Disruptor Bomb Launcher, What A Waste...

[komninosm]

Equip my ships with it? NO!

I just remembered why I never used it before, when I had bought Apocalypse when it was new.

It takes 4000 workhours to produce a single bomb for it (not to mention 8000 for the launcher, but at least you can get that for free). That's a grand total of about 5 bombs in exchange for a medium disruptor. You don't even get to recover bombs when you capture UFOs. It's freakin weak! It's not even a better weapon than medium disruptors anyway. Not even against the heaviest armoured UFOs which subtract like 20 damage per shot that hits them (just do the math, RoF is like 1/5th!). It is the same size too, 3x2. Perhaps if it was 4x1 (or even 3x1) it would be interesting, but still worthless because the ammo takes way too long to build. I mean instead of building a Retaliator and arming it with (the 96 required) disruptor bombs (that you also build) you can build like 3 of them armed with medium disruptors that will last you much longer.

 

Sorry I just had to vent my frustration guys...

Edited July 15, 2006 by komninosm

[[NKF]]

The disrupter inversion bomb's main gimmick is its 50 ammo magazine (and as you said, it takes a while to produce this ammo), and being a missile, it homes in on its target.

 

The only real way to have a healthy supply of inversion bombs is to have a large factory, or more, pumping them out 24/7. I find my workshops have a lot of down-time once I've amassed a sizeable personal shield and ship shield collection, so this is a good excuse to get them working on the inversion bombs. By then, I'm only building them for fun. They're actually quite good when used in twos or even threes. But 50x3 rounds do run out very quickly if not supported by disrupters.

 

To be fair, the inversion bombs are considerably more useful than the multi-bomb launcher. That abomination was designed for only one purpose: to destroy hoverbikes and hovercars. It's not all that great against the other UFOs - although it does knock out the pathetically easy-to-shoot-down probes and scout UFOs easily. I suppose it might work if you're attacking the city - but again, there are better weapons available. Its 12 round magazine really ruins it as well.

 

Although, like you, I'd generally go for a medium disrupter any day. It's much more reliable.

 

- NKF

Edited July 15, 2006 by NKF

[komninosm]

Actually it's a 32 ammo magazine.

And building the 100 required to arm a Retaliator takes up like 400,000 workhours. A medium disruptor needs only 20,000. You can build like 20 of them in the same time!

And the homing is nice, but missiles tend to do a lot of damage in the city because of it. Your ship gets a line of sight, fires a missile, the UFO moves, the missile tracks it, a building is now in the way, hello hostile org. Not to mention how slow missiles can be.

And the rate of fire is 0.4 compared to 2.1 shots per second. Damage is 98 to 40, but even the heavier armoured UFOs only subtract 20 damage max so it's not enough to make bombs useful. If there were some that subtracted like 35 damage perhaps, but then the heavy disruptor will still rule it at 80 damage, 1.8 RoF and only 35,000 workhours. But at least that one requires more weapon space, only 1 per Annihilator.

 

I think 400 workhours instead of 4000 would be more realistic. The other alien launchers are useful. The stasis is pretty good in some cases. The multi-bomb is not very useful against the aliens, but so is the brainsucker launcher, and the entropy launcher is only useful in some cases. It doesn't have to be useful against them, just useful against something! Multi bombs are useful against you and other orgs! Disruptor bombs are not usefull at all

Edited July 15, 2006 by komninosm

[[Blehm 98]]

personally i always use disrupter bombs, its always just fun to have a very powerful missile, i do think it takes too long to build, but i don't care, i just always want a missile to put on. generally its only 1 per ship at the most, and some ships don't have any

[[NKF]]

I hate to pick on a minor detail but the inversion bombs are useful. Against your ships. The aliens can use them to quite some degree of efficiency.

 

I hate it when I slip up and get my ships swarmed, and the one of the UFOs manage to catch one of my ships off guard and destroys the last of its shields with an inversion missile.

 

One other thing in their favour is the amount of hit-points the disrupter inversion missiles seem to have. I've watched my plasma defence turrets hit them spot on several times, but they appear to take a lot more hits to shoot down than when you're being attacked by more conventional janitor missiles fired by enemy ships. Or perhaps this is just an illusion? Ah well.

 

Speaking of the entropy laucher: The only time the entropy launcher isn't useful is when you want to gather equipment and when you're fighting unarmed aliens like multiworms and spitters - not counting the impact damage.

 

- NKF

[[Blehm 98]]

yeah, later on you mostly face anthropods and skeletoids so entropy launchers are excellent

and they're great fun, especially against rentacops

[Aiki-Knight]

Can the plasma defence turrets actually shoot down incoming enemy missiles? I didn't realise that was possible. Can anyone confirm for me?

[Steelion]

Well, seeing as how thats what the're designed to do, I would imagine so. I never use em. Or missiles, of any kind for that matter. The only time I do use them is during the transport/fast attack phase.

[[NKF]]

I've seen it happen a few times when I used the plama defence guns in conjunction with the missile jammer.

 

In most cases, the missile will overshoot its target and start to circle the ship (stationary ship). The defence guns will continue to fire on the missile until it blows up.

 

Normally the missile will be able to make several rotations before it fizzles or manages to hit its target.

 

Because of this, I generally have a missile jammer Annihilator with two or three plasma defence guns tossed into my large armada of ships. It's not necessary, but it certainly adds a bit of spice.

 

- NKF

[komninosm]

Yeah, I use a few janitors/prophets when those 2 fast attack ships and 2 transport ships first appear. It's all you can do to dent their armour at that stage. I've even tried 1-shot missiles to minor effect. They don't seem to do full damage, but their range is good enough. You have to micro carefully though. Remember the enemy troop carriers are slow and when the enemy escorts reach them they slow down too. Don't bother chasing them with your slow fleet. Go for where the aliens plan to unload instead.

 

The missile jammer works for the whole fleet or for 1 ship alone? Do additional jammers on the same ship count? What does ship cloak do other than make the ship harder to be hit (imagine a cloak on a hoverbike!)? Do plasma defenses fire only on missiles targeting the ship that has them or all enemy missiles in vicinity/range, regardless of their target?

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

For cloaking device:

I'm not using them on my ships, but for UFO's I can say for sure - they DO decrease your accuracy a lot - missiles or beams, no matter. It looks pretty silly: if the alien ship is shooting (cloak disabled), all fire from your fleet is closing on the target in a triangle-shape. While UFO is cloaked, your fire, on the controrary, spreads anywhere but the target.

I'm not 100% sure, but I beleive, cloak helps to protect only the cloaked ship, but not the others.

Inversion Bombs do have the advantage that they rarely miss and thus make much less damage to the city, but it doesn't help other weapons to be more effective. I'd rather use stasis rockets - they don't do any damage, but greatly increase Disruptor beam accuracy by preventing targets from escaping beam shots. And as a bonus - you get much less return fire this way. Just take one stasis launcher or two for all your ships and manually start/stop the fire.

[Robo Dojo 58]

From the looks of it, craft loot was never fully implemented in Apocalypse. Ever noticed that you don't ever capture any actual UFO power sources, navigation, or propulsion? You simply unlock the topics at the research base from the first thing you capture. You can see missiles/craft ammo in UFO missions and weapons factories, but you can never loot them. I imagine that these were supposed to be a sort of "loot tile", sort of like how alien alloy walls work in X-COM. But it was never fully realized, probably due to how the objects were often 2-3 levels tall.

 

If disrupter bombs could be looted from craft, then they would definately be a great weapon to use.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Yes, craft assault is not nearly as satisfying as in UFO:EU. The few reasons to attack an UFO rather than a building are that aliens won't escape, you don't have a hedache of not using explosives and UFO mission is usually faster than in a building. But no extra loot.

No more trophies from a single battle worth twice your normal monthly funding. One capturedBattleship used to mean massive base costruction, scientists/engineer hiring or any other serious actions you couldn't afford before. In Apocalypse goodies from one big UFO don't even mean you can buy a single Interceptor.

And also, when you see somebody's building attacked and the armada rising from the hangars, you can't beleive these guys really need your protection from aliens with your pitiful Valkyrie, several Hovercars and a Hawk, if you're rich enough. As well as hard to beleive a crew of Alien Scout can threaten a Diablo building with twenty gangsters armed to teeth with plasma guns and heavy launchers.

[[NKF]]

True about the UFOs.

 

The only thing you do gather from Apocalypse UFOs would be a set amount of items, like 1 craft weapon and one shield when they become available (small on most ships, large on the capital ships). So the only real reason to assault them (apart from the need to get 1 sample of the UFO itself) would be to get free craft weapons and shields. You also get free gadgets like the cloaks or the laughable craft teleportation device that often takes you out of the fire and into the deep freezer.

 

Not that you cannot build these yourself. It's just a way to gather a few freebies from the UFOs while your production team works on other more important mass-production tech, like personal disrupter shields or toxigun ammo.

 

- NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

And even worse is that you can't sell anything until it's researched.

I always used to think in X-Com 1/2 the player was getting way too much money from selling trophies. That's not really fair you can sell corpses and useless stuff like Entertainment, Surgery, Food, etc. and at pretty good prices.

X-Com:Apocalypse has made an attempt to balance the money question, but failed. IMO, X-Com: Apocalypse is way too tight on money, unless you raid like crazy. You don't get much reward from your "normal" activity like fighting aliens. In the beginning you fight Multiworms, Hyperworms, Anthropods, etc., put an effort and time into battle, but get one 200$ Brainsucker Launcher as a "hard way earned reward". I think, there just have to be some more positive effects of battles, than that. Organizations could pay some money for clearing buildings or, at least improve their relations with you. That would be reasonable.

But instead - guys from Transtellar and Marsec come to you and say: "You're such a heartless bastard to shoot UFO's with those poor aliens. By the way, you owe us $60 000.". This "feature" just pisses me off. I'm not a fan of raiding much, and now playing a game, where I've decided to be "good and honest", which means I don't raid and try to maintain good relations with all "legal" oqranizations (neither the Cult nor gangs).

But you're penaltized in any way or another for EVERYTHING, but truly rewarded for nothing.

My next game concept will probably be "raid on demand".

Edited September 8, 2006 by Bullet-Tooth Tony

[anaglyph]

^Yeah, some of the arbitrariness of this game gets quite frustrating. Introducing challenge through methods that don't make sense is not a good idea.

[Robo Dojo 58]

I only found funding to be a problem on the first week in Apoc. You want to do everything at once, you want a fleet, more bases, packed supplies, the city starts off pre-infested, and there is only so much money to do stuff with. That first week of senate funding is a godsend.

 

Don't pay a dime to make organisations happy. The raiding risk is so low, and their hostile fleets aren't really a problem. Only megapol, marsec, and the senate really have to be happy, and you can do that by shooting up some slum scum.

[Aiki-Knight]

I only found funding to be a problem on the first week in Apoc. You want to do everything at once, you want a fleet, more bases, packed supplies, the city starts off pre-infested, and there is only so much money to do stuff with. That first week of senate funding is a godsend.

 

Don't pay a dime to make organisations happy. The raiding risk is so low, and their hostile fleets aren't really a problem. Only megapol, marsec, and the senate really have to be happy, and you can do that by shooting up some slum scum.

 

"Slum scum" are regular, poor citizens, right? I mean, when you knock down a slum, aren't you killing all the people who live there?

 

In Germany, when the army damages civilian property during military maneuvers, the military/government pays for the damage. So, if I have booming $$$, I'll pay orgs when I accidentally knock down their buildings. Of course, not the criminal syndicates or the Cult. Those guys can kiss my [....].