Short Overview of Ground Missions

Whenever one of your craft successfully shoots down a UFO over land, that UFO will crash-land and the aliens aboard will beam down to terrorize the local populace. As of the .845 release, there really isn't a populace to worry about, so don't be shy with your high explosives. Also as of the .845 release, the terrain is limited to flat land with one of several arrangements of one-story buildings.

Before You Fly

Once the aliens crash-land, they'll just sit there, wherever they fell, a blight on the landscape. Waiting to go after them accomplishes nothing, but you should make sure your soldiers are properly equipped before sending them out to face the enemy.

At the start of the game, you will have three ships with which to shoot down UFOs (2 Kronos fighters and 1 cruiser) and one ship to send out to clean up on the ground, the Ambassador. Your Ambassador can't shoot down enemy ships, and your fighters and cruiser can't carry troops to battle.

When you shoot down a UFO, you'll get a dialog box asking you if you want to just Continue the game at the speed it's set, Stop the game so you can check everything, or Intercept and send your troops into battle. If everything's in order, you should click Intercept and choose a ship to send (at the start of the game, your Ambassador). You can also select the available ground mission from the Missions menu later on, and send a ship out then.

There are two steps that ensure you're properly prepared for a ground mission.

Make sure your ship has the right people. You can do this from the Crafts Squadron screen. Select your troop transport (Ambassador), click Equip, then Soldiers. Use the menus to cycle out your injured soldiers or fill the slots of dead soldiers.

Make sure your people have the right equipment. You can pile equipment onto your troop transport from the Crafts Squadron screen, and equip each soldier at the start of each mission by selecting Equip from the splash screen which explains the mission upon which you're about to embark, but there's a quicker way.

From the soldiers screen, select Equip and handle the loadouts for each soldier that's assigned to your troop transport. This way, you won't have to hang around before every mission, double-checking equipment.

On the Ground

Your Ambassador can hold six soldiers. Soldiers will be arranged in the terrain in groups of five. That means that if you have six soldiers in the ship one of them will start far from the others.

The area of the map your soldiers can see will be fully colored. The areas that have been checked out but no one is currently watching (and where aliens can sneak past undetected) will be shaded in gray, and unexplored area will be in black. If a soldier has a Sensor, deploying it will allow you to keep track of an area without having to post a soldier to watch it. This enables you to watch your back while using all your soldiers aggressively, to search and destroy.

Currently, the only ground combat mode is Turn-Based. This means you have all the time you need to decide where and how to move your units. When you've put all your units where you want them to be, you must end your turn in order for the mission to progress.

If, during the course of the Aliens' round, one of your soldiers sees or hears an alien (or an alien shooting), the Aliens' round will be interrupted and the soldier who detected the alien will have the opportunity to move and shoot. This can happen any number of times per round. As such, 'it is a good idea to leave your soldiers with at least enough time units to turn and shoot between rounds.' This can save you a lot of trouble and keep your soldiers alive.

See Ground Controls for a description of how to move your soldiers on the ground.

General Tactics

The safest way to go is to keep your soldiers in loose groups of two or three - that way, if one soldier sees an alien, shoots, and misses, he has backup. When assaulting a building, moving in teams is crucial because there are many places for an alien to hide. Having more eyes and guns in the assault will reduce your soldiers' chance of getting shot in the back - for example, one soldier can cover for the other as he checks each room.

Make sure you don't bring a rocket launcher into a close-quarters fight, like into the cramped confines of a building. Rockets are area-effect weapons and if you miss, you could injure or kill your own soldiers. Similarly, be careful with hand grenades!

If you deploy a sensor and win the mission, you get the sensor back - they can be used in as many missions as you need. Sensors are extremely useful for watching your flank, so spread them thick on the map like butter on toast when you think an alien might sneak up on you from behind. They're especially suited for big maps; when you might be tempted to basically waste a soldier on keeping watch over one part of the map while you search another, you can just drop a sensor and use all of your soldiers to search and destroy.