Production and improvement of equipment | XCOM Base XCOM: Enemy Unknown Guide

XCOM soldiers can rearm in two ways: obtaining the plasma gun from an alien stunned with the Arc Thrower, or faster and safer: producing it at the base. For this purpose you can use the Engineering Bay, which is a production center for the development of our database, production of new hardware and upgrades of the existing elements.

The first and most commonly used option is to Build / Buy Items. It allows you, as the name suggests, to build or buy new items. The production panel is divided into three tabs: weapons and equipment, armor, and vehicles and their equipment - when you select any of them will display a list of possible items to produce. Each item has its price (which may be reduced by hiring more engineers, or building another workshop), the minimum number of people required for its production, and - in case of more advanced design - a list of the components that we have in stock. All additional items we obtain from tactical missions: Alien Alloys and Weapon Fragments, which are available after each match played, while Elerium and other components needed for the construction of fighters (such as UFO, or UFO Power Source or Flight Computer) can be obtained only after an attack on a grounded enemy vehicle.

Production of modern fighter aircraft requires more advanced elements.

After selecting a specific product, go to the next screen where you can choose how many copies of an item are going to build. It is worth to note that higher number of copies does not increase the production time! Building one or five satellites will always take 20 days.

Whether you need one or three fighters, the production will take 14 days.

Another equally important option is Build Facilities. When you press it you will see a whole XCOM base plan including yet undiscovered subterranean. There are four types of locations: Solid rock, cave, vapor (steam) and an existing building. New facilities can be put only in cavities, which have to be excavated in the rock - just hover your mouse cursor on it and when you select to excavate, pay small fee and wait a few days: you will enlarge our complex for another installation. Locations where there is water vapor are so unique that they can build a Thermo Generator - one of the most efficient power plants in the game, which you can access right from the start of the game.

When you start playing the XCOM base consists of only few rooms.

In order to use the deep will have to build an elevator (Access Lift) to the next level. Since the preparation of land for development is not too expensive, you might want to think about it ahead of time and prepare some empty caves. This allows construction of new buildings and will not require the dedication of additional days for the development of an appropriate amount of space. In addition, it is necessary to have a surplus of electricity, because every room needs a power supply - it is convenient to use one of the wings of our base to build more power plants. At the beginning of the game you should as soon as possible dig up at least one jet of steam and put on the thermo generator - it takes only one field and is more efficient than three normal Power Generators.

An extensive database of XCOM, some areas are still under construction.

While expanding the base, you should carefully plan the location of each room, as some of them will work more efficiently if you put them side by side installations of the same type. For example, all plants produce more power when they are next to each other. Below is a list of available bonuses:

Properly operating set of rooms generates higher results.

The last tab, i.e. The Foundry, is active only after the construction of proper installation - Foundry. It allows you to build various improvements in the existing inventory. The visible list is similar to that seen during a visit to a research laboratory: there you can see the costs of implementing innovations, the required components and the minimum number of engineers needed to start the project. The speed of introducing the upgrades can be sped up by hiring new workers or building another workshop (with him also get five engineers).After completion of the study the new version automatically replaces the older inventory items.

List of improvements from The Foundry is confusingly similar to the Build / Buy Items, but is governed by different rules.

As the use of Foundry consumes large quantities of components and the money here is the list of the most interesting and useful improvements that should be discovered in virtually every game. Some of them will be available from the start, some will appear when getting better equipment from enemies and carrying out research in the laboratory:

• Heavy Weapons Platform - gives us access to the S.H.I.V. rover, which perfectly complements our strike team
• S.H.I.V. Laser / Plasma - arms the rover with more effective weapons
• Improved Arc Thrower - increases the effectiveness of stun guns
• S.C.O.P.E. Upgrade - increases the chance of a critical hit when using the S.C.O.P.E. targeting system
• Alien Grenades - gives access to much stronger alien grenades
• Ammo Conservation - Increases the amount of ammo for each weapon type

Other improvements are also useful, but dependent on the chosen tactics. The ones listed above are universal and will be useful for all XCOM commanders.