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[another_guest]

How far soldiers can throw grenades, indeed depends on more than throwing accuracy: when I boosted my soldiers, they couldn't even throw to the adjacent square, very likely because their throwing accuracy was so high. Though I don't know how it works exactly.

[Eagle of Fire]

Throwing accuracy only matter to calculate if the grenade will land on the spot you asked for or not, and if not by how far. I beleive strenght is the stat you should look at if you want to be able to throw further.

Also, sometimes you can't throw further because there is something blocking your throw arc. For example you'll notice that you can't throw far in a house because the above floor will block your throw arc...

Kneeling when throwing can allow you to throw further or in a way you could not before. Such an example would be to throw a grenade in a window while kneeling. I never tryied such a tactic myself tough.

[Jman4117]

And i don't think that bravery factor can be increased.

Getting paniced a lot usually does it.

For me close range firing doesnt seem to improve accuracy that much. Ive got a commander whos got 20 kills and started with 60 acc but now has 62, all his kills were pretty much auto ones against a person right infront of him.

From my experience it is a random amount from 1-5 with it leaning toward the high side if you get a lot of hits on aliens. Laser pistols at point blank own at this.

How far soldiers can throw grenades, indeed depends on more than throwing accuracy: when I boosted my soldiers, they couldn't even throw to the adjacent square, very likely because their throwing accuracy was so high. Though I don't know how it works exactly.

Maybe you upped strength so much that a value looped back to negative?

[axident]

Originally posted by My-Q@Mar 9 2005, 09:42 AM
Well, I always liked using the MC function to make the alien work as scout. I never use the alien puppet to kill other aliens, since the point is.. why improve something you'd kill afterwards?
I like grouping the puppets in one corner, and blow 'em up to smithereens in the next turn using the blaster.. the scream of pain is so loud LOL

And i don't think that bravery factor can be increased. The same thing applies with psionic strength, which can't improve.

Also, i never knew that holding something else in the other hand while one hand is holding a gun will affect the accuracy.. that's new.. i guess there's no telling that we know EVERYTHING about this game huh?

I don't even like mind-controlling aliens to scout. Maybe to drop weapons (by using the "next soldier" inventory trick; click on inventory of a regular soldier and keep clicking next soldier while in the inventory screen) and run towards my guys who flatten them, but that's about it. The problem is that I don't want ANY aliens to die by anyone other than a living, breathing soldier. Sending them as scouts may mean that they die against other aliens.

That said, I do agree that MC is a lot of fun sometimes, esp. on the last mission when I don't care about improving soldier stats.

It IS possible to improve EVERY stat EXCEPT Psi Strength. I know of no way to increase Psi Strength, only Psi Skill, which is not important to me since I almost never use mind control anyway.

When I buy 100 soldiers and sack 90 or 95 of them, I look for the stats that are most difficult to improve: Bravery (very hard to improve) and Reactions. Everything else like time units, health, strength, firing accuracy, throwing, etc. is easier to improve. I think bravery goes up if someone panics a lot but survives a battle anyway.

Reactions is hard to improve because
1) if it's too low (I don't hire anyone less than 50 unless they have gonzo stats elsewhere), the soldier may not react in time to safe his or her own life = no improvement, only a dead soldier

2) usually your soldiers have some variation in reaction time. Say you have three soldiers parked next to a door, one with 40, one with 50, and one with 60 reactions. An alien pops his ugly head out the door. Your 60-soldier pops him. At the end of battle, they have 40/50/61. If this keeps happening, you'll soon have something like 40/52/67. (The 50 guy will probably get a few kills in, because Mr. 60 sometimes misses.) The fast get faster and the slow stay slow. You can try to fix it by sending Mr. 50 and 60 somewhere else, but then if Mr. 40 MISSES the alien or is too slow to shoot him in the first place, Mr. 40 probably ends up dead. Moral of the story: Reactions is one of the hardest stats to improve easily, so when picking your soldiers, focus on Psi strength, Bravery, and Reactions, which are the top three hardest stats to improve. Everything else you want good stats too, and if you can afford to hire 100's of soldiers try to get at least 40 bravery and 50 reactions with 60+ accuracy. Of course, many of those soldiers you will find out in a month have crappy Psi strength, but it's hard to get around that without cheating.

[axident]

Originally posted by Sharp@Mar 9 2005, 06:11 PM
Well actually when you use a pistol then you dont lost accuracy by only holding it in one hand. What would really be great to see is a person firing dual pistols though, that would be nice.

Well I think the bravery can be increased because its jumped by 20 on one of my soldiers, i dont know how it improved but i dont care as before it was a shoddy 30 and now its a respectable 50.

Also i dont like expanding to much. I hate micro-managing. I usually have mabye 4 or 5 bases, one on each continent.

The one in Europe and the one in America are the only ones with Skyrangers.

Also I only use psi-amps for paniking aliens, easier to do and makes them easy to stun.

For improving my soldiers though I just send around 8 at a time to the alien base in the antartic which i never fully destroy. Just kill a few aliens, try and snatch a few bodies and ammo if i can and then get the hell out. Whenever a soldier successfully hits an alien from a decent range their accuracy improves.

This is the best time to use aimed shots on aliens as your soldiers accuracy will soar by miles. In one mission a soldier gained 2 increase in shooting by hitting an alien which was quite far away. He already had a 66 accuracy but a nice aimed shot with a heavy laser decimated the muton and boosted him to 68.

By the way axident, whats your definition of crap soldiers?? I fire anyone below 30 bravery and thats about it. Between 29-50 they are fodder, no Heavy Weapons, last pick on armour and mainly using stun guns.
I dont bother firing for other stuff unless its all really bad.

However i have got a grenadier with 80 accuracy with grenades, he lobs em through windows and holes. Absolutley great when crouched and blows up an enemy on the otherside of the window. Can also throw through for miles as well, though that might be affected by str as well as he has over 50 str i think.

Yes, that's what I was saying about weapons; you're right that pistols, being the only one-handed weapons, don't get accuracy penalties if you hold a grenade or something else in the other hand. I'd like to see a two-pistoled soldier John Woo style, too

Please see the post right before this one on why I care so much about Reactions, but anyway, you asked for my def of a crap soldier.

Crap: any soldier who has less than 75 psi OR less than 40 Reactions.

When I have tons of cash to burn, I usually sack everyone with bravery 40 or less to start with. Among the remainder:

soldiers with reactions 57+ AND accuracy 60+ I ALWAYS hire so long as they are bravery 40 or more, like I said above.

soldiers with reactions 50-60 plus accuracy 55-65 (reactions 50 with accuracy 66+ and I'd hire that soldier automatically). These are "maybe" soldiers. I'll hire them if I'm low on cash, else it's back to hiring another crop. A 40 bravery, 50 reactions, 55 accuracy soldier is the absolute minimum I'd consider even if I were dirt poor.

soldiers below those get sacked.

You can get "good" soldiers one by one if you want to cheat. The stats are set at time of hire, not time of arrival. So you can save just before you hire. Then hire and save, then fast forward and see what kind of soldier you get. If he's good, go back to your savegame where you had just hired him, then hire another soldier. Save it in a third slot, fast forward, etc. But that's kind of cheap and also unnecessary once you get your Laser Cannon riches, anyway.

I didn't know that range and shot selection (Aimed shots) matter when improving accuracy; maybe that's why I sometimes end up with soldiers with 90 Reactions but only 80 accuracy, because most of the time they are parked next to a door at close range waiting to shoot the next alien that steps out.

Nice tip on alien base raids that you leave alone after getting a few kills, I may have to do that with the Floater base that I let survive in Africa. I let it survive because it's a Supply Ship magnet, and I get tons of goodies from its downed supply ships.

By the way, I'll have to eat my words a bit on strength not mattering. My USA base was down to three rookie soldiers after I sacked the other 7 that were psi-wimps (which I found out on the previous mission against Ethereals). Why couldn't psi strengths be displayed at purchase? Argh. Anyway, with only three soldiers I took on a downed Muton battleship and survived, but it was rough since my time units were cut to almost half. If I were smarter I would have told them to drop those 5 medikits + 6 grenades they were each carrying, but I didn't, and it took me about 10 turns just to walk over and set up my ambush configuration next to the main elevator. I had to reload a few times because I got hit by a blaster bomb right as I got there.. if I were smarter I would have told them to drop stuff early, like I said before. Ugh.

The bottom line is, do what is fun for you. Some people like sending in masses of rookies with grenades (since even rookies have good throwing aim), others like the small super-soldier squads, some like rocket launchers, others use blaster bombs to tear open doors, some like MC. At the end of the day, we all beat the game and [edited out]. (I do think it's funny that when you blow it up, the ending says that you shoot plasma at it, even if you did it by some other way like a blaster bomb or grenade.)

P.S. Another way to overload your soldiers is with High Explosives. Lots of them. Yeah, your soldiers will be slooooooooow for a while, but if they get a few kills (the game rarely increases the stats for soldiers that don't get kills), their strength will increase by a lot. Try doing this with half of your soldiers weighed down and the rest unencumbered, to provide cover fire for your slowed-down soldiers.

[another_guest]

Pst, don't spoil the ending by telling everyone too much

You're right about the ending though, I noticed that too. I guess they were too lazy to take that into account, it would be a lot more complicated that way.

Speaking of crappy soldiers, I also used to sack soldiers with very low TU, like 50 or so. While it doesn't matter for firing (that takes up a fixed portion of a unit's TU), it makes quite a difference when walking.
And if you're using units with low TU, let them be followed by one or more with very high TU: that way, if the first runs into an alien, the other(s) can still take a shot at it.

[Rubberband]

Bravery can actually be increase. I am not sure about being panicked, but one way I know of to train bravery is to let morale drop below 50 and NOT panick.

I never sack people with low bravery, as I usually get enough kills to keep morale near 100. The only occassions I have problem with low bravery is with panic attacks(which depends a lot more on psi strengh) and when most of my soldiers, especially officers, being wipe up in a single turn(but when that happens, I am most likely going to lose anyway and bravery is not going to help).

But I think one of the reasons that make this game so good is the many different possible ways to play(and win).

[My-Q]

Well, maybe we can step the challenge on this game up by NOT using any alien tech (except craft & craft weapons) when playing. Let's say.. using only the rifle/pistol, heavy cannon, auto-cannon, rocket launchers, etc (a.k.a traditional weaponry). Not even lasers allowed. What do you guys think huh? Oh right.. no ARMORS as well.. medikits & movement sensor (i forgot the name haha) is okay

[TwoHedWlf]

Nah, make it only strictly human technology is allowed. So that would allow lasers. All the standard rifles and autocannons end up totally useless after a few months. I once took control of a muton and emptied an entire clip into him from a rifle and he was barely injured. It's insane. That was about 7-8 months into the game though because all the aliens stats slowly go up as time passes.

[My-Q]

Well.. :whistle:

Maybe lasers are allowed JUST for the sake of facing mutons.. but i think grenades (HE pack) will kill 'em easily right?