Sylph

Indeed, and with small launchers being a unique blast weapon in that they do 0-200% of their damage (I know you already know this, don't wanna sound patronising to one of the gods of xcom research) , they can be effective even against the massive armour of a sectopod. In fact, I sometimes give my scouts 2 small launchers, one in each hand - the loaded item weight bug means the soldiers get 2 stun bombs free of weight costs, and the low snapshot cost of a small launcher means they can fire both shots in one turn, with a pretty good chance of taking down a sectopod on the second shot. Of course, by the time you can afford to give scouts double small launchers, you're probably playing too long and should be using a psi-amp instead, but still, for those of us opposed to mind control... Not such a fan of alien grenades though - And even with small launchers and blaster launchers, there's really no beating incendiary autocannons for sectopod killing. Hiya NFK, Actually, I find the 'volume' goes to plasma pistols - they land more successful hits than laser pistols at anything but point-blank range. The fact that laserpistols were overlooked for so long is one of the reasons I've tried to bring plasma pistols to attention.

It's indeed a shame about the dead-end research from the plasma pistol, but the manufacturing time and cost of ammo, if you end up having to do it, is pretty negligible. As for sectopods, I have the same problem with heavy plasma to be honest - just bounces off (superhuman), same as laser rifle. I always use incendiary autocannons to kill sectopods, which pair nicely with a plasma pistol against ethereals, and was in fact one of the things that spurred me into looking for a decent ethereal-killing pistol. Turned out I got a lot better than I bargained for, and decided to try relying on it as a primary weapon for a game, where I was really pleasantly surprised. In summary, I suppose I'm trying to say I don't think the drawbacks of plasma pistols are as bad as they're often made out to be, and the big pro (the incredible autoshot accuracy with 9 shots a turn) seems to be forgotten in lieu of a few days manufacture and a small scout power source every few months.

Interesting fact - the plasma pistol is the best long-range sectoid killer in the game. At least, I think it is. I've found that 9 shots at 50% accuracy is absolutely incredible for ranged combat. I've noticed the vet xcom community seem to have found a love for the laser pistol, but often neglect this awesome tool because of ammo costs or TU costs. The ammo is so cheap, anyone who has raided a supply ship or 2 will have easily enough elerium to manufacture a few hundred clips of the stuff... In the early game you get the ammo given to you by the aliens too. In my last few games of xcom, I've started using plasma pistols before even researching laser pistols. The things are amazing to give to a few soldiers. In fact, my vet soldiers have been armed with a plasma pistol in one hand, and a heavy plasma in the other, and it's probably my second favourite armament for late-game combat. Instead of wasting the last few TUs on a heavy plasma snapshot, they can spend it on pistol autofire. While I'm ranting about this, I feel the need to mention laser pistol + heavy plasma. With the laser pistol in the belt, a soldier with 80 TUs can fire 6 shots of heavy plasma with both hands, then draw a laser pistol for another 3. Next turn he can fire 3 with his laser pistol, drop it, then fire 6 more heavy plasma shotsm again 2-handed. The point of this topic? Not a great deal, just wondering if people still have the negative opinions of plasma pistols *after* trying them out as a staple of their armament for a game, and more importantly suggesting that, if you haven't given the plasma pistol a serious try, you might enjoy giving it a go. Take care all. ~Sylph.

A possible solution to this question crossed me today - From the 'smoke' entry in ufopaedia: "It takes 15-20 turns for the cloud from a smoke grenade to clear" I'm wondering whether, upon mission start, the smoke from a crashed ufo is preventing the alien AI from leaving their craft, and once the smoke has dissipated, the alien AI starts to work properly?

Well, I was thinking it'd be more of a 'see how far you can get' than a 'try to finish the game' type challenge.

Does anyone care to ellaborate on what Ironman mode is? I've been playing the game for a while with the 'no reloading savegames at all' rules, but I'm not sure whether this is ironman, or whether ironman involves trying to finish the game without buying any new soldiers...

I use it all the time. The main feature I use it for is the automatic armament of squad members. That feature just saves *hours* of boring clicking if you're doing a lot of xcom missions. I also love the automatic naming of soldiers based on their statistics, another great time saver. As for new features - I'd really like an option to automatically turn off all blaster launchers, similar to the option to remove psi powers... That would make a no psi + no blaster game of xcom a lot of fun.

There's a very easy-to use program called easyBCD. I decided to give it a go, and checked the following tutorial: http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp If you follow that you can get XP installed as a dual-boot with your vista installation, without having to format drives or lose any data. You might want to give it a go. It really is simple, and the guide on that webpage, while far longer than it needs to be, will take you right through the process.

As an example of my spacing, just to make it more clear: ----------=------ XX XX XX x The second alien can kill the scout from time to time, although often they leave the ufo to do it just like the first did. I suppose it boils down to whether you feel you can sacrifice a scout in order to gaurantee the safety of your veterans. I've gotten used to losing 5+ scouts every mission, and my score is still very high at the end of each month, so I'm ok with it. If you were going for perfect mission scores, or perhaps couldn't afford the cash on new recuits, then yes, the broken semi-circle would be better.

Well, remember that turning on the spot doesn't promote reactions fire. The aliens can leave their UFO then turn to face your men and still get the first shot. In my strategy, if the alien's reactions are poor, then my rookie will be able to kill the alien just like they can in yours. It's also worth noting that I normall have 7 or 8 veteran soldiers looking right at that door, so it's not common for them all to fire. The two strategies are functionally identical, particularly if you have been putting the rookies slightly closer than the veterans in your broken semi circle. I'd just imagine it's harder to get the rookies closer without blocking LOs if your shooters are spread out in a semi circle.

Easier than assaulting a base? Heh, I usually leave bases alone until I have psychic troopers, at which point it's not hard to clear all the blaster launching aliens on the first turn. My usual tactic for base missions is to get psychic power, assault a base, steal a blaster launcher, then dust off immediattely. i then research blasters myself. After getting blasters, I go back to the base, scout using hovertanks and mind control, kill the base controls with my own blaster launchers (usually on the first turn) then dust off, killing the base and getting me all the equipment intact. As you can probably guess, I'm so scared of blaster launchers that I try my very hardest never to give the aliens a chance to use them! If you have troopers with the reactions to shoot the aliens, then my strategy will kill the alien before he kills my scout, just like yours. If the reactions aren't in your favour, then my strategy works pretty much the same as the semi-circle, except that I gaurantee that it's only a rookie that dies, rather than risking the death of an experienced member of the team. On superhuman difficulty, you can pretty much gaurantee that the aliens will be shooting at least once before you get a chance to have a reaction shot, so the rookie decoy is pretty necessary for me. The main disadvantage to a firing team like mine would be alien grenades, but since when the alien leaves the UFO he only sees the rookie, the firing team isn't in danger to getting bombed. I assume that even with the spread out semi-circle a blaster bomb will still kill almost all of them...

Battleships? I'd be interested in hearing how you deal with those. I leave them alone, because of the blaster launchers inside. I've never found a reliable way of defensing against blaster launchers until I'm using them, or psychic powers, myself...

To take advantage of reaction shooting to it's max I usually use the following strategy: 1. Use a squad consiting of 7 soldiers with guns, and 7 scouts with smoke grenades, flares, and stun launchers. 2. Move out scouts and smoke area around my craft 3. Explore landscape outside UFO and clear it 4. Camp to the side of the UFO door with all shooters (half sitting down so that the other half can fire over their shoulders). I take up a position so that an alien would have to turn around after leaving the UFO door in order to see them. 5. Stick some scouts in front of the UFO such that the aliens would not have to turn to see them 6. Wait Once turn 21+ come around, the aliens start to leave the UFO. They shoot and kill the scout that stands outside, but after firing they get reaction-shot by the shooters. Sure, the scouting rookies die, but you have to expect some deaths on superhuman if you don't save/load in missions. It's very rare that I lose one of my valuable soliders, and usually at about turn 25-30 aliens start to panic to such an extent that half the time aliens that remain 'stuck' in the ufo don't have any weapons when I come to find them. You can get more success by smoking the UFO doors on turn 19, then sitting your firers out of visual range. The scouts hide around a corner from the ufo door, then each turn the scout pops out to have a look. If he sees an alien, he runs back behind cover, and the shooters all fire. The trouble is your soldiers don't get reactions training from this, which, in the long run, hurts more than losing and replacing a few rookies every mission.

I haven't looked into the code too far, but I've conducted some testing after noticing this same turn21 theory years ago. I basically got a savegame after clearing the geoscape outside the ufo (tested on a large scout and a supply ship). Every turn, I saved the game, then ran my camping force into the ufo to see where the aliens were. Most of the time, the aliens were hanging around near the door, even on turn 8 or so. They'd stay in this area (and presumably spread around the rest of the ufo too) until turn 21, at which point they'd start leaving the door. I think worrying about whether AI has to path it's way out of the top/back of a ufo, and it taking 21 turns 'on average' for them to do this, would be a mistake. There's no doubt that the aliens will sit around, even right next to that door, until turn 21 when they start pouring out. I'm sure the reason they trickle out one or two per turn has more to do with the fact that when an alien pops out and gets shot by the camping force, the rest of the aliens, knowing that there's a team camping their door, wait a turn before sending another alien to peek his head out. Also, the turn 21 issue happens in alien bases too. Try invading an alien base and block the lift (remember aliens don't fire up those lifts, even with blaster launchers, so you're safe if there's no mind control.) At turn 21 there is a *very* noticeable increase in the amount of aliens that rush to the bottom of the lift, suggesting that they run for your soldiers at turn 21. In fact, most of the time if I sit on the starting lift I don't see any aliens until turn 21, and in the next 2-3 turns I get a good 5 at the bottom of each lift.