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Originally posted by Sharp@Mar 29 2005, 01:14 AM
Hmm, everyone does seem to prefer Heavy Plasmas, no arguments for all its advantages.

Auto-shot
Lotsa damage
Fairly good accurcay

Now i dont give heavy lasers to everyone, just 2-4 snipers in my squad.

They fire from off-screen and kickass while safely hidden from the aliens.

Also the heavy laser is not weak at all. If you mange to hit all 3 in a HP then yes it does more damage but the Heavy Laser is not for close combat. Its for long range fire support.

The heavy laser can kill any alien you want if the person who fires it is that accurate. One of my best snipers is 83 firing accuracy. Im assuming that the 110% accuracy of the heavy laser aimed shot gives an overall accuracy of 93%, which means if crouched as well should make it almost impossible to miss. My sniper kills anything in her line of fire, and i mean anything. Generally she hits headshots as well so she kills people in one hit.

Adv. Of Heavy Lasers
No Ammo
Good Accuracy
Good damage

My other 3 snipers are +70 firing accuracy and all equipped with heavy lasers, it is really a one-shot one kill. Also when theres those annoying obstacles in the way i can use my snipers to blow them up without wasting ammo and be sure of not killing any of my troops because there soooo accurate.

Somewhere b4 someone said that power armour is resistant to laser, well mabye laser rifles, not heavy lasers, there also good against plasma rifles as well but not totally resistant.

Newayz i luvs my lasers, cheap, effective, accurate and efficent.

Also one more thing, a heavy plasma can only fire 12(last one only 2 times i think) times of autofire before reloading, a heavy laser can fire forever without reloading. Ok so you fire less shots, but your shots are more accurate. My sniper doesnt even have to use the aimed shot, just a few snap shots, she can usually fire 2 while moving a bit, and 3 if practically motionless (i think).

So basically what you should do is give your best shots a heavy laser and the rest of em plasmas.

Maybe my table isnt clear, the 110% Aimed is for Heavy Plasma, not Heavy Laser. Also the snap on HL is only 50%. so your 83 firing sniper is at 41.5with a HL vrs with a HP at 75% means 62.25. Aimed is 69.2 for HL vrs 91.3 for HP. HP has 30 more dmg and as I disscussed before I never run out of ammo on its 35 round clip so reloading isnt an issue.

But if your guy can kill like that anyway... go for it k:



Remember, there is no right answer in this






except mine

^ thats me ^

[PrejudiceSucks]

Right, I'll help that other guy out - Nobody here knows how to sort out that bug, but try downloading it from HoTU if you got it here, or here if you got it from HoTU.

Oh guys, as a (semi) final statement I would like to say that I play with X-ComUtil and I choose the 'improved lasers' thing. It only improves the Heavy Laser, though, and also means that you need Elerium and/or Alloys for your laser weapons that are better than Laser Pistols.

It adds to the HL damage and accuracy, but they cost 1A and 5E each, so you can't just make loads at the beginning. Even Laser Rifles are 1E and Laser Tanks are 10E 5A, at the same price as before for the same tank.

It balances the game a lot more and all of you should download the latest version of X-ComUtil (not the beta) as it makes the game easier to start off with and much harder to end with. One of the features I like the most is the 'High-Explosives' option that allows them to blow through a UFO's outer wall (although it takes a few). Very rewarding. And handy on Battleship missions.

Like you know all the times you wanted to go through the roof without blaster launchers (maybe the first battleship you meet, where you don't have the tech)?

Well now you can, you just throw some HE onto the roof to make holes of 1 square (so 4 packs = hovertanks!) and let the fun start. Especially since you can always throw more in and it goes right through the inner walls of a UFO in no time.

But that's just me.

[dunkellic]

doesn´t this destroy the gamebalance?
i mean the thing with the HE´s wasn´t made for fun.
it shurley has its reasons that the only weapon wich can blow a hole into an ufo is the blasterlauncher/heaveplasma (heavyplasma does only work inside, doens´t it?)

and also i find it useless to power up the heavy lasers. they weren´t made weaker than the heavy plasma wihtout purpose.
AND if you need elerium for heavy lasers this would be another reason for me not to use them.
heck, i don´t ever needed elerium for plasmaweapons (only for aircraft weapons) because you will find them (in mid-game stage) at any ufo site and after a mission you will have even enough to sell them for about 1 or two millions.

laser weapons are only usefull (in my opinion) at the beginning of the game, where you only have rifles and not enough scientists to research plasmaweapons fast enough

[Gnorkha]

Hi everyone,
i´m new here, but i love x-com. I would like to play it, but i´ve several problems. :help: First i can´t load my saved games, they´re not shown in the loading list. The second prob is discussed earlier but it´s solution doesn´t work for me.
I´ve windows xp sp2 and everytime i wanna start a mission the game crushes down. It doesn´t work when i shut down every other program. Has anyone here an idea how i can solve my probs?

I´m desperate, :ranting: I WANNA PLAY

[PrejudiceSucks]

Actually, the inner walls of a UFO are weaker than the outer walls. A HP could easily go through the inner walls. Even a Heavy Laser would probably do the trick. Blaster Bombs are always goin to work on anything.

No-one knows how to fix UFO, or people would have been replied to. For the saved games thing I have no idea. Try copying them and pasting them back into the saves folder, overwriting the originals, that could work.

[another_guest]

Originally posted by Gnorkha@Mar 29 2005, 11:23 AM
I´ve windows xp sp2 and everytime i wanna start a mission the game crushes down. It doesn´t work when i shut down every other program. Has anyone here an idea how i can solve my probs?

I take it from the review that this is the windows version.
To the abandonia crew: is there a reason not to upload the DOS version?
This runs quite flawlessly in Dosbox.

[Jman4117]

DOS version has the fixable difficulty bug and crashes a lot less (ok...DOS crashes less than Windows probably ). The Windows version added a blaster bug; not fixable to my knoweledge.

As for my weapons combos:

6 Heavy Plasma
4 Laser Rifle
2 Blaster/Rocket /w Laser/Plasma sidearm
2 Heavy Laser/Plasma Rifle/Stun Launcher /w Laser/Plasma sidearm

[Sharp]

Originally posted by Guest@Mar 29 2005, 04:12 AM
Maybe my table isnt clear, the 110% Aimed is for Heavy Plasma, not Heavy Laser. Also the snap on HL is only 50%. so your 83 firing sniper is at 41.5with a HL vrs with a HP at 75% means 62.25. Aimed is 69.2 for HL vrs 91.3 for HP. HP has 30 more dmg and as I disscussed before I never run out of ammo on its 35 round clip so reloading isnt an issue.

But if your guy can kill like that anyway... go for it k:



Remember, there is no right answer in this






except mine

Erm..... your table must be incorrect as well if you dont have the Heavy Laser on 110% accuracy.

Heavy Laser Stats
120-dmg (highest conventional weapon damage in game)
Snap Shot - 75% accuracy 33% TU Cost
Aimed - 110% accuracy 60% TU Cost

Other: No ammunition required, extra-effective against sectapods, can blow holes in inner walls of UFO's

Heavy Plasma Stats
115-dmg
Auto-Shot - 50% accuracy 35% TU Cost
Snap Shot - 75% accuracy 30% TU Cost
Aimed - 110% accuracy 60% TU Cost

Other: Weak against sectapods, can blow holes in inner walls, clip size of 35

As you can plainly see the Heavy Plasma is very effective for your gruntwork soldiers as it has a high damage combined with the ability of the Auto-Shot so in enclosed areas.

However when sniping that extra 5 damage that the heavy laser does can make a lot of difference. Also as no ammunition is needed you dont have to even put the tiniest amounts of effort into ammo conservation. The laser can efficently and effectivly blow holes in many obstacles for fire teams to go through. As I stated before, I only give lasers to my snipers, hence they only use aimed/snap shots hence the extra 5 damage the laser does is extremly usefull when fighting.

Also you can see that the snap on the laser and plasma are exactly the same only differing in TU's by 3%. I dont know if you use XCOM Util or something which changes weapons stats but the heavy laser is the ultimate Sniper weapon.

I give the grunts the heavy plasmas and make them go into close combat, however if you can afford to (as in you wont die) then try and fire aimed shots as this increases your soldiers firing accuracy greatly.

Sniping Tactic:
My best sniping tactic is similar to what those darn aliens do all the time, I give my snipers flying suits, they fly ontop of buildings. They stay in the centre of the roof and move to edge to spot n' shoot an alien and then move back into the centre, makes the soldier immune to being MC'ed and no return fire as well.

HWP's:
Heavy Weapons Platforms are extremly usefull in every stage of the game in my opinion. In base defence they effectivly boost it. They cannot get mindcontrolled, get panicked or go beserk. They move extremly fast and the weapons they can carry are suprisinlgy effective. The Plasma/Laser Cannons practically dont have ammunition problems as the Plasma can fire 255 rounds and it automatically gets replenished after each battle. The Cannon is the only useless one, it is only good for the first few missions, I first get the Rocket Launcher, it has a large firepower, lots of ammo, and unlike soldiers wont accidently blow up your troops.

Im not too sure of the accuracy of the HWP's but im sure that it is fairly high, although not as high as experienced soldiers. A Cannon HWP on the first few missions can kill far more then your newbie soldiers.

The HWP is also much better then losing 4 valuable members of your squad (generally the first people in your sky-ranger are the most experienced due to killing more aliens etc... unless of course your next 4 people are the best as the first 4 die)

Only in Base Assaults do tanks truly suck. They clog up hallways and cannot fire around corners and then peek back effectivly. On the otherhand using a tank as cover means that you can chuck grenades over the tank while being safe against return fire, but that is a very expensive tactic. Tanks can also effectivly clear out the same corridors they clog up and let your soldiers mop up the leftovers.

[Lizard]

Eh?
Heavy laser stats(from Ufo)
damage-85
snap shot 50%
aimed shot 75%

Really strange.But lasers are better anyway :Titan: