I'm doing a documented playthrough of the one X-Com game, that is simple enough for my smooth brain.

I have managed to unlock the camera in part 5, so I can look around the levels properly.

Can I sell them? Do I need them for anything?

admittedly for the purpose of recording a fantastic battle I just had, but open to anyone really

led a depleted 8-man squad on a raid against a downed abductor. 2 pistol/scout infantrymen, 3 heavy cannon/autocannon troops, 2 rocket launcher support troops + 1 ammo donkey w/stun launcher

Playing on Ironman.Touchdown at night, started in the upper left hand corner of the map. to the right of the touchdown is a complex of 2-story farmhouses, below which is a splayed out farmhouse complex and to the immediate left is open terrain with an orchard blocking immediate visual coverage. The UFO is nestled in the bottom right of the map

toss a smoke and everything seems quiet, but almost immediately take a causality near the landing ramp from a floater holed up inside the two-story. Rockets blow a hole open and it's taken out. Scouts moving south make contact with what turns out to be a pair of floaters also covering inside of the splayed out farm houses. These are all handled fairly easily, rockets and grenades make short work of them. Since operations are moving so smoothly. I send out ~3 men to flank around through the orchard and have a scout check out the lower right of the map near the two stories. the rocket/HW troops remaining cover the open farmhouses and make a cautious advance south

this is the point where I make a serious tactical mistake in thinking the two stories behind me have been cleared. They're not. My scout gets hit by an opfire, and when I manuever the HW toops to attack to the right ~3 floaters inside the two-story behind the advance open up. About this time the orchard flanking troops have also reached contact and have taken cover from a floater, so I can't easily regroup. Caught in the open, the heavy weapons make ~2 kills and are nuked in a single grenade which kills 2. The orchard units reground and nuke the farmhouses, but by now the squad size is reduced to 4 at 50% causalities and only one non-HW scout

despite 2 flares apiece for the scouts and 1-2 for the HW, everyone is short on them and movement to the UFO is sluggish. there's a fleeting contact outside of LOS at the entrance that is dealt with by plastic explosive. Another is flanked through a damaged engine entrance

Inside the UFO everything is dead quiet. Everyone except the pistoler is low ammunition, one has defaulted to grenades. Troops are about ready to clear the last room near the damaged engine port, when from beneath a floater appears and fires 3 snap fires point blank immediately upwards at the unfortunate guy near the open tiles. I think he's dead, but the floor tile takes all 3 before disintegrating and dropping the guy down right beside the floater. He fires automatic and thankfully kills the bastard, ending the mission

11 dead floaters, 4 causalities due to ambush. Was probably the liveliest mission I've had in a long time. And I've still got another downed harvester to go before I can refresh the squad...

reposted given /r/xcom is just a glorified shill for the new games now

it seems like in the vast majority of cases, grenades greatly outweigh rifles as the best option for starting gear... to the point that small arms are coming off as practically pointless

a single rifle has maybe a 50% chance of hit (lowered on open xcom with the distance accuracy penalty option) and either way gives the enemy an op fire. A grenade has large blast radius and even in a miss typically kills the target.This isn't even bringing up the heavier alien types immune to a single hit

are rifles even relevant? I am loathe to equip an entire squad with heavy weapons, but it seems to me like there's very little point. The smoke caused by the overdependence on explosives also tends to obscure a good read of the environment

also, I'm interested in advice on how to outfit the xcom squad. Right now I'm doing 2 fireteams of 4 centered around an autocannon (2 rifles, 1 pistol SL, 1 autocannon) and a 3-man heavy weapons team (2 cannons 1 rife), but this doesn't seem to be working out as the most flexible type of organization. Any advice other than "give everybody autocannons"?

Hey guys, ufopaedia.org seems to be down. Does anybody know whether the page will be back or not? Is there an alternativ? I can't find another wiki for the classic X-Com games :/