Xenonauts 2 - Early Game Tips
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- There is quite a steep learning curve with Xenonauts 2. Hopefully this video will get you up and running without hitting some of the mistakes I did while learning the game. Let me know if you want a midgame video at some point.
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00:00 Intro
02:50 Passive Income
03:27 Base Building
04:48 Soldier Stats
06:57 Defender Armour
07:24 Item swapping
07:46 Skyhawk facing and positioning
08:32 MARS Loadouts
10:07 Selling items
11:08 Skyhawk Vision
11:32 Combat Primer (Smoke, Cover, Flashbangs, Suppression, Crouching)
18:29 Using Smoke to capture enemies
20:32 Cancelling Movement
20:58 Air Combat
25:54 (Spoiler Warning) Accelerated Weapons - Hry
I would argue the massively increased healing rate from the Medical Center is at least as valuable, if not more so, than the increases survival chance if they go down. Well worth mentioning, at least. :)
Especially since getting wounded gives you stat bonuses from the award. So getting your heart and I am getting back to battle faster is nice.
Common misunderstanding with how cover works with Xenonauts; destroying the pile of bricks had no effect on the hit chance. No matter how many pieces of cover a target is behind, only the "best" (highest penalty) one will actually affect the shot. That's why the percentage chance to hit was unchanged and the text over the bricks was greyed out, but the penalty text for the wall the alien was behind was still red. The *exception* to this is smoke, which applies its hit penalty (-10 for light smoke and -20 for heavy iirc) for every tile of smoke a shot passes through.
For the air combat, rolling is effective for dodging shots, especially when you're charging directly in. It's tricky getting the timing right at first, but it's valuable for drastically reducing repair time. You didn't mention the torpedoes, which can be very useful when the next UFO type shows up, but it disables rolling in combat.
I came here to comment the cover thing :)
I would note, because experience for all non health stats scales with how many TU you spend, higher TU also scales how quickly your combat soldiers level up. I would argue it's by MILES the most important soldier stat. I like health, but I just sort my soldiers by time units at game start, skyranger up the first 9, and fire the bottom 3. Everything else will sort itself out in a few missions (except health, unfortunately, but you can deal with low health), but time units are king. Low time units may not fire slower, but they DO level up slower.
My top "getting started" tips after having played roughly 40 hours the past 3 days and sort of "perfecting" (in my opinion) the first month:
1. Start by building a training facility, medical facility, second radar, extra living quarters and one extra laboratory and workshop. Start research for MARS. Don't workshop anything yet (we have more than enough armors).
2. Setup your squad to have 3 shield units, 2 assaults and 4 snipers (you can run 6 snipers for the first mission if you want, just be prepared to break a lot of walls if you get indoor aliens). You can replace soldiers if you want, but don't go above 12 total before you're ready to build a second training facility.
2a. Your default setup for the shield units will be a pistol, shield, one smoke, two demo packs and as many flashbangs as they can carry. No armor and no ammo (unless you have
Simply awesome suggestions! Thanks!
Many thanks, Amazing guide as well
In patch 1.24 they fixed the selling mechanics :
Item sell prices now increase / decrease correctly per item sold even if you sell in a stack, meaning there is no longer any benefit to hoarding items in your stores to sell all at once.
Great update thank you for letting me know.
You talked about skipping Accelerated weapons for Laser weapons at the end of the video. However both laser and accelerated are on the same "Tier". Laser weights less, has an accuracy boost and chips away armor - so it is good when you want to focus on a target with multiple guys - but it only has very low clip sizes. Accelerated on the other hand weights more and straight up penetrates a good amount of armor in addition to chipping some. So for units that have to deal with enemies alone, or in situatios where the bonus laser accuracy is not needed accelerated shines. For example a close range shotgun will always hit and the armor pierce can get you a oneshot. Also the standard ammo amount helps avoid awkward situations where you have to constantly reload your laser weapons when an aliens is right infront of you.
Yeah, that's what I thought too, and hence I delayed laser weapons for quite a bit... But then I realized (just 1 hour ago) that you can do an upgrade project for the laser weapons in the engineer workshop, which buffs their damage, so that it gets higher than accelerated. For example for sniper, it goes from 46 damage to 54 damage (if I remember correctly), and the the magazines starts to regenerate bullets over time. I haven't actually built them yet, so I am yet to find out how well they work in-game.
And yes, I have already equipped all my soldiers with accelerated weapons, soe yeah I might do that different on another playthrough.
@@DanildFlamme I didn´t know about the regenerating ammo for advanced lasers. How fast do you get a refill during tactical battles?
@@jigsawpieces5416 As far as I can read, they all have 1 round regenerated per turn, except pistol which has 2/turn, and machine laser which has 5/turn.
So depending on your playstyle, it may or may not be enough, but you can still bring 1 or 2 extra clips, just in case.
BUT for the sniper it is clearly wild!... Since you can only get 1 shot/turn with the Sniper anyway, it means that for the sniper rifle it means unlimited ammo for all practical purposes, so no more reloading sniper rifles, when you have advanced laser on it.
So for sniper laser you don't even need to bring extra clips, meaning even more weight saved.
Bravery is insanely important early game. I have ran into psions as soon as mission/ufo 3. I was pleasantly surprised by my people getting mind fucked so early in the game. ( I was actually quite pissed off.) Really good video, dude. A lot of shit I had no idea about.
Thank you. I have been playing this game quite a bit but had missed the point that you can change the direction the soldiers are facing in the dropship with right-click. So that will help me from now on. :)
Your xenonauts content is super solid. Looking forward to more! And yeah mid game tips would be good as well
I remember a tactic from the first game where some soldiers carried a shield into battle but dropped it in the transport on the first turn or so. The advantage is there are spare shields to replace lost ones or to supplement existing ones. The downside is that it takes TU to switch to a primary weapon and inventory space. So, it will be less ideal for anti-terror or cleaner intel missions where time is at a premium. However, its utility should be considered when dealing with crashed or intact UFOs and base assault missions.
It would be cool if it was like the original XCOM, where you could simply have stuff stored in the transport that isn't equipped.
Unfortunetly you can't do that in this game currently
@@chriseash6497 Well, I'm not in a position to test it out myself. If I recall correctly the shield was carried in an active slot with the primary weapon in inventory. Then on first turn or when it was safe have the soldier drop the shield and switch to the primary weapon. Having the transport have an inventory of extra equipment would be better if implemented.
@@StoneCresent I played around with it. Had to put Shields on my Snipers, no one else has the available space. I remember having multiple on the Shields guys and dropping them.
Great intro; long time XCOM/XCOM2/WOTC player who just bought the early access of XN2. This was very useful.
Looking forward to watching this, thanks Phros! 👍🏽👽
Great vid! Thanks for the info!
Can't wait for the game to unlock, very excited. Thanks for this primer content, very helpful to hear your distilled wisdom!
Starting location for me is always Cyprus due to its central location.
Cyprus is also extremely realistic since its home to British RAF bases which I imagine would be ideal areas for Xenonauts to be based.
Good thinking, I might look at a different start point for the next campaign, the state of Latin America at the end of the my first playthrough was pretty bad.
Verry good vid, keep up the good work.
Nice tips. They stand up to what I've noticed playing so far :)
I just wanted to say that I loved your Xenonauts 2 let’s play, and I’m waiting patiently for the next one.
Thank you! And it's coming!
You win this game in the air! Have Always airplane ready and in multiple bases
Very great video, thank you!
14:53 That’s incorrect. Only the biggest cover modifier applies, so max(-40, -40). If you look at the displayed to-hit chance, it remains the same, 31%, whether or not the bricks are destroyed.
Some nice tips and this game is looking to be a worthy successor to the first one. Thanks!
Well done Tip Tutorial, loaded with common sense and great tactics. Countless thanks, for sharing with us all. 👍👍 10⭐
There's no point to having low reflexes since you can just turn off reaction fire for individual weapons. Considering in Xenonauts 1 reaction fire was just turned off for explosive weapons I imagine it is here as well, at least by default.
Well said, though I think his point was that IF a soldier has an abysmal reflex but amazing other stats, don’t discredit his ability as a grenadier.
Doors and corners, kid. That's where they get ya - Miller from The Expanse 😀
Sound advice, Miller knew his room clearing. Interesting skill set for a detective.
great guide, focused and fast. One additional tip: hovering over the stats shows how to train them
yeah the side doors thing is definitely huge. Been playing this variant since the '93 OG xcom, so well done!
The Mars is great for scouting and decoy work early game because you really need to have all the exp from kills going to troops or you will have a tough time in the mid to late game, Captured aliens are a must for those species bonuses. Don't know if they change it but the lizard aliens had a regen ability in the game is you don't want one to run and hide because it will heal and not be wounded.
im really enjoying this game! i love that the art style is realistic, the last xcom game i played felt a bit superhero-y, great tips thanks!
Very useful. Quick one would you recommend to purchase in early game sidewinder missiles along with skylancer torpedo?
Also notice a good tactics when going into UFO here if it not a small ship:
Use LMG's, and fire at distant enemies, PAST close by enemies. it suppresses the front and the rear guys, which is a very efficient way of suppressing and destroying cover. It's great for clearing UFO's, as often you can just spray down the cockpit with LMG fire, suppress everyone, and then go in with the shotguns to clean up. It also magnifies the power of smoke, as halved time units means enemies are far less able to move out of smoke and then gun you down, as moving takes far more of their total time units.
Btw I notice another function from other comment:
You CAN turn off overwatch. It's the little eyeball symbol on the weapon. White is on and red is off. Just make sure you turn off primary and secondary weapon overwatch when applicable. I don't know for sure, but this may let you turn on overwatch with a grenade launcher as well.
Yeah LMG's AOE suppression (and clipping other targets) is very cool. Supression mechanics are essential I am finding. Great tip here.
Thank you!
I didn't know that you can change soldier orientation in landing craft by right-clicking on them.
Yes! It's actually in this video!
For crouching I disagree on the constant usage you make of it. The problem is the 4 Tu it takes to do it, but also to stand up again.
So if you crouched someone the turn before and he needs to move to shoot a newly discovered alien, he will lack 8 Tu (4 to stand up, 4 to crouch again...).
Conclusion: for me you crouch exposed soldiers, the "safe" ones stay up. These Tu saved will save the ass of some soliders (allowing a shot on an alien who would have survived and shot you, allowing to heal a soldier who would have been just too far otherwise...)
I agree, but the trouble is that it can be very tricky to accurately assess which soldiers are actually “safe”.
You can get unlucky and have aliens showing up from unexpected angles, having a height advantage that means a unit is suddenly exposed, breaking through walls or breaching through doors or windows.
Hence, you usually need to crouch a lot during the beginning of a mission and only once you have areas completely cleared and, say, have to get one half of your men to join up with the other to mop up the rest of the aliens, or having to run to support them, do you really have either the safety to avoid crouching or the time pressure meaning you have to forego it and chance a run instead.
You can just sortie multiple times with all missiles, release it all and retreat. It lets you kill them without taking any of your own health at all
Not sure if it's a bug but accelerated weapons you make and get from cleaners can be sold for twice their manufacture cost compared to the later tech weapons so you can easily fill a team with them and sell it later for a boost.
Also if you don't want to risk your fighter jets dying you can equip all their weapon slots with missiles/ torpedoes, manual attack and retreat back to base and repeat. Very useful for getting rid of fighter UFOs and observers.
that where a lot of helpful informations! most of it was unknown to me!
Glad it was helpful!
Ahhh my machine gunner missing every shot from 3 tiles away. Classic xcom
Start with heavy gunners in front of your assaults. They can initiate with 10 shot bursts to supress the initial enemy overwatch.
the smoke grenade trick with stun damage is very strong i accidently pulled it off on a Mentarch on my first UFO breach trying to figure out what it does, got the unconscious Mentarch for Plot progression before i even had any real incentive to. I can highly suggest dropping smoke into the small scout ships and letting them run around in it.
Does destroying alien computers and stuff in the ufos reduce the amount of looted material? Ive been trying to clear them cleanly but I dont know for sure
Do new soldiers become recruitable as the game goes along, or is everyone that will be available there from the start?
There will be new recruits as time passes by
@@renyaoqin once you hire a number of new recruits, they will immediately be replaced in the hire-able pool by new soldiers. The screen doesn't refresh immediately so you may need to get out of it and back in to see the new available recruits.
The reflex stat is also used to determine alien reaction fire too. (at least it was in the prev game) So it is useful for units that will move in sight of aliens, such as scouts and shotgun troops. You might argue that shield duty needs reflex to avoid breaking the shield, but drawing fire with a shield guy also has its use, and that is easier with a low reflex guy.
I believe it's the same initiative rules as UFO/TFTD. Reactions/Reflex ÷ TU% = Initiative, and if the defending unit beats the attacking unit's Initiative, then react.
Just learned about Xenonaughts. I was playing XCOM, XCOM 2, and War of the Chosen for a while. But it's nice to see a spiritual successor. I'm tempting to buy both during tomorrow's Steam sale. Hope there's a deal.
If there isn't check out my affiliate link for a big discount on Gamesplanet.com!
Xenonauts is not a prequel to Xenonauts 2 it is just the previous game.
25:44 So the Xenonauts 1 tactics do not work anymore?
Hm... but that first tactic. If it keeps switching targets between both jets, wouldn't it be possible to just roll everytime?
Quick question. I knocked out the Cleaner Leader and the quest says to return him to the dropship, how do I carry a unit?
Ah just seen this n u probs have the answer but u need to stand over them and open Ur inventory (backpack icon along the bottom)
Different attack types have different TU costs?
The air combat part was a bit questionable.
To be fair, air combat in this game in general is also questionable. ;-)
- Missiles used to fire three times, rather than once, and it was definitely easier. Accelerated Autocannons are much more useful as a result of the nerf to missiles.
- You can take three interceptors into a battle, so you may want to build a third one relatively quickly (always have to weigh your priorities, of course).
- Air combat in this game definitely gets interesting when there are multiple UFOs in a single battle. :)
Early game its just aswell to autoresolve, you tend to take 20% dmg on each ship. You can always fight manualy. But I found it makes little difference as the guns are mandatory and dmg unavoidable
You should make a ground ops opener guide, i want to know how to max my survivability of leaving the ship if i start surrounded out in in the open :o
flashbang spam my guy
yknow, imagine if it was possible to have a navy as well, patrolling the seas as recon to catch inbound UFOs. Followed by UFOs bombing the ships once they're aware of them, requiring air to stop them.
This was done in the first sequel of the original game from the 1990s, X-COM: Terror From The Deep. Combat took place both on land and underwater. The way it was implemented was that instead of aircraft, you had flying submarines that could fight both above and under water.
@@stamasd8500 Yeah. I know. I meant having both at once. Though frankly, I wouldn't count submersibles as exactly exciting navy combat. Sorry for not specifying.
The money per hour especially when you get more scientisits and engineers is actually quite a lot. Just the starting 250 are 180k per month. I wouldn't stop research unless you have to but letting the engineers make you money is often better.
At what point would you suggest investing in a second base of operations? appreciate this may not be an 'early game' question
I'm not Phrosphor, but I find getting started on building a second base after the first month (when you get your monthly payment) very helpful. My plan from the start is to move either production or research out of the first base ASAP. It's too limiting to try and have everything in one base. Then of course we want the additional radar coverage, and eventually more interceptors. My initial goal is just to get storage, a barracks, one or two workshops, and a radar, while mentally planning where hangars will go.
@@Trifler500 Thanks, good to know. It never even occurred to me that your second based could be used in a different capacity like you've listed here 👍
@@Trifler500 I would suggest that production should be wherever your skyranger is based out of, since that's where the loot ends up being. If your production is somewhere else, then you have to ship all the materials to the base your production is at. Research doesn't matter where it is, since you at best need to only ship a single item for the tech.
@@serbeardian8849 That's a good point. I've never minded shipping stuff, but others might. In that case moving research out would be the way to go.
Build a second base second month and start outfitting it with hangars and build aircraft for it. Shooting down UFO's is priority no1
Its funny how the first section of your guide you tell us to place your base somewhere that covers a lot of landmass (i thought this would be a good idea too when i started my very first playthrough after buying it yesterday) but I placed it right over Japan and named the base Earth Defense Force without skipping a beat lol
*Inhales*
TO SAVE OUR MOTHER EARTH FROM ANY ALIEN ATTACKS
Soo… when if the next ep comming out?
I am working on it!
@@Phrosphor I can’t wait for it! I actually just got the game cause I love your play through
Thank you for this your video was very informative because I was dying to mutch I wanted to uninstall
where is the pause button? It was spacebar in xenonauts 1
No pause button in two!
Your tip about TU is not entirely correct, as there are some attacks that use absolute numbers. Most notably, the grenade launcher.
Well spotted, looks like I need to do a new version of this.
would love a xcom style game with co-op
Would've been awesome if they had implemented Xcom2 tftd in Xenonauts 2. Then you wouldn't have to worry about shooting down UFOs over water.
I think gears of war broke our collective brains about how cover works edit not sure of exactly how close they need to be, but allies and enemies can both get suppressed by heavy gunfire (machine gun full auto etc) even if it's not aimed at them, I've accidentally suppressed my own guys by firing an MG too close to them
So, based on what you said about accelerated weapons, i guess listing out all the problems with stupidly tiered weapon choice from XN1 has not helped, as the system is still so bad in XN2
Does anyone know what the training center does?
Grants XP to 12 soldiers per training center each day. If you have more than 12 soldiers, all soldiers will get xp, but at a lower rate. Super useful to train rookies (as first stats upgrades require less XP to level up)
@@Kaserdan Thanks, sounds like I’ll be putting a lot of money into those.
I think you might be misreading reflexes. Reflexes determines whether a soldier will TRIGGER an aliens reaction fire, not if he will make one himself. High reflexes help you to AVOID an enemy's overwatch. The text box makes no mention of reflexes helping YOUR units chance of pulling off an overwatch.
But reflexes do it both, in fact it does not mention it, but you can find in another tooltip that formula for taking overwatch is something like [reflexes×% of time units]
My understanding is the higher the TU's you have left at the end of a turn, the higher the chances that your soldier will perform reaction fire. So, having enough to fire is the minimum, but having more will improve the chances. Since I've started operated that way, I've seen my units perform much more reaction fire than previously.
@@Trifler500 Does their reflexes number seem to play much of a role? Or does a unit with high TU's left over but low reflex beat a unit with high reflex but lower tu's?
@@outlaw8425 That’s the way it was explained to me elsewhere too.
This also means that it makes intuitive sense that if X2 runs a comparative formula between the unit potentially reaction firing and the target of their respective reflexes and % of time units left, then that formula works both ways, thus making reflexes important, both for taking reaction fire pot shots at enemies and avoiding them doing the same to you.
Certainly, reflexes were quite important to assault units in X1 (and to a lesser extent shield/stun baton units), because it would allow them both a better chance to close with aliens and to reaction fire at them at close range; crucial for an assault soldier that tended to be in the vanguard of a squad, incl. when breaching rooms/UFOs.
This was why low accuracy/high reflex units were generally useful as assaults, as the shotgun (and its upgrades) gave serious close range boosts to hit chance (and possibly to reaction fire as well?).
By extension, if this formula is correct, I assume that assaults should ideally have both high reflexes and time units with all other stats being of lesser importance?
If you want to be a robot, go ahead and select a base that covers land, if you want to roleplay. Select new Mexico/nevada or some random area in the center of your home country. I don't care about getting a leg up, this isn't a competitive game. Shits is like playing with toys.
Dies the game actually look worse than X1? The graphics are rather underwhelming to say the least...
its two different styles so that would be up to your own eyeballs lad
Looks good to me in missions. Up to taste, though. Very satisfied with the research and autopsy art.
When is the next campaign video?