Starting a Mission (Apocalypse)
To start a ground (battlescape) mission, an X-Com agent(s) must be at a building or be able to travel to a crashed UFO.
Commands
Know how to do it and not just what to do.
Preparation
Equip a squad (usually six to twelve troopers in total, or single agent if you prefer) with armor, weapons and grenades at minimum. Other devices to use would be suited to the task you want to perform:
- Kill the meat, save the metal = non explosive weaponry to limit destroying items dropped by the dead and damage to structures.
- Convince the aliens to come with you = bring stun grenades and stun grapples (other options to stun aliens may be available).
- Kill em all, no mercy = launchers, ammuntion, high explosives, incendiarys ...and a bad attitude!
An agent should not be heavily over encumbered, if at all. Suitable items for suitable troops. Rename your agents (click on their name) to identify those with particular loadouts or skills etc. Humans are well rounded in combat, Androids are immune to mind games, Hybrids are your (future) psi-troops.
Transport
Travel to a building is possible via the people tube network (slowest), using a road vehicle (slow), or using airbourne vehicles (fastest). Travel to an alien crash site is only possible with air craft.
To place agents into vehicles, or to remove... READ the fine manual!
Additional Passenger Modules allows for more agents to be transported, however, only one Cargo Module is needed since the module seems to have infinite capacity.
Agents moved to a building via the tube network, or by road, go to the home cell.
Agents arriving at a building via airbourne craft land at the launch tubes and stay there until take off. Launch Tubes which are at ground level are themselves safe from collapse and can only be destroyed by weaponry, however, building collapse next to the tube may damage craft.
Note: it is not necessary to move agents off the landed vehicle into the home cell.
If an "Alien Detected" alert has appeared, selecting a vehicle with agents on-board and then clicking the Alien icon will send off immediately to that location.
Starting
When you have your troops at a building (irrelevant whichever transport method was chosen), click LMB on the building to display the squad present, select the agents for the mission, then choose one of the two mission buttons: Search or Raid. Alien craft which have been shot down can only be reached with air vehicles and only when they have impacted the ground ("UFO crash lands" message and the UFO is smoking). When your transport craft "Attack Hosilte Unit" targets the crash site and 'lands on the UFO's roof', the UFO crash recovery mission will immediately commence.