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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Gauss Or Sonic?


Do you prefer guass or Sonic? Decide like Lobstermen weren't in the game  

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Gotta love that mad and demented wizard who dared to steal the powers of a D&D god (Sort of). He almost got away with it too, if it weren't for those darn kids and that space hamster.

 

Rifles are two-handed, but you can often get away with the -20% accuracy penalty, since sonic weapons make up for it by being fairly accurate to start with. Often in the late game I'll have some shock troopers with a sonic cannon and a vibroblade out most of the time, especially for interior maps since range won't matter so much. It's better to go with the drill stowed away if you're out in the open maps though until you get close to buildings or other structures that might have hidden aliens.

 

- NKF

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  • 10 months later...

So... first of all, let me say, sorry for starting off off-topic,

 

but WOW... i loved the heck out of XCOM way back in the day & never even heard of 2, 3 or beyond until recently...

 

i always played UFO with lasers as my primary weapon all game, the no clip made it too tempting,

 

i would line up a fire team along an edge of the map & just literally destroy everything all across the map & then use a few troops as scout/spy & call in the laser fire strike from god...

 

SUPER excited to see a live forum with current posts on XCOM!!!! WOW!

 

would LOVE to see these same games, same concept, with same system mechs (maybe minus dreaded tech tree bugs) & new graphics / sounds... would gladly pay for that today.

 

and now... to the topic at hand.

 

Let me say, i just started playing this week and have only used gauss so far, but i still choose sonic weapons.

 

Here's why... being as I always played UFO on Superhuman & never really came close to failing,

I foolishly figured that I should be able to do the same in TFTD.

 

I am playing on SH, but was punished severely during my first few missions & survived my first calcinate terror mission with 1 agent (with 3 fatal wounds LOL)

 

I still prefer setting up a fire team way off in the distance & using Snap/Aimed combo (Gauss is not as accurate as laser & the clip discourages spray & pray with no regard for ammo)

 

However, I have recently discovered an alien colony & been performing raids on it daily...

 

I didn't initially intend for these to be "raids", the 2 part colony was a surprise,

but the bigger surprise was a crab looking man walking into a room full of agents & killing one with claws.

The next round i proceeded to surround it with 9 agents & point blank auto fire.

2 Rounds -4 agents & literally 100+ gauss rounds later, it became obvious i could not do ANYTHING against this creature.

 

So i loaded up the remaining team & aborted mission in despair...

 

However, I was happy to note that all the kills & gear gained on the top level were collected & netted me 3 million (in a game with very strict cash rules as I have learned)

 

So... now I raid the top level daily for about 3 million & i'm building a base + transmission resolver /day, soon i'll mass scientist/engineers & start getting results.....

 

ANYWHO, my point would be, I have no option to use sonics yet, (going off UFO exp. I went gauss early & didn't do any sonic except pulsers)

 

It on average takes me 7 shots to kill a Tasoth & 8 or 9 for a hallucinate, also average of 7 for a Tentaslut

 

let me tell you, you simply cannot pull that off without at least 5 man dedicated fire team support & accurate hero units.

 

going through doors to find tentasluts is a horrible nightmare, i can basically only kill them with pulsers...

 

also, my first terror mission had calcinates on it & that did NOT go well... let me tell you, without grenades i cannot reliably kill them

 

several people have mentioned not using doors, but rather making them... you cannot do that with unmodded Gauss (and i don't like to cheat)

 

a few flimsy walls cannot be Gaussed, but even beach resort wood panel outer house walls cannot be Gaussed & certainly not ufo walls or colony walls,

 

i currently have to use pulsers to pierce ufo/colonies... but do indeed prefer this technique vs. door assaults

 

Gauss is not a viable option on SH... i think they probably intended it that way, consider in UFO i went L pist, L rifle = set for life.....

 

which i was using by the end of January up through end game even on Mars.

 

Long story short, you cannot use unmodded Gauss on SH for long...

 

it is not an end game weapon by any means...

 

as I stated I have not gotten to use sonics yet, but if it can take down a Tasoth in 2 hits average, then Gauss will be out the window in my campaign very soon

 

Gauss Sub Craft Weapons however need to be produced to keep income streaming... so don't totally skip Gauss...

 

another note, for those previously mentioning ammo supply problems from sonic weapons,

 

level 1 base clearing level 2 abort mission raids will yield massive supplies of sonic cannon ammo & disruptor launcher ammo (whatever the fusion homing missiles are called now) even as early as mid-March (I am playing SH afterall)

 

and also before you have research & tech on MC abilities this is a great way to weed out your mentally incompetent troops, save the game before you land & anyone that is constantly being possessed &/or paniced, simply put don't give them a gun, even in their backpack... give em glowsticks & scout/spy/suicide their asses

 

with the 3+ mil you're clearing per raid (cruelly i know) you can more than afford to meat grinder these poor souls, while your MC resistant troops sit back & fire volleys at troops from the distance collecting kills & as the missions roll by they will develop into super soldiers / heroes...

 

WHEW... my verdict = sonic :P

 

PS wow... sorry for the super off-topicness LOL

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Welcome to the forum. We're slow moving but indeed we do have a few dedicated players that have been around the forum for a long time, and are happy to answer any questions if we can.

 

You can get by with gauss weapons, but as I discovered recently that the damage multipliers are very heavily weighted against gauss weaponry, the designers appear to have indeed intended Gauss to be a stopgap weapon for Jet Harpoons and Dart Gus that eventually get tossed out in favour of sonic.

 

Sonic's great, and I've become very fond of the sonic pistol recently, partly because it's cheap-to-build ammo at 1 Zrbite for 20 rounds of damage comparable to UFO's plasma rifle, and it seriously beats the (unmodded) Heavy Gauss hands down stat for stat except for its aimed accuracy. I say it's cheap to build as you stop collecting them after a short while.

 

If you'd like a read of the analysis I (and several others) made on the sonic pistol vs. heavy gauss, read it on:

 

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=S..._vs_Heavy_Gauss

 

Check out the damage multipliers to see how bad gauss really fares. Still it has its uses, and its one redeeming feature, the automatic mode, is a great way to train your aquanauts' firing accuracy quickly, as this game bases firing accuracy experience improvements on the number of hits you land, not how quickly you can kill an alien. (hence, a great way to train later on once you have MC is to MC a lobsterman and unleash gauss pistol rounds into it - it won't feel a thing!)

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Ah, the damage modifiers really make Gauss weaponry undesirable on Superhuman (though not so bad on Beginner). Here's a slightly useless table showing the average damage modifier for each damage type.

 

Damage Type		Ave Modifier
Armor Piercing		  85%
Incendiary			  78%
High Explosive		  88%
Gauss				   79%
Sonic				   99%
Stun				   101%
Drill/Melee			115%
Electric Shock		  41%

Clearly, Sonic does (on average) nearly listed damage to every unit in the game whereas Gauss actually shows a reduction in damage of 20%. So that alone should sway most people to switch over to Sonic ASAP. Not only that, but the Gauss weapons are less powerful than the Sonic counterparts which makes them even less desirable. :(

 

If you can handle the stress of hand to hand combat, the drills have the highest average damage modifier in the game (especially against Lobstermen). Stunning is pretty darn good as well. :)

 

- Zombie

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