I haven't had a lot of experience with higher level aliens yet. In my first game they showed up long before I got prepared for it, so I pretty much lost - suffered heavy losses, failed missions and eventually abandoned that game. This time around, I'm getting ready for the lobbies and tasoth(sp?) right off the bat. Tell me how good the following team setup is.

1 Gas Cannon SWS
5 Auto (Gauss Rifle, 2 clips, 2 reg. grenades, 1 flare)
5 Heavy (Sonic Cannon, 1 clip, 2 reg. grenades, 1 flare)
0 Stun (Shock Launcher, 5 ammo, 2 reg. grenades, 1 flare)
0 MC (?, Gauss Rifle, 2 clips)

As soon as I research the Shock Launcher, I will make it 4 Auto, 4 Heavy and 2 Shock. As MC comes along, I will see what it's like and possibly enter those specialists into the team. If XCOM1 is any indication, however, it will take quite a while before I will be able to have good MC attack troops.

On an unrelated note, what's the deal with Ion Armor? I caught a live Deep One, hang on to it until I found and researched the Ion Beam Accellerators, only then did I research the live Deep One, but still, I didn't get the option to research Ion Armor. Am I missing something?

In the un-patched version of the game, I believe Deep One's gave you Aqua Plastics, and what you needed for Ion Armour was Ion Beam Accelerators and something silly like a Tasoth Commander.

I remember something MAJOR hinging on the Tasoths and after a while neither myself or my brother could get one as we were well into the reign of the Lobstermen by then.

Doubtless someone wil correct me. It's been a while since I played

The three prerequisites for the Ion Armour are:

1. Plastic Aqua Armour
2. Ion Beam Accelerators
3. Live Deep One (must be researched last)

You must research the deep-one corpse to get the aqua plastics, which is in turn necessary for the plastic aqua armour.

Check if you can get another Deep-One on the researh roster. If you can, you should be safe and can research it again after getting all the prerequisites ready.

Oh, Pete, you only need one Tasoth of any rank to get something special. Apart from that - stay well away from the Tasoth Commander. It's evil. Pure unadulterated evil. The latest patch should remove it from the to-research list, but if it appears - leave it alone until you get the Leviathan and "T'Leth, the Alien's City".

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As for your equipment setup, a few suggestions:

Flares
You probably don't need a flare on everyone. I usually find a small set (about four or so - or half your squad) is enough for most occasions. You don't need to leave a cleared area lit, so you might as well reuse some. But hey, don't let me stop you.


Heavies
1 sonic cannon clip will never be enough. They're powerful, but they have far too few rounds per clip. You need at least one spare clip (even if it's easy to just forage for them in the battlefield). This is particularly important since you often need 2 - 3 direct hits to kill one lobsterman most of the time. Unless every shot hits, I'd recommend the extra clip just to be on the safe side.


You might also want to try a Gas Cannon with a set of HE and Phosphor shells. You probably won't put it to much use later in the game, but it comes in handy under various circumstances. It's particularly useful on land missions, where phosphor weapons are even more useful (it's also the only weapon with phosphor rounds that works on land too). The phosphor shells can be used to burn out sniper positions (like the hotels and the storeroom in that large port building). It won't be that great against lobstermen (note - HE shells can hurt a lobsterman, albeit very slightly), but it can deal with anything else you'll possibly face easily. It's a nice all-rounder that still finds its way on my equipment setup later in the game.

Stunners
No comment about the thermal shok launchers. They rule. But you might want a sidearm if you can carry one - as you can run out of shok bombs (they're also pretty expensive to produce).

Gauss pistols are pretty good sidearms for weak enemies. They have huge clip capacities, so even if you aren't using the XComutil enhanced gauss weapons, you can still pepper your enemies with a barrage of cheap bullets (relatively speaking, considering the normal amount of cash you can often generate from selling off surplus alien weapons).

Upgrade to the sonic pistol if you want to pack something that's better than the heavy gauss in general. It even damages superhuman lobstermen if you're desparate. Not that much better than the blasta rifle, but it's better that not being able to damage it at all.


The only other thing I'd suggest keeping in mind for later addition to your list would be the drills. They are the most efficient weapons for killing aliens in tight cramped spaces (happens a lot on ship missions and tightly packed spaces like the interior of the alien colonies). They only cost 10%, 15% and 20% of your TUs to use respectively, which gives you plenty of remaining time to do a bit of jogging.

- NKF

Thanks a lot.

Now that you say one clip for the heavies isn't going to be enough, I'm beginning to dread the time when lobbies should appear. I mean, if 50 shots isn't going to be enough to do away with them, I can only imagine...

I was thinking about giving every non-auto trooper a gauss pistol, but it's 20 extra items, so I wasn't sure if I could fit it in. I was thinking sonic pistols, too, but I'm not sure how much ammo for them I will find. It would really be a waste of Zrbite to make pistol ammo. Or, perhaps, it's just my over-conservative attitude from XCOM1 when it comes to scarce alien minerals. :rolleyes:

As for gas cannons, I just phased them out as heavy weapons as sonic cannons became available... The HE shells aren't quite powerful enough to my liking, lacking the punch to take out simple walls, which sonics easily fly through. Hitting the target is also not a problem with automatic rifles, so the only thing I see going for them is the incendiary shots. I never used those much, but they appear pretty weak, unable to kill the enemy unless they hit it. Perhaps I should have a second look at them.

I don't know about the HTH weapons. I thought about them, but I only have the puny tazers(or whatever those things you can purchase from day 1 are called). I've had a pretty bad experience of them simply not packing enough punch to stun the meaner aliens in that last game, so I'm a bit reluctant to use them now. When I research things like vibro blade or t. lance, I'll definately put them to good use, though.

Can anyone comment on the balance of the weapons in the team? As in, do I have too few heavy punching weaponry and will likely get overwhelmed when lobbies come around, or something along those lines.

Oh the GC-HE are quite useful against large terror units. First time I met a Triscene, killed it with one GC-HE shell. Gave me quite the wrong impression of the Triscene for a bit there... The idea here, you see, is that HE shells always targets under armour. The area-effect is an additional bonus. Also, as it was in UFO, you can use it to deal damage right through ceilings. Great if the only access to a certain area with a sniper alien has been destroyed. Even though it cannot destroy most walls, these advantages certainly make up for it. (note, the shok cannon can do the through-the-ceiling trick too)

A note on sonic weapons:

Unlike their UFO counterparts, sonic weapon ammo capacity goes in reverse as the technology progresses. Where in UFO you had something like 15, 20, 35, in TFTD you have 20, 15, 10 (Gauss weapons go in this manner too). So you can see my concern in only carrying one clip for the sonic cannon.

Regarding the thermal tazers vs. the drills - oh yes, the drills are a vast improvement. They're way faster than the tazer.

As for sonic pistol clips, each clip has a clip capacity of 20 rounds. So you won't need to worry about running out too quickly for each clip, but as the game progresses, free clips do indeed become scarce.

I'd suggest using only one or two sonic pistols for the entire squad. This way you can hoard the ammo and use the pistol for quite some time before manufacturing any of your own. The rest can go the cheaper route - gauss pistols.

I don't recommend arming everyone with sidearms. As you said, they take up too much space. Just use it with the one-shot weapons like the thermal shok launchers.

Regarding balance:

There's no true perfect balance of weapons. The only important thing is to at least have a weapon (and sufficient ammo) that can damage whatever it is you're facing.

It's probably a good idea to have an even mix of your auto and cannon soldiers. If you need more firepower, there's always the guns you can pick up off the alien corpses.

I'd try to keep the number of thermal shok cannon soldiers down to a minimum of 2 or so. That way your sidearms can be kept down to an absolute minimum. They are powerful, but you want to be careful with spending your precious shok bombs.

- NKF

Don't the grenades and explosive packs also target under armor if you toss them on the same tile? Since everyone already carries grenades (and as I research more, I expect to mix in some sonic pulsers), is it really worth it to dedicate a man to the gas cannon?

The ceiling trick sounds neat, but I'm sceptical in that unless I give a gas cannon to everyone, the trooper in a position to use this trick would most likely be the one without the GC Especially since I wouldn't want to send heavies into the building, less they will blow themselve and their comrades up with their HE shots. Well, perhaps I will change my opinion on the subject when the Tricenes come and start ripping my aquanauts apart, laughing at the sonic cannon fire in the process. :o Then I'll probably be grasping any straw there is.

With heavy sonic cannons, my thinking was that those troops aren't going to be taking part in the regular action against the light enemies, like gillmen, but rather will only come out to play if a very hard target, like lobstermen, is encountered. Of course, if the enemies are all lobstermen, that might not be enough, but I didn't anticipate that happening. From what I saw, lobbies only appeared in mixed crews with gillmen and aquanoids, and sometimes tasoths.

If the game progresses to the point when light enemies are phased out altogether, I was planning to switch my Auto section to sonic rifles. Of course, it wouldn't be Auto then, but at least their weapon will be adequate to deal with most threats.

You are probably right, though, about an extra clip. Better safe than sorry.

Well, you can throw grenades through ceilings too - but that's cheating.

Grenades are good (excellent, actually, particularly with the pulsers), but they don't provide instant results (i.e. during the turn). The GC also provides the option of having direct fire explosive capabilities (for both land and sea). Combine it with the grenades for their ability to arc over objects, and you've got explosives for every eventuality.

Just wait till you get ion armour. You won't even feel the GC-HE backlash - but most of the light enemies will.

Note - when shooting up at a low ceiling only the floor above gets damaged. So your shooter is perfectly safe in tight spaces.

It's just the versatility of the GC (not its strength) that makes it worthwhile to invest in one of them. You should by all means rely on your sonic and gauss weapons for the majority of the fighting.

But as for the Triscene - the chink in their armour just happens to be their underside. But what happened to me was just a fluke, so don't go expecting incredible results.

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Speaking of the sonic cannon - it's slow but very accurate and very powerful. You'll probably find yourself using it on quite a regular basis despite its flaws.

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The phasing out of lighter enemies really depends. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I've encountered pure gill-men crews very late in the game before, though others have had them disappear completely.

Mixed crews appear very late in the game (and these carry every type of alien. They sometimes even bring along terror units that don't normally appear on land/water). Lobstermen crew appear much earlier than that. Also, the interior of colonies will always be populated with lobstermen. It's a bit odd how important these bruisers are to X-Com in general. But there you go.

- NKF

Well, what would I add to this.

Oh, I think about the lobbies. So first of all, maybe in your (I mean Privateer) previous game you haven't encountered pure Lobsterman crews, but I think it's rather frequent. Me personally have encountered them late in May the last time (I've plaing superhuman for that). Didn't have sonic weaponry by this time, so I've got to rely exclusively on HE to deal with them. What do you say of large UFO (or better name it USO) crews consisting completely out of the Lobbies (around 20 of them - that is an answer to your question that 50 shots isn't enough). I had 10 aquanauts crew and 1 missile tank. I took 3 torpedo launchers, 3 gas cannons and 4 hydro-jet cannons. GC and HJ had 2 HE and one P shells each (don't know why I've taken phosphour shells, they are less effective, though they also target under armour when they explode, but since the Lobbies don't suffer from fire, it's more effective to take 3 HE shells). Torpedo guys had 4 large torps with them. Also, this is theese Lobsterman missions, when I really praised magna packs. Though not so powerful, as pulsers, they are nevertheless mosty powerful earth based weapon. So I tried to arm every member with at least one of them. They are a bit heavy for rookies, but since your strength goes over 45 (or something around that), it's not a big problem.

HTH weapons are particularly good for dealing with Lobbies, since it's the only weapon type they are weak against (in fact they resist even sonic). But it's very hard to use it in open terrain, cause Lobbies have very good reactions, accuracy and won't let you get too close. Even a panicked Lobster is a threat. It may drop it's weapons but still use it's claws. I've recall one mission, where near the end of it I'd wounded one of them and it got stunned. But one turn later he revived and killed two of my soldiers from behind . As for the HTH weapons, they are good in close spaces, when you can stun the lobsterman out of the corner. But then again, it's better not to use this tactics against targets with full TU.

Oh, and the very first time I've met Lobsters was the base assault mission. Thank god, you don't need to kill em all in order to be victorious. So, I sneaked to where this synomium device was and blowed it to bits successfully completing the mission.

20 lobsters... using HE weapons... :o :o :o

This isn't exactly a fight I'd fight. Well, not at night and not without reloading, anyway.

A short while ago I had a large USO landed during the night, so I responded with 1 tank and 10 aquanauts (plastics armor, Sonic cannons, gauss rifles). The enemy was aquanoids mixed with some weird large terror units (not their usual calcinites). I killed one 'noid, took his corpse and items, killed one terrorist unit and got the heck out, as I was taking fire from far beyond my units' sighting range as well as suffering MC attacks on troopers inside the sub. I figured I wasn't going to win if I hung around longer, not without great casualties anyway. No great glory, or loot, but no casualties either, resulting in a small positive score and the foiling of the alien mission.

As for lobsters waking up, experienced that first-hand. Although, he didn't kill any of my men and was quickly subdued. Must have been too groggy to aim properly

Well, as I recall, one of the two 20 lobster missions (in fact there were 18 and 16 lobsters) was right at night.

Ehhh heres mine, havent encoutered lobbies, just aquas, gillies, deepies, 2 calcinties (base got attacked in the first fortnight ), so now i got drills i need to research
10 troopers
8 with gauss rifles, 2 extra mags (I like autofire...) a proxemity greanade, and a standard grenade
2 with gas cannon with 2 extra ap clips, 1 he clip, 1 phosphor clip, and a prox and standard grenade
working on aquaplastic armor
and a gascannon tank

New stuff!
Plastic Aqua Armor
shok launchers
sonic pulsars
working on prereqs for drills

Early game I just gotta have my gas cannons, the other weapons just aren't too good. Either underwater only or pathetic firepower. Gauss is nice if I have it. Proximity grenade is my main nade until I get pulsers. Gotta love the rediculous armor rating of nades in TFTD. Lets you stack til your heart's content.

My ideal Triton squad early game:
4 Gas cannons (2 HE, 1 AP)
6 Gauss rifles (2 clips)
20-30 Nades (15 proxy/5 standard, 10 proxy/20 pulser later on)
1 Tank (Gauss or Gas cannon)
Best armor I have, if any

ehh with my cannons I carry one type of each ammo, so my guy can blast down a wall with HE, start a fire inside With a phospur, then wait for anything to come out with AP
and I dont really use grenades before I get sonic pulsars no friggin clue why