XCOM: Enemy Unknown – Understanding The Game

Overview

As we all know, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a very hard game, even at the start. This guide will teach you tips, keeping your cool, and making sure you don’t get a game over right off the bat.

Story

Aliens are killing, capturing, and slowly distorying the Earth, it’s up to the XCOM project to save Earth. You are the Commander, and you have to make choices that can save the Earth, or lose the Earth. Make sure you keep your cool, and make sure you don’t worry about whats happens. Just make sure you don’t screw up!

Never The Same Twice

Let me say that no matter how many times you start a new game, it’s never the same twice. The number of Alien aduction are always random. You won’t get the same classes with the same characters, and never the same missions.

Your Characters

In the game, you have a wide selection of charcters to use in battle, and each one is different from one another.
You can customize your character to your liking. You can name him/her after your friends, family, pets, game characters, and even yourself, but don’t get too attatched to your characters, because if one of your favorite soliders die, that’s it. They’er gone.
And like I said before each character is different from one another with different set of skills. There are 4 different types of classes that you can have in this game. Heavy, Sniper, Assult, and Support, but you can’t chose which Character has which class. It’s decided for you when your Character Levels Up from they’er first battle. Of course, having 4 types of classes means that each one has different skills too, but it also let’s you choose between one or another skill. Once you made your choice, you can’t go back and change that skill that you just picked.
And last but not least, each class can only use certain weapons in battle. Snipers can only use sniper rifles, Heavies can only use heavy mechine guns, Assults can only use Shotguns or Rifles, and Supports can only use Assult Rifles.

The Lab

We have to research the enemy’s gear to improve your own gear. In the Lab, you’ll have a wide selection of items to reaserch from the Aliens that you’ll kill, and pick up from battle, and what you pick up can be research.
Each item that can be research will take time to figure out. It can range between fast, normal, and slow, and after it’s done it will grant you new things to build in the workshop. (I will explain about that later) It’s your choice to choose what you want to research, such as armor, weapons, items, and even alien autopsies, to earn research benifits. The only down side is that you can only research one item at a time.
Another thing that can really help you in the lab is when you have more scientist, the research speed increases. So it makes it easier reasearching items to gain items, but when researching items, you’ll need to give the lab a certain amount of items to research it. Sometimes you’ll have to save certain items to get something else you want, so choose wisely.

Engineering

Engineering is the place where you can build items that you research, build new facilities, and improving items in the Foundary.
One of the main features about Engineering is building items, weapons, and armor. It’s something you really need to survive. Some items that you want to build will take certian number of days to build. When you want to build something, it will cost you one, two, or all of the following: Alloys, Elerium, Weapon fragments, Money, and Alien Ship Parts. The more Engineers you have, the cheeper the items will cost, which can help you greatly.
Now Facillities is what you bulid in your base to improve your awesome plan to save the Earth. The layout of your base is like an ant farm, and the deeper you go, the more you’ll have to pay. You’ll have to plan out on how you want to build your base, because you have a limited amount of money, a limited amount of power to keep the base runner, and a limited amount of space. If you build the same facillities next to, under, or above each other, it will give a bonus to what you’ll get from it. If you notice during your run on XCOM, you’ll see a steam filled area, dig it out and place a thermo generator to get a huge power bonus.
And the Foundary can only be used when you build the facillite for it. The foundary is what you use to improve the gear you own, and make better than what it was before. It can build new items such as robots to take the place of a soilder if you don’t have your best people out there. Make sure you build the Foundary as soon as possible.

The Situation Room

The Situation Room is the place to check how your doing on keeping Earth safe, and it’s not an easy job. What you always want to do in order to keep each country safe from withdrawing is always try to help the country that seems to be in trouble the most, via the bar. Depending on how far the bar is filled, the closer it is from withdrawing from the XCOM project, and the Doom Tracker will fill (such as the image below.) If you lose too many countries, and the Doom Tracker is filled, it’s Game Over man, GAME OVER!
There are five ways to keeping countries safe when doing missions.
1: Choosing to Fight when theres an alien aduction
2: Shooting down UFOs and clearing the crash site
3: Taking out aliens that landed their UFO
4: Doing Council requested missions
5: Completed certain Story Missions
Putting up Satellites over countries, will slow down the bar for that country greatly. You’ll get satellites when you build them in Engineering, and buliding satellite uplinks.

Story Missions

In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, there are story missions to help progress the game, but they are hard. If you don’t do the story missions for a long time, the game just ends, I’m not joking, it can happen without a warning. The key in doing these story missions is to be prepared and make sure you have the best stuff you can get before you take them on so be prepared.

Are You Set?

I just explaned the basic parts about the game that can really help you win this game in your favor. If you want to see how the game works in gameplay, AKA the combat, come to my youtube channel at
http://www.youtube.com/user/mrgameplay1001?feature=mhee
I’m currenty playing XCOM Enemy Unknown and some others.
Now tell me, did this guide help? Is there any info that I didn’t mention or needed to be mention? Leave a comment to tell me what your thoughts were about this and tell me if I’m missing something.

(UPDATE 11/9/2013 – I fix the grammer!…I think I got all there is to be corrected. I even fix certain lines that just didn’t make any sense either. For Ex: I said a few things twice in the same sentince in different wording. Hope it helps!)

FAQ

People might ask a few questions about what I said in the guide, so to get your curiosity satisfied here is a quick put together Q and A session here. More will be added if new questions are asked. So check back here if you have a question, or if you want to see addition info.

Q.
What might happen if I went ahead and completed every science, and engineer project, and got geared up with the best stuff there is before I do any story missions?

A.
Well it is possible to do all of it before doing any story missions, but it is best recommanded to do the first two story missions to have some important gear that is needed to beat the game, well to progress at all in the story. Like I said, if you don’t do any story missions for a long, long, looong time, then the game will come to an end at one point, not sure how long, but it does have a time limit.
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Q.
Is there any kind of REAL walkthrough I can read or watch?

A.
As much as I want to tell you guys how to get through parts or show a real walkthrough for this game, it’s kinda impossible. Every single encounter you get is random, but Story Missions stay the same every time with two slightly different map designs for each one. If you do want to watch someone playthrough XCOM, then I’m your guy! The link to my channel is in the “Are You Set” tab.
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Q.
How long is this game?

A.
It depends on how you pace yourself.
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Q.
What am I in for with this game?

A.
A lot of thinking, fustration, and a lot of restarting (Levels I mean). Overall, you’ll be having tons of fun replaying it and trying out new strategies than how you did it before.
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Q.
Will you be adding any DLC Tabs to the guide to show us how new items, features, and any new things work?

A.
I plan to add any expansion guide tabs for future installments. For Example, XCOM Enemy Within is coming out soon, and when I own it, see it, play it, I’ll tell you what you’ll be seeing. (I don’t own it yet, but soon I will.)
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Q.
Tsuni Asked:
Just purchased the Elite Soldier pack, how do you make it work or see it to select the gear/players for your game?

A.
It should just act like an update when you purchase any DLC. Since your using the Elite Soldier Pack, all it really does is change the color of your character’s amor and add a lot of hair styles, helmates, and certain options are only aviliable depending on the suit your wearing. To change your character’s amor and hair style, just enter the constumize charater option, and you’ll be allowed to change the color, hair, and helmates.