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== Setting Your Expectations==
# '''Choose an appropriate difficulty:''' this is not an easy game, so if you're not familiar with the classic X-Com mechanics then start with Recruit for your first campaign (or Soldier if you've played a lot of the modern XCOM games).
# '''Prepare for Casualties:''' expect to take heavy casualties, particularly in the early months. The situation improves a little once your soldiers have access to Warden Armour and eventually Guardian Armour, but Xenonauts is far more of a meatgrinder than XCOM - it's okay to lose soldiers if you keep winning missions!


== Strategy layer ==
[[File:Geoscape.png|thumb|400px|The Geoscape]]
The world is divided into 6 regions: Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America, Soviet Russia and Africa & Middle East. Each region has a panic level ranging from 0 to 100. If panic level is 100 at the end of a month the region will surrender to the aliens. If two regions surrender the game will end.


The strategy layer can run at the following speeds:
== Starting the Campaign ==
* '''Slow''': 5 seconds pass every real world second
* '''Normal''': 5 minutes pass every real world second
* '''Fast''': 20 minutes pass every real world second
* '''Fastest''': 100 minutes pass every real world second


It is recommended to construct the first base on the border between Asia Pacific and Soviet Russia. The base coverage will be able to protect both regions and all UFOs will be downed over land.
# '''Play the Tutorial:''' make sure you play the tutorial at the start of your first campaign. It isn't long, and it explains the basic controls for the strategy and tactical layer.
# '''Base Location:''' your first base should be placed in a location that maximises the amount of land covered by your radars and aircraft. Generally this means placing the base somewhere equatorial, either covering North / South America, Europe and Africa / Middle East, or the Soviet Union and Asia.
# '''Upgrading Your Base:''' it's worth upgrading your starting base with some new facilities. Take a look at the different base structures you can build and consider building some or all of the following:
## Medical Center: possibly the most important building of all. This speeds up soldier healing rate, and increases the survival chance of any soldiers killed in action - and you'll probably have a lot of hurt / dead soldiers!
## Living Quarters: this is almost essential. Make sure you place it next to your existing Living Quarters to get the adjacency bonus!
## Laboratory: expanding your science team to speed up your research speed is usually a good plan, particularly as scientists now generate money if there's no research for them to do.
## Radar: each additional Radar building you construct will extend the range of your base radar, up to a maximum of three. You don't need to do this immediately, but it's certainly worth considering.
# '''Research:''' you should always be researching something if you can, so get started on Combat Vehicles. Once you win some tactical missions you'll be given new research options.
# '''Soldiers:''' it's worth taking a quick look at the brave bunch of heroes you'll be marching into battle.
## Check the carrying capacity of your soldiers. If they are overweight, then remove a few items from their backpack until they aren't. If they've got a lot of unused capacity, give them heavier armour or some more equipment.
## The various weapons / equipment items in the game usually have good tooltips that explain how best to use them, so give them a read. Most things are viable if used correctly, so experiment and find what works best for you!
## The soldier recruitment pool refreshes monthly (although one new soldier is also added each time you hire one). Check to see there's any soldiers in there with particularly good stats, and hire them if so. Most of the stats are valuable, with only Reflexes being a little bit useless.


== Ground Combat ==
== Combat Missions ==
[[File:Soldier UI.png|thumb|500px|Soldier UI]]
The tactical combat is deep and rewarding, but it takes time to get used to it - particularly if you've played a lot of XCOM. Here's a few tips:
Land combat consists of turns during which each team chooses what actions its soldiers will take.


The green bar below a unit's health shows its Time Units, or TU, the starting amount depending on the soldier's Time units attribute. Each action consumes Time Units. Moving, rotating, crouching and uncrouching consumes a fixed number of TUs and most attacks consume a percentage of the TU bar. This means soldiers with higher TU are more mobile and versatile but cannot fire more times per turn. Any TU left at the end of the turn will be spent on Overwatch Fire during the opponent's turn. Time Units are replenished at the start of each turn.
# Keep troops close enough to support each other in combat, but not so close that an alien grenade will kill several of them at once.
# Soldiers have 90-degree vision cones, so remember to look around to check for aliens. It's easy to walk right past one and get shot in the back if you don't!
# Shooting a weapon doesn't end your turn, so if you have Time Units remaining after shooting you can move your soldiers into a position where the enemy can't shoot back. Doorways and windows are great for this.
# Weapon damage is semi-randomised, ranging from between 50% of the base damage to 200% of the base damage.
# The maps are almost entirely destructible. The Demolition Grenade is great for removing walls or cover that may be blocking shot paths.
# If you meet a tough armoured enemy, throw a Demolition Grenade at them to remove their cover and break their armour before attacking them normally.
# Grenades and explosives will gib enemies and destroy their items, which loses you valuable resources - but this only happens an explosive scores the killing blow.
# Don't worry too much about protecting civilians. The game doesn't penalise you if they die.
# Ending your turn in a smoke cloud causes your soldier to take Stun Damage, and eventually fall unconscious. Running through smoke will also do this, but in smaller amounts - generally you'll be fine if you don't end your turn standing in smoke!
# The MARS vehicle is very powerful, so make sure you build one. The rocket pod is great for removing terrain and cover, and the secondary autorifle hits just as hard as standard soldier rifle.


Weapons inflict between 50% and 200% of their Damage value each time they hit, depending on the body part hit. Each weapon has a maximum range, visible during combat with green squares when targeting an enemy. It is possible to fire beyond a weapon's maximum range but its damage and hit chance will be reduced.
== Strategy Layer ==


Most weapons have multiple fire modes, with varying Accuracy and TU costs. The most expensive fire mode is selected by default but can be changed by right-clicking on the target.
# Your key strategic aim is to build additional bases to expand radar / aircraft coverage across the rest of the planet, as unattended UFOs will start to generate significant Panic once you reach the mid-game.
 
# Don't feel like you need to capture every UFO you shoot down, especially if it feels like a chore. If it's a new type of UFO, make sure you capture it - otherwise you can just claim the cash bounty unless you need the Alloys / Alenium.
Most forms of cover are destructible. Free Fire mode can be used to manually attack pieces of cover and destroy them.
# The fastest way to increase your monthly funding is to progress down the plot research projects (and the Cleaner missions).
 
# If you're short on cash, you can sell your recovered items on the Stores screen. None of the recovered items are useful except for Alloys and Alenium (which you should never sell).
==Day 1: The beginning of the end==
# You'll want to hire some spare soldiers to cover for injuries / deaths during missions. However, be aware that most tactical missions last 72 hours on the Geoscape and newly recruited soldiers only take 48 hours to reach your base - so you can always hire new soldiers before going out on a mission!
 
# The effectiveness of soldier training increases as you capture more types of alien, so it's worth setting up a Training Center and attempting to capture as many alien species as possible as you approach the mid-game.
#'''Start on a low difficulty''': If you're new to a ''X-com'' style game such as ''Xenonauts'', it will be wise to start on Easy or Normal before tackling the Insane difficulty. You'll save yourself some heartache if you don't immediately jump into the deep end.
#'''Get your base operational''': Place your initial base somewhere on the planet. Do take note that you'll want to protect as many nations as possible. Consider placing your first base somewhere such as equatorial Africa or Central America.
#'''Get those workers working''': You have a team of Scientists and Engineers under your payroll. Fortunately for you your Chief Scientist took the initiative and started research on the invasion already. However, don't allow your Labs or Workshops to sit idle if possible.
#*Scientists and Engineers will wait vigilantly for your orders, essentially they won't do anything without your instructions. Remind them to research the correct item and build the correct equipment constantly.
#*When starting research, consider investing your time in a High Speed Interceptor to start with, you'll thank us when Corvettes start ruining your day. 
#'''Review the troops: '''Your organization employs the "best of the best". Nonetheless you'll want to personally inspect their stats to determine their roles and job prospects.
#*Soldiers turnover rate can be extremely high, especially in the beginning. Be sure to keep a healthy reserve of soldiers on stand by. Generally having around 12 to 16 soldiers in total is a good number.
#*The stats most important to you are '''bravery''', '''accuracy '''and '''reflexes''' in that order. Having your men not go berserk after one psychic attack, and to be able to actually hit a target, are paramount. While accuracy and reflexes level up naturally, bravery will only increase if your soldiers fail to defend against psionic attacks or get medals, making it the hardest stat to increase.
#**'''Strength '''and '''Health '''are also important to note, strength is needed for specialist soldiers (Snipers, Machine gunners, Rocket Launchers), while additional health can make the difference between a one shot death and limping back to the drop ship. However, both of these stats level up naturally and easily.
#**A good rule of thumb: If any soldier has any stat under 40, don't recruit them.
#*Rotate your Soldiers, having only a small group of Majors and a bunch of Privates to the side will only hurt you in the long run. Ranking up as many Soldiers as you can will mean you'll have more good soldiers to spare.
#'''Organize your inventory''': Fortunately for the Xenonauts, you have immediate access to an unlimited quantity of ballistic firearms and equipment, and all that pesky inventory management and stock taking is organized by your dutiful quartermaster.
#*What this means is that you're free to mix and match any weapon and equipment combination at will, which lets you customize your squad's equipment with ease.
#*Every item is useful, unlike most prior ''X-com'' games. Any weapon is viable under the right circumstances.
#*This affords you the opportunity to establish a preferred squad loadout before getting access to more advanced and expensive weapons. Meaning: when you do get access to laser weapons you will know exactly what kind of weapons to manufacture.
 
==Month 1: This ain't so bad?==
It gets worse, but for now things are manageable. Unfortunately, trying to fight off the alien invasion is an extremely costly endeavor, and you will find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel sooner rather than later. Here's how to keep a grip of your situation.
#'''Keep enough troops for the helicopter''': At all times in the early game, you should maintain at least eight soldiers on hand, and make sure they are actually in the helicopter before sending it out only to discover that two people are in it.
#'''Keep the starting troops alive''': Your 10 starting soldiers are unique in that they start off all promoted and have slightly increased stats. All other recruits start off at the bottom of the barrel. Keeping your starting soldiers alive for as long as possible will allow you to build up your other soldiers to comparable levels.
#'''Keeping the finances in order:''' There are only a few ways to make money and 99+ ways to spend it. Be very careful in where you invest your limited funds, and when you do invest in something, fully commit your resources to it. You'll be better off with a fully furnished air force than an under-equipped air force and three other underfunded endeavors. The ways to actually make money are limited, and they are...
#*'''Funding''': Your primary area of income, at the start of each month you'll be evaluated based on your performance by a council of funding nations, and be allocated a large sum of money. At first, you'll earn about $1.5 million each month, but don't be surprised as your maintenance costs rise and the national funding decreases to be only getting $500,000 a month or only just enough to cover maintenance.
#*'''Assaulting/Air-striking UFOs''': You'll gain slightly more money, usually, from assaulting UFOs. During the first months, most UFOs only give between $15,000 to $40,000. Barely enough to cover for replacing the soldiers you'll lose on that mission. This number does increase as the UFOs get tougher.
#*'''Selling Alien Artefacts: '''Usually a bad idea, most useless items are sold off or destroyed after a UFO is taken and whatever is left is actually very important to you, such as [[Alien Alloys]] or [[Alenium]]. Only sell these items off when you desperately need a quick cash injection, and even then it's still a bad idea. Selling off manufactured items is non-viable as you'll only get half the cost to manufacture it.
#'''Always respond to [[Alien Terror]] Missions: '''When the Aliens lay siege to a city, you '''must '''respond. If you fail to defeat them the local military will resort to dropping a nuclear bomb on the city to stop the Aliens, ruining your relations with that country. Fortunately for you, Aliens won't start launching Terror Missions until around the third month. Just don't ignore them if at all possible.
#Always look at the wiki it is very helpful for ingame to know

Revision as of 21:49, 13 July 2023

Defeating an alien invasion is no easy task, even if you know what you're doing - and if you don't, it's even harder! This guide is intended to help you understand the basic principles of Xenonauts 2 so you can concentrate on winning the war.

Setting Your Expectations

  1. Choose an appropriate difficulty: this is not an easy game, so if you're not familiar with the classic X-Com mechanics then start with Recruit for your first campaign (or Soldier if you've played a lot of the modern XCOM games).
  2. Prepare for Casualties: expect to take heavy casualties, particularly in the early months. The situation improves a little once your soldiers have access to Warden Armour and eventually Guardian Armour, but Xenonauts is far more of a meatgrinder than XCOM - it's okay to lose soldiers if you keep winning missions!


Starting the Campaign

  1. Play the Tutorial: make sure you play the tutorial at the start of your first campaign. It isn't long, and it explains the basic controls for the strategy and tactical layer.
  2. Base Location: your first base should be placed in a location that maximises the amount of land covered by your radars and aircraft. Generally this means placing the base somewhere equatorial, either covering North / South America, Europe and Africa / Middle East, or the Soviet Union and Asia.
  3. Upgrading Your Base: it's worth upgrading your starting base with some new facilities. Take a look at the different base structures you can build and consider building some or all of the following:
    1. Medical Center: possibly the most important building of all. This speeds up soldier healing rate, and increases the survival chance of any soldiers killed in action - and you'll probably have a lot of hurt / dead soldiers!
    2. Living Quarters: this is almost essential. Make sure you place it next to your existing Living Quarters to get the adjacency bonus!
    3. Laboratory: expanding your science team to speed up your research speed is usually a good plan, particularly as scientists now generate money if there's no research for them to do.
    4. Radar: each additional Radar building you construct will extend the range of your base radar, up to a maximum of three. You don't need to do this immediately, but it's certainly worth considering.
  4. Research: you should always be researching something if you can, so get started on Combat Vehicles. Once you win some tactical missions you'll be given new research options.
  5. Soldiers: it's worth taking a quick look at the brave bunch of heroes you'll be marching into battle.
    1. Check the carrying capacity of your soldiers. If they are overweight, then remove a few items from their backpack until they aren't. If they've got a lot of unused capacity, give them heavier armour or some more equipment.
    2. The various weapons / equipment items in the game usually have good tooltips that explain how best to use them, so give them a read. Most things are viable if used correctly, so experiment and find what works best for you!
    3. The soldier recruitment pool refreshes monthly (although one new soldier is also added each time you hire one). Check to see there's any soldiers in there with particularly good stats, and hire them if so. Most of the stats are valuable, with only Reflexes being a little bit useless.

Combat Missions

The tactical combat is deep and rewarding, but it takes time to get used to it - particularly if you've played a lot of XCOM. Here's a few tips:

  1. Keep troops close enough to support each other in combat, but not so close that an alien grenade will kill several of them at once.
  2. Soldiers have 90-degree vision cones, so remember to look around to check for aliens. It's easy to walk right past one and get shot in the back if you don't!
  3. Shooting a weapon doesn't end your turn, so if you have Time Units remaining after shooting you can move your soldiers into a position where the enemy can't shoot back. Doorways and windows are great for this.
  4. Weapon damage is semi-randomised, ranging from between 50% of the base damage to 200% of the base damage.
  5. The maps are almost entirely destructible. The Demolition Grenade is great for removing walls or cover that may be blocking shot paths.
  6. If you meet a tough armoured enemy, throw a Demolition Grenade at them to remove their cover and break their armour before attacking them normally.
  7. Grenades and explosives will gib enemies and destroy their items, which loses you valuable resources - but this only happens an explosive scores the killing blow.
  8. Don't worry too much about protecting civilians. The game doesn't penalise you if they die.
  9. Ending your turn in a smoke cloud causes your soldier to take Stun Damage, and eventually fall unconscious. Running through smoke will also do this, but in smaller amounts - generally you'll be fine if you don't end your turn standing in smoke!
  10. The MARS vehicle is very powerful, so make sure you build one. The rocket pod is great for removing terrain and cover, and the secondary autorifle hits just as hard as standard soldier rifle.

Strategy Layer

  1. Your key strategic aim is to build additional bases to expand radar / aircraft coverage across the rest of the planet, as unattended UFOs will start to generate significant Panic once you reach the mid-game.
  2. Don't feel like you need to capture every UFO you shoot down, especially if it feels like a chore. If it's a new type of UFO, make sure you capture it - otherwise you can just claim the cash bounty unless you need the Alloys / Alenium.
  3. The fastest way to increase your monthly funding is to progress down the plot research projects (and the Cleaner missions).
  4. If you're short on cash, you can sell your recovered items on the Stores screen. None of the recovered items are useful except for Alloys and Alenium (which you should never sell).
  5. You'll want to hire some spare soldiers to cover for injuries / deaths during missions. However, be aware that most tactical missions last 72 hours on the Geoscape and newly recruited soldiers only take 48 hours to reach your base - so you can always hire new soldiers before going out on a mission!
  6. The effectiveness of soldier training increases as you capture more types of alien, so it's worth setting up a Training Center and attempting to capture as many alien species as possible as you approach the mid-game.
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