Xenonauts 2 is an action strategy-based video game that many consider the spiritual successor to the widely acclaimed XCOM series. It involves the player fighting to protect Earth against an invasion by an alien species. Players can research alien technology to improve their weapons alongside building their bases as strongholds to launch attacks while making sure that their soldiers do not die.
If you’re interested and want to make your way into the Xenonauts universe, I got you covered. Here’s a complete beginner’s guide and everything you need to know as a starter in the game. Let’s get right into it!
Complete Beginner’s Guide
Each section of this guide will focus on one particular aspect of the game as you progress through it.
Starting Game
When you choose the option to begin a new game, the menu might seem overwhelming for beginners. The most important option here is to choose your difficulty level correctly. For beginners, select the Soldier difficulty since that is essentially Normal difficulty. If at any point in the game, you feel overwhelmed by this particular setting, you can step it down a notch to the Recruit difficulty.
It is crucial to enable the Introduction option since this is essentially a tutorial that will get you up to speed with the major mechanics of the game. Lastly, there is an Ironman option which we do not recommend enabling. Enabling this option means that any decision that you make throughout the course of this campaign will be permanent, meaning you cannot go back and reload previous saves.
Tooltips
As you begin the tutorial, Tooltips will start popping up to explain the different aspects of the game to you. In our opinion, this is the biggest strength of this game as it is completely transparent with respect to the information it provides as long as the player knows where to look. Additionally, there are links found in tooltips that can be clicked on, and this will allow the player to view additional information regarding the subject.
Inside the extended information, you can find additional links, so these tooltips form a Wikipedia page that players can use to find information on any subject that they desire.
How to Detect Aliens
Starting the game, you will be provided with a base that has coverage over a limited area. If any alien aircraft pass within this area, your radar will be able to detect them, and you can then engage in combat with them. For progressing quickly, we recommend setting the time at the fastest speed using the upper left corner or pressing F3. At times you might also see certain events show up in your log at the bottom of the screen.
These events might raise the Fear level in the particular region it occurred in. As shown in the image above, the two events that occurred caused the fear level to increase from the base level of 25 to 26. These events indicate that there is an anomaly in the region, but since we have no radars or bases in the area, we cannot investigate.
How to Intercept Aircrafts
Once an enemy aircraft flies within your radar, a message will pop up with its statistics and a couple of options that you can choose from on how to proceed. Shooting down the alien aircraft is beneficial since it will prevent the building up of fear in the region. This is because, at times, these aircraft are directly involved in the anomalies mentioned before.
Launching the interceptors will allow you to send your aircraft to engage with the alien aircraft to take it down. Successfully taking on the opposing aircraft will likely spawn a crash site that you can explore with your team and obtain valuable alien technology that can be researched for producing powerful weapons.
Once the alien craft is intercepted, players can engage in either manual combat or auto-combat. Since the game is in early access, engaging in manual combat is discouraged because it is partially complete. However, using manual combat can allow you to maneuver your aircraft in such a way as to avoid them taking more damage. For beginners, we recommend using the Auto Resolve option.
Choosing the Auto Resolve option will display your results in another menu indicating the status of your aircraft and how many rounds and weapons they have used. This is the auto result meaning that if you are not satisfied, you can fight manually, but in most cases, the auto result is acceptable.
Crash Sites
Successfully taking down alien aircraft through interceptors has the opportunity to spawn Crash Sites that can be explored using your soldiers. These missions involve turn-based combat against aliens and require players to contemplate the consequences of their actions.
Before choosing to launch the dropship, you want to make sure that your Skyhawk is loaded with personnel that you want to use in battle. Because once you choose to launch, you can only modify the equipment of the current soldiers on the Skyhawk and not swap them.
Mission UI
Once spawned inside the mission premises, there are a few important things that you need to know about. The first is modifying the camera angle, which can be done using the WASD keys or through the mouse. Moreover, you can also rotate the camera using Q and E keys, and this is very important to look around corners. Lastly, since this is a turn-based combat game, each soldier has action points that dictate their actions. If a soldier uses all his points in moving, then he won’t be able to fire his weapon.
Action points in this game are referred to as Time Units. For example, in the image below, our soldier has 60 Time Units. Selecting any tile for movement will show the number of time units that the movement will consume. This can be used to plan your actions while keeping in mind which attack you can use. As seen in the image, the soldier’s line of sight is also important, and it can be rotated every 45 degrees by right-clicking in the desired direction. Lastly, soldiers can Crouch, which makes it harder for bullets to hit them due to the protection provided by the cover.
Combat
Once aliens or cleaners appear within your Soldiers’ vicinity, it is time to engage in combat. The first thing that you would notice is the visibility of enemies to the current soldier selected. This is indicated by the Alien skulls towards the lower part of the HUD. Yellow indicates enemies that are within the line of sight of the soldier, while Red indicates enemies that were seen by the selected soldier but are not in his/her line of sight.
Next, when you select a particular enemy to engage, you will notice two numbers appear next to them. The green number on the left indicates the time units required to take the shot, while the red number on the right indicates the shot accuracy. This percentage is determined by plenty of factors which can be seen in the lower right corner of the HUD. Your weapon is capable of dealing between 50% to 200% of its base damage, depending on which body part it hits, so there is an element of luck involved in combat.
At times when targeting an enemy with a soldier, you will notice the path of the bullet highlighted. Once it turns yellow, that means that you are trying to shoot past the effective range of the weapon. Bullets fired on such paths have a lower chance to hit the enemy, and even if they do, they will deal less damage to it is not recommended. At times with Snipers, you will notice a huge drop in their accuracy due to objects in the bullet’s path. For this, enter into free fire mode using Ctrl and use a soldier near the blocking object to destroy it.
Grenades
Grenades are an important part of your soldier’s arsenal in Xenoanuts 2. They also require Time Units in order to use, so you should plan your moves carefully. Additionally, in some cases, beginners have a misconception that Demolition Charges need to be placed and activated remotely for them to explode.
This is not true, as you can simply throw these charges, and they will explode on impact, damaging enemies and destroying any cover they have. This is very useful since, without any cover, you can easily hit them.
Secondary Weapons
As you are playing the game, you might notice that some of your soldiers can carry more than one weapon. The second weapon is referred to as the sidearm and is essentially the soldier’s secondary weapon. These are very beneficial to use in case the soldier does not have enough Time Units to fire the primary weapon.
To use the secondary weapon, simply select it in the HUD, where it should be right next to the primary weapon. Since firing the secondary weapon takes fewer Time Units than using the primary weapon, you will often be able to take multiple shots in one turn.
One Shot Preview
One of the best mechanics that we have seen in this game is the One Shot Preview. This allows you to view the chances of your shots hitting the enemy on a path that you plan to take. This is very useful since it allows you to gauge if taking that path is even worthwhile or not. To use this, simply highlight the tile that you want to move the Soldier to and then hole Shift while hovering the cursor over the enemy. This will highlight the chances according to the selected path as well as tell you the total Time Units that are required.
For instance, in the image above, since the enemy is behind heavy cover, using the shotgun from that range won’t be effective. Hence highlighting a path to the cover and using the Once Shot Preview lets us know that we would have a 93% chance of hitting the shot. Additionally, moving the soldier into that spot and firing his weapon would require a total of 54 Time Units.
Overwatch
Overwatch is an additional mechanic present in this game that allows the unit selected to fire on anything that moves within its line of sight. This happens if the unit has remaining Time Units and its turn ends. To avoid wasting those units, it may trigger Overwatch fire. A good way to gauge how many Time Units the enemy might have left is to check how much distance they moved. If you know they moved a significant distance, then they might not have enough Time Units for an Overwatch Shot, and you can move safely.
Overwatch fire can happen in a lot of ways. For instance, even if your units are not within the enemy’s line of sight and you fire a shot at them, it will alert them. It doesn’t matter if the shot hits or if it misses. The enemy will face you and trigger Overwatch Fire. If your unit has enough Time Units left, then it might also repeat the same action, and Overwatch fire back. This will continue until one party exhausts their Time Units.
Suppression and Smoke Grenades
Suppression is a great way to prevent Overwatch fire. For this, the best tool in your arsenal is the Stun Grenades. They Stun all the enemies in the damage radius, which means that all of their Time Units are exhausted. This way, they cannot fire their weapons or move. Moreover, in the next turn, they receive only 50% of their Time Units back, so this is a great mechanic.
Another great mechanic to protect your soldiers is to use the Smoke Grenades. Each tile that the smoke grenades occupy reduces the probability of the shot passing through it and hitting its target. As seen in the image below, smoke grenades do Stun Damage. If this damage exceeds the health of the unt, this incapacitates the unit.
This can be used to capture live enemy soldiers for any research or mission requirements. However, it should also be noted that your own soldiers are also susceptible to your own smoke grenades and can be incapacitated if they take enough damage.
Base Location
Once the tutorial has been completed, players will need to choose a location for their new base. A word of warning here is that you should not attempt to put your base in areas such as Madagascar. This is because any alien aircraft you shoot will most likely crash in the water. This will make any crash site missions useless.
Hence you want to place your base in such as location where there is maximum land mass to allow for the alien ships to crash. Good locations include Northern Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe.
Base Overview
Upon accessing the base tab, you can notice all of your available facilities and which facilities you require. Most of the time, with new bases, your Training Capacity will be low, meaning your soldiers will be unable to train properly. For this reason, one of your first buildings to build should be a Training Center.
A Medical Center is also a good choice since it speeds up the rate at which your soldiers heal and also increases the overall survivability of the soldiers. This allows you to make sure that your best soldiers are being deployed in each mission.
This concludes our beginner’s guide for Xenonauts 2. If you have any questions or suggestions, let us know in the comments below.
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