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Landon_Fox

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  1. I found shotguns to be very useful against cultists early on. Take a cyborg out and have him wave and make crude gestures until you get a cultist's attention. (Your mother stinks of elderberries!) Then have the cyborg run back through a door so there is a wall between you and the cultists. The cultist will give chase and as soon as he comes through the door you can feed him two rounds of buckshot. Rinse and repeat until there are so many corpses piled there you have trouble aiming through all the "dead" tags. Then move to a new room and rinse and repeat! It helps a lot if you have a guy with a second level of leader already. That gives you the damage you need to take out those big brown, stocky dudes with the big guns. I cleared a cultist base early on with just a cyborg using his shotgun. I had other guys along, but didn't use them much. The cultists stayed in buildings until I got just outside the door. So they all ran out the door single file to be slaughtered by shotgun shells. It was kinda sick actually.
  2. I use frag grenades for close range work. If I am close it means that there are obsticles around. So I get an idea of where the enemy is located and use the splash damage of the grenade to hit him around a corner without exposing myself to counter fire. If there is no way to tell what is behind the door and no real cover for when I open it, I simply open it with four guys. With a high rifle skill you usually get first shot and four assault rifle burst shots will take down most transgenants. The rifle/grenade combination is a very good one because they both require agility. This lets you become superhuman in both weapon categories with little effort. Also, agility is the primary attribute for speed, and speed will let you swap weapons almost instantly! For crazy situations such as entering a small UFO, I carry incendiary grenades and set all of the adjoining rooms on fire. This halts the initial reticulian swarm dead in its tracks. After that I use grenades and focus fire.
  3. UFO Enemy Unknown: My preferred weapon of choice for much of the game was the rocket launcher. Aimed shot has 115% accuracy. Add in another 10% for kneeling and your soldier only needs an accuracy score of eighty to have perfect accuracy. You usually get a least two upper sixty accuracy soldiers in your first squad. Add in the the large rockets do enough damage to one hit KO cyberdisks, reapers, and chysalids then add in the lovely splash damage and you almost never need more than two guys with four shots each. Finally, with a little training your guys will learn to reload and shoot in the same turn. The rocket launcher completely redefines devastating. UFO Aftermath: I finished the game with improved hybrid plasma rifles and collapsable plasma turrents. By the way, all collaspable weapons use the launcher skill. You're thinking of the double barrel machine gun which uses marksman for some reason. But in any event, it doesn't matter anyway because they do such absurd damage that nothing will survive anyway. I didn't make a specialist to man the turrents, I just used my normal Rifles/Aliens soldiers. Two of them in turrents was more than enough to clear the first part of the final mission without anything getting off a single shot in responce. And for the final mission I posted both turrents outside the final room and had my fastest guy open the door and haul behind away. NOTHING got down the hall, although I did need to apply plenty of first aid. Think of them like siege tanks in Starcraft. One turrent stays deployed while the other moves up. Then he deploys and the one behind moves up. Leapfrog like this with your riflemen scouting ahead. I don't really like the laser or plasma weapon types. Just about everything ignores it. It's just that the hybrid plasma rifles are long range shotguns! That uniqueness makes them good. In addition, the plasma turrents were lighter than the rest of the collapsable weapons, which is exactly what my low strength soldiers needed. The laser weapons always struck me as gimps. I didn't even use the alien laser rifles before they were toned down in the patch! Same for the plasma thrower. Earlier I use G3s and Neosteads. When they become available I add in G11s or Steyr AUGs. I don't use CAWS because their autofire range is pitiful and aimed shot damage is pitiful. Neostead gives the best balance in my opinion. If the soldier is a rookie, I'll give him a sniper rifle until he can get his rifle skill up. Doing it again, I'd add throwing to the mix over the aliens skill. That would give me all three attack methods (Long Range, Short Range, and Thrown From Cover) in the same soldier for less attributes spent. It would also give me more capacity for the normal soldier to use with collaspable weapons. Finally, even though I didn't lose many soldiers during the game, only one soldier actually made it to Superheroic/Superheroic in two skills that used different statistics. Throwing and Rifles share Agility, so I have a good shot at getting a full team of Superheroic/Superheroics! I don't really like submachineguns or pistols. They are too short range. Sure, they do a lot of damage but what good is the damage if you miss half the time. Rifles don't do as much damage but the accuracy is great, so you end up doing more damage at all but close range. For close range you can bring up the shotgun dude and still do more damage than a submachinegun. Finally, you don't get much else from dexterity, but willpower has a number of very useful abilities. All in all, submachineguns could have their place, but rifles just give you so much more utility for your stat points...
  4. Thanks. Hmm, I don't have any specific numbers with regards to the AI. All my data is from observation of the game as it plays. Most aliens charge on sight. Others charge when shot. A few will not charge at all. The latter are usually transgenetics and not much threat. If the alien won't charge, then check to see if you can sneak into shotgun range or if there is a sniping possiblity. If he's got a rocket launcher then you can probably bait him into using all his ammo. A fast solder can play peek-a-boo and run away from ground zero. After all the rockets are spit, make sure you let the rookie take him so he gets some experience. Finally, you can just use a two person team. One with a gun shooting around the corner and the other with medikits. The latter garentees a long hospital visit though so it's a last resort.
  5. I like to engage the enemy in a way that puts me at an advantage. I see four ways this works. - Shoot an enemy outside his range. - Trade range for damage and use terrain to get close. - Divide and conquer, attack aliens four on one. - Use grenades to shoot from cover of terrain. I try not to rely on grenades because you will not always have terrain obsticles. There are plenty of cars in a city, but if you're in flat desert sand and all you have are fragmentation grenades, you're yiffed. Grenade launchers get you around this problem, but I like to save them for emergencies. Carpet bombing the entrance to your base is sometimes the only way to win a base defense mission, and it really helps on the Russian base too. This leaves us to work with the other three. I've noticed that the AI doesn't seem to like using aimed shot unless the gun doesn't have burst-fire mode. This is a great thing for you! It means that unless the enemy has a gun with insane accuracy, you can use aimed shot to chip away most of the enemy's health before he starts shooting back, even if you both have the same weapon! This only works if you have enough vision to see the enemies far way. Make sure at least one person focuses on scouting. Always make sure you pick off aliens one at a time so they stop doing their damage. Out in the open where everyone has a line of sight, there is no reason not to do this. For short range I like to use shotguns. In truth, submachineguns are better, but that's all that the handguns skill can do. The rifle skill gives you shotguns and longer range rifles as well. You get more options for your stat points so I use it instead. In addition, the shotguns benefit more from the aliens skill because they are aimed shot. However, one shotgun alone may not cut against late game alien hordes. This means we need to learn about ambushing techniques! If you run your guys forward and find three aliens around a corner, you know you're going to take damage while you get ready to fight. The enemies get to pick you off one at a time. That's why advancing in a base is dangerious. But the same thing works against them if you have a little patience. First setup your guys. You want to set them up so the aliens will see them all as soon as he rounds the corner. A diagnal line of soldiers seems to work best for this. Have the one closest to the wall run up to the corner. Make the aliens want to come to you, shoot one in the back if he refuses to take the bait. Once they become aggressive, get back into the line. The aliens will come forward and find four shotguns pointed at their face. That alien is not going to be an alien for much longer. That alien is Ragu Thick and Chunky. And the best part is that aliens aren't big on pattern recognition, so when one alien rounds the corner and ceases to be an alien, the rest won't take the hint! Opening a door should be handled on a case per case basis. If there is only a small room behind the door, pull out your shotguns. Two or three shotgunners opening a door is usually enough to liquify any enemies behind it. If there is a long hall, you may wish to consider an assault rifle or similarly functioning weapon. That way if the alien is close you can use burst fire and if it's down the hallway you can use aimed shot. Pausing to swap weapons while being pelted with bullets is not a good thing. When in doubt, scout. It's better for one soldier to take damage than your entire squad. Speed and hitpoints are the major considerations in a scout. Speed is to run the yiff away when you find the aliens, and hitpoints are so you can survive the bullet barrage. Once the enemies start using area of effect weaponry, this becomes much more important. Speed is vital. Area of effect and damage over time are the most dangerious attacks in the game! And both can be avoided entirely if your soldiers and your reactions as a player are quick. React with a pause as soon as you hear the launch sound. Predict where the missile will hit and move all affected soldiers. If you wear heavy armor you are yiffed the second one rocket launching enemy gets through, and if you don't train speed you're still yiffed! If you are fast enough you can start a mission next to multiple deathbellows or rocket launcher reticulians and not get hurt. Never neglect speed. Lastly, it seems that the game's recovery of items is buggy. If you go on a two stage mission it forgets the items in the first stage, and any other stages before it! This is bad, because it seems like the amount of ammo you get is related to the number of guns you have. Pick up all enemy weapons and put them in your backpack. You can conserve space or your can conserve ammo. I'd rather have more ammo, so space conservation it is!
  6. Which path you take depends on what weapons you have. If you've got a lot of good shotguns or even good submachineguns, then you'll want to take the right path where the surplus of doors, corners, and small rooms lets you get close to the aliens very easily. If your long range firepower is stronger, you'll want to take the path to the left with it's long corridors. Personally, I take both or hybrid weapons and base my strategy on where the aliens are. You can tell by doors opening up. I try to meet the aliens in their path so I won't have to worry about being flanked. Nothing yiffs you quite as badly as running away to heal and regroup only to run into another strike team. That's when soldiers start dying. If you're desperate, grab three or four M79 grenade launchers and spam the explosives like an anime cartoon. A surplus of explosions can solve most problems. Fortunately the ammo is limited, or this would be a VERY easy game.
  7. I did some experiments on this because I wanted to know. The experiment was performed on the tutorial mission, because the initial danglefly would not attack you. I used various weapons on it and restarted many times to get various statistics on my solders. I used a stopwatch to keep track of time and the damage done was listed in the event bar. General results: - A weapon skill affects three things. It affects how fast you shoot (and reload), how long your range is, and scoring critical hits. The weapon skill is the ONLY thing that affects these. Speed has NO effect on these. - Aliens skill affects damage done per bullet. Aliens is the ONLY skill that effects damage done per bullet. Specific results: - The damage increase from increased firing speed and increased damage from aliens skill are roughly equal. Together they will create an uber soldier. - Aliens damage works best on aimed shot. Burst fire significantly decreases the aliens bonus. If you have a high aliens bonus, you will do more damage on aimed shot than burst shot! - If your aliens skill is awful or poor, you will do more damage per bullet with burst fire than with aimed shot. If aliens is average they do equal damage. In other words, if your aliens skill is below average, it is actually penalizing you! - Explosives receive no benefit from Aliens at all. In this case your weapon skill also acts as an aliens skill. This is why grenaders get so powerful so quickly. - Serious hits do double damage. Critical hits do triple damage. Low weapon skill, burst mode, and extreme long range reduce the chance of critical hits. Observations: - As tempting as it may be, do NOT keep rerolling your soldiers so that you get two awful traits so you can max a weapon skill and aliens as soon as possible. The lack of hitpoints and speed means that your soldier will be less effective than a more generic soldier. - You get more benefit from increasing a weapons skill than aliens skill. I recommend you get aquanted with your weapon before you get aquanted with the bad guys. - Skills have exponential returns. Going from heroic aliens to super-heroic is going to give you a LOT more damage than simply going from excellent to heroic. But even so, you will do more damage over time with a very good weapon skill and aliens skill than from having one super-heroic and the other poor. You also open up more training options this way too. The two skills work together and should be trained together.
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