COMON TACTICS AND TIPS

TACTICAL AND ECIONOMIC TIPS

Tactics upd. Common Tips PC Tips PSX Tips


Handy Hints Before Beginning by Alan Manning

Don't let any of your agents get killed and then complete the mission, because you will have lost a valuable asset i.e. they could have been upgraded.

If there is a bank in your current mission, always rob it by demolishing it with an explosive. But be prepared - banks are usually secured by police, which will arrive when you blow them.

Upgrade your agents as soon as the technology becomes available; it will prove invaluable in combat.

Don't be ashamed to run from a fight if there is a big bunch of enemies in an area. Kill a few until you sustain enough damage and then run to another area to heal; then you can destroy groups of enemies gradually and effectively.

Use a car for some initial protection. Drive by a bunch of enemies and pick them off. Make sure to bail out before it explodes.

Use the persuadertron or Indoctrinator to make civilians join you. Once in your command, they will pick up any dropped weapons enemies may have left after being killed, which they will use to fight alongside you. Although weak, an army of them can prove most effective.


OFFICIAL TIPS thanks to Cathy Campos at Bullfrog

During the early missions keep your agents together. This will bring more firepower to bear on each enemy.

Try to collect spare weapons during a mission and sell them at the end for much needed cash.

Research High explosive as soon as you can. You will need it to blow up the banks. Blow up any banks you come across, they hold money in underground vaults which can only be accessed when the building is destroyed. Watch out for a police response to bank robbing.

Try to get a variety of weapons spread across your agents and ensure you always carry high explosive for the banks. The long range rifle is the most efficient weapon but it takes a long time to reload. Learn to sniper the first couple of adversaries then switch to another weapon for the rest of the gunfight. If the enemy outnumbers you then try KO gas or sniping from a distance. Razor wire is effective when used as part of an ambush, it will injure the enemy and perhaps even slow them long enough to sniper more of them off.

Beware people carrying explosives, because when they die, their explosives are primed, and will blow up unless you pick them up first. Shooting the bomb will detonate it earlier.

Flying vehicles that attack you cannot shoot you if you hide under a building.

Always have healing kits with you and remember to use them. If the action gets too much then put on your super shield and run.


Misceleanous Strategies

Ranged attack and provision by Tom Gould

The long range rifle is the greatest in the world. The computer only reacts when you get close on most missions. You can just barely stand out of sensor range and shoot things with the long range rifle.

If you remember the path the bads guys take, like maybe a big huge group of them (escpecially when they are unguided) goes to a specific place, then you can razor wire in front of them. They run into the wire and start moving really slow. Then you drop a nuclear grenade on them and kill the whole group.

Hovercars hook by Liang Huang

Killing hovercars the easy way...
Hovercars won't shoot at you if you're under something or in a building. They also only home in on only one or two of your agents. So... have all your guys stand under a fire escape and then by trial and error see which agent the hover cars won't go after. These agents can then stand in the open and take out the flying tanks without damage. Just watch for when the hovercars crash and burn that none of your guys are under it.

Persuadertron abuse by Danny Errett

Persuade everyone!
That's basically it... just run around with your lead agent with a persuadertron out, then whenever you get into a combat situation (except with the church of the new epoch) persuade all the police, class "U"'s and enemy agents. Doing this will give you amazing power, can kill anything super fast, and your guys rarely take damage.

Weapon selection instructions by Simon Halliday

Try using a combination of weapons with your agents, and not all on the same one; try using 2 elecrtonic maces combined with a LR rifle and a minigun. If you put all your agents on something like pulse laser it takes so long to power up that your team will be dead before they've even got one shot off.

When your team comes under heavy fire, and one of your agents dies, and he was previously carrying a high explosive, evacuate the area immediatly as the explosive will now be armed and amidst all the confusion could kill your whole team outright.

Corpses desecration by Conor Rainey(Trakker)

It's pretty easy to get quite a bit of money if you only give your agents sparse equipment and pick up the rest off of dead guys!
You can sell these weapons that you pick up at the end of the level, so never leave without all of you agents carrying as much as possible!

Knockout strategy by Stephen

2 words: Knockout Gas.....
It will work on Zealots, Unguided etc, about the only thing it does not work with are agents, so each one of your 4 agents can carry 4 canisters each, making 16 attacks that your can slow down to a crawl, and then wade in with the miniguns, nuclear grenades or whatever you like.

Spider bots and hovercars by Mikey

You can easily kill the spider bots by arming all your men with LR rifles, and waiting for the bots.
You can also use mini guns and run around in a tight spot where your agents can pick off the bot as they round a corner.

Hovercars are highly sensitive to buildings going down near them. You can kill a bunch of hover cars, e.g. if hover cops are after you for blowing up a bank on later missions. Run under a building. wait for the pursuit cars to hover above the structure. Then set a bomb to destroy this building.
Time it right . . it'll beep like 8 times, run away from the structure on the 4th or 5th beep (this may vary) so your agents don't blow up.

Basic minigun strategy by DarkSunshine

Always Equip your agents with Miniguns!
Even though they don't have as much power or range as the Pulse Laser or the Electron Mace, in close combat they are far more effective. At short range they, I believe, miniguns are better at killing the opposition due to the knockback, which makes them unable to shoot for fraction of a second. Also, always have your agents equiped with LR-rifiles, they are the BEST! At the moment, I allways have 2 guys using them.

Persuading enemies behind corners from Patrick Aspinall

IML links are very useful for persuasion of otherwise dangerous targets. They usually only have one entrance, with a 90 degree bend after it. Put all your men, bar one, behind the bend in the fence, with a persuadertron armed. Send one out to attract the attention of the enemy. When they give chase, run back behind they fence, they follow you and bang, useful additions to your force!

Persuasion via super shield runs from Patrick Aspinall

The button to activate your shield is good if used judiciously. When persuading cops or unguided, run ahead of your persuadees with your shields active.
Then, when they fire at you, you don't get pushed backwards all the time, getting your or your persuadees fried.

Razor Wire Wall Climbing - idea by Lucidtomr

If you want to jump on a higher/lower place, and there's no way to just go there, and you have no flying car - you can use Razor Wire.

Place lot of Razor Wire at any corner of the wall, then try walking on it. It could take some time, and lots of wire, before you get there, but it works!

Tested on both, PC and PSX versions.

Blocked Parking Glitch - by Kyle aka Silencer150

This one is useful if you want to get to a higer place which ramps up close to a street.

  1. Get a car.
  2. Ener the car with all 4 agents.
  3. When inside the car, ungroup your agents.
  4. Drive to the place where there is thin sidewalk between the road and a ramp, too narrow for all four of your agents to debark at once.
  5. Debark agent 1 alone. The game actually spits him onto the stronghold walkway.
  6. Select another agent and move the vehicle a little before you debark - this way you can put all four in the stronghold.

If the agent debarks on street level and not up, try another agent. This also works with only a single agent in the car.

After initial parking, moving the car a little puts the car higher each time you do that. Just don't move it too high, or you won't be able to get in from the street.


USEFUL TIPS by Habzial

In Syndicate Wars you have virtually unlimitted ammo on your guns. However, all of your energy comes from the same source, which means if you wore out your minigun you don't have ammo in your rocket launcher. Furthermore that's the same energy source your agents draw from to activate heat vision mode or their personal force fields.
Even though your ammo repleneshes, there's no way to make it refill faster. If you don't keep track of your ammo use, you will find yourself defenseless.

Gated areas require you to be in a vehicle to pass through them. If you see a massive wall with a thin, upward-pointing wedge, that is a gate. If you do not have a vehicle, you can get through by blowing the gate up.

Persuadertron

The Persuadertron only works on certain people if you have enough LIVING victims already. It takes 6 civilians for it to work on police, 10 for Unguided, and 20 for Agents/Zealots (Zealots require the Persuadertron II to be persuaded).
The better the brain on your agent, the longer range persuarertron has.
Full chart of persuasion can be found in FAQ section.

You receive 100 credits for every LIVING civilian you have persuaded upon completing your mission and hitting spacebar/enter.
You receive 1000 for every persuaded agent.
A good way to make money earlier in the game is completing a mission and getting to the point where you can hit space/enter, then running around and persuading as many people as you can.

All enemies, police, and automated laser cannons will kill persuaded victims on sight. Take this into account when wandering around with a crowd.

Persuaded victims do not need to be near you to count when you go after police/unguided/cyborgs. If there is a gated area with nothing inside that will kill your victims, stash them there.

There is no maximum occupancy on any vehicle. Vehicles are an ideal way to keep your persuaded victims in one place so they don't do what they do best: die.

Persuaded victims will arm themselves the first kinetic or energy-based weapon they find. An army, of them though very frail, can have massive offensive capabilities. Since all passengers in a vehicle (excluding tanks) fire from the same starting point, you can do horrendous damage by arming them and entering one.

The better the cybernetics in your agents, the faster your energy will replenish. You can also increase the replenish speed by running.

While pumped full of psychotropic drugs at ANY amount, your agents will recover hit points extremely slowly.

Weapons

Upon firing the Long Range Rifle (LRR), de-equip it. This will eliminate the pause before your energy recharges.

One of the most powerful weapons in the game is the flamer. It is also virtually impossible to hit anyone with it until you have Arms Level 3. Once you have them, though, you can annihilate enemies.
Funfact: The flamer is the only weapon which can fire through a chain-link fence if you stand near it, and there are a few times in the game this comes in handy.

When you blow up a bank to loot it, odds are you will be rushed by the police. It's a good idea to always have at least one agent carrying Razor Wire (or the incredible upgrade Trigger Wire). To lay an effective field of razor wire, always make short lengths of wire. The wire has the exact same durability regardless of how long it is. It is better to have a groups of short lengths of parallel wire. Put these groupings of wire side-to-side to cover a wide area.

Razor wire may not do enough damage to kill enemies. Rather than relying on it to kill them, treat it as a way to remove their PFF and slow them down. Wait at a position that is just outside of weapons-range for anyone not in the razor wire. Shoot enemies as they run through it.

The following guns can destroy structures: Pulse Laser, Electron Whip, Missile Launcher, Plasma Lance, and Graviton Gun.
The first two take forever to work, and I only found out they work because I was very bored one day...

On another note, once you can afford Plasma Lances, get rid of your Rocket Launchers and switch back to LRRs. The LRR has better range than Rocket Launchers, while the Plasma Lances do more damage and destroy structures faster.

Ion mines destroy vehicles instantly. Other than that, they are worthless as a weapon but pretty good to collect and sell. You can pick up an ion mine ONLY if your agent has ion mines equipped as a weapon and is not at capacity (4) for ion mines.

Gases stop affecting your agents at Brain Level 2 or 3. Around the time you have Brain Level 3, so will your enemies.

Other

When creating a field of razor wire, it pays to leave a thin path between your groups of parallel wires for your agents to flee through. While razor wire won't harm your agents or their persuaded victims, it will slow them down. Since enemies will take the shortest path to your agents, you can have them veer to the side sharply after clearing the field to avoid leading enemies through it safely.

Garbage cans, high explosives, and street lamps explode when shot. Plantlife catches fire when shot. Any structure (building / object / bridge) which vanishes when you hold B down can be destroyed.

Exploding objects disable the shields of anyone too close to them. You can use this to your advantage by forcing your enemies to run past a street lamp to reach you, then blowing the lamp up by shooting it as they reach it.

Burning objects eat through the shields of anyone near them. They will eventually set anyone too close on fire, though don't expect to see any cyborgs bursting into flames. You can use this to your advantage by shooting trees your enemies must approach through.

Persuaded victims between different Persuadertron-armed agents are not cumulative. Only use one of your agents for persuading victims.

Once they become available, always arm at least one of your agents with a Disruptor; it can pay off at times.

Thrown weapons can, in fact, be lobbed onto higher areas or over barriers. Of course, get to know the throwing arc, because if you fail to clear the wall whatever you're lobbing will hit it and drop straight down.

If you equip the Clone Shield, then switch to the Persuadertron, you will be able to your the Persuadertron while cloaked. This will not work with any other weapon. Your energy will deplete until you remove the Clone Shield by de-equipping the Persuadertron.

Money and Research

For some quick starting cash, sell all 8 of your agents' uzis. Buy your first agent a Minigun and persuadertron, and all of your agents medkits. On the first mission, your minigun will kill anyone you encounter long before they can kill you with an uzi.
Arm your agents by looting the dead. This is also a great way to avoid the cost of upgrading to new weapons your enemies carry.

Whenever possible during any mission you should persuade scientists, agents, and/or zealots. You never can have too many scientists or cyborgs.

Rob every bank you can. Take every briefcase you can. Always check the Netscan for opportunities to make money (if Netscan doesn't pay off, load the game before you blew your money on it).

Loot your enemies' corpses for weapons you have no use for but which you can resell.