Best base locations

Best Supporters and uses of Operations Points

• Funding: Grants a huge amount of cash at the start of each month.
• Security: Lowers global and regional panic.
• Intelligence: Gain additional OP each day.

• Prioritize missions where you have to hack computers and terminals. Each data stick that you collect and bring back to your dropship grants +5 OP.
• Supporters that are elite—i.e., with a star icon—provide higher bonuses, so make sure you recruit them by spending OP. Those with a lower protection status—i.e., a green dot—cost fewer OP, too.
• Supporters with red icons are actually Infiltrators controlled by aliens. They gradually increase panic, which contributes to the Doomsday Counter and, subsequently, a game over for the whole campaign. You have to spend OP to remove an Infiltrator from play before you can recruit a non-Infiltrator.
• During the first phase of the campaign, you can spend 100 OP to raise funds or reduce panic. Then, from the second phase onward, you can use 100 OP to request rare materials like Alenium and Alien Alloys.

Best buildings to construct

• Generators: You need enough power capacity for all facilities.
• Hangars: You start with one for your interceptor aircraft and another for your dropship. Later in the game, each base should have two to three hangars for high-tier interceptors.
• Living Quarters: You need to have enough living space for each soldier, researcher, and engineer in a base.
• Laboratory and Workshop: Your first base should have one of each by default. These allow you to conduct research projects and craft new devices and weapons respectively. You can build additional ones later if you have enough cash to spare.
• Medical Center: This ensures that soldiers replenish health faster after missions and increases the chances of survival if they get incapacitated.
• Training Center: This ensures that soldiers gain experience points and rank up even when they’re not actively deployed.

• Radar Array: This boosts radar coverage, allowing you to detect UFOs that are farther away.
• Missile Battery: This damages UFOs that attempt to attack your base. These are useful in case your interceptors are unable to down spaceships and you have to fight a base battle with idle troops.
• Storeroom: You have 150 storage capacity by default. Go to the Base Stores menu and sell the junk you don’t need to earn more money. You may also click the Transfer Items option to move resources from one base to another.

Best stats and attributes for soldiers

• Time Units (TU): Govern every single action in combat, including movement, shooting, and throwing grenades, as well as basic quirks like opening a door, crouching, and turning in another direction. That’s why having a high TU attribute is important. If a soldier doesn’t have enough TU, they might not have the means to even fire their weapon.
• Accuracy: Determines a unit’s chance to hit with firearms.
• Health: The higher the HP, the higher the survivability. Armor also helps in this regard.

• Reflexes: Determine the hit chance of melee weapons and the potential to trigger reaction fire—i.e. overwatch—from hostiles.
• Strength: Determines carrying capacity and throwing distance for grenades.
• Bravery: Nullifies psionic attacks and effects that cause a unit to panic.

Best soldier loadouts and team composition

• Shield: The unit can defend against frontal attacks until the shield is destroyed. Follow this up by tossing a Flashbang Grenade to suppress enemies, so allies can move closer without triggering reaction fire/overwatch.
• Assault: Although shotgunners need to be at close range, the weapon type is the most effective at taking out enemies.
• Sniper: If they have decent accuracy and line-of-sight, then their target is as good as eliminated.
• Rifleman: Assault Rifles can pick off enemy units at close-to-medium range.
• Heavy: Machine Guns can fire up to 10 shots in a single high-TU-cost action, though they're mostly used for suppression purposes.
• Grenadier: The Grenade Launcher lobs explosives at an arc, dealing damage and destroying terrain or obstacles.

Best research projects to prioritize

• Laser Weapons: These are well-suited for the mid-game and are significantly better than Accelerated-type firearms.
• Guardian Armor: This offers great defense for frontline units like the Shield and Assault.
• Phantom Interceptor: This is a much better alternative to the Angel Interceptor.
• Mars Combat Platform: Each one costs $250,000, but it can be armed with laser cannons, autorifles, and rocket launchers.

Best ways to bring down UFOs

• As mentioned earlier, each base should have up to three hangars for aircraft.
• If you have the resources, you should replace your Angel Interceptors with Phantom Interceptors.
• Continue to engineer air weapons and plating upgrades via your Workshop.
• Manually fighting battles can be a little tricky, which is why it’s better to bring several aircraft and autoresolve the encounter.
• You can pick the “Tail Until Over Land” option and wait before engaging spaceships. UFOs that crash on land yield resources, but UFOs that crash at sea yield nothing.
• If you need more money, take the bounty provided by regions where UFOs crashed. Undertaking a crashed UFO tactical mission nets you materials, but this action may also cost Operations Points.