Beginner's Guide

Strategy layer

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:

• 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.

Ground Combat

Soldier UI

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.

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.

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.

Most forms of cover are destructible. Free Fire mode can be used to manually attack pieces of cover and destroy them.

Day 1: The beginning of the end

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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. 
4. 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.
5. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Always look at the wiki it is very helpful for ingame to know