Entertainment Weekly brings you the latest TV, movie, music, and book news daily. Think of Satellites as the SCVs of XCOM. Just as with those gathering units of real-time strategy series StarCraft, you should always be building one. They have one of the longest construction.

Tactical missions are XCOM's main operations and can be generated through either Mission Control or the Situation Room. Each mission will have a codename, and will have a Brief and Objectives for XCOM to achieve. At the end of the mission the XCOM Commander will be shown an After Action Report detailing the success/failure of the mission.

XCOM is a tactical strategy role-playing series that began on the PC all the way back in 1994. The first game is still considered to be one of the most influential games ever made. XCOM EU/EW Spoilers ahead: In the end of the previous XCOM, the organization has to chose a psionic character and have him in the party that beats the final assault of the mothership. The thing is, it was all a ruse, merely for Ethereals to test humans to assess 'our' strenght. EW is a more complete experience. It has the same story as EU + new content. The only reason one would play EU is if they wanted to learn the game without the new content getting in the way.

• 1Mission Types
  • 1.2Council Missions
  • 1.4XCOM: Enemy Within DLC Missions
    • 1.4.2Council Missions
• 2Mission Frequency
• 3Mission Factors
• 4Alien Species Deployment Table

Mission Types

Alien Missions

Missions involving alien invaders are the bread and butter of XCOM. You'll be asked to either stop alien activity in specific countries or to recover landed/crashed UFOs. Ignoring these missions increases the panic level of the country, and usually also in the continent where they occur, with the exception of Crashed UFO sites.

Council Missions

Council missions will appear periodically and you'll be given resources (credits, soldiers, etc.) in exchange for completing these missions, in addition it may also reduce the panic level of the country where it takes place. If failed or ignored most missions will also raise panic on the country, and, in Impossible difficulty, on the entire continent.

• Target Escort (Rescue)
• Asset Recovery (Assault)

The most difficult Council missions are usually the Bomb Disposal sites because of the time window involved to deactivate the alien bomb.After a player has reached the mid/late game the Council missions will turn into training runs since your advanced weapons and armor will be more than a match for the usual Thin Men found in those missions.

Slingshot DLC Missions

Slingshot is a DLC available for Enemy Unknown which consists in a campaign of 3 Council missions that unlock a playable soldier Zhang along with additional salvage. The Slingshot missions will only be offered once in the first month of the game and you'll be given the choice of taking it instead or a regular Council mission. After each mission appears available on the Situation Room it is possible for the player to delay it indefinitely by choosing the 'Not Now' option.

On the Enemy Within DLC, the Slingshot campaign has been pushed to a May start, instead of late March.

Storyline Missions

These are special Missions that you'll need to complete in order to progress in the Storyline. Failure to complete certain missions will be considered a game loss. There are five Storyline missions, although the two Tutorials are optional at game start.

• Tutorial
• Meld Tutorial (EW DLC)
• Alien Base Assault
• XCOM Base Defense (EW DLC)
• Temple Ship Assault

For more details see the Storyline Missions page (massive spoilers!).

XCOM: Enemy Within DLC Missions

In addition to the ones already mentioned above, the Enemy Within DLC introduces several new missions.

Covert Operations Missions

Covert Operations missions that become available on the Situation Room after EXALT appears in May. Covert missions will be available until the EXALT base is destroyed.

Council Missions

• Site Recon (Assault)

Progeny Missions

Progeny is a Council campaign of 3 missions that is optional at game start. It can be played in the same game with Slingshot campaign also activated, or as a solo campaign.

Mission Frequency

The majority of the tactical missions will be generated periodically by the game upon certain definitions on a monthly basis. It is possible to ignore those missions but it will usually have negative consequences as panic will increase.

Storyline missions don't have any time requirements and can be completed at the player's discretion. However, the Alien Base assault can alter the frequency of Abductions, Terror Sites and UFO missions.

Before Alien Base Assault

• 1st mission - Tutorial or regular Alien Abductions mission in March.
• Up to 2 Abductions each month, depending on the number of countries without satellites.
• 1 Terror Site every even month (April, June, etc.)
• 1 Council Mission every month, between the 13th and the 27th, can be Slingshot campaign (EU only), if the Tutorial isn't activated.
• 1 Council Request each 20 days + 7 random days. Each Request has a requirement and if it isn't met no request is generated (common in the early months). Each request has a 20 days limit to be completed before it disappears.
  • On the Enemy Within DLC, there are two monthly time windows, between the 5th and 15th days and between the 17th and 27th.
  • There can be only 1 Council Mission each month. On each window there will be either a Mission or Request (25% chance for 2 Requests, 50% for Mission and a Request, 25% for a Request/Mission). The Slingshot and Progeny missions can fill either window.
• 1 detected UFO each month, either crashed or landed.
  • 50% chance for a 2nd detected UFO during April to June (March to July with Second Wave's Marathon).

Special Missions

• On the Enemy Within DLC, Slingshot's Friends In Low Places mission happens on day 51, or around April 20th. Confounding Light mission happens 25 days after (around May 15th) and Gangplank 2 days afterwards.
• Also in EW, the Portent mission of the Progeny campaign is a Council mission in April.
• EXALT on May, on the 12th to 24th (Easy and Normal) and 6th to 24th (Classic and Impossible).

After Alien Base Assault

• 1 monthly Abduction mission, if there are 3+ countries in the Council without a satellite.
• 1 Terror Site every month.
• 1 Council Mission every month, between the 13th and the 27th, can be Slingshot campaign (EU only).
• 1 Council Request each 20 days.
  • On EW, there are two monthly time windows, between the 5th and 15th days and between the 17th and 27th.
  • There can be only 1 Council Mission each month. On each window there will be either a Mission or Request (25% chance for 2 Requests, 50% for Mission and a Request, 25% for a Request/Mission). The Slingshot and Progeny missions can fill either window.
• 1 detected UFO each month, either crashed or landed.
  • 50% chance for a 2nd detected UFO each month.
  • Random Mission - if the 2nd UFO wasn't added, the game may add an additional Abductions, Terror or Council mission. The AI will choose randomly between the mission types according to the following criteria: Terror and Council missions can only be chosen if they haven't been already scheduled for the month; in the case of Abductions, they are only chosen if there are 3 or more countries without satellites. If none of the criteria is met, there won't be an additional mission added.

Special Missions

• Base Defense - 2 to 3 weeks after XCOM assaults the Alien Base (EW DLC)
  • Progeny campaign Deluge and Furies missions - both take place the month after Base Defense and building the Psionic Lab. Furies takes place 7 days (168 hours) after Deluge.
• EXALT Elites replace regulars in July.

Abductions

• Abductions require a minimum of 2 countries without satellites to take place and have a maximum of 3 countries targeted each round. There is a maximum of 2 Abductions each month.
  • An exception is that after the Alien Base is assaulted, which always requires 3 countries as targets to take place.
• Before the Alien Base mission, there will be 2 Abductions each month, if there are 5 or more countries (3 for the 1st Abductions, 2+ for the 2nd Abductions) still in the Council without a satellite.
• After the Alien Base is assaulted it can be none or up to 2 monthly missions, depending on the number of countries remaining on the Council without satellites.
  • The 1st mission will take place with only two countries available but the 2nd round of Abductions always requires 6 countries without satellites to be planned by the AI.
• The aliens will target any countries still in the Council that don't have a satellite deployed and avoid any country already marked for a Terror Site during the month.
• On EW (and probably for EU as well) there are two time windows for Abductions. The 1st is between day 1 and 7 of the month, the 2nd between the 11 and 25 days. The first window is only used if there are two Abductions scheduled for the month.

Terror Site

• Before the Alien Base mission, there's 1 Terror Site every even month (April, June, etc.). After the base is destroyed, it takes place every month.
• Terror missions will take place on countries still in the Council, regardless of if they have satellites deployed or not.
• There's a 75% chance that the aliens will choose to terrorize the most panicked country. If not, the aliens will randomly choose between the 3 countries with the most panic levels.
• The targeted country will also be removed from the target list for any Abduction missions that take place on that month.

UFOs

• Detected UFOs can be conducting 4 types of missions: Scout Target, Destroy Satellite, Harvest Live Specimens, and Final Preparations.
• There's a monthly limit of 2 UFOs being detected either landed (Harvest Live Specimens mission) or flying (Scout Target mission)
• 1 UFO is always detected each month, either flying or landed.
• The appearance of the 2nd UFO is dependent if the Alien Base has been assaulted:
  • If it hasn't been assaulted and the 2nd Abductions mission has been added, there's a 50% chance for a 2nd detected UFO during April or May (April to June with Second Wave's Marathon).
  • If it hasn't been assaulted and the 2nd Abductions mission has not been added due to a lack of sufficient countries, the 2nd UFO will always be generated.
  • If the Alien Base has been assaulted there's a 50% chance for a 2nd detected UFO.
• Each month there will be specific UFOs available (either flying or landed) for missions.
  • If there are flying UFOs available for that month there's a 66% chance that the UFO will be detected while flying. Otherwise if there are landed UFOs available it will be a Landed UFO mission.
  • If there were no detections or there are no available landed UFOs, the game will choose from a pool of possible UFO types for the month.
• More UFOs can appear in case a Destroy Satellite UFO mission is generated but there's a maximum of 2 UFO ground missions.
  • A Destroy Satellite UFO will only appear if any Harvest Live Specimens or Scout Target missions are completely ignored (no interceptors or Skyranger is launched and intercept/deploy the UFO).
  • The aliens will send quickly a Large Scout/Battleship on a Destroy Satellite mission, depending on the game difficulty. If the first mission is ground assaulted or intercepted, regardless of the final result, the 2nd mission will not be generated.
• The Final Preparations UFO mission is only assigned to Overseer UFOs and only appears after you've progressed enough on the Storyline to build the Hyperwave Relay.

Council

A list of Council missions and their rewards can be seen at Council Missions.

• On Enemy Unknown, 1 Council Mission every month, between the 13th and the 27th, can be filled by Slingshot campaign missions.
• On the Enemy Within DLC, there are two monthly time windows, between the 5th and 15th days and between the 17th and 27th.
  • There can be only 1 Council Mission each month. On each window there will be either a Mission or Request (25% chance for 2 Requests, 50% for Mission and a Request, 25% for a Request/Mission). The Slingshot and Progeny missions can fill either window.
  • Slingshot or Progeny missions will take place during these time windows. It is possible to have a mission from either campaign and a regular Council mission on the same month.
  • If the Meld Tutorial is active it will take the place of the 1st Council mission.

EXALT

For a detailed explanation of the appearance of EXALT see EXALT Cells and Covert Operations.

Mission Factors

Response Times

Each mission will have a window of opportunity of 1-2 days, specific values below:

Mission Difficulty

The overall difficulty of a mission depends on the number and type of aliens present in a mission and the Difficulty level. For a detailed breakdown of the numbers, check Alien Deployment.

Abduction missions will appear with individual difficulty levels of: Easy/Moderate/Difficult/Very Difficult. These give an indication of the total number of alien and the number of alien 'pods' (groups of 1-3 aliens) present on the mission. The individual mission difficulty is a number calculated with the following steps:

1. The number of current Storyline Act (can vary from 1 to 3) is reduced by -1 and added to the mission difficulty.
2. The panic level of the country (1 to 5) is reduced by -1 and the final number added.
3. A random number from 0 to 2 is added.
4. If playing on Impossible difficulty a +1 modifier is added.
5. The difficulty number is clamped to a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 3. The final number determines the mission difficulty, with 0 being Easy and 3 Very Difficult.

Mission Rewards

On Abductions, the type of the rewards is randomly chosen when the mission appears, while on Council missions the rewards are predetermined.

There are 4 types of rewards possible for Abduction missions. Since there are only 3 Abduction sites during a raid only 3 of these rewards will be chosen, with no repeats. On the first Abduction mission the rewards will always be credits, scientists or engineers.

• §200
• 4 Scientists
• 4 Engineers
• 1 trained soldier, with a semi-random class and a rank randomly chosen between Sergeant and Major.

If using Second Wave's High Stakes option then the rewards are randomized as the following:

• §100-300
• 2-6 Scientists
• 2-6 Engineers

On the Enemy Within DLC, the Covert Operations missions will give either §100 (Covert Extractions) or either §100 or §150 for Covert Data Extractions, depending on if the Encoder has been destroyed or retrieved intact.

The Progeny and Slingshot campaigns have predetermined rewards for each mission, see Progeny vs. Slingshot. Finally, the salvage from UFO missions is calculated separately.

Alien Species Deployment Table

For detailed information on the actual probabilities of seeing an alien species during a mission, check Alien Deployment.

Enemy Unknown

Enemy Within DLC

Progeny vs. Slingshot

• Portent first appears in April, but the other two missions in this side plot won't take place until the aliens have done their assault on the XCOM HQ, which only takes place after the assault on the Alien Base.
• Friends in Low Places takes place after Portent, and you will usually finish the whole Slingshot campaign before the rest of Progeny.
• Annette and her fellow abductees' stats, recruited months into the game, won't be as useful as getting Zhang in just a few weeks in, especially since pre-leveled recruits (such as from Abduction/Council rewards) don't benefit from OTS's Iron Will.
  • This also includes having your late-game soldiers in mind, particularly if Hidden Potential and Not Created Equally are chosen, and you have already begun farming and raising for your Psi Squad; they can easily get higher stats than these pre-leveled soldiers.
  • Pre-leveled soldiers are not a priority reward in general: generic Abduction/Council Reward soldiers will always be one level below your highest-ranked solider for that class, and Zhang is the one exception as he would be the only one that could be of higher rank than any soldiers you'll have at the time, at least in vanilla EU, where he could be gotten in March.
• What you can sell and research from Slingshot's Battleship mission in (as early as) April, has now been moved to May.
• At the very least, the Council rewards of the first missions are more profitable from Slingshot.

See Also

• UFOs - For more information regarding salvage from landed/downed UFOs.
• Maps - For details on the types of terrain for each mission.
• Managing Panic - For more information regarding country and world panic.
• Alien Deployment - For data on the number of aliens present during a mission.

Xcom Eu Vs Xcom 2

• 6Examples

Overview

Keybind command is a command mapped to a key. It is done by editing <Steam install path>XCom-Enemy-Unknown[XEW]XComGameConfigDefaultInput.ini. Commands bound to keys are working even with disabled Developer Shell and Console.

Also bear in mind that if you have any DLCs installed, copies of various 'default' INI files are made in the My Games folder tree, but begin with 'XCom' instead of 'Default' (as in XComInput.ini instead of DefaultInput.ini). While they normally are updated automatically when you change the 'Default' versions, you may need to update these files manually as well if your key bindings don't seem to 'take'.

For a list of valid keys and gamepad buttons that can be bound, see UDN Three - Key Binds article. This also include descriptions and other examples of features such as key bind aliasing, chaining, the onrelease modifier, use of variables, toggles, and binding functions.

DefaultInput.ini sections

It is necessary to put the command into correct section of DefaultInput.ini, because some commands work only in specific layer of the game - strategy or tactical. General commands may be in both sections, but should be in the section regarding the layer of execution.

• Bindings for strategy are in [Engine.PlayerInput] section (lines 18-200 in XCOM EU).
• Bindings for tactical are in [XComGame.XComTacticalInput] section (lines 201-330 in XCOM EU).
• It is absolutely possible to add new lines at the end of the file, but always precede them with correct section name in brackets. In case a key has multiple bindings, the game executes only the last valid entry, so there's no need to edit old bindings.

DefaultInput.ini entries

An entry in DefaultInput.ini looks like:
.Bindings=(Name='[Name]', Command='[Command]', Alt=True, bPrimaryBinding=True)

• [Name] -- String, mapped key's name, can be alias like MyName (MyName is then used as command)
• [Command] -- String, command(s):
• Alt -- Boolean, modifier key (other modifiers are Control and Shift), can be omitted if not required
• bPrimaryBinding/bSecondaryBinding -- Boolean, if the key is primary/secondary key, can be omitted

Commands and their syntax

There can be one or more commands written between quotes of Command=' entry. See Console Commands - XCOM:EU 2012 and Unreal Engine 3 Console Commands articles for available commands.
Square brackets in the following syntax descriptions indicate [optional component] and should be omitted whether the component is present or not.

• Single command with or without parameters.
  • Syntax: command [parameters]
• Multiple commands with or without parameters, known as chaining
  • Multiple commands are divided by vertical bar character.
  • Syntax: command [parameters] command [parameters] command [parameters]
• Exec command
  • Exec command executes all commands inside specified text file located in <Steam install path>XCom-Enemy-Unknown(XEW)XComGameBinaries folder. MAC users may place the file into <Steam install path>/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/XCOMData/Binaries (needs verification).
  • Syntax: exec Filename.txt
  • The best is the file can be edited on the fly!
  • It is possible to use // for commenting.
  • Put each command on new line to be safe (one command - one line).
• Any command can use onrelease key event.
  • Syntax: onrelease command [parameters]

Good to know

When Keybinds don't seem to be working, check for the wrong (angled / curly) double-quotation mark characters like [“] (i.e. HTML &ldquo; or Unicode U+201C) and [”] (i.e. HTML &rdquo; or Unicode U+201D) in use, instead of the correct (vertical) ['] (i.e. HTML &quot; or ASCII 0x22). Make sure to use the correct one, when enclosing the key's name and command(s). Don't go just by how it looks on screen; check the character code. [This proved to be the problem preventing Mac users from getting Keybinds to work correctly.]

Best proven practice is putting new commands at the end of the file, so previous bind commands are overwritten. (No need to remove or disable them, as the last one overrides any earlier ones.) Don't forget to precede them with the correct section name in brackets.

Xcom Eu Vs Ew 3

In order to place functional aliens on maps that don't have them, you have to: 1) place the aliens, 2) save the game, and 3) reload that save file before they will function correctly.

Xcom Ew Vs Eu

Examples

Single command - tactical layer

• HunkerDown action assigned to the 'B' key.

Single command with parameters - strategy layer

• Gives one Skeleton Key after pressing F9.
• Sell anything to see the key in gray market.

Multiple commands with parameters - strategy layer

• Gives one Skeleton Key and creates alien base after pressing Alt + F9.
• Revisit Mission Control to see the alert.

Multiple commands with onrelease - tactical layer

• Removes fog of war and shows AIDebugAI info after pressing and holding down F9. Reverts to default view upon releasing the key.

Xcom Eu Vs Ew Vs

Exec command - tactical layer

• Executes MyBatchofCommands.txt after pressing F8.
• The file can contain more commands and comments:

In this case only AIDebugAI is executed.

Key bind toggle trick - strategy layer

• The 1st F12 key press executes commands defined in SlowMotion alias and sets F12 to NormalMotion.
• The 2nd F12 key press executes commands defined in NormalMotion alias and sets F12 to SlowMotion.
• Its purpose is to slow/normalize the time when scanning for UFO contacts.

Tutorial

(This section is taken from the Keybind commands thread on the Nexus XCOM Mod Talk Forum.)

Short example tutorial about increasing resources like money, elerium, alloys and weapon fragments to ease testing of strategic layer of the game.

• Decide, if you want to mod EU or EW. Correct paths for PC are:
  • XCOM Enemy Unknown (EU)

    XCom-Enemy-UnknownXComGameConfigDefaultInput.ini

    XCom-Enemy-UnknownBinariesStrategy.txt

  • XCOM Enemy Within (EW)

    XCom-Enemy-UnknownXEWXComGameConfigDefaultInput.ini

    XCom-Enemy-UnknownXEWBinariesStrategy.txt

• Open DefaultInput.ini in your favorite text editor and add lines below at the end of the file.

• • Save the file.

    (Make sure correct quotation marks are used. Must be straight ('). Curly/angled double quotes (” “) don't work.)

• Create a new file in the Binaries folder and name it Strategy.txt.
  • Add any resource you would like to increase. Syntax is 'GIVE RESOURCE <Amount>'. Available resources and items are listed inside classes XGStrategyActor and XGGameData.

• • Strategy.txt can be edited while the game is running, so it's easy to change the amount of resources or comment lines to exclude resources not needed. The amount can even be negative (use minus sign).

    (A sample Strategy.txt file is available in the Keybind commands Mod Talk thread article. Delete '//' comment sign in front of commands you wish to use. The file is not 100% updated for EW.)

• Run the game and press F12 while being at the 'Base Overview' screen. To see updated numbers, navigate somewhere else, like 'Engineering' or 'Situation Room' / 'Visit Gray Market'. You may need to do it more times.

[Image credit to Drakous79]

References

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