Can I increase the speed of combat?

XCOM Enemy Unknown is a beautiful game, but you can only see every 5 second animation so many times before it becomes repetitive and self-indulgent. Is there a way to make the animations go faster or speed combat up in some other way, so that I can spend more time strategically exterminating aliens and less time watching my operatives shoot their guns?

Solution 1:

You can skip the time watching units move by ordering a unit where to move, then immediately hitting tab to switch to the next unit. If the unit can do an action after moving, you'll still be able to select them again later, once they've reached their destination.

The actual firing sequences cannot be skipped (which I'm okay with, since I'd like to know how much damage I did; unfortunately, it seems they can't be sped up, even the incredibly slow sniper animations...).

You can also skip other non-firing sequences; for example, hitting the "overwatch" key then immediately hitting tab will skip the short "moving to overwatch" sequence.

Finally, remember to use the action keys on your keyboard! It really helps speed up how quickly you can give commands.

Solution 2:

You can use the XCOM ToolBoks mod to speed up combat in several ways:

• Speed up time in combat up to 9 times, with hotkeys to turn it on and off
• Remove the alien detection dance
• Remove the 1.75 second delay after activating hunker down and overwatch.

There are many other options, one particular time-saver that doesn't have to do with combat is the ability to set the chance of successful Psi testing, which saves a lot of time if you're saving and reloading to make all of your dudes psionics.

Solution 3:

XCOM ToolBoks has a "Fast Motion" option allowing you to toggle between faster and normal speeds. ToolBoks also has many other tweaks and improvements you might be interested in.

As far as I'm aware, it's compatible with all the major overhaul mods such as Warspace Extension and Long War.

You can still obtain achievements using ToolBoks :)

Discussion and support for ToolBoks in this thread :)

-XCOM ToolBoks author :)