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Engineering Research

The Engineering Department at XCOM is headed up by Dr. Raymond Shen, an enlightened soul who clearly understands the value of the work that they do, even if he reminds you of someone's grand papa... As the Chief Engineer at XCOM Shen wields enormous power and influence, providing the player with just the sort of support they need to find a toe hold into the tech that will lead to victory!

Interestingly the creation of tech objects and weapons from the breakthroughs made by the Science Department is not the only area of influence and responsibility that Shen has at XCOM, as he is also largely responsible for implementing your expansion plans and for excavating and building the base expansion underground.

Constructing New Facilities

When you go about planning the placement of each of the new facilities that you are building it would be a very good idea to try to plan them so that like facilities are built next to and above and below each other, so that they attach to each other, because save for a few minor cases, doing this almost always results in attaining some sort of bonus effect, whether that be higher power output, or lower expenses, or even requiring less materials to produce whatever that facility produces, the writing is on the wall (literally) in the form of the green plus marks that connect each similar facility!

Satellite Facilities and the Birds

Among the more important facilities that Shen builds for you are the Satellite Uplinks and the Satellites that they operate. One only need examine the bonuses that are dealt out by region and by country to understand what a massive impact the Satellite Networks can have on your game. This is something that you should seriously think about as you are expanding your base, since the early adoption of Satellite tech and early deployment often has a massive impact on your game success.

Bearing in mind that for every Uplink you have, you should have built TWO Satellites to deploy, since they each can control two. If you did not, then reviewing how many Satellites you actually have deployed and comparing that to the number of Uplinks will clue you in on how many more you can deploy.

Tech Items and Kit

By far the most significant role that Engineering plays is supplying you with the Items and Kit you need to keep your Squad and your Interceptors at a competitive level with the enemy. It should be very clear as the game progresses that despite the fact that they are quite literally an invasion force, the enemy has not halted its tech development, and therefore you cannot afford to do so either!

The rub is that creating the new tech that is reverse-engineered from the Alien Tech requires not only time and money but Alien materials - basically the stuff you cannot obtain any other way and so must re-purpose after you salvage it from the enemy.

Getting to know the different items, armor, weapons, and supporting kit that you have available to you, and getting a sufficient amount built so as to fully support whatever Squad you are sending out on a mission should be one of your main priorities as you play, regardless of the game type or immediate goals.