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).
Vision
- It should always be assumed that any uncleared fog harbors more pods. This limits forward options and is the appropriate way to play (do you expect not to get punished?). The game often hovers an unactivated pod at the periphery of vision while in contact with active aliens, but this may be unnoticeable on lower difficulties. Situations where one must take a risk going forward are less often than one might think. Limiting yourself will make it all the more rewarding when you truly "have no choice".
Combat
- You should always think about having a guaranteed backup plan, e.g. a Grenade or double Grenade kills, or someone has a 100% kill, if you intend to take pot shots (that could go horribly wrong). Things like a 90% rocket or a 95% shot are not guaranteed kills.
- Suppression+Smoke Grenade+high cover is safe against Sectoids, Floaters, Mutons at range, and Sectopods, given they don't run the reaction shot.
- Sometimes you can find a spot to Overwatch where a soldier can see a sliver of vision and not see any cover and peeking tile the AI can blue move to fire back on. That is a cost free potential reaction shot if the AI has a valid reason to cross the visible region.
- Plan before you commit. This is important for 2 reasons:
- 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.
- 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.
- [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.