Help: X-Com3: Apocalypse

[Raion]

I drank to that, last night, when the Internet went down, or was that the night before!

I think I should replay one scene, it went badly for the agents, since I missed the actual button to click, and blew up my own agents.

Oh, well, I am the Commander, and........................

[Skanky Burns]

Priming grenades without throwing them isn't such a good idea.
Not that I haven't done that before

[Raion]

Oh, well!

Spoiler:

It's the error message one gets when they get there and one finds out without being able to leave!

Spoing!!

[Skanky Burns]

Time to talk tactics.
As per Tuomerehu's request, the contents are in a spoiler box, headings left in plain text so people can choose just how much is revealed.

The type of aliens generally faced:

Spoiler:

Most alien forces in XCom Apocalypse consist of a few brainsuckers, one or two poppers, one or two multiworms and a slew of cannon fodder (soldiers). Later on, psi-enhanced soldiers start coming into play. To effectively defeat this enemy force, you will need to know how to overcome each different type of alien without losing agents in the process.

Brainsuckers:

Spoiler:

These are the little orange guys that run around, jump on your guys heads and try to convert them to the alien way of life. Not what you want. However, there are several ways to render them less effective.

The first method is to use android soldiers. Androids can not be brainsucked, so any brainsucker that tries simply dies in their attempt. However, androids do not gain skill with experience, and humans with experience quickly surpass androids.

Lying down on the ground (setting your agents to crawl) just before the end of your turn will also prevent successful brainsucker attacks. Here, they still jump on your agent's head, but instead of then attacking find themselves flattened on the ground. They can then be killed the following turn by some forced fire* from the agent.
Drawbacks to this method include the fact that approximately 12 time units must be reserved at the end of each turn, and some more the following turn to get your agents on their feet again (to walk or run). Also, if an agent faces a different direction and is prevented from lying down by a wall or some other object, they will end up kneeling. An agent can change the direction they are facing due to opportunity fire**, so this remains a risk.

Prevent the brainsucker from gaining access to your agent's head. To do this, put your agents in positions where the brainsucker can't reach. Flying just below a roof is one such spot. Of course, this requires flying armour (which is weaker than other armour types). Flying reduces your weapons accuracy too.

Opportunity fire: Give you guys enough spare time units to fire at the approaching brainsuckers. Initially your soldiers will have very low accuracy (hence will generally miss with their main weapon), so equiping each agent with a stun grapple is recommended. This forces the agents to wait until the brainsucker is close before they fire at it. Forced fire the following turn will prevent the brainsucker from being a problem in the future. Later when your agent's accuracy is higher, standard weapons will be able to kill the brainsuckers at range. There is some risk with this method, but I feel it is the best way to deal with this enemy type.

One final method is the "pray" method. You let the brainsucker run up to you, jump up and attempt to suck your agent's brain. You pray that the attack fails (which will prove fatal to the brainsucker in question). Generally, however, this method proves fatal to the agent in question. If using this method, expect to be saving and loading often, or be losing many agents. Equiping agents with XCom-built armour helmets increases the success of this method, but still does not guarantee its success.

Poppers:

Spoiler:

Poppers are the little blue aliens (similar in size to the brainsuckers) that run around very fast upon spotting your agents, leave a trail of dust behind them and upon reaching your agents, explode in a suicidal attack.

An unfortunate fact of poppers is that almost every weapon will prompt them to explode. This can be bad (as low accuracy weapons mean that your agents will be near the popper when it pops), but it can also be used to your advantage if you spot the popper whilst it is still near its alien masters. A grenade or other explosive type (rockets :D ) will generally set the popper off, even if inaccurate, so long as the explosion area reaches the popper. For aliens near the popper, this means that they not only have to survive your grenade exploding near them, but the popper explosion immediately following that too!

However, mostly when you encounter poppers you would prefer them not to explode, such as when they are near your agents or even near buildings owned by some other corporation. Relations are important, you know. ;). Two useful weapons where poppers are concerned are the toxiguns and stun grapples. Either will disable the popper without it popping. Initially you won't have toxiguns (nor the accuracy to use them effectively), so equiping your agents with stun grapples is a must. As with brainsuckers, opportunity fire with a stun grapple is a very good way to deal with this enemy type.

Multiworms (and hyperworms):

Spoiler:

These evil creatures are green snake-type units that take up two squares on the map. They have a powerful ranged acid weapon, and even in death (especially in death) are dangerous - releasing up to 4 hyperworms.

There are two effective ways of dealing with multiworms. The first is to stun them. Have at least two agents near the multiworm (but out of its sight) and end your turn. On the following turn, get an agent to run up directly to the multiworm. Shoot it four or five times with your stun grapple, then fire at it with your agent's main weapon with the remainder of your time units. Repeat with your second agent, who should have the multiworm unconsious before he runs out of time units. The multiworm may take oppertunity fire at your agents while they are stunning it, but if it does react, it generally is to run away. A drawback to this method is that an agent must hang around the multiworm for the rest of the mission to keep it unconsious, as they have a tendancy to wake up often. If you knock out multiple mulitworms near each other, one agent can guard several of them.

The other method is to kill the buggers outright. From a distance. Of course, this requires your agents to have some decent accuracy, and some weapon with a decent chance of hitting from a distance. A toxigun is recommended. The real problem here is what you do with the hyperworms that are born as the multiworm dies. Each hyperworm has full movement points, and can easily kill any agent that is close by. A quick way to get rid of these new pests is to throw a grenade amongst them that is set to explode NOW!, and then snipe off the ones that may have run away before the grenade landed.

Cannon Fodder:

Spoiler:

These are your generic anthropods and skeletiods. Armed with ranged weapons and able to carry more advanced alien technology into battle, these are the most frequent type of aliens you will encounter. (It helps that I lumped 2 types of aliens into the one group, though ;) I won't discuss specific strategies for cannon-fodder removal, as there are multiple valid ways of dealing with them, and chances are you have already found a tactic that suits you. However, I will share with you some pointers on how to make the battles easier for you.

It is a good idea to check what weapons an alien has dropped on the turn it is killed. (Funnel-heads don't carry weapons, other alien types do though). What you are looking for here is unhatched brainsucker pods - little yellowish pods - that will hatch and cause havok amongst your attacking agents on the following turn. Once you have found some brainsucker pods, use your agent to pick them up, saving yourself a large amount of trouble with pesky brainsuckers. While someone is carrying the pods, they will not hatch.

After some time, the aliens will get shields. This means that you will have to destroy their shield before you can even start damaging the actual alien. If you have toxiguns then you are laughing - the darts go right through the shield, killing the alien and leaving behind a fully charged shield (which your agents can then use if researched). If you don't have toxiguns though, all is not lost. Equip your agents with plenty of stun grenades, and attempt to stun the alien cannon-fodder.

When the aliens get higher technology items that allow them to be partially invisible, your agents have a hard time aiming at them. A better method than aiming at the alien in question is to force-fire on a sqare further past the alien, so that the bullet hits the alien before it gets to the forced-fire square. There is no to-hit penalty aiming behind an alien.

Psi-enabled aliens:

Spoiler:

Psi-offensive units encompass the psi-morphs (very large units) and psi-puddles (not their real name, but a very accurate description). I have three methods of dealing with these units. The first is the mind-shield cheat. The second is to use androids, although by the time you are facing psi-units, you definately want better units than androids. The third is to equip your units with non-killing weapons such as toxiguns (they don't injure humans much) or stun grapples, and just hope that the psi-morphs don't capture your agents. If they do, your captured agent hopefully won't harm his fellow agents, and the next turn you can kill or diable the psi-unit that did dthe capturing.

Up **** creek without a paddle:

Spoiler:

What do you do when you have run up to a single alien with just enough time units to kill it, only to arrive at that alien and find he had about a dozen friends just around the corner? In situations like this, your agent is in deep trouble. One very useful (last-ditch) method to save your agent is to prime and drop a stun grenade on the square that he is standing on. This may (and most probably will) stun the agent in question, but in this case it is much better than the agent dying at the hands of the aliens. Plus he might take a few aliens to stunnedville with him. He will then be able to wake up some turns later no worse for wear. If your agent doesn't get stunned, then there is still a chance that the aliens around him will be stunned. Even if both your agent and some aliens around him aren't stunned, there is a good chance that your agent will still be safe, as aliens won't be able to see well through the stun gas.

* Forced fire: Holding shift and clicking in a square forces the agent to shoot at that location. This can be useful to kill aliens that are only unconcious (to ensure they will not wake up later on), although that is not the only time forced fire is useful.

** Opportunity fire: Firing at the aliens during their turn. All that is needed is good reaction times, spare time units and for the agent to be facing towards an alien.

EDIT: Typo

[DrSpike]

From my recollection is all sounds pretty useful...........though there are some nasty aliens later on that aren't on the list.

[Skanky Burns]

For some people, it's just never enough

I really only left 2 aliens out, and one of them you only encounter once in the entire game.

Megaspawn:

Spoiler:

By the time you find these guys, you should at least have shields and toxiguns. Hopefully XCom armour too. If so, treat these aliens as you would other cannon-fodder units, just run into accurate firing range and blast away. The megaspawn's opportunity fire should be soaked up by your shield, leaving your agent unharmed. Double shields for the first agent firing at the megaspawn would probably be a good idea, though.

Use stun grapples if you wish to take a live specimen - stun grenades are spectacularly ineffective. The megaspawn will just walk out of the cloud and express his displeasure at your nearest agent.

Queenspawn:

Spoiler:

You will only ever encounter one of these alien types, and they will be surrounded by alien eggs, as well as a large platoon of guards. She is found only in the alien dimension, and this will allow you plenty of time to prepare a squad for queen-capturing duty.

I generally wait until I have teleporters to do this mission. Once a scout has found the location of the queen, teleport an agent near her to remove the alien eggs from her surroundings. You don't want agents to be killed by eggs! Next, teleport in a few agents with stun grapples and proceed to stun her as much as possible. After stunning, shoot toxigun darts into her one at a time, until she is unconcious. This is important as you only get one chance to capture a live queen, and killing her means you will not be able to complete the research tree.

If you finish the mission in one turn, the queen is not a fearsome adversary at all. If she is allowed to fire back at your agents though, I have heard that she is quite deadly.

[Skanky Burns]

Ok, now for something actually fun...

Destroying buildings from the tactical map!

Recommended: 8 agents (more agents mean the building can be destroyed in less turns),
Each armed with a power-sword or disruptor cannon
Several vortex mines.
A weapon and shield is useful if the aliens/building guards counter-attack before the building is destroyed.

Location: The easiest building to destroy is one of the slum buildings, normally owned by the gangs and the lesser political parties. The actual building will be 9 levels high (only 4 floors though, including ground and the roof), and the building will be resting on 8 concrete support blocks, with an additional support block in the center of the building housing the "elevator" shaft.

This will place a strain on any relationship with the target organisation, so don't target someone you need (such as the government).

Now, how to destroy the building:

Spoiler:

Done correctly, your agents will never leave the ground floor. This is also a fairly dangerous way to remove aliens/guards from a map, since you won't be facing towards where they come out, and you could also get crushed by the falling building. Save often.

Get your agents to the nearest building support block, and start digging into the foundation by attacking it with your powersword (or disruptor cannon). The powersword I think takes less time-units to use, so is recommended. Keep digging by force-firing (shift left-click on the concrete) towards the center of each support block. Once you have dug near the middle of a block, prime a vortex mine, drop it, then move your agent out of its explosion range. This will get rid of much concrete. Additional vortex mine might be needed to remove more of the support concrete. Power-swords or disruptors can be used to finish off any remaining pieces of concrete.

A strange property of this building is that it is built in two pieces. Once all supporting concrete is removed from one side, that side will fall to the ground (killing everyone in that side of the building, and anyone standing beneath it), but the other half of the building will still be standing as though nothing had happened. While strange, this property can be exploited by agents removing concrete from the middle area around the "elevator", as they will have *somewhere* to go when removing the last bit of concrete support from one side of the building. Moving agents under the side of the building that isn't falling will keep them safe.

Once you have removed all the supports from the building, sit back and watch as the theory of gravity kicks in. All enemies still left inside the building (which should be *all* of them) will be killed instantaneously, and the mission will end. The corporation that owns the building will now have a massive chunck of their reserves depleted, and you will have all the equipment that the enemy dropped as they were crushed by tons of concrete. Enjoy.

[DrSpike]

Ingenious.....and delightfully underhand.

[Skanky Burns]

Well, I have since confirmed that Disruptor cannons are very effective at removing enemy buildings from the tactical map. And I have another building that is nice to destroy.

Spoiler:

The corporate headquaters - the building with a large set of entrance stairs going up about 3 levels in the middle-south of the map. Just destroy the stairs as a first priority (as well as killing any enemy soldiers on the ground) and then destroying the building piece by piece). This map is especially nice as once the stairs are removed, all enemy garrison remaining on the map are forced to stay inside the building (which you will be steadily destroying) and will leave you in peace. You can't ask for much more than that. :)

This building is strange though. Even if you destroy every support holding up the building, it refuses to bow down to gravity. The first level (the one your agents destroy) will be removed, as will the second by gravity, but the third up to the ninth will still remain. Do not despair, however. Your agents will be able to destroy the building yet.

Get your agents to the south of the map, group them, and have them fire as a group at level 3 and above, preferrably aiming above the concrete layer between level 2 and 3.

I have destroyed the entire building by about turn 50 (yes, it takes a while, but its FUN!). Twice however, I have had the enemy soldiers knock themselves out/commit suicide before the entire building is destroyed. Annoying, but what can you do? Loading didn't help.

Anyway, destruction of their entire corporate headquaters set the corporation back over a million dollars - not something to scoff at.

I actually left one of the smilies in as an incentive to view the spoiler.

[Raion]

Devious.

Spoiler:

But why just not knock down the building from the outside on the city map, sometimes?

[Skanky Burns]

They fight back.

[Urban Ranger]

Another way to deal with brainsuckers.

Spoiler:

I found that keeping your agents under a ceiling or just in a doorway keeps the brainsuckers from successful attacks. Sure they will still make a jump, but the attacks will be unsuccesful because they will bump into the ceiling. You can then pick them off with opportunity fire.

[Ozz]

Pitting Aliens:

Use high explosives to blow holes in the bottom most
floor of a building, you get concrete pits. Hide behind
them. Quite often aliens fall in and you can end a mission by just gassing them. This way they don't die
while you hunt the last alien down.

Works great with poppers and worms.

[Urban Ranger]

Interesting.

Does the "no need to pay salary" exploit works here?

[Raion]

Wonderful!!