I lean more towards vibroblades since you can deal twice as many blows for every HTL attack, and deal more damage in the process (See: 80 x 2 versus 150 x 1 for every 20%TUs spent). Being able to zip across the map and still have enough TUs to land a blow or two is rather desirable for hand-to-hand combat.

 

The heavy lance looks a lot better though...

 

- NKF

here's a thought....

 

how is armour dealt with in the damage calculations?

 

cause if it is subtracted from the damage then vibro blades may actually be less efficient.... *ponders* *shrugs* i'm no tftd expert...

I know through experience that Vibroblades aren't always a guarranteed kill in one swoop. Aliens like the Hallucinoid, Xarquid and also Tentaculat needed multiple strikes. Though I have not tried with a Thermic Lance I guess that it would be better against the Tentaculat but not against others.

Edit - Snipped entire previous post due to new information received

 

I ran a couple of tests, and still am apparently. Armour does play a signficant role, although I still don't know to what extent. I was testing in superhuman so the armour values I mention below may vary depending on difficulty.

 

The HTL has a much better chance of damaging high-armour units like the hallucinoid (which has almost twice as much all-round external armour (42) as a lobsterman or a tasoth) (24). The chance of actually causing any damage to a unit with high-armour gets better as the HTH weapon increases in damage. However, the actual damage that is dealt seems to vary.

 

The vibroblade still works wonders for lobstermen - a single hit from a vibroblade will either kill it, cripple it, or cripple it and stun it. Odd thing is, a superhuman lobsterman has more health than the damage a vibroblade can dish out.

 

I also observed all sorts of interesting things worth noting. Among them, did you know Tentaculats have 50 for front armour? It has 30 for sides but only 18 and 3 for rear and under armour. Their zombies can be mind controlled, and you can also create loyal tentaculats. Not much use in firing weapons, but they make fantastic melee units if you give them a HTH weapon.

 

Did you know deep-ones have an auto-fire mode that they never use? It shoots straight, wheras the single-shot modes fire in an arc. If you mind control a deep-one, put it to good use, the gun is very effective. It's probably the only sonic weapon in the game with a burst mode.

 

If you haven't got one, you can still get calcinites in mixed crew terror missions. Oddly enough, you can sometimes find Xarquids with them. You don't often see them on land. Then again, you don't often see Deep-Ones underwater either, except in T'Leth.

 

Is it just me, or does every alien that can carry a gun carry a disrupter pulse launcher in the top-side level of an alien colony? No wonder I used to avoid the colonies so much.

 

A large terror unit can be fully controlled if you control the upper left corner. Any others and you'll only retain partial control. The lower right corner can cause a bit of havoc on the next turn as bits of the large terror unit (and maybe some of the others) will stay under X-Com control. I had hallucinoids that I couldn't even see dropping left and right because they were attacking the bits of themselves that were mysteriously under X-Com control. Some even died from fatal wounds I never even gave them.

 

A superhuman level tasoth squad leader has MC Strength 62 and MC Skill 49. Hmm. What does that say about your own soldiers?

 

- NKF

Which is the toughest alien in your opinion

LOBSTERMAN but they are stupid.

or

A combination Tashots with Calcinates.

lobstermen sure are stupid, i shot at one, hit it about 3 times with my gauss rifle crapped myself and took no reaction fire, clicked end turn the dumb thing just stood there, didnt even turn around, i took it out with a couple of auto shots next turn without any reaction fire, however i stil think they are the hardest alien to down with ranged weapons (except the shok launcher)

You know WHY the lobsterman didn't care????? LOBSTERMEN EAT GAUSS FOR BREAKFAST!!!!!!!! Dude, it takes about twice that to do in a lobsterman, he doesn't need to care about 3 gauss hits. By the way, i still hate lobstermen the most. I use xcomutil, mainly because i like the gauss weapons with unlimited ammo, its like the lasers. Problem: using gauss, lobstermen are a bitch to kill. Using anything: lobstermen are a bitch to kill

What are lobersterman weak to?

Lobstermen receive:-

 

Double damage: Stun weapons, hand-to-hand weapons (vibroblades and upwards)

 

Half damage: Explosives, and pretty much everything else.

 

- NKF

i have shot a lot of tasoths with 2 sonic cannon shots before they went down, their mind control abilities make them almost a match for lobster men

Prefering to modify weapons, I tend to modify up the earth's weapons, and try to downgrade some of the alien's weapons. Except for the thermal shok launcher and bombs. It still takes around 6 hits of modified gauss to know down a lobsterman, but they go down, and hard. The other secret, is to modify the amopunt of time they use.

that works too, but if you want a chllenge, take on a ship route attack with only gauss rifles and magna blast grenades

I actually need to start a new game, because I've lost one of my sponsor countries, and I need better coverage of my sonars. But, I still think Lovstermen are the hardest to take down, while Tentaculates are the hardest to deal with, especially when I attack their bases. On terror missions, it's a toss up on calcinites and Deep Ones.

See, that's what's good about TFTD (Most people say it is just a knock off of UFO), you actually have seperate fears for seperate types of missions.

The Hallucinoids, or however that is spelled only show up either with bigger ships, or else whaen you attack their bases, on the first level. They are usually easy to deal with.

Hallucinoids? I don't remember any hallucinoids. What do they look like?

Jellyfish. Big hulking jellyfish (with short tentacles). They behave like the Reapers in UFO, but they can also float.

 

They've got some pretty heft armour too. Superhuman Lobstermen and tasoth only have 24 armour, but the hallucinoid mostly gets 42 armour.

 

They're nasty up close, even when you're wearing Ion Armour. Luckily, they're easy to deal with.

 

You can also find them on the second level of an artefact site.

 

- NKF

Are they the big blue, slightly translucent ones?

they sure are, and i have also killed some on the first level of an artefact site too

NKF, or some of the others who have experimented with the game, is there a way to capture Hallucianoids, Xarquids, etc. alive?

you can run up and poke them with stun rods a couple of times (like me ) or do it the sane way and shoot them with a thermal shok bomb

i dun noe wat mission this is, but on one base, the tenticlut-thingies are on ledges, above you 2 levels, so you can't see them, but u noe their there. the only way to get them down is by walking into the room and ending turn. the thing is, there're heaps of them!

Sounds like the black chamber with the shaft to the synonium device in Artefact sites. Yeah, they're nasty.

 

One way I like to deal with them is to have soldiers enter the chamber from two opposing directions so that one side will spot the aliens in the upper alcoves just behind the other team. The hiding aliens don't seem to move until you've entered the chamber, so you can spend a bit of time setting up the 'ambush' of sorts. A team of reaction fire soldiers waiting just behind the soldiers who entered the chamber helps too just in case you missed some.

 

And hey, what are disrupter pulse launchers for eh? Shok bombs work too, as long as you don't forget to follow through with a live grenade afterwords to neuter the tentaculats.

 

- NKF

Yeah, that does, got one man turned zombie, and the tentaculant. But, with XCOM2edi, I can change that. Does anyone know where the pow's, and MIA's go? I'd like to find out, so I'm not constantly changing them back, unless they are dead...

This seems like the best place for this post since we were talking about Bio-Drones earlier in the topic. Anyway, I was doing some testing on Bio-Drones for the X-COM wiki tonight. A few people mentioned that this alien has a melee attack besides it's ranged weapon. So I edited the Bio-Drone to have 0 ammo and let it attack my unarmored soldier with 250 health. It took a really long time, but eventually he got hurt for 171 points of damage. I found out the reason why it takes so long for the attack to succeed: the Bio-Drone's Melee Accuracy is 0%!!! No wonder.

 

In my testing scenario, I equipped my team with Heavy Thermic Lances (one of the rare times I had this weapon). Let me tell you this: a single poke with this against a Bio-Drone is very, very effective. As a plus, it doesn't explode either. So a good strategy for Bio-Drones is to get up close and use a melee weapon against it. Since the Bio-Drone normally prefers to use melee in close quarters, and since it can't hit the broad side of a barn with it's attack, you can just poke it with one of the blades and you can feel confident any attack it manages to wage will be shrugged off. It's kinda counter-intuitive to rush these aliens, but it sure works!

 

- Zombie