and lasers. 
These are the only guys in this list that have actually managed to kill 
someone in the several campaigns I've played. No one else on this list of 
alien badguys have managed to kill anyone on my team or forced a reload of the 
game... NOT EVEN THE SECTOPOD

Hp: 4
Aim: 75 (+10 light plasma rifle)
Defense: 0
Abilities
Leap: can jump onto elevated areas without using ladders or pipes.
Poison Gas: Can spit poison at any enemy out of range. Does 1 damage for 3 
turns or less. Explodes into poison gas when killed. Poisoned units also lose 
20 aim.
Suppression: Can suppress enemy units.

Muton: Big hulking brute that starts with light plasma rifles but gets plasma 
rifles later on. The first enemy squad that actually is meant to stand up in a 
symmetrical fight.

Hp: 10
Aim: 80
Defense: 10
Abilities
Blood call: +10 aim, +10 will, + 2 movement per action bar for all allies 
nearby. 
Suppression: unit can suppress
Intimidate: Bangs on chest that apparently makes X-com soldiers panic instead 
of shooting them again. The lead by example skill generally prevents panic 
from happening ever. 

Mechtoid: Resilent enemy mech that has excellent firepower and synergy with 
its sectoid escorts. Escorts can be regular sectoids or commander variants. 
Focus fire to take Mechtoid and don't be afraid to use rockets or grenades to 
kill Sectoids using mind merge.  No match for MEC squads. I once had UFO with 
5 Mectoid squads, the mectoids did not manage to get a shot off.

Hp: 22
Aim: 80
Defense: 10
Abilities
Cannon: shoots guns, may shoot twice if it hasn't moved. Generally distributes 
firepower to multiple targets. Does 9 damage on classic
Psi-Shield: Requires a sectoid to mind merge with Mechtoid. Confers a +6hp 
buff as well as -50% damage reduction to the Mechtoid. Killing the sectoid 
involved in mind merge causes slight damage to the Mechtoid and cancels psi-
shield effect.

Sectoid Commander: Has weak pew pew gun and weak skills. Can mind control and 
may come in groups greater than 1. Annoying but crushable. Never lost a 
soldier to this boss alien although I have fired many soldiers for having 
pathetic will scores.

Hp: 14
Aim: 95
Defense: 20
Abilites
Mind Fray: does 5 damage. -25 to will, Aim and 1/4 movement. 
Mind control: Only deadly ability of the Sectoid commander. Generally succeeds 
because mind control has been made signficantly easier in Enemy within.
Greater Mind Merge: Mind merges with all sectoids/mectoids in radius. 

Outsider: Annoying guy with light plasma rifle and high accuracy. Referred to 
as energy alien to avoid spoilers in previous sections. Puny and easily 
destroyed by bullets and bombs. Self disposing corpse. Must be captured in 
order to progress the story. Outsider squads will increase in size as the game 
drags on without story progress (to a max of 3 outsiders). If you are really 
having trouble capturing these guys either wait until a better opportunity 
comes along or just flashbang and zap the guy. Never lost a soldier to this 
boss alien especially when a rocket or grenade can solve any problems posed by 
this particular boss alien.

Hp: 5
Aim: 80
Defense: 10
Abilites:
Self disposing: Does not leave corpse when brutally murdered by superior X-com 
forces/tactics. 

Chryssalid: Quad-pedal alien with sharp claws. Lays eggs in enemies it kills. 
Enemies who have been killed by chryssalid will become zombies in the next 
turn. Easily mowed down by Heavies and MECs, I've never lost a soldier to 
these guys... not even on the newfoundland mission... AND I was using regular 
machine guns. Avoid selling chryssalid corpses since they give the every 
useful Chryssalid chitin item. Cannot be stuned. Feel free to blow thse guys 
up.

Hp: 8
Aim: ? never misses, does 8 damage (less on easier difficulties)
Defense: 10 (does not take cover)
Abilities:
Leap: can jump to elevated positions without using ladders or pipes.
Poison: melee attack deals poison damage and will cause 1 damage for 3 or less 
turns.
Zombify: Enemies killed by the chryssalid turn into zombies. Zombification is 
prevented if the soon to be zombie corpse is blown up by explosives.

Zombie: Victim of a chryssalid attack. Back in the good old days people were 
always turned into a zombie when a chryssalid attacked them, now you 
youngsters really need to screw up to let that happen! Generally will happen 
to civilians but Chryssalid aren't much of a threat if you play safe (which is 
why Chryssalids tend to show up on terror missions, to trick noobs into 
playing aggressively). Zombies have low movement but hit harder. Cannot be 
stunned, shoot them to death or blow them up with explosives.

Hp: 10
Aim: ? never misses, Does 10 damage
Defense: 0 (does not take cover)
Abilities:
Hatch: if left alive after 3 turns, Zombie turns into Chryssalid. Arguably 
easier to kill due to having less hp then the zombie. 

Beserker: Large and in charge... Also very very dead against an experience 
Xcom player and his favourite squad. Focus fire really does a number on these 
guys. It also doesn't help that they can't leap so they're literally screwed 
when it comes to pipe and ladder chokepoints. This unit is meant to distract 
you and it shows.

Hp: 20
Aim: ? Never misses, Does 10 damage
Defense: 20 (does not take cover)
Abilites
Blood lust: When shot by an enemy, Beserker moves towards the unit that shot 
it. Leads to hilarious humiliation conga for the Beserker.
Bull Rush: Charges in small radius and does damage to anything caught in 
charge. Very buggy, generally not used.
Intimidate: Thumps Chest to intimidate X-com soldiers into panic. Rarely works.
Harden: -60% chance to be critically hit.

Floater: Flying guy with gun that is all too easily murdered by X-com forces. 
Generally carries light plasma rifle. Flys

Hp: 4
Aim: 60
Defense: 0
Abilites:
Launch: Move to a position on the battlefield regardless of distance. Ends 
turn.

Drone: Has a ridiculous amount of Hp for its size and carries weak pew pew gun. 
Can heal enemy robotic units. Can be converted to your side using arc thrower 
with relevant project. Very weak and easily distracted by a feint retreat. 
Flying unit.

Hp: 5
Aim: 70
Defense: 10
Abilites:
Repair Beam: +3hp to the target. Can vary between +2 to +4 hp to the target.
Overload: Explodes doing 3 damage to all around.
Drone Beam: does 2 damage. Chance to hit based on Aim.

Seeker: Flying octopus/squid (I'm not good at biology okay!?) comes in pairs 
that has a weak pew pew gun and build-in cloaking. For some reason the aliens 
couldn't be bothered to cloak something deadly like oh I don't know, a 
sectopod? Generally never attacks on the turn it was spotted and rarely 
attacks in tandem with its partner. The second seeker seems to attack a turn 
or two after the first attacks but it rarely seems to matter anyway since the 
standard move and overwatch tactic discussed in this FAQ should have you 
totally covered from seeker related injuries and fatalities. When activated, a 
seeker squad will cloak and move away from their position. You can't move to a 
spot that cloaked seeker occupies and this can be annoying when the cloaked 
seeker moves straight up in front of your soldiers. Of course hitting a 
cloaked seeker with an explosive will reveal it but its generally a waste to 
use it on such a weak enemy. Bioelectric skin will also hard counter the 
seeker's cloaking but just remember that seekers aren't the most deadly enemy 
in the game and I myself can attest that that I've killed seeker squads by 
shear accident while fighting mutons and mechtoids at the same time. This unit 
can fly, cannot be stunned and use a unique calculating AI that targets the 
most vulnerable unit in your squad.

Aim: 75
Hp: 5
Defense: 20
Abilities:
Strangle: Decloaks and proceeds to do 2 damage to a unit and prevent that unit 
from having any further actions. Reaction fire can occur if the unit decloaks 
within range of overwatch fire but the unit to be strangled will not get a 
reaction shot. Strange is considered successful if the seeker does not die 
before it deals damage to the target. The seeker using strangle will continue 
to do 2 + n damage per turn where n is the number of turns that unit is still 
being strangled. When a seeker is hit after a successful strangle attempt, it 
will release the target and remain open to more attack attempts. The released 
target will be 'catching breath' and have their aim reduced by 50 and move 
reduced by 75% but otherwise still have 2 actions to make. 
Cloak: Cloaks unit. Nuff said
Seeker gun: Does 3 damage, chance to hit based on Aim stat. Rarely used unless 
soldiers are immune to strangle.

Sectoid: The weakest of the weak. These guys apparently are talented psionics, 
its a shame they're not bulletproof nor given good equipment. They carry weak 
plasma pistols.

Aim: 75
Hp: 3
Defense: 0
Abilities:
Mind Merge: Gives a friendly target +1 hp, +25 will and +25 critical hit 
chance. Killing the casting unit also kills the unit receiving the buff.

*Research* (RDUL)
This is a list of all the pathways for research.

Biology/story pathway:
Kill alien = Alien Biology research
Research Alien Biology = Arc Thrower + Alien Containment + Autospies pathway
Build Alien Containment = Interogations pathway
Capture Outsider (energy boss alien) = Outsider shard research
Research Outsider = Assault alien base
Assault Alien Base and not die = Hyperwave communication research
Hyperwave communication research = Hyperwave facility
Hyperwave facility = Spot Overseer UFO
Shoot down Overseer UFO + raid = Ethereal device
Research Ethereal Device = Gollop Chamber + Psi lab + Psi armor

Weapons pathway (This path intertwines with biology due to capture being 
required):
Kill aliens and get fragments = Weapon Fragments research
Research weapon fragments = Scope + Experimental warfare research 
*note researching weapon fragments also opens up the plasma tech tree if 
you've captured a plasma weapon*
Research Experimental Warfare = Foundry facility + Phoenix cannon + Beam 
Weapons research
Build Foundry Facility = Access to foundry projects pathway
Research Beam Weapons Research = Laser rifle + Laser pistol + Heavy Lasers 
Research + Precision Lasers research
Research Precisions Lasers = Scatter Laser + Laser sniper rifle
Research Heavy Laser = Heavy laser + Railgun + Laser cannon
Capture Alien Weapons *using appropriate research from biology pathway) = 
Access to research of the captured weapon
Research Plasma pistol = Plasma pistol
Research Light Plasma Rifle = Light plasma Rifle + Plasma rifle research + 
Plasma cannon.
Research plasma Rifle = Plasma rifle + Plasma sniper research + Alloy cannon 
research + Heavy Plasma Research
*Researching the last 3 plasma weapon techs will unlock the weapon it is 
associated with*

Armor Pathway (this path intertwines with engineering and story pathways):
Kill aliens and get fragments = Alien Material Research
Research Alien Materials = Experimental warfare + Nanofiber vest
Recover Alien Alloys + Research Alien Materials = Carapace armor research
Research Carapace armor = Carapace armor + Skeleton suit research
Research Skeleton Suit = Skeleton suit
Research Carapace armor + research elerium = Titan Armor research
Research Titan Armor = Titan Armor 
Research Titan Armor + New Fighter Craft = Archangel Armor research
Research Archangel armor = ArchAngel Armor
Research Titan Armor + Hyperwave communication research = Ghost Armor Research
Research Ghost Armor = Ghost Armor
Research Ethereal Device = Psi Armor

Engineering pathway:
Recover Alien Nav computer = Alien flight computer research
Research Alien flight computer = Satellite nexus facility
Recover Alien power source = Alien power source research
Research Alien power source = Elerium generator facility + Elerium research
Research Alien Flight computer + Research Alien power source = New fighter 
craft Research
Research New fighter Craft = Firestorm craft + Emp cannon research
Emp Cannon Research = Emp cannon

Foundry Pathway:
Build Foundry = Improve pistol 1 project + Scope upgrade project + Heavy 
weapons platform project
Complete Improve Pistol 1 project = Crit chance of pistol +10
COmplete Scope Upgrade project = Crit chance for equiping scope +10
Complete Heavy weapons platform project = SHIV + SHIV suppression research + 
MEC close combat project
Complete MEC close combat project = +6 damage to kinetic strike and kinetic 
strike does not end turn for the unit using it.
Complete Shiv supression = Shiv's can suppress
Complete Heavy weapons platform project + research Carapace armor = Alloy Shiv
Complete Heavy weapons platform project + research new fighter craft = Hover 
Shiv
Research Beam weapons = Improved pistol 2 project
Complte Improved Pistol 2 project = pistol aim + 10
Research Heavy lasers = Shiv laser project
Complete Shiv Laser = +10 aim to Shiv, weapon is replaced to laser if not 
plasma
Research Alien flight computer = Stealth satellite project
Complete Stealth satellite project = Stealth satellite available (Satellite 
that is less likely to be shot down by escaping UFOs)
Research elerium = Improve arc thrower project
Complete Improve arc thrower project = Arc thrower may now stun at 6 hp, 
increased odds as hp goes less than 6
Research Archangel Armor = Advanced flight project
Complete Advanced flight project = Units may now fly for longer
Research plasma pistol = Improve pistol 3 project
Complete improve pistol 3 project = Pistol damage increased by 1
Recover alien grenade = Alien grenade project
Complete Alien Grenade project = All grenades are replaced with alien grenades
Research Emp cannon = Shiv repair project
Complete Shiv repair Project: MECs and Shivs can be repaired by arc throwers
Research heavy plasma = Shiv plasma project
Drone Autospy = Sentinel Drone project + Drone Capture project
Complete Sentinel Drone project = All Shiv's heal 2 hp per turn
Complete Drone Capture Project = Drones can now be captured by arc throwers
Muton Autospy = Ammo Conservation project
Complete ammo conservation project = All units now have more ammo
Thin man Autospy = Improve medikit project
Complete Medikit project = Med kits heal for +2 more
Sectopod autospy = Advanced construction project
Complete Advanced construction project = Rush construction option enabled. 
Speed up construction date at expense of money
Research experiment warfare = Tactical Rigging project
Complete tactical rigging project = All soldiers get 2 item slots while 
supports can fit even more uses in his two item slots. 
MEchtoid autospy = Shaped armor project + advanced servomotors project
Complete Shaped armor project = +3 hp to all MEC and Shiv armor
Complete Advanced servomotors project = +3 movement to MEC and Shiv
Research elerium = Elerium Jelly project
Complete Elerium jelly project = +3 damage to MEC flamethrower attack
Heavy floater autospy = Advanced repair project
Complete Advanced repair project = SHIV and aircraft have a lower recovery 
time.

*Section 5 Specific missions* (T3IE)
Well this is it, the second last section of this walkthrough. If I missed 
anything please be sure to email me and inform me that missed something.

Q: I failed a DLC mission? What do I do?
A: You're out of luck I suppose. There's not much you can do other than hope 
the game glitches and offers you mission again or just take the loss and move 
on. The rewards given by slingshot and progeny can be replaced by hard work 
and by playing the game longer.

Q: I don't have DLC am I screwed?
A: No. Aside from not getting DLC characters, you're not missing out on much. 
However you will not get an adequate explanation for why your base got 
attacked.

DLC missions slingshot
Friends in low places: After the intro cinematic showing Zhang killing an 
alien in one shot, Zhang suddenly converts to pacifism and is now a weak 
hostage who is easily killed. The standard tactics for target extraction 
council missions apply here (i.e don't advance the VIP until your squad has 
advanced and set up a kill zone). Unlike most target extraction missions this 
one will feature thin men but with mutons or even a chryssalid thrown in near 
the end. There will generally be 4 waves of reinforcements, the first at the 
beginning , the second when you advance into the graveyard, the third past the 
sakura tree in the center and the fourth near the end. The fourth wave will 
generally contain the muton or chryssalid and it appears to be random as to 
whether its a muton or a chryssalid. Once Zhang has reached the extraction 
point the mission will end. He will join your team as a Heavy but with high Hp 
and higher will then his class normally would have.

Confounding light: The standard tactics for bomb disposal applies here despite 
the fact that you're planting beacons and the timer, while generous, cannot be 
delayed. The majority of your enemies here will be thin men but there will 
also be mutons who will be warped in. Mutons can even warp to high ground, 
further complicating the mission. To finish the level, you need to plant 4 
beacons and have one soldier activate the train controls. Notice that I said 
nothing about killing the aliens. That said I heavily recommend killing the 
aliens and liberal application of explosives. The train cannot be blow up and 
it will happily drive off the station even if 100% of train is in flames. You 
have 10 turns to get the job done and I would like to stress the fact that 
this mission WILL be followed up by an even harder missions so don't take 
casualties to get this mission done. Remember that you can ignore this mission 
as long as you want so if you aren't prepared with good laser level weapons, 
you can wait until you are.

Gangplank: Oh boy this is a hard and mean one. This mission will show up 
shortly after confound light has been finished because well, you just lured an 
alien battleship into a trap. Ignoring this mission obviously means letting 
the trap fail though I fail to understand why humanity thinks sending 4-6 guys 
is the best trap ever. The game states that you should prioritize 
disabling/blowing the engine nodes of the battleship, but this triggers 
reinforcements and so you shouldn't do it unless you're ready. In some cases 
getting close to a engine node will cause reinforcements to be triggered. That 
said, reinforcements can be rather lame in this missions from sectoid, to lame 
chryssalids to maybe a thin man or a muton. There is also no boss alien so 
this mission isn't as hard as it would be if you were assaulting an actual 
battleship. To start with your team will be outside the battleship. Entering 
the first door will lead to large open room with grav lifts and an engine node. 
Here you will likely encounter 2-3 thin men. As you approach the center of the 
room reinforcements will be triggered and either thin men or Chryssalids will 
drop in. Chryssalids dropped in for me and they were no match for MECs. At the 
far end of the room is large guard tower like structures and another engine 
node. Here I had a thin man as reinforcement and sectoid squads guarding the 
node. UP ahead at the end of the large room is two doors each leading to a 
long corridor connected to each other in the center. There are two engine 
nodes here, one at the far side of each corridor. This is most dangerous room 
in this mission as the door at the far right end of this room has a cyberdisk 
hiding behind it that is activated as soon as you approach the engine node on 
the right side of the room (aka it will move through the door and shoot, most 
likely killing someone because you never expected aliens to shoot on the first 
turn you saw them). Mutons will be guarding this room and thin men are likely 
to be the reinforcements here. After you've dealt with all the enemies in this 
room and engine node you can then advance into the last area which appears to 
be a wide open area with two engine nodes sitting around in it. Mutons are 
likely to the guardians of this area but if you've handled the cyberdisk then 
you can't possibly fail here. Kill the last of the enemies here and disable 
the engine nodes in this room and the mission is over. Congrats on taking out 
an alien battleship, enjoy the fusion cores you've liberated as they're either 
great cash, great rocket launchers or excellent aircraft armaments.    

DLC missions progeny

Portent: A french convoy got attacked and somehow an IFV and dozens of guys 
lost to what appears to be 6 thin men. This is a very easy target extraction 
mission. As you start on the map, you've only got one direction to advance. 
There be a survivor on the map and you're expected to walk up to the survivor 
at which point you'll be given control over the survivor. Just like every 
other target extraction mission, moving VIP closer to the extraction point 
equals more reinforcements. Since you're fighting thin men exclusively here 
there's no much I can do to help you here other than to tell you to use 
everything in your arsenal to kill the aliens before you they get shots off.

Deluge: This mission pops up after your base has been attacked and portent was 
successfully completed. This mission is actually fairly easy although you will 
face mechtoids, mutons and thin men. You objective is to reach the other side 
of the dam and inspect the truck before the dam collapses. You can open valves 
to relieve pressure to the dam and give you more time to reach the other side. 
You don't have to extract anything so the mission ends as soon as the truck is 
reached. You will face a random number of air dropped mutons but 4 mechtoids 
dropped in pairs. By now you should have plasma and so the high HP of 
mechtoids shouldn't be so intimidating now. Advance at a steady pace and this 
mission is as easy as any other mission.

Furies: This mission pops up after deluge and while skippable, there's no 
reason why you would need to unless you failed to listen to my advice about 
not progressing the plot until you have plasma and every weapon/accessory you 
need. This is a relatively easy mission however it can be tough if you don't 
have enough firepower and mobility on your squad. Shivs and Mecs are heavily 
recommended here. As soon as your first turn is over you will be informed that 
aliens are cutting the life support to the people in the stasis tanks you are 
trying to save. You will then get 12 turns to secure/destroy the control room 
of the abductor class ufo in order to save the people in the stasis tanks. For 
obvious reasons, do not blow up the (three) stasis tanks, you will receive 
less rewards for doing so. Also avoid using them as cover or shooting at 
aliens who are using it as cover (unless you flanked that alien) again for 
obvious reasons. Thin men will the primary guard of the adbuctor class ufo and 
since its an abductor class ufo the thin men aren't exactly well suited and 
are thus easily eliminated. To makes things interesting, a beserker will be 
airdropped several turns after the alarm activates (usually your third turn) 
and another berserker will be dropped on the roof of the room with the control 
console. Same tactics as any other mission; advance when safe and kill aliens 
before they can do bad things.

Xcom enemy within missions:

Newfoundland: Chryssalid happy hour! Chryssalids apparently managed to kill a 
whale and now an infinite amount of Chryssalids are spawning and have overrun 
the town. This mission has almost no good rewards and you don't get chryssalid 
corpses from this mission. To start with your squad is placed on a wharf with 
a large wooden building in front of them. When you walk past the wooden 
building you will encounter zombies. After the zombies are Chryssalids with 
some Chryssalids emerging from the fish hanging from the wooden poles. The 
fish that appear to be bursting are the ones that will have Chryssalids 
emerging from them. As you advance down the wharf you will encounter the 
fishing vessel. Before you enter the fishing vessel ensure that all aliens on 
the map are dead as once you step on the fishing vessel you will need all of 
your squad to keep the area pacified. Once you step on the fishing vessel you 
will see the whale which has thousands of eggs in it which will then begin to 
spawn 3 Chryssalids followed by at least one chryssalid a turn. If you have 
MECs, kinetic strike is very useful here, otherwise you may wish to retreat 
and set up a killing zone outside the fishing vessel. After a while of 
constantly killing the Chryssalids, the whale will stop producing Chryssalids 
(or substantially slow down its production of Chryssalids). Once its safe take 
a soldier to go push the button on the control room of the boat to call in an 
airstrike. At this point the whale will continue to make Chryssalids but its 
not like you're in danger because Chryssalids cannot attack a soldier who has 
dashed away from them because they can only move 10 tiles before it loses its 
ability to make an attack. So dash all the way to the extraction point, making 
sure that you kill Chryssalids as necessary and don't move in such a way your 
soldiers get surrounded. To complicate matters Chryssalids can also spawn from 
fish that weren't bursting when you came in. Regardless if you haven't used 
explosive abilities or flamethrower now it might be a good idea to do so to 
aid your escape. Get all (or at least one) to your extract zone and click the 
extract button to win the mission (as well as leave all others who did not 
extract for dead). Why X-com couldn't just ask for a Gatling helicopter 
assault I don't know but what makes this mission difficult is the timing of 
when it comes. Some people get this mission as early as they possibly can, 
while others like me get it after they have 5 mecs and more than enough fire 
power to kill 12 Chryssalids a turn. Feel free to ignore this mission as while 
its unique, the rewards aren't great.

X-com Base defense: Oh NOES the aliens made some people's faces have black 
marks on them and now the base's defence is compromised for some reason. While 
the aliens didn't send a battleship and drill a hole in the base I don't know 
but I can say that this mission isn't difficult unless you've pressed the 
'make items available' button on the squad selection screen. The game will 
auto-select your highest ranking and high stats soldiers so its not like you 
will be working with soldiers you don't like but the game will not bother to 
equip them so if 'awesome mcawesomesauce' was your favorite soldier but he got 
injured the day before and you gave his gun and armor to 'noob mcreplacement' 
you'll now have to do the base defense mission with a colonel armed with a 
weak assault rifle. Colonel or not, a guy with an assault rifle is not as good 
as one with a plasma rifle. The game will start with roughly two your guys 
parked in the command section of the xcom base while aliens drop in through 
the ceiling and come in through the underground tunnels to the left of the 
command section. To aid your two guys are xcom security personnel with rifles 
and grenades and poor hp. These security guys are totally expendable and you 
are free to get these guys killed (they don't even show up on the memorial 
wall). Brad will occassionally open the security door of the Xcom base 
yielding one of your favorite soldiers + xcom security personnel. Brad doesn't 
seem to open the doors if personnel haven't died though. After the first wave, 
aliens will come from the MEC bay (the right) and the tunnels (the left) with 
the difference being that the tunnels will have cyberdisks while the MEC bay 
will generally have mutons. The cyberdisks can get stuck at the doors to the 
command section and the mutons are idiots who are easily dispatched from the 
highground overlooking the MEC bay. After that wave, the tunnels at the far 
right of the base will explode and aliens will pour through. If you're played 
the game for a long while, an ethereal may be present. If you've played it for 
even longer, Sectopods may be in this wave. Of course there's always the 
Mechtoid in case you feel the aliens haven't used their big guns yet. 


There are no tips I can give you for making this mission easier other than 
ensure that your best troops are given the guns they need to beat this mission. 
In addition the high ground given by the command section of the xcom base 
provides great high ground bonuses and thus you should have your squad camp 
here as there's little reason to engage the aliens on level ground in the MEC 
bay or at the eastern tunnels. You should do this regardless of what the 
aliens have as it make the mission so easy as the aliens aren't very good at a 
coordinated assault.

Q: What about Alien Base and the final battle?
A: These missions are too random to provide good tips for. There also like 
generic alien abduction missions in that you have no time limit, no special 
features, just linear map to explore and kill aliens on.

****Section 6 What I did**** (DLAI)

*this section is just there for people who want to know how I play the game. 
Attempting to emulate me will have various degrees of success. You will have 
more fun trying to play the game the way you want to which is quite 
hypocritical of me to say because this guide encourages MEC and SHIV spamming 
as much as possible*

I constructed my base with satelite uplinks on the left side and 
powergenerators on the right.

My first floor looked like this:

Sat uplink, Sat uplink, Sat uplink, Access lift power gen, Power gen, 
Cybernetics lab

I made sure to excavate my second floor well in advance so I could laydown the 
foundation for month 2. By this point I was already feeling the heat for 
skimping on tactical equipment, so I build the officer school to compensate 
and had another sate 
uplink ready and operation before month 2 ended. 

My second floor looked like this:

Sat uplink, Sat uplink, Officer school, Lift, Power gen, Power gen, workshop

The workshop was necessary because the requirements for the sixth and last sat 
uplink was too high for me to work with only abduction missions and monthly 
recruitment. By this point I had more cash then I really needed so my troops 
had wonderful heavy lasers and rail-guns. I started save up meld for a tier 3 
mec here during the second month

My third floor looked like this:

Genetics Lab, sat uplink, alien containment, lift, workshop, foundry, Thermo 
generator
My their floor was lucky enough to have a steam vent located in the corner. It 
turned out to be overkill to build a thermo gen there but it worked out anyway. 
As I noted earlier I don't put too much priority on capturing aliens as it all 
it does is give credit bonuses to research and thanks to moderating panic 
bonuses, I didn't have the 'we have ways' bonus so capturing aliens was 
useless. Needless to say, the alien containment slot was left empty for quite 
some time. The genetics lab was built simply because I wanted to see what it 
contained (this was my first playthrough). On the right, another workshop 
built to give me more engineers and a foundry because I wanted ammo 
conversation (it was the third month and mutons were showing up so I said 'why 
not?'. 
The forth floor contained power generators and plot facilities. These were 
built in September 25 2015 when I officially done stalling for money and 
profit (Exalt clues were being a bitch). 

Well you should know by now that I love MECs and so my squad was literally 
composed of 5 MECs and one heavy. The one heavy was for capturing aliens and 
rocket support. When I didn't need to capture anything I just loaded up with 6 
MECs. When I had 4 MECs I saved up meld and upgraded one straight to tier 3, 
giving it a grenade launcher and Emp. After that it was just smooth sailing. 
Even sectopods regularly got defeated without injuries.