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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

What's the Second thing you Research


Guest stewart

  

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Guest stewart
For me it depends on the style of play. I've chosen. Motion Scanner is first in either case. If I'm playing my recless style then next is Heavy Plasma so I can ger to Plasma Cannon. If I'm playing my carefull penny-pinching style next is Laser Weapons, for the zero ammo and eventually the Laser Cannon so I can become independant of the funding countries.

More often I play penny-pincher because it's more fun for me so I voted that way.
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I never quite got 'into' motion scanners. My first choice is medi-kits, followed by Heavy Plasma. Why HP? Because they're plentiful, even early on, and they're unmatched for stopping power (not counting the BPs, which are by comparisson terribly rare).

I used to go up to HLs as soon as possible, and start manufacturing them (as they are one of the more 'profitable' items, as far as I'm aware)... but as I said, now I'm an HP man.
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Guest stewart
The most profitable item that does not require alien alloys is the Laser Cannon very slightly behind it is the Laser Tank, third is the Motion Scanner. I go for it first for two reason, one it's the third most profiltable thing to make and two a motion scanner is crucial to my base defense strategy.
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Laser Pistols..... I just can go on a mission with out destroying almost every posslible building and clearing walking paths. > 10 turns with about 5 guys shooting up those alien hiding barns.:wacko: Plus, I don't like killing aliens once I get mind control. Heard them up in your craft, 2 men guarding them, then let one guy go at it. :LOL:
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Guest stewart
Until I have personal armor, I use Medikits more on the aliens than my soldiers, so I can keep the mission active to do training. I forget do pain killers improve morale?
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After laser weapons, which is always first then laser pistols. Thats so i can get to laser rifles which i like to get by the middle end of January 1999. While ont the most powerful weapon in the game, they are quite good with decent accuracy, auto shot capacity and relatively low time units.
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Well the way I research is I don't use all my scientist to rasearch the same thing when I am first playing. First think I usually research is laser or plasma weapons. I like put most of my scientist to research the laser while 10 are researching the medikit. then once the scientist are done with the weapon I shift them all to the medikit. I do the same kind of thing while researching my next major weapon with the small percent being on the motion scanners (which I do use). now how I equip my squad is the first two players always have laser rifles so that they can destroy the walls of the buildings close to the craft that the aliens are hiding in if that is the case. I like Heavy plasmas for the rest of the group. for the first two players once also has the smoke grenade which I always throw before exiting the skyranger and flares which can actually be useful if you know how to use em. the next row of players is my UFO invasion squad sort of. besides heavy plasma they have the stun rods which they can stun an alien with when opening doors. These two dudes also carry the medikits which do come in handy. There usually always someone with a scanner with the invasion group. Scanners are pretty most useful when you have a player standing in front of a door. you can do a quick scan to see if there is an alien waiting for you and where.
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Guest stewart
Hey that's exactly how I use smoke grenades too! It's hard throwing over the tanks though. That's where weak guys are better; their grenades land closer to the back of the skyranger. The strong guys often toss them so far that the cloud doesn't reach the ramp. I toss one outside the skyranger and one INSIDE. Standing on an exploding smoke grenade causes no damage. The reason is so the soldiers in the skyranger itself are also obscured.
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Hey :) I forgot I used to do that too. Although I think one time something went wrong and the smoke grenade started a fire burning my poor players. Just happened once so it could have been a freak accident. I usually put the smoke grenade in the hands on the first player so he always can throw it infront of the ramp. I end my turn right there because I don't like being ambushed especially at night with moutains and forests. smoke grenade inside the skyranger can reduce the risks in terror sites of having an alien toss in an alien grenade or shoot a stun bomb into your ranger.
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Believe it or not, the first thing I research is the motion scanner. Then the second is usually laser weapons. To me, the motion scanner and laser pistol seem to be hugely underrated. I find that my soldiers that are armed with a laser pistol in one hand and a motion scanner in other tend to often survive the best as well as kill the most. Especially in terror mission where you often have lots of areas that end up in alot of close quarter battling. Those extra TUs come in very handy, and since the range tends to be up close the lethality and accuracy rarely seem to be an issue. It allows me alot to scan around a corner or before entering a room and seeing where the threat is behind. That usually gives me a pretty good assessment of where to have the soldier hide so that he'll have the draw on the alien should it decide to come out. Then my soldier's next turn he can go in, go auto on the alien, then run for cover if he needs to (like if he missed or didn't kill the alien(s)). Whereas if I tried that same tactic with a rifle, if I my soldier misses or doesn't get the kill, he gets killed since he often doesn't have enough TUs left to get to safety.

I used to think the pistol were pretty worthless and used to wonder why the developers even bothered to have them in the game. But they work beautifully for your soldiers that are going to be fighting in close quarters and need their other hand free to work their gadget (motion scanner, stun rod, etc).

Granted, that a certain point the laser pistol just doesn't have the lethality, but at that point, so does the laser rifle. However, with the pistol, you can often get more chances to attack your target more than once since you can do alot of shooting and scooting.
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Oh I can believe it. The motion scanner is quite useful if you know how to use it. The UFOPedia even say so. The people you find them useless probably just didn't bother to learn them. Laser rifles are useful even if you have Heavy Plasma because Plasma runs out of bullets and laser rifles do not. Heavy Laser seem somewhat useless to me though.
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Guest stewart
Yeah those fires can happen sometimes. Once your tanks are out you have spare room in you skyranger to avoid the fire. But, your right they're quite rare. It's fun though sometime the smoker in the skyranger (blowing up on level 2 of the map) creates floating fires out in the middle of the air.
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Yeah I just stop doing that because I forgot about it. :) what happens if ya take a couple of months off afterawhile. We need to have equiptment in our version to put out fire. I love having a guy with a rocket launcher and IA ammo. It sucks to have a player on fire and having to watch him die after 3 or 4 turns with nothing you can do about it. Part of X-Com is knowing how to use your equipment. Some players find things like flares and scanners useless but they are not. flares are good for making a path twards the ufo or when there is an alien sniper killing your squad at night throw a flare where the shots are comming from and then it is easy to take him out. I like having the person farthest away from the enemy shoot him.
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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Medikits almost always finish before even the first battle, so I usually do that first. While most shots will kill, sometimes you'll have someone just be wounded by a grenade or a shot, and you'll be kicking yourself for letting that guy die needlessly.

Second is always plasma rifles, then heavy plasma.

Motion scanners are useless to be only because I use a more advanced version: Scouts.

I have two squads, each squad consisting of either a heavy weapons and sharp shooters, or just general purpose troop types. That is, people who are strong -and- accurate.

Plasma/laser pistols are useful for making scouts. I always bring two scouts: Two units I've kept with nothing more than a med kit, a grenade, and a pistol, who I run all over this place. You'd be surprised how quickly they get up to 80 TUs.

The scouts find them, the sharp shooters and heavy weapons destroy them. :uzzi:
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I research medi-kit only after discovery of power suit. After plasma shot soldier with no power suit have very low chance of surviving, so in early begining medi-kits are useful for waking up stuned.

The second thing that i research is plasma rifle or heavy plasma. I never research clips before weapon becouse I use plasma weapons even before finishing researching clips.

People how do you use medi-kit in the beginning?
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[quote name='Stewart' date='Oct 1 2002, 10:09 PM']I never tried sticking a live alien on a transport and bugging out.  Is it captured?[/quote]
No they are NOT captured. Also, if you end a mission, and one of your unit is under alien control, he is M.I.A.
if you stun an alien which is under your control, YOU DO NOT CAPTURE THEM!! :cussing:

My research order for x-com ufo non-save superhuman style is
laser weaponry
laser pistol
laser rifle
alien alloys
personal armor
plasma technology
plasma cannons
heavy plasma
small launcher
stun bomb
ethereal soldier :devillaugh:
snakeman navigator :bash:
psi lab
psi-amp
ufo power
elerium
ufo navigation
firestorm
lightning
avenger
alien commander
---------end game---------
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Wow, no bb? Do you have to capture an eth, to get psi lab? I have avengers, fly suits plasma cannons, firestorm, but i have yet to even meet an ethereal. im sure they would only need one stun bomb to capture, but since sometimes soldiers die on previous missoins i recuit some that have low bravery, and i give them personal armor. there basically ready to die :devilsmile: but anyway eth, would always probly take controll. and one more question, i havent realy noticed it i try to avoid it just in case, lets say you put a soldier to guard a door right next too it, and say a rocket tank aiming at it too, will the rocket tank be smart and not fire at it for fear it will injure the soldier, same with people with rl?
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No, your guys only look at the alien and don't base their decision on where their colleagues are, unfortunately. This goes for all weapons; I've lost a few of my own to a bad aimed laser-shot.... :(
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[quote name='c4t' date='Dec 21 2002, 11:09 PM']Wow, no bb?  Do you have to capture an eth, to get psi lab?  I have avengers, fly suits plasma cannons, firestorm, but i have yet to even meet an ethereal.  im sure they would only need one stun bomb to capture, but since sometimes soldiers die on previous missoins i recuit some that have low bravery, and i give them personal armor.  there basically ready to die  :devilsmile:[/quote]
yes you need to capture an ethereal -any kind- or a sectoid leader to have access to the psi labs

later you can capture every alien only using psi powers

nowadays in my superhuman- no save game i have an army of

3 psi sodiers - 60 psi attack 90 psi defence-

and a squad of rookies assist them scouting

my psi sol NEVER get out of the craft -they are very important-

with this combined force i take out battleships really easy, their shiny footballs kill each other. my soldiers are only killed when i am getting them out of the craft -campers :cussing: -
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i go after medikit after i research the power suit. Anyway, if your soldier has no armor, it is SIMLY killed :cussing:
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I always get to the Laser Rifle ASAP, I like to have a full 9 person team for missions(never enough time units) and the silly stock rifles are crap....

Why not Plasma you ask? Because I always seem short of plasma...

I alway go Laser weapons up to rifles, because I have no use for laser cannons/tank/defence, i find them somewhat usless.

After laser weapons, I do alloy and then personal armor, by that time Ive usually accquired enough Plasma weapons to feel the need to use valuable research time....
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laser tank is a good x-com based technology. They don'T need elerium to manifacture, and besides THEY ARE TANKS!!! :o :D
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  • 2 weeks later...
The second thing that I research is laser pistol... My fovorite weapon is Heavy Laser :D. Why? I just dont use autoshot so I do not need laser rifles which's snap shot cost is 34% and HL ones is 33% so I can shot 3 times :)
I use it instead of HP because clips in UFO are messed :( (1 shot=lost of whole ammo) and HL's fire power is quite well :D
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  • 2 weeks later...
i tried a weapons/ships only tech route on super human, you would be suprised the kind of shots people lived through on my game...

Xcom scout walks, 1 TU left, turns left to check, OMFG ITS 2 SNAKEMEN AND A chryssalid!!!! (sp), no one can get anyshots to him for cover, i nervously click the end turn button, chryssalid walks towards guy, then turns and goes back (huh?) Snakeman A: bang bang bang bang bang bang.... Miss hit miss miss miss hit SnakeMan B: bang bang bang hit miss miss

My guy had 9 HP left, but had 2 torso wounds and one arm wound... he had no armor!!! :P
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1. medikit
2. alien alloy
3. personal armor
4. heavy plasma
5. heavy plasma clip
6. plasma cannon (plasma beam)


Protect my soldiers then protect my ships.....

With plasma beams your interceptors don't take damage from anything but battleships. O:)

And even battle ships go down to a couple interceptors armed with plasma beams.... :uzzi:
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  • 2 months later...
[quote]and one more question, i havent realy noticed it i try to avoid it just in case, lets say you put a soldier to guard a door right next too it, and say a rocket tank aiming at it too, will the rocket tank be smart and not fire at it for fear it will injure the soldier, same with people with rl?[/quote]

Yes, the rocket tank will fire, killing or injuring any troops unfortunate enough to be within blast-range. This is especially bad if the tank's Accuracy is damaged.
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[quote name='Extralucas' date='Jan 16 2003, 11:36 PM']I use it instead of HP because clips in UFO are messed :( (1 shot=lost of whole ammo) and HL's fire power is quite well :D[/quote]
:unsure: I remember reading somewhere that if you unload the used clip from weapons you save them! I did that with TFTD, always unloading sonic cannon clips near the end of the mission (even if they had only 1 shot left) and get away with the full clip! I guess it's something of a bug. That has been fixed in Apocalypse.

As for research, I go for the medi-kit, I know it's useless unless you've got armour, but there is always a chance that your weak soldiers might survive (esp. to a bad thrown alien grenade) and still die without getting proper care. <_<
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  • 4 weeks later...
i always go for lasers. heavy plasma's dont appear for a few weeks and laser rifles are useful until even the end of the game.

and i think a motion scanner looks more like diving gear than a scanner. never really worked out how to use one - if i want to know whats behind the door i go look, although any xcom rookie wouldn't be pleased with this
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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...
[quote name='GreatGold' date='May 13 2003, 01:26 AM']Hey -

It's been a while since I've played...why the de-clipping?

Gold[/quote]
No need for anymore in the newest version

My research tree is assembled ad hoc, so not much I can tell on that. My first thing to research though are laser weapons, depending on availability of new projects all the way to laser tank. Next priority would be alien alloys and personal armor (by then I also like to have the medicit done). Any further than that tends to change every game...
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  • 2 weeks later...
In a much earlier post i said that the second thing i research is usually laser weaponry. But quite recently i discoverd how useful motion scanners can be and quite a few times now i research these second. They really help me out a lot when i'm about to start a mission and i want to know if any aliens are lurking just outside my skyranger. Also they make quite a lot of money when sold.
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