«

[Eagle of Fire]

Originally Posted by Japo

The way reaction works is very simple: every time someone moves, it may happen that he spots an enemy (because the enemy was in the line of sight for the new position), that an enemy spots him (he moves into the line of sight of the enemy), or that nothing's up. In the first case he will usually get to shoot first in his turn, and in the second he will usually be fired at.

Originally Posted by UFO Wiki

What is not common knowledge is how the overall reaction level of any given unit is also influenced by the percentage of the unit's remaining TUs! So say an alien has 100 reactions but only has 60% of its remaining TUs. Its actual Reaction level is really 60, not 100. If it takes a Snap Shot, which costs 30% for any plasma weapon, the remaining TU percentage will drop to 30%, and so will the Reaction level. For more information, see Reaction fire formula. --JellyfishGreen 10:51, 25 Apr 2005 (BST)

That's what I was saying before. Really important.

For the tanks I remember I used to use them. Mainly to spot for Aliens when you disembark because they tend to see you disembark and take pot shots at you. Having good squaddies dying while disembarking always infuriated me, especially considering you have no say in the order your soldiers are at the start of the mission in the Skyranger. The rest of the time, after disembark, my lowly ranked soldiers goes to the front and take the brunt of the damage.

If you want to use tanks I'd recommend using solely the Hovertank/Plasma once it gets available. Good armor, it flies and its chance to hit something is actually decent. I usually used it to spot Aliens and in the occasional time when I needed to down an enemy and no other soldier was in range.

[Japo]

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

For the tanks I remember I used to use them. Mainly to spot for Aliens when you disembark because they tend to see you disembark and take pot shots at you. Having good squaddies dying while disembarking always infuriated me, especially considering you have no say in the order your soldiers are at the start of the mission in the Skyranger.

It's possible to exit the transport safely. The first thing I do is deploy smoke and wait a turn inside doing nothing (except looking outside as default of course, in case an alien appears amid the smoke I can shoot at him). After that turn firstly the smoke is up, and secondly aliens move and so I continue by using the motion detectors and learning where are the nearest stalking aliens.

Afterwards it's also possible to exit the craft safely without giving aliens who are farther the opportunity to shoot. It's like going around a corner, the most obvious and fast trajectory can make an alien see you before you see him, but with a little roundabout this can be made impossible.

It's not possible to exit the transport safely with a tank first, though. And losing a soldier is bad but losing a tank is damn expensive too.