Hello everyone, I'm new here, and I recently stumbled across something in XCOM after several playthroughs I need help clarifying during and after the global defense in the Resolution Phase.

I've repeatedly read through the app to look for conditions about whether or not remaining UFOs that have not been destroyed or do not have Interceptors assigned stay on the board once the rolled tasks are completed. I've also been trying to find the timing of raising Panic during this step of the Resolution Phase because of one of the Mission Rewards that destroy UFOs.

In almost all of my games, I found this pointless except when getting rid of Orbital UFOs, and wondered if it could be used at all for Global UFOs. The app rules never state whether or not that non-destroyed UFOs are ever taken off the board at any point in the resolution phase. It also has made me wonder that even if these UFOs do stay, if completing the mission that destroys UFOs could reduce the panic on the continents the chosen UFOs were placed. If not, then what's the point of the destroy UFO rewards if they don't prevent Panic in either the Orbital or Global Defense since that's resolved before the mission? Hypothetically, wouldn't that reward be useful if Panic is raised at the *end* of the resolution phase from the remaining UFOs in their respective continents? Or do the UFOs just stay and roll over into the next round, making sense for the need to blow them up if they can start piling up in between rounds?

Thanks in advance for helping out!

UFOs stay on the board. The point of the mission rewards is that those UFOs won't be there to raise panic again *next* turn.

Like Bleached said, the UFOs don't go anywhere just because you haven't killed them. The "destroy 2 UFOs" just makes it easier to handle global defense next round if you've left some UFOs still on the board. I have found this is typically the least useful mission reward, but it can be great in the right circumstances.

I actually really like the order of the resolution phase. Every portion of it, excluding science research, can raise a country's panic levels or do damage to the base, all of which push your "loss" condition of the game. You have to survive all of these steps before reaching the missions - especially the final mission, which is the only way to win the game. I like how you can't just abandon something completely and just push for the final mission.

Slothgodfather's point makes sense. However I think there is still a lack into rules about this.

I've played all the X-COM videogames and their clones too. My perception about the board game is that it wants to be as much as possible coherent with XCOM Enemy Unknown. With this in mind, when you don't intercept an UFO in XCOM Enemy Unknown it can:

- land,

- generate a terror in a city,

- destroy a satellite.

In any of these cases at the end of the month this will have negative impact on panic levels and funding of continents. After few geoscape hours the undestroyed UFOs will disappear because they accomplished their mission. This contrasts Slothgodfather's point and sounds more logic as UFOs are on the Earth to accomplish a mission and not to wait us to destroy them soon or later.

Anyway I think what designers had in mind is what Slothgodfather said, even though they didn't state it explicitly with a clear rule. We might have some freedom here and play a variant of the game as we like it.

My personal variant follows below.

I feel this game quite hard to manage in early rounds and if you can't contain the alien invasion and remove UFOs they'll stack up on continents in few rounds (1-2). If you keep undestroyed UFOs on the geoscape for more than one round, this gives the same UFO the chance to increase the panic more than once in a game. I see this as a possible exponential panic growth which can introduce an unstable dynamic into the game.

For this reason I remove UFOs and I pay this in panic points. However to keep it consistant with mission rewards, I need to resolve mission rewards before removing undestroyed UFOs from the geoscape. The resolution phase should follow this order:

1. Manage global defense

2. Manage mission and resolve mission's effects if accomplished (hence remove UFOs if this is the reward)

3. Pay 1 panic point for each UFO still flying on the geoscape and remove the UFO (the UFO accomplished the mission and can go back to the base to plan the next attack)

This is more consistant with the videogame.

For this reason I remove UFOs and I pay this in panic points. However to keep it consistant with mission rewards, I need to resolve mission rewards before removing undestroyed UFOs from the geoscape. The resolution phase should follow this order:

1. Manage global defense

2. Manage mission and resolve mission's effects if accomplished (hence remove UFOs if this is the reward)

3. Pay 1 panic point for each UFO still flying on the geoscape and remove the UFO (the UFO accomplished the mission and can go back to the base to plan the next attack)

This is more consistant with the videogame.

Well... this is not how the game was designed to be played. I see no problem in use a house rule, but I think that if you remove the non destroyed UFOs the game will become much easier.

The game "lends" a lot from the videogame but it is not the videogame. For example, I'd like that soldiers took advantage of killing aliens to gain ranks or become elite, maybe even a diferente power or 1 extra "hit point". It does not exist in the board game but may exist in a house rule. The main question here is how all these house rules will take effect at the game balance.

It would be really nice if there was an additional token that you could slot and after a troop survives 3 encounters, they are upgraded to have an additional dice. I like how the commander can just train/promote a guy, but it would be cool if the grunts in the field could also gain in rank.

For this reason I remove UFOs and I pay this in panic points. However to keep it consistant with mission rewards, I need to resolve mission rewards before removing undestroyed UFOs from the geoscape. The resolution phase should follow this order:

1. Manage global defense

2. Manage mission and resolve mission's effects if accomplished (hence remove UFOs if this is the reward)

3. Pay 1 panic point for each UFO still flying on the geoscape and remove the UFO (the UFO accomplished the mission and can go back to the base to plan the next attack)

This is more consistant with the videogame.

Well... this is not how the game was designed to be played. I see no problem in use a house rule, but I think that if you remove the non destroyed UFOs the game will become much easier.

The game "lends" a lot from the videogame but it is not the videogame. For example, I'd like that soldiers took advantage of killing aliens to gain ranks or become elite, maybe even a diferente power or 1 extra "hit point". It does not exist in the board game but may exist in a house rule. The main question here is how all these house rules will take effect at the game balance.

Yesterday evening we had no interceptors, more than 10 UFOs on the geoscape, panic was red almost everywhere. This was almost the end of round 3 in normal onslaught. Luckily the final mission was available, we put 4 soldiers and all the tech cards on that mission. We had luck with dice for the first time and we won.

The feeling in any mission is like: "we can't contain them, we are doomed, let's complete the fecking final mission!". The game looks like unbalanced. Everything is in an exponential growth and you must end it in 3 or max 5 rounds otherwise you fail. I can like the fight against time. but being in a rush all the time is stressing. I could understand if only some of the missions were like that and some others were more manageable...

Well, to be fair, the name of the mission you were on was onslaught. I haven't played the others enough to really get a feel for them, but I generally like the way misdirection plays. It seems to alternate between all the various war fronts and crisis cards throughout the rounds at a more manageable rate - if not a little chaotic.

Games go infinitely better as long as your science guy has good roles. Getting the one that auto-progresses science and/or the one that lets him build from hand with salvage (once a turn) are absolutely critical to making the game much more manageable. I've still won games without those, but it obviously depends a lot more on the luck of the dice.

One time i was playing the following occurd.

One of my continents (i dont remember wich one) went in the orange because i couldnt defend it properly and had several ufos on it. The rules state that, if a continent goes in to panic all the remaining ufos of that continent go to orbit. In the same resolution phase i finnished the mission, the mission reward stated i could reduce panic in any continent and the continent that just went in to full panic.

In this situation...what happens to the ufos? Do they stay in orbit or do they stay on the continent.

I'm pretty sure the rules state if a continent goes into the orange, then it cannot have its threat lowered by any means. So that continent is effectively lost. The UFO's return to orbit to hit somewhere else.

I'm pretty sure the rules state if a continent goes into the orange, then it cannot have its threat lowered by any means. So that continent is effectively lost. The UFO's return to orbit to hit somewhere else.

From Panic and Global Defense rules pages.

1) "To increase panic in a continent, move its panic token one space on the panic track toward the orange space."

2) "After resolving all global defense tasks, the commander increase panic [...]"

3) "When a continent reaches the orange space, it has fallen into panic."

4) "Its [the continent in panic] panic level can ONLY be reduced by mission effects."

5) "To reduce panic in a continent, move its panic token one space on the panic track away from the orange space."

6) "If a continent has fallen into panic WHEN UPDATING THE PANIC LEVELS IN THE APP, all UFOs in that continent are added to orbit."

Apply these rules this order and you'll see there are no UFOs in orbit.

It's clear that during the app update stage the continent is not in panic. This also prevented you to lose the game if you had one continent already panicked.

"If two or more continents have fallen into panic WHEN UPDATING THE PANIC LEVELS IN THE APP, the player lose the game."

good to know. thanks!

On 29.9.2015 at 0:04 AM, Ikon84 said:

...

Apply these rules this order and you'll see there are no UFOs in orbit.

...

Hmm, none of your rules show, that UFOs in orbit are removed/destroyed. Second, the first "UFO action" of real-time phase is "move UFOs from orbit to continent xy". We didn't realize that "from orbit" in our first games, too.

PS: have the german version of the game, so I might mis-translate things a little, sorry then...

Since this has been dug up from the distant past, I've an observation to make about making UFOs go away automatically just because that's how the videogame does it:

The videogame also handles mission choice differently - in the videogame, when you get given a choice of missions, you choose between 3 and get increased panic for the 2 you don't pick. If you're going to clear UFOs after every round, you should also draw an additional Mission and increase Panic in the continents of the Missions you don't choose...

2 hours ago, Thinkpositiv2 said:

Hmm, none of your rules show, that UFOs in orbit are removed/destroyed.

He's talking about the specific scenario where

A) A continent has enough UFOs surviving after Global Defense to put it into orange panic.

B) The same round, a Mission on the continent is completed, bringing it back from orange panic.

C) (implied rather than stated) there were no UFOs in orbit after Orbital Defense.

In that situation, the UFOs all stay on the continent and none move to orbit.

I'm thinking about using the remove the ufo house rule. Somehow, the alien die turns up a 1 or a 2 almost every time we start attacking UFOs. On other checks, the die seems fine, but against UFOs it somehow always rolls low. Basically, if a UFO spawns in our game, it's sticking around till we lose.

We've lost easy games and even the tutorial due to this phenomenon.