whirlingdervish

I seem to get lucky with finding sci heavies, and at relatively low level the bullet swarm skill allows you to make a very versatile sci soldier. As long as you shoot first you can fire once on a strong alien for good damage, and take down a weaker alien with mindfray in the same turn from almost any range with nearly 100% accuracy. Once they're up to higher promotions, they take relatively little damage while in cover, and firing a heavy plasma and mind controlling an enemy in the same turn makes them one of the best units to completely ruin an alien advance. They will quickly take cover or fall back when faced with one of these guys, and in the next turn you can wipe out the cover with a rocket to open them up for your snipers with "in the zone"

surely you meant to say "I'm picking over the raider's corpses for .44 ammo and bottlecaps" BIG SPOILER INCOMING.... LOOK AWAY IF YOU DONT WANT TO GET A FREE NPC! Don't ever take Tandi back to shady sands! give that chick a good knife and some stimpacks and she'll be your little stabbing lover forever. The second you return her to shady sands after rescuing her, she's lost to you as a party member.

This thread and the excitement following the F3 trailer got me to start up a new character over the weekend in Fallout 2.. I'm sitting at my desk now, longing to go home so I can finish my walk back from Gecko with the car parts. It's driving me nuts! I guess I forgot how addictive these games are..

It will be hard to find in fallout 1, as you will have to do a few quests for the brotherhood of steel to get access to a suit of power armor. I think there were only 2 sets of it in fallout 1. In Fallout 2, you can actually buy regular power armor in the 2 weapon shops in San Fransisco. Remember to inspect both of the tables of stuff in each store to access the shopkeepers 2 different inventories.. It'll cost you about 30-40 grand per suit, but your human NPC's can wear them so it's worth it to have a couple suits. Once you have 40 grand in cash, just buy the power armor with cash only, and then steal the cash back from the shopkeeper. (it gets stored on his person) buy,steal,repeat until you have everything you ever wanted. works well for the best weapon(small gun) in the game too: the gauss rifle. once the shopkeeper has a few, do the above procedure to acquire them for nothing. Also, if you want the best NPC in Fallout 2, go to Vault City and in the courtyard outside, there is a bar with a lit up sign. There will be a guy behind the bar that is wearing leather armor. save your game, then try and talk him into leaving vault city with you. the magic words are "whats going on around here?" or something along those lines.. This is Cassidy. Give him power armor, a gauss rifle, ammo, and stimpacks, and watch the carnage that he creates.

I agree. Play through the first then start on the second. BTW, I found the most effective way to win at both is creating a character with these attributes: for tag skills, select unarmed combat small guns steal for traits select gifted finesse. on the stats, make sure you have 10 agility and high perception and intelligence. now you've got a combat ready sneak theif that will kill most anything easily from start to finish, and who can "liberate" any item in the game.. look for a red ryder LE BB gun in the abandoned shack special encounter too. 25-25 damage and low AP cost.

there's some really useful info in this thread. good job guys! Since you're compiling all this info together, I figured you might get some use out of this X-Com Field Officer Equipment Manual that I put together out of various sources. http://dervish.tastyspleen.net/files/XCOM_EM.pdf It has full color item/armor/hwp/craft pics ripped from the game, and a page of description/strategy and stats for each. I've got the original laying on my HD in MSword .doc format, if anyone wants to add anything or take parts out for other stuff.. rock on guys.