I want to power level....
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Jan 3, 2013 7:51 pm GMT
I want to power level my soldiers, and power research all that I can then just go through the game. Is that possible or am I doomed to a gameover if I take too long and just do random missions? So far I'm doing that but panic rises far too much in the country that I did not chose. I hate the political system.
Jan 4, 2013 7:29 am GMT
I had the same idea and stopped right before the alien base assault. I spent about 2 months just grinding out research and leveling my guys. As far as I can see, as long as you play intelligently, there is no problem doing this. The enemies do keep getting harder though and most of my gains in weapons/armor have been offset by much stronger enemies. I was worried about panic eventually getting too high as well, but I just kept adding satellites as much as I could and my panic levels were still pretty low by the time I finally decided to move forward. Give the power levelling a shot, you can always do it differently the next game.
Jan 4, 2013 7:35 am GMT
If panic levels aren't too high then you can hold off on the base mission to power level, the games plot will stall but the aliens will still get tougher because the introduction of new aliens seems to be linked to the calendar date and not the plot progress(excepting two types of aliens that are plot centric) I try to use this time to get full satellite coverage if I don't have it already and to train up a few colonels. The only time I will rush the base mission is if I have a bunch of countries that are at panic level 4 or 5 and there is a good chance of losing them at the monthly council report, because the base mission reduces panic world wide by 2 levels.
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Dude I'm telling you, it's jobs. We gotta get jobs. Then we get the kakhi's, then we get the chicks. ~coop from baseketball
Jan 4, 2013 10:23 am GMT
If you really want to power level, you're probably better off not completing 100% satellite coverage, especially on lower levels where mission opportunities are less frequent. Having abduction missions available is an easy way to train up low-ranking soldiers and to farm weapons fragments.
One of the tricks I employed during a Classic Ironman run was to cover everything other than the two countries in South America (save the countries that left the Project). This forces all abduction attempts to Argentina and Brazil. You don't have panic issues from the choice, because panic only rises on continents where you choose not to react to abductions. Having two nations available gives you the opportunity to pick a reward with less in the way of savescumming (and on Ironman, you can't really savescum in the first place).
Why South America? In addition to it having the smallest number of countries to "not cover", the continental bonus is also the one that's probably the "least valuble" of the five.
Jan 5, 2013 7:25 pm GMT
What if I had coverage everywhere but in two countries? Or even one? Would that give me the missions and bat the panic from one country to the other?
Jan 6, 2013 12:03 am GMT
Divona posted...What if I had coverage everywhere but in two countries? Or even one? Would that give me the missions and bat the panic from one country to the other?
I once had coverage in all countries but 3 in asia. and the abductions were in all of them. The panic result could only be positive with success.
I think the abduction ship was found and destroyed soon after though.
Jan 6, 2013 5:28 pm GMT
Divona posted...What if I had coverage everywhere but in two countries? Or even one? Would that give me the missions and bat the panic from one country to the other?
I don't have an answer regarding leaving only the one hole in your satellite coverage, yet. I've just gotten to that exact situation in my current game, so I'll see what happens from there and report back to you.
As long as the "missing" countries in your coverage are all on the same continent, you won't have panic issues resulting from picking one abduction over the other. The penalties for not responding to an attack are superseded by having responded to an attack elsewhere on the same continent. Panic won't change where you don't respond, and it will decrease (if possible) where you did.
The ideal is to leave an entire continent empty. Not having to provide interceptors to overwatch a continent can save you some money and resources, particularly if you're running with the high-end researched options that also require a fair amount of alien resources just to construct in the first place. I recommended South America above. Not only are you giving up the fewest amount of resources, but the continental bonus is lackluster compared to the others and becomes relatively worthless pretty quickly.
Jan 9, 2013 2:38 pm GMT
I don't have an answer regarding leaving only the one hole in your satellite coverage, yet. I've just gotten to that exact situation in my current game, so I'll see what happens from there and report back to you.
Alright, here's where my hypothesis lies at this point:
Having the one "hole" in your satellite coverage also puts the kibosh on abduction missions. I've advanced the in-game clock more than a month, and all I've gotten are a Terror attack (which never go away entirely even with 100% coverage) and I've just shot down my second UFO in that span. If I get to the end of the calendar month in-game without an alien abduction mission putting in an appearance, I'll just throw up the last satellite and call it a day.
Jan 10, 2013 5:21 am GMT
I started power leveling once right as soon as they wanted me to capture an elemental.
That was a gas. I had full satellite coverage by the time I captured the elemental but for the life of me I can't find a sectoid to capture to get a plasma pistol in order to build more plasma pistols. :\
I remember my game went from me using regular weapons to using laser weapons to just a month later cranking out plasma weaponry.
I know that when you hang out just plowing through UFO encounters that you'll eventually see much stronger monsters like Muton Elites, Sectopods, and multiple cyberdisks on the same mission - but I think having a full spread of titan armor and plasma weaponry is worth it.
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