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[PrejudiceSucks]

Originally posted by Jman4117@Mar 6 2005, 10:05 PM
Laser Rifle: 60avg (7 shots per turn)
Heavy Laser: 85avg (2 shots per turn)
Heavy Plasma: 115avg (7 shots with no movement whatsoever)

60*1.5=90
85*1.5=127.5
115*.7=80.5

Taking into account the massive armour on a Sectopod (142 front, and around 90 rear), the Heavy plasma doesn't even do damage most hits, with the Laser rifle being slightly better (10 more beyond armour). The Heavy laser actually has a use here. Shoot it in the back from a distance with a sniper and possibly oneshot it. :bye:

Hmmm... while you do make quite a good point, you miss out on the fact that if there are going to be sectopoids then there are gonna be aliens that will probably kill you if you somehow manage to get behind it on the tiny maps.

I suppose that flying suits would help, but they will leave you horribly exposed if you try and fly behind a sectopoid. The aliens using it will probably have heavy plasmas and you will be getting shot in the back by them, and trust me, that is very, very bad.

So snipers are not the best plan with sectopods, the best idea is to stun launcher it. Whilst I would usually go for my Taser and Pray tactics, those things are a bitch in combat. A stun launcher would probably do the trick, and if it misses, on a terror mission it will probably sort out a few aliens that will inevitably surround it.

Just hope you don't hit any civilians with it.

X-Com tip for the day : Rookies can be used as effective 'bullet shields' by commanders etc. once given power suits. Captains or whatever can throw hand grenades from behind the rookies and still get a kill pretty much all the time. Plus a rookie with a laser pistol can always finish the job.

Sorry to find faults in your post again Prej, but its not always the best idea to send rookies as bullet shields for commanders.

It can work well but when your rookie gets mind-controlled/beserk its not hard to miss a target right next to you. Therefore later on in the game when i lost a few elite members i simply get rookies only using mind-probes and stun launchers. (laser pistol in belt just incase) until they get a bit of exp under thier belt.

Although rookies are less likely to go beserk when a Officer is nearby they may still get Mind-Controlled and shoot your team.

Oh and an absolutely great tactic for stunning aliens in a UFO, especially a small one is to simply chuck in a few smoke grenades and camp near the door. Also whats really great is if you get a unit who is amazingly fast, give him a power/flying suit and a stun rod and stun the aliens one-by-one as the smoke grenade gives you cover from thier attacks, (helps to chuck in about 3 and wait a turn first) but you have to try and guess where the aliens are as they are in slight cover also (i think).

And the heavy laser rifle is actually still really really useful later in the game if you manage to train a unit to be an excellent sniper, the heavy lasers power actually beats the plasma but does not have auto-fire although both have the same accuracy and same TU cost and similar damage with the laser narrowly beating the heavy plasma. However the laser negates its disadvantages by requiring no ammo, which means no reloads and you can take a shot whenever you want.

A sniper in a power suit makes a great unit, especially in terror attacks as you just put him on a high building and take pot-shots at any enemy. However you can also use a heavy plasma rifle just as equally as you usually get loads of em along with clips. Once I had a dude shoot through 2 windows and hit a snakeman on the other side with a plasma rifle, the snakeman was about to decimate two troopers who both missed (yeh they almost deserved to die). But it was just a nice aimed shot, missed two civillians as well who were one hex away from the aimed shot.

He's now my favourite sniper. Picks off targets he cant even see. Not only that when theres a fence or something blocking the way he simply shoots it so my other team-members can pass without wasting ammo.

My all-time favourite HWP is the Plasma HoverTank. You dont need to buy ammo for it as it automatically reloads 255 ammo everytime and its got great movement. Fusion Tank is good as well but not enough ammo for the big battles.

Now heres a great tip. Ever been stuck in that situation where one of your team-members misses an alien and doesnt have enough time units to move away properly or they are blocking the door/window so none of your other teammates can shoot or fire through to the alien?? Well there are two simple tactics, one is to try and throw a grenade over the team-mate (never tried so dont know if it works), all you do is what you do to units near chyrsalids...... stun em, stun em real gooood. All they do is fall down and you can either simply move and fire at the alien or just wait another turn in a safer position until you get more TU's. And if you need your unconcious person back into the battle just stim em back to full health.

I always keep around 6 stun rods to the strongest people in my team so there is never a case where an alien kills a person in a bad position or has to kill a mind-controlled team-mate/beserked or paniked.

Also My-Q, I hardly ever use psi-amps for Mind-Controlling, its far easier to make em panic and when they panic they can drop thier weapons. Also if you stun a mind-controlled unit then you wont get it at the end of a mission so it is easier to panic them and then stun-em.

But now as a final tip. Always have one unit in the team with a demo charge at least. They come in usefull everywhere, whether it be blowing up walls or blowing up aliens. Its so fun dropping a demo charge through the hole of a UFO Roof. (Note you might have to use a demo-charge to make a hole in the roof in the first place).

Grenades work well through holes as they are lighter and can be chucked further but a demo-charge just has that nice feeling of, mmmm overkill........

Also Prejeduce, when you block a chyrs with tanks im sure the tanks get damaged as well. But also its far easier to use a stun bomb through the tanks which wont affect the tanks but will stun the chrys.

[Lizard]

The tank is going to be VERY damaged when attacked by chrysalids.It destroyed me plasma hover tank just in one turn.I couldnt believed my eyes :blink:
So block chrysalids with tanks isnt such a good idea...
to sharp:Excellent idea,that with stunning your troops that would be killed by aliens next turn.I am going to use it in Terror from the deep .Congratulations k:

[PrejudiceSucks]

All of you should read my earlier posts - I use XcomUtil and turn the Psi powers off.

To start with the game is just too hard and by the end it is piss easy to just Psi everything and win. Hence it goes off.

Also, XcomUtil makes tanks better, so Laser tanks = good armour + TUs.

If that makes me a noob then whatever, but I think it improves the game quite a bit.

The stunning thing might look useful, but if you really want to do that you need added security to wake people up and keep them alive.

By this I mean 2 med-kits.

And I have to say that whilst making holes in the roof of UFOs and throwing in HE packs might seem good, but you'll be kicking yourself when you take out all of the Power Sources/UFO Navigation + kill anyone useful.

Smoke grenades can work, and I like the idea about flying suits + taser.

Mmmm hit + run... :w00t:

[Eagle of Fire]

Yeah, that's called cheating by my book... Not something I would do... :blink:

[another_guest]

Originally posted by PrejudiceSucks@Mar 7 2005, 08:13 PM
And I have to say that whilst making holes in the roof of UFOs and throwing in HE packs might seem good, but you'll be kicking yourself when you take out all of the Power Sources/UFO Navigation + kill anyone useful.

It's one of my favourite tactics for the smaller ufo's (size 9, in whatever these were measured). If there's a 3 by 3 squares hole in the roof, in most cases the power source was gone long before you arrived at the site anyway. And a little later in the game, ufo's of that size don't carry anyone important enough to keep alive.

And speaking of cheating: half a year ago, I decided to replay UFO. But since I didn't have enough time for a normal campaign, I speeded things up by boosting my soldiers. I must admit I've never enjoyed invading alien bases that much
Mind you, I wouldn't do this if I'd never played the game before, I always want to see whether I can beat the game honestly.
But it was fun... only 3 casualties in the whole game

[Havell]

LOL I boosted my soldier once is was fun. I liked watching my men taking 3 direct hits from blaster bombs and then staying in hospital for about 200 days

Er one thing to be careful with the stunning thing, stunnig and being unconcious are pretty much the same thing i think, one of my soldiers had a primed grenade ready to blow up alien scum but he just ran out ot TU's (my fault, really wasnt thinking straight).

Anyway 3 dam sectoids take pot shots at him (in an Abducotor UFO which had the whole of the NW wall gone). Luckily he only was knocked unconcious, however the grenade went off.

The body actually disapperaed although i could actually find the guns (they seemed to fly off onto 3 hexes away).

End of the mission it came up as no losses on soldiers but he simply disapperad. Not even an MIA. (Also one really big bug in the game, Mind Controlled units at the end of a mission are lost wheter your mind-controlling or being mind-controlled.)

Also, when using democharges against UFO's, i like to do it against the big ones as they dont have power sources on the top floor, dont use it on aliens you havent discovered yet or anything as it can easily kill leaders and other good units.

I love this game. I really love this game. Its amazing.