Tactics (EU2012)

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Pod System

Aliens now come in groups of 1 to 3. Some of these groups may patrol around the map by teleporting to random points around the map, but are tactically dormant (i.e. they will not open fire or take cover) until you "wake them up". Note that once awoken, aliens can act fully even when outside your visual range, including Overwatch (and in the case of Sectopods, the Cluster Bomb attack).

Similar to massive-multiplayer online game instances, "waking-up" multiple groups of enemies is just plain stupid. The best strategy is to wake-up and deal with one group at a time. When scouting for enemies, don't move too far ahead, especially with a 2-move dash. When a group is activated, it may be prudent to then back up and get into defensive positions to greet the enemy.

Enemies can be in two states: activated or not. When you start a map, all aliens are not in activated state, and are bunched up in packs of up to 3. They roam the map (actually, teleport around the map until next teleport will put them inside your LOS, thats when they make a movement animation) or even stay in place until discovered. When spotted on your turn, or coming into your LOS on their turn, a small cutscene will play, and aliens will always make a move, usually into cover. They will never take an offensive action at the turn (yours or theirs) at which you met them. Only once activated, starting from their next turn, aliens start to act as individual units, taking turns in the same manner as player does. (two actions per turn, move/move or move/shoot, overwatch, etc.)

This means that as long as you have no activated aliens on the map, you are completely 100% safe from any kind of harm. You can have every enemy carry a grenade and yet bunch up your soldiers next to each other and never be in danger, as long as those enemies are not active yet. You can be in the open and never be in any danger as long as there are no active enemies on the map. You never have to fear an enemy that is not activated. In a situation when you have no active aliens on the map, you can play a completely different game, and to a big advantage.

Also, notice that landing a shot on an alien that you have spotted but that has not spotted you (this can rarely happen when you're behind cover, or easily happen with Battle Scanner) will activate the pack. Misses that travel close to the pack will also activate them, as missed shots provide a bit of vision. Same for explosives.

Do note that, sometimes, these wandering packs may 'teleport' into the middle of your squad, and that if savescumming, unactivated packs might be in a different location (even from the same savestate).

Combat

• Leap frog your way forward on maps while also rotating through your squad's first move before deciding to perform a second move. It will also help make sure you have someone with a move left to take action should you encounter aliens.
• Plan before you commit. This is important for 2 reasons:
  1. Aliens get a free move when they are seen and if the alien moves into view of a soldier that has already been put on overwatch they cannot use that turn to fire. You have to rely on them having a reaction shot during the alien's turn.
  2. If you want to move them somewhere else you can't because they are locked once on overwatch.
• [Overwatch tactic; Weak] Alternatively, put several secure units (like snipers) into overwatch before revealing enemies. Your soldiers will open fire on aliens as they scramble for cover and the penalty to reaction fire will be more than compensated by the absence of a cover penalty.
• For behind the door situations, gather your soldiers in front of the door, around the corner or in a spot across the room facing the door. Next open the door to wake up the aliens inside. If no aliens are seen, have a soldier (preferably your assault with Run&Gun) move in. After the aliens run for cover, charge in and open fire at optimum ranges. If there are multiple entrances into the same room, split your team so that you can potentially get a flank bonus on some of the enemies. Depending on the situation, you also have the option of waking up an enemy behind a door, and then back out of sight to encourage the alien to run out and into a flurry of reaction fire.
• Instead of taking best shot possible with each soldier, one after another, it might be a good idea to first check which soldier sees which enemy, and has which chance to hit - for example, one of your squad sight snipers could only see one target with 100% CTH on it, and your other squad sight can see that target with 100% CTH on it, and another with 80% CTH on it - while it could seem as a better move to fire on the first target with the second sniper when you select him and look at available targets, doing so will mean you cannot do any reasonable damage with your first sniper this turn. Also, consider what opportunities indirect use of explosives may provide - you may first remove cover of several aliens, then shoot, to maximise your chance to hit, consider how you can move to improve your sight or chance to hit, etc. It is also a good idea to plan for the worst case scenario, having backup plans - for example, leaving Heavy's turn for last, so that he can blow enemies up in case you miss them, or, commit to firing first with your soldiers that are least in danger (snipers, or those behind good cover) so, in case enemies live, you can retreat your soldiers in low cover or in danger of being flanked, instead of having them already spent their turn and locked in a danger zone.
• While shooting at enemies is always better than nothing, if you miss or don't kill the target, said shooter is exposed to return fire. Unless you are confident in the shot, or have a second shooter, it may be a good idea to hunker down.
• [Exploit] If AI unit has no AOE attack, has no enemy in LOS which is exposed/flanked, is himself exposed/flanked, and sees a unit which is on overwatch, it will completely skip its turn. AI seems to run out of options and "panics". Therefore, you can "lock down" units like sectoids and floaters (on the ground), or Mutons if they already used their grenades, or Thin Men if you carry medkits, by simply flanking them with one of your units and putting one of your soldiers that is visible to them on overwatch (can be the flanker, can be different unit).
  This can allow you to advance your Arc Thrower carrying soldier, or take free shots on the enemy until it dies, or just save yourself from harm. Using this is way superior to just taking the shot with your flanking unit, because in case you do not kill it, AI will move to cover on its turn and fire back, plus, in a situation when your unit flanks 2 or more enemies, he can only theoretically kill one of them (except using grenades, but then flanking was probably unnessecary), plus flanking does not always guarantee a hit, etc. However, by going overwatch, you can single-handedly keep all flanked enemies at bay while giving yourself freedom to deal with them in whichever way you prefer.
  Notice, however, that you must have no units exposed/flanked by an alien locked that way, or alien will fire. Also watch out for aliens with grenades or other AOE attacks.
  The panic also seems not to trigger a good amount of the time if the alien unit has not yet moved away from it's starting position. (the cover it moves to after its introductory cinematic) To be completely sure that overwatch will lock down an enemy, make sure it has moved at least once, unless you have no other options.
  Because the flanking unit does not necessarily have to be the one to overwatch, you dash a unit to a good position where it has an exposed view of all enemies, and as long as a unit has any line of sight on these same enemies (not necessarily an exposed one) overwatch will lock them down, except in some cases mentioned above.
  This has been 'fixed' in Enemy Within.

Mind Wall

If you are tired of mind controlling aliens after you got Psionics and if you have lucky to have 5/6 Psionic soldiers you can set your psi squad to be permanently in a Telekinetic Field that gives all units (including the aliens) inside +40 Defense. The ability has a 4 turn cooldown so you need 5 soldiers equipped with it to always have 1 unit activating it at the end of your turn. This tactic works ideally on open areas like smaller UFO maps and most abduction and Council missions. Even if the aliens are protected within the field you just need not to set your soldiers on Overwatch so that they'll not fire at the aliens, and if you combine it with Dense Smoke and/or terrain cover you'll get +80 Defense stats. The only vulnerability of the field is to grenades, so take out first any aliens with explosive weapons.

Equipment

• Ghost Armour is the obvious choice for all classes (maybe Psi Armour for Psi), but for snipers you may want to equip with Angel Armor. Because of a bug in the game, Angel Armour grants you Height bonus and Damn Good Ground bonus even though the Angel Armor strictly says it shouldn't. With these bonuses plus a scope, your chance to hit jumps to near certainty even for aliens with full cover.

See Also

• Tactical Layer
• Squads
• Class Builds
• Abilities