Stunning People: (As-In How To?)

[New S2 Player]

New player here and have read through some of the material on the posts, so apologies if this has already been covered.

 

Like many of you, am fan of X-Com, and read the manual for S2 which led me to believe that if you brought back a stunned/uncon. prisoner after you killed all the rest, that you could learn a good deal more from doing this (simialr to the stunned aliens in X-Com).

 

On my first mission, I ran into a named officer and promptly tried to bop him over the head several times with my Scout's billy club with no luck. Had to kill him. My question is:

 

Is there a way to stun the opposition without killing them?

 

If so, should I just wait for this ability/weapon later in the game or is it available to the first few missions players?

 

Thanks for the help

[DoomMunky]

Welcome, New S2 Player! In a couple weeks you'll have to change your name to "Grizzled Veteran S2 Player". That'll be sweet.

 

Good question, too, and one that we had an answer to in a FAQ thread before I took it down to rebuild the thread! So, sorry, but we're glad you're here.

 

To knock someone unconscious you just shoot/pummel/stab/detonate- grenades-on-their-faces as usual. Then they fall down. The weird thing about this game is that it treats everyone as "unconscious" until they get below a certain number of negative hit points, at which point they "die". This means very little for the way you "kill" baddies, as you get experience points for every baddie that you put down, and they never get back up, "unconcious" or not. BUT, it means that if you do TOO much damage to the guy you're supposed to bring back to base, you "kill" him, and fail the objective. You can still complete the mission by finding and completing other objectives, but you won't be able to interrogate him when you get back.

 

And the way the game works is that you get a mission from everybody you interrogate, basically, so you won't get that mission if you kill that dude. BUT, the game will probably enable you to get that mission from someone ELSE in the campaign, so you'll probably be able to do it anyway. S2 uses a dynamic campaign system, so some campaigns won't feature the same missions, or the same order of missions necessarily. Or they might. It's a weird system.

 

The upshot is that if you want to knock someone unconsious, just shoot them as usual, but try not to lob too many fragmentation grenades into their laps, as this usually does enough damage to kill them outright. Also, you can't really knock anybody else unconscious, at least, not in a game-meaningful way (they'll be considered "unconscious" by the game and you'll get the experience for killing them, but you won't get extra points or missions for taking them back to base).

 

How about this: Named baddies will be knocked unconscious if you shoot/pummel/stab them (as long as you don't do TOO much damage to them), while random baddies will die when you do those things to them.

 

Should have just said that!

 

Welcome to a kick-ass game, and to our forums!

[Unsterblich]

It also depends if your on S2 or S3.

 

In S2, EVERYONE is unconscious, unless theyre blown to pieces, in which case they disappear. "Oh, he was disintegrated by my hexogen grenade! Did he die?"

 

In S3, most of the time, people die. It is as Doommunky said.

 

Also, on S2 "clue characters" can die, differently from the "average" character. If you use grenades or other lethal weapons, youll probably fail the mission objective.

 

A good way to avoid this is using the billy club and other stun weapons. Here's another difference between S2 and S3: stun weapons are almost useless in S2. They won't hurt much, nor they put the guy to sleep. It was a total dissapointment the few times I used them. You'll have to leave the enemy with some 10, 5 life points, to use a stun weapon on him.

 

In S3, stun weapons are the opposite: you hit someone with them, they sleep like a little baby.

 

If by some chance, you happen to have to capture someone inside a panzerklein, for example, try to use your bare hands... it works. And yes, you'll do damage.

[DoomMunky]

Really? Is that how it works...hmmm... Good stuff, man, thanks!

 

I've found that the best way to get anybody out of those walking metal cans is to use what I call the "can-opener", the laser rifle. Not very "authentic", but damn useful for cutting through troops like butter!

[ChronoLegion]

Really? Is that how it works...hmmm...  Good stuff, man, thanks!

 

I've found that the best way to get anybody out of those walking metal cans is to use what I call the "can-opener", the laser rifle. Not very "authentic", but damn useful for cutting through troops like butter!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I tried the melee option, but in all my playing through (both Allied and Axis), I only got maybe 3-4 melee kills. Maybe I never trained my scouts to be stealthy enough, but whenever I try to get too close (in crouched position, at night, hidden, from the back), they spot me and shoot (usually with fatal results).

[DoomMunky]

I don't have any freakin' melee skills either. Knives cost so much AP that I never want to use them, instead going with the lovely and familiar silenced SMG (the one you get from the 'Silence the Sneak' mission in the first four missions in S3). I really want to be good at it, but I don't want to stand around a campground for an hour or four throwing them at trees. That ain't fun. And using knives from the beginning ain't fun either, as it means either a ton of reloading (my preferred method) or having to be incredibly good (which I'm not).

 

What level are you at, and how good is your Hide skill? I've found that the only consistently good way to get melee kills is to have something to duck behind at the end of my turn, otherwise they see me and perforate my little face.

[ChronoLegion]

I don't have any freakin' melee skills either. Knives cost so much AP that I never want to use them, instead going with the lovely and familiar silenced SMG (the one you get from the 'Silence the Sneak' mission in the first four missions in S3). I really want to be good at it, but I don't want to stand around a campground for an hour or four throwing them at trees. That ain't fun. And using knives from the beginning ain't fun either, as it means either a ton of reloading (my preferred method) or having to be incredibly good (which I'm not).

 

Amen to that.

 

What level are you at, and how good is your Hide skill? I've found that the only consistently good way to get melee kills is to have something to duck behind at the end of my turn, otherwise they see me and perforate my little face.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Right now, I'm at the level where I have to infiltrate the T.H.O. building, but I can't be seen carrying weapons because the cops will shoot me. Unfortunately, after a while, the Hammer people start shooting at civillians. I don't know what I can do about that, so I'm stumped.

As for my Hide skill, I think it's over 100 or something, since I hired the best scout in the "drawer" - the one that costs $30,000 and has a Katana. I have managed to get a few more melee kills/stuns in S3 since my last post, but in my opinion it still isn't worh the hassle. 2 or 3 headshots with a silenced pistol seem to do the trick.

My other complaint about using stealth to that extent is that the game pretty much boils down to using one character, which defeats the purpose of having a 6-person team. Of course, on the other hand, my regular tactics are giving everybody a rifle and shoot from afar.

 

A side question: Is using the multiple-turn shot option the only way for a sniper to gain sniping skill? You'd think that making a kill headshot from 200 yards from a standing position would earn him/her a few snipe points, but I guess not.

[DoomMunky]

As far as I know, the only way to gain in Snipe skill is to actually use the sniper shot mode on scoped weapons. Unfortunately, this seems (from my experience) to make for very slow gains in Familiarity with the weapon, but once you're at 70+ Snipe you really don't care, as you've become a kind of grain-thresher of Thor's Hammer operatives, and cut through them like they're kittens and you're a lawnmower...(mixed metaphor, but apt).

 

And I totally agree about the frustrations of a stealthy approach to the game. You're out there with your Scout, alone, sneaking around, and then you get seen! Poop! End of the world? Well, it wouldn't be if you had some of your buddies around, the guys with the heavy firepower, but you don't. You're stranded and just have to hope for an opportune interrupt or some seriously bad aiming (which is hard to get from your bad guys at the higher levels...).

[ChronoLegion]

As far as I know, the only way to gain in Snipe skill is to actually use the sniper shot mode on scoped weapons. Unfortunately, this seems (from my experience) to make for very slow gains in Familiarity with the weapon, but once you're at 70+ Snipe you really don't care, as you've become a kind of grain-thresher of Thor's Hammer operatives, and cut through them like they're kittens and you're a lawnmower...(mixed metaphor, but apt).

 

Hmm. Well, having a super-sniper might be useful for long-ranged combat against several enemies, but once you're surrounded by enemy who overpowers you 3 to 1, you might want to switch to something that can do more than one shot in several turns.

 

And I totally agree about the frustrations of a stealthy approach to the game. You're out there with your Scout, alone, sneaking around, and then you get seen! Poop! End of the world? Well, it wouldn't be if you had some of your buddies around, the guys with the heavy firepower, but you don't. You're stranded and just have to hope for an opportune interrupt or some seriously bad aiming (which is hard to get from your bad guys at the higher levels...).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I like the "Act first" (or whatever it's called) perk, which ensures that the character will act first in any combat turn (even though the interrupt might be on another character). Of course, I'm not sure how the game will react if the characters interacting (yours and enemy) both have the perk. Probably ignore them and go back to the standard way of calculating interrupts.

[DoomMunky]

Okay, the Sniper IS limited in scope (heh heh!) but if you've got a gun that has a low AP usage (like some of the earlier scoped rifles) and a badass sniper, you can take out two enemies a turn, easy. Headshot with a basic snipe shot on the nearest enemy, then another headshot using your remaining APs (increasing your chance for a hit, of course) on the next closest. At the point I'm at, with a level 7 sniper, Always Inflict Ranged Critical, and moving in on the Always Inflict Bleeding perk, I'm pretty freakin' unstoppable...

 

And is that what the Act First perk does? That's freakin' incredible, and I wished I'd known that earlier...I would have been snapping it up like candy, especially for my Scout, who tends to get caught in Interrupts more often than all the others combined. The only other one who comes close is my Soldier, but that's only because I look at his incredible VPs and think, "so what if I run around a corner and get shot up" too much...

[Schuh]

So does the snipe variable affect snap shot accuracy at all? I never saw the point in using the snipe feature when my sniper(s) usually can hit with 100% accuracy with the snap shot and be able to shoot multiple times in a round.

[Zager]

So does the snipe variable affect snap shot accuracy at all? I never saw the point in using the snipe feature when my sniper(s) usually can hit with 100% accuracy with the snap shot and be able to shoot multiple times in a round

 

I think using the snipe mode increases the vision range of the character, but I'm not one hundred percent sure on this.

[Schuh]

I've been using the snipe mode and loving it. Why I never used it the first couple of times through I don't know. I can usually seriously mame or kill in what shot and the whole time conserving ammo. You probably can do more killing in the longrun when you don't have to spend APs reloading so much. I basically walked through the Swiss factory that way, even on impossible.

[Pax Melmacia]

I no longer pack a bludgeon simply because I don't need one. As mentioned above, you can shoot your victim until he keels over. If you're afraid you'll kill him then go for bursts or single shots. I had to do this because when I tried to run next to a character to club him a glitch declared that there was No Path available, even though the target had passed there during his turn.

 

Too, shooting at someone from a distance lessens the chances of you getting shot when he fights back.