Xcom: Enemy Unknown Class Guide #1 - The Sniper

Welcome to the first of my Xcom: Enemy Unknown Tutorials! This tutorial will focus on the humble Sniper. Simultaneously one of the weakest and most powerful units in your Xcom arsenal.

My intention is to couple this with a YouTube video tutorial to show some of the points I am going to discuss here in a more cinematic and fun fashion. I will link it >Here< when it is completed.

First of all - lets discuss the available abilities! Unlike the original Xcom Defense/UFO Enemy Unknown  game that this is based on - the ranking system is not based on the soldier pool you have, it is experience based. This means that any soldier that survives long enough and does enough good work in the field can quickly earn promotion to the top rank. (Colonel)

Squaddie Abilities: Headshot
A pretty useful ability - it gives the agent an increased critical chance on the shot. Very useful against those armoured aliens that you need to take a chunk of health off of, or whom you would like to kill in one hit.It has a 2 turn cool down. Be careful when selecting when you will use this shot. Take note of the typical damage your rifle will do. If you think you will need more than this to take down the target, then go for it. It works well in conjunction with 'In the zone' and 'double tap' as for best effect the shots from those abilities will kill their chosen target so you can shoot at another straight after.

Corporal Abilities: SnapShot/Squadsight
Both abilities seem to be very good, but in actual fact - if you have a well balanced team, it is rare that Snap Shot will be more useful than Squad sight. Squad sight allows your snipers to sit in safety and pick off targets that your team mates uncover. This ability is particularly good when in overwatch when you expect your team mates to uncover aliens on the move as quite often, a reaction shot will kill an alien in the open before it can get hunkered down in cover. If you need to move your snipers - their pistols dont work with squad sight normally, but they do in Overwatch and depending on the pistol, your foundry upgrades, and wether or not your sniper has 'Gunslinger' (below) - the pistol can pack enough of a punch to kill weaker or weakened enemies, and the 'overwatch' area is seen as more of a dead zone from the AI (Notice how the enemy is less likely to advance when you have troops covering an area with their overwatch.... sometimes its useful to abuse this, even if you know you cant do anything if you were to trigger overwatch - its similar to suppression fire - the alien can waste their tmie doing nothing just to save from being wounded which can be a very important move if you have a weak or exposed trooper in their line of sight.)

There are of course advantages to Snapshot; your agent can move and fire their sniper rifle. This means they can relocate to get better shots at groups of hostiles giving In The Zone the potential to be a little more effective, but in order to do all this - you put your trooper on the front line. If you can see them, they can see you. Your sniper tends to be quite weak at point blank range which many aliens will be in, and they tend to have less health and weaker armour compared to other front line troops, e.g Assault. The best time to have Snapshot would probably be if your kill-team was quite weak and the support cannot be provided from other classes, e.g your sniper is your only surviving veteran, in which case getting in with the powerful gun and taking some names is a good thing. Of course, I still prefer to cower on the back lines and pick the enemy off one at a time.

Sergeant Abilities: Gunslinger/Damn Good Ground
This can be a bit of a tough choice. Gunslinger removes the weakness of close combat from your sniper. A good pistol with foundry upgrades means your pistols will be hitting about as hard as most of your other weapons. Damn good ground gives a little bit more of an edge to your sniping abilities. Especially with Archangel armour. The defensive side will rarely come into play unless your grappling up in the front lines, or your having a bout of last man standing with your sniper against remaining alien forces, in which event - your probably in more trouble than an ability will help with.

Lieutenant Abilities:Disabling Shot/Battle Scanner
Utilitarian abilities. Depending on what your other ability selections are, you may favour one over the other. Disabling shot diarms your opponent for a round - or until they reload. This is a very effective variant of suppressing fire, though it only affects one target it can be used to prevent a vulnerable soldier from taking a fatal hit from a nearbye enemy that is not likely to die this round. The Battle Scanner lets you throw a small object - akin to an electro-flare from days of yore, that will give you a display of the immediate area as if an agent were present. It does not trigger enemy 'spawns', and it can be thrown through doors. On many occasion, this can be very valuable. Both are pretty situational, but in the right situations can be a great utility. Choose wisely. Or do as I do - pack two snipers.

Captain Abilities: Executioner/Opportunist
I always lean towards Opportunist here. I use reaction fire a lot in the early turns or when I am expecting to trigger enemy 'spawns' so that I can get a couple of potential kills in before they break for cover. It becomes less valuable as you get the end-tier abilities of Double Tap or In The Zone but one shot in the open can be worth more than the others in some situations.

Major Abilities: Low Profile
Not really a choice - but if you have a sniper that needs to make use of cover, having any cover provide the full bonus is a nice advantage.

Colonel Abilities: In The Zone/Double Tap
Both of these abilities are AWESOME. I cannot emphasise just how good they are, and neither are a bad choice. Here is the breakdown. Double Tap allows you to take two shots. That's it, end of. If you run out of targets or ammo the second shot is wasted. In The Zone requires a specific set of circumstances to be met, firstly the target must not be in cover (yellow shield = Bingo. Get killing) And secondly the target must be killed with the shot in order to be able to move onto the next. Given the right circumstances it is possible to knock out 4 or 5 kills in a round with this ability. The chances of getting multiple kills are slim though, unless you strategise. I find that the ITZ sniper works best when paired with a Double Tap sniper. If the targets would take more than one shot to kill, two can feasibly be weakened into the ITZ snipers kill zone. Chances are by the time you get this ability your accuracy is going to be near or over 100%, especially if you throw in a scope and high ground/Archangel armour and Damn Good Ground from before. The front-line troops can also help the ITZ sniper out by using explosives to weaken opponents and deny them the cover that would block the shot.

Whichever you choose it is not a bad choice, but bear in mind that ITZ is much more strategic. If you are going to have a solo sniper - Double Tap is probably a better ability because 75% of the time you wont be able to get more than one shot from an ITZ sniper unless you set up the kill zone or get lucky - but that 25% of the time, your talking 3-5 easy kills if the targets are weak or softened. I think on average, I get more kills with my 'In The Zone' soldier, but this is purely due to the way I like to stack and domino the enemies with my snipers. In 27 missions, 68 kills compared to my more experienced 'Double Tap' sniper who has seen 49 missions for 109 kills.

Other important points:
Ghost Armour: Don't give this to your snipers - give it to fast-moving support units, and send them to scout ahead before the rest of your forces move. They can spot many groups of enemies without triggering their 'spawn' reaction (taking cover) meaning that your snipers can make short work of them before they become a threat. They also help your team prioritise targets, e.g that Sectopod just behind that squad of harmless Sectoids that MUST GO DOWN. (plasma pistols v chest-plasma cannon, plasma rifle AND a multi-missile launch pack? Gimmie a break :p )

In conclusion - Snipers are awesome support for your front line troops. The ability to shoot anything they see that they can draw a line of fire to, to Overwatch and shoot the enemy before they can dive for cover, or the ability to pick off weak or weakened enemies - or even fire enough damage into tougher ones so they go down is invaluable. They can be weak if poorly equipped or supported, but given the right abilities and thought they can be 'Angels of Death' - much like the achievement denotes. Snipers work great in teams with cross-over abilities to help them cover each other as well as maximise the kill potential from them. I have had missions where there have been close to 20 aliens, and the snipers have mowed the majority of them down in two turns with the rest of the team only getting as far as spotting them and taking cover. Rare, but a beautiful sight ^.^

Check out my 'Sniper Reel' Video >Here< To see my Let's Play sniper team in action.

-V

Warhammer 40k 6th edition resources / recommended sites.

With the arrival of 6th edition - many many people are out hunting for information to try to keep up with their A-game. You aint going to find a whole lot of useful information directly from me... I will post what I can when it comes to me, or I find it - but what I would like to do is provide a little list of links to sources and other blogs that I think are really on the Ball and useful :-) I'm fairly sure that most people that happen to stumble upon this page already know of most - but in case you don't. check them out!

The Bolter and Chainsword - A forum that many avid gamers use to air their problems and seek advice. Primarily aimed towards Marine players, but it has info useful for all :-)

Warseer - Another forum packed with useful information.

DakkaDakka - Yet another forum! (Hey, your best resource is the rest of the gaming community...)

The Beasts of War - YouTube channel that covers quite a lot on 40k and other Tabletop gaming.

Way of saim hann
Fritz was always a good resource for me, providing strategies and tactics, battle reports and fun information for various armies. The information I followed most was the Space Marine and Eldar stuff, but he also is a big player of Necrons, Tyranids and Grey Knights. At this point in time he has YouTube videos up on Necrons, Eldar and Tyranids - and how the game changes effect them, and how units can be adapted to work in 6th ed, or if they should just be dropped. Check it out!
Necrons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=bNqm0AcmnsY
Tyranids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=BLqLWaaK9bw
Eldar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=BLqLWaaK9bw
Fritz's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/WayOfSaimHann

I have a few more that I may add in later, they dont seem to be active at the minute...

I hope this helps, if you know of any other good resources, fire them into the comments - Ill be happy to check them out and add them in.

A new you tube let's play by... me!

Hey folks, welcome all.

In addition to my minecraft let's play - I now have one for UFO Enemy unknown / XCOM: UFO Defense. I decided it might be interesting, and fun to try to play this game in a superhuman challenge. I have completed the game on all difficulty settings in the past, but I invariably finish the game with a vast squadron of super soldiers - half of whom were there at the start due to the ability to reload and reload and reload after every mistake. Well, not this time! Come see how long I can last against the vastly more advanced, numerous and more powerful alien forces as they seek to Harvest our organs, turn the governments of cities against us and generally try to destroy life as we know it.

As with the Minecraft let's play - I shall attempt to upload videos daily although I only really do the recordings at the weekends, so if I have short sessions - I apologise if the end of the week is a little stagnant ^.^

>Linky<

Crysis 2: Stealth tactics

This post is more than likely going to be poorly constructed waffle, but I am currently going through the game as previously mentioned on the hardest setting. Tactics are vital, and using all the tools in your arsenal as designed is critical. I am going to discuss in the following post, a number of Stealth tactics that I have found to be useful:

Disclaimer: Some of the tactics below are not for everyone and some of the strategies may be arguable, but this is just my take on the game and tactics I find work for me ;)

Suit Mechanics:
Firstly, lets talk about the stealth mode. In stealth mode, you are invisible, and your footsteps are muffled. Opponents will still detect you if you move a lot near them, especially if your directly in front of them. I would recommend one of the first Suit Upgrades you get be the Stealth Enhancer, as the duration of Stealth mode is extended significantly.

A few tips for stealth mode:
1) DONT USE ALL YOUR ENERGY. If you run out of energy, you are visible. If your visible, you dont have energy to enhance your armour. On diffcult modes, without quick reflexes and a good aim - this usually means a reload screen is imminent.
2) Locate cover. Situational Awareness is key - if you have played through on an easier setting before hand, this is all the easier. Try to identify where your enemies are, (Battlescape view and tagging enemies makes this a little easier, but dont rely on tagging all the enemies, most arrive on the battlefield after you have commenced battle and the corpses pile up.) and make sure you can find some cover to try to pick them off with silenced attacks, or "pop-up attacks".
3) Relocate. If you reveal yourself and are spotted, or a body lies near your cover, the enemy will come investigate or commence fire on the general area. Unless your baiting the enemy to come to you for melee or point blank take downs, you might want to pop out of cover and relocate.

Silencers:
Silencers are extremely useful for a stealth run, though not essential depending on the approach you wish to take, especially if your using a gun that is powerful enough to perform an effective "Pop-Up Attack" as discussed later. With a silencer, you can fire off single rounds from most guns whilst maintaining stealth. This is great for peeling health off Ceph by shooting them in the Jelly, or for headshotting human opponents.

The best weapon for this is the Nova as you can get off a half a dozen shots and move back into cover to regenerate your energy. Later on, the Hammer or a silenced Scarab in single-shot mode prove good substitutes. I would bypass the hammer in favour of the Scarab since the Reflex scope or Ranged scope make for very easy targeting of opponents that are further afield. If you screw up - you can tap full auto mode and try to finish the target off.

Pop-Up Attack
To perform a pop up attack you simply uncloak and fire of the shot or burst, then re-cloak. You momentarily give your position away to anyone looking in your direction, so it is likely you will need to relocate after performing this attack a few times. If you have a silencer, you will have more time and can effectively kill a majority of the targets in the field like this. Without a silencer, I find the most effective way to use this is  something more powerful, in single fire mode (or in burst if you feel the need to ensure that target is dead.). Uncloak - head shot/burst - recloak. if your quick and have the stealth upgrade, your visible for such a short period of time your often un-noticed, save the sound of un-silenced weapons giving you away.

Sniping
With a silencer and willingness to relocate - the G1 sniper rifle can be put to awesome effect. Its best to perform a pop-up attack, or you are left with your nuts swinging in the breeze when half the map turn and start blasting at you. A silencer will buy you some time before the enemy can locate you. Plan your targets, and enjoy! One of my favourite past times is finding a good spot to empty my ammo supply from. Without a silencer it is still possible, but expect to have to relocate often.

Relocation
Fairly simple and self explanatory: When your position is compromised, move to another location! Ideally with some cover and your line of site blocked to recharge your energy when you get there.

Advanced Relocation
Revealing your positon to the enemy (preferrably by de-cloaking and taking out an enemy of two with some pop-up shots) can be a good strategy, and is one of my most oft-used tactics. The enemy will start firing on your position, and in the case of the Ceph, will converge on that position. You will be under spray-and-pray fire when you get up to move, but dont worry as unless the enemy strip your energy, they cant see you - just keep moving. By relocating at this point it is possible to find some isolated targets, or flank the enemy forces and with good use of Silenced stealth kills or pop up attacks, you can eliminate most/all of the enemy forces. I particularly like placing some C4 in the baited area or lobbing some grenades from my new spot once the enemy have gotten to my last known position. Blissful giblets flying through the air is a sign of success! :-)

Run & Hide
If your caught out in the open - or don't have enough energy to get to cover - don't be afraid to drop cloak in favour of shields or a momentary recharge and gun and run. If you can take out some targets in the few seconds whilst waiting get some energy back - you will want to use the regenrated energy to activate your enchanced armour and sprint to some cover... (that is unless you get enough to cloak relocate) then quickly regenerate your energy and attempt to relocate. This is very similar to advanced relocation in that your going to be under fire, so be quick!

Silent Kill
If you can find a target on its own, or flank a group and none have you in their field of view, you can perform a silent kill. As an alternative, you can do the grab&jab mentioned below. A silent kill works on any target without a shield, or that is not massive. (Heavies, Pingers and shielded commanders I think are the only ones immune to this.)


Grab and jab
This is actually my preferred version of a silent kill. You grab the target whilst cloaked. This works wonders if the target is advancing on your position, or knows you are there and is running at you. (Im looking at You Ceph assault troops!) You simply grab the target, and can then perform a silent Kill. This method drops you out of cloak like a silent kill, but only for the moment you perform the grab. The time exposed is less than that of a stealth kill, and you can move as soon as you have grabbed the target, just in case someone DOES see you exposed. If behind cover, you can grab the target from the cover your hiding behind as it comes to investigate, and execute it out of sight of its comrades.

I found this tactic to great effect on one section of the game - a large area quite early on after meeting the Ceph - and there are some dozen or so targets. On the first run through I shot them all, and made it through with 8 scarab bullets left... This time round I used a single clip. I shot from the balcony and the target would then come over to investigate where the shot came from. I stood by the side of the doorway and grabbed the target as it moved through the door. In some cases 2 or 3 came to investigate and I managed to pluck and stab them as they came through the doorway. By the end of it all I had a bloody pile of rotten Carcasses by the side of the door and did not take a single hit.


A few donts:
1) As mentioned before - DONT run out of energy. When the crap hits the fan you will need to quickly hide and relocate, or will need to activate your enhanced armour lest you become goo on someones boot.
2) Dont be afraid of melee... I find a majority of my killing blows come from close combat, or stealth kills.
3) Dont fire an unsilenced weapon stealthed. It strips all your energy and your life expectancy is greatly reduced...
4) Dont fight from the Open - unless there is somewhere to hide behind, sheer weight of fire will kill you fast on the higher difficulties, or will force you into enhanced armour mode, which on a stealth run is a last resort. You dont want to be caught in a gunfight, you want to know where the enemy are, and for them to NOT know where you are.

If you have anything to add, dont hesitate to comment below and the "guide" can be amended.