Rob88

Yeah, they read CoE and all ended up joining the Church of England. Maybe there's a whole team of blonds praying for victory. If any blond ready this, I'm sorry, it's not your fault your blond. As far as multiculturalism goes, well, I have blacks, whites, and shades of Greys. (greys, as in the aliens, d'ya see what I did there, hah, I crack myself up)

OK, so the default is Hard, which makes it difficult for a newby, and may not be a good idea. What I'd like to see is an inteligent difficulty changer. Huh? what ? It's like this. Using some algorythm if time taken to complete mission, damage inflicted, damage recieved and other stuff the game changes its difficulty after every few battles. I don't just mean E/M/H, I mean a sliding scale sort of thing. Adding an extra unit or two to the alien forces each time you wipe the floor with them. A sensinble alien commander would probably increase the number of soliders on a spaceship if they kept getting beaten (space allowing). or, for that matter, decrease the number of units if they are not needed. I guess you might be able to manipulate it to your advantage, but that's a good tactic. Make the enemy think you are weak so they don't send more units.

In a UFO. 4 solders on the floor unconcious 1 under alien control 1 paralysed 1 almost down, but still standing. There's a rocket in the air heading towards them all, only about 4 squares away. Suddenly my last man standing empties his clip into a reticulan and I get the mission complete popup. Do I want to continue ? I think not. I think I'll stop right now before that missile hits and kills all my team. I've had some close calls before, but this was the closest. --- It may seem a little unrealistic, but I consider it like this. If the rocked had hit they would have been massively injured/dead, but without any more alien threat then some serious first aid could have been applied. The chopper would have contained better medical facilities/stasis thingy and they could have been carried to it. Am I making excuses for abusing the mechanics of the game to my own advantage, yup - but the mission had taken ages, and I deserved to win.

Sniper rifles. 6 guys with rifles. 1 with psi controler thing (and PSI helmet) All with loads of medi packs. As soon as you see an alien, all attack. If you mind control him make him drop his gun and run away from it. If you don't just keep firing. A new alien shoud appear about that time. As alien 1 is not longer a threat, all snipers shoot at new alien. (if alien 1 is still alive and shooting at you then make oen or two carry on shooting at him, and get the other 4-5 to shoot the new alien) Doing it this way you can normally elimiate the threat, but you are likely to get some damage caused. Sometimes it may be minimal, but sometimes - if a rocket gets through - you'll take a load of damage. Use the mid kits - then drop em to clear some weight. If an alied does fire a rocket - pause. Cancel all your orders and make all your team seperate - except one of them. (S)he should stand there and shoot at the rocket launcher alien. Remember, you can see what weapon each alien has. 6 sniper rifles can often kill an alien before he has time to fire a shot, so as soon as you see a rocket launcher alien concentrate all fire on him - you can come back to the lazer guns later.

So, I've just got so far as the Russian base, but not started the mission yet. I have dscovered that sniper rifles kick arse. Of my 7 man team, 6 have sniper rifles, 1 has 6 barrel grenade launcher. Most have one or two medpacks to. As soon as an alien stcks its head out it gets 6 bulletsin its face, and a grenade in its gut. Most the time they don't even get a single shot at me. When they get into a base or UFO they sling their rifles and get out SMGs (purple one?) or shotguns. I'm guessing at some point the games going to get harder, but for now my setup seems to be working. Any comments ?

I have a £1K laptop from Toys - R - Us and it plays fine. Although it is a 2.6Gz 64 mge radeon graphics cars 17" flat monitor

Just tried a mission with a sniper in my team. Bloody useful. He can shoot from a distance while my SMG and assualt rifle guys advance. Not much use inside a base. Maybe I'll give him a backup weapon for when he gets inside.

I wonder how many other people will have replied as I type this. UFO - Enemy Unknown - aliens from mars attack very dark, very scary, good fun. One alien would kill 4 of your men before you got him. UFO - Terror from the deep - Same aliens from #1 had been hiding under water, kill em with spear guns. Still scary, but green and murky. X-com - Apocalypse - Big city, 40s style vehicles, reat time or turn based, face huggers, skeltiods and dimentional gateways;. X-com ? ? ? few 1st party shooters and a flight sim, nothing like the originals, just cashing in on the name. and now, this. Editied because I got the name of the underwater one wrong.

Is it worth using snipers and hunting rifles. They have low damage (or at least the ones I have do), and there's no way to put a sniper on a roof or up a tower to have a good vantage point. The game seems to be more of a skirmish style of game rather than a game where sniping is useful. Comments ?

I'm pretty sure that this is correct. The guns won't become available until your chopper returns to a base. Also, when you get back to the base you team will automaticaly re-equip so they are carrying exactly what they had when they left the base last time. This is great for restocking ammo, but bloody annoying if you changed guns whilst on the chopper, bacause it all gets changed back. This had me confused for quite a while

Why cheat ?? Any fool can complete a game with cheats, and it's a hollow victory. If you can't complete the game without cheating, then try an easier level, and if you can't complete easy level, then keep trying until you do. The closest I come to cheating is save the game at the start of a fight, and if I realy screw up replay the fight. (not that that's happened yet) If I lose one or two of my team, that's just the spoils of war and I carry on.

I have an alien running towards me. I tell my guy to fire at it, and rack up [5] shots. After firing the 5th shot the game does not seem to pause. if I have two+ guys shooting at an alien, it's too easy to not notice that one of them has stopped firing. Is there a setting a I can change so that it pauses when I finish firing ?