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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Down To Business


Trevelyan

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Well, where muties are considered, every piece of damage helps. If you're camping 8 guys on a small scout door, there's no reason not to kick things off with a prox grenade. I tend to put the grenade one step back and right from the door of small scouts though. Otherwise the blast tends to blow up the power source.

 

Anyway, the key to this game IMO is to use spotters and snipers well and try to spread out for maximum coverage in such a way that there are always at least one or two agents that can help another agent out in a bind and to never leave an agent exposed to more angles of attack than are necessary by using cover well. Most of the deaths my agents suffer have more to do with impatience than not knowing what to do. Sometimes, you just really don't want to have to check every square inch of that house.

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Oh, come on. The house isn't THAT big. And rookies always need the exercise. I'm willing to bet money that all your soldiers havn't maxed out on TUs yet.

 

As for the medium scouts, there are aliens who just WON'T come out. That's why I never camp a door for more than a couple turns.

 

I was facing some floaters in a medium scout on a jungle map. I had secured the outside and had my textbook 3-man cover on the door. I hit the "End turn button" FIFTY TIMES wating for them to come out so I can practice reaction shots. When I finally decided to go in, there were three of them still in there, minding their own business and watching TV on the navigation. :cussing:

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Just fifty? Nah, that's not enough. ;)

 

There aren't any aliens that spawn in the medium scout that'll camp forever. You may have to provide some incentive for them to leave - like moving a tank or a soldier up in line with the door. That always seems to get things moving again after a lull in combat.

 

- NKF

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True, but like I stated in another post, for the price of two sectiod corpses you can invade the UFO and wage war on YOUR time, not when the snakemen are done with their nap.

 

Snakeman soldier: Shouldn't we guard the UFO door at all?

Snakeman leader: Nah. Why bother? We still have another hundred or so turns until they get fed up with camping.

(Rookie walks in)

Snakeman leader: Crap.

(Rookie detonates self. Xcom wins)

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Oh, come on. The house isn't THAT big. And rookies always need the exercise. I'm willing to bet money that all your soldiers havn't maxed out on TUs yet.

 

 

Yet? Dude, in the last 10 years, I've probably played through this game like 300 times. I've played psisquad games, human tech only games, and solo agent games.

 

=b on the snakeman conversation. That was hilarious.

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But in any of them (With the exception of the solo agent games I suppose) did you manage to max out ALL your troops?

 

'Nuff said. There's always room for improvement.

 

Besides, barn-raiding is fun. Camping isn't. Ideally, you'd wanna blaster-bomb a structure apart, but if that isn't an option...

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If that's not an option, you blast them to smithereens with High Explosives. Ideally, no more than two. You cannot believe the sort of devestation that I like to leave behind in farm maps... well, I suppose you can.

 

I don't like to set up ambushes outside farms houses if I can help it. For UFOs, I'll gladly do so, if only so it gives me a free hand to sweep the countryside for stragglers without interruption.

 

I'm not really for the suicide bomber strategy. I don't like to intentionally cause the death of my soldiers if an alternative can be found. Besides, I don't want the squad-wide morale hit should the attempt fail (and believe me, it can fail quite frequently should you under estimate the aliens' capacity for reaction fire). Mind, you that doesn't stop me from having soldiers walk about with a primed high explosive. Nothing like immediate access to a primed grenade.

 

But, for what it's worth, here's how to get the most out of your suicide rookies. That is to say not in how you use them, but how you can squeeze just that little more out of them.

 

For all grenades, they only give the hit experience from the resulting explosion to the 'last' unit that threw the grenade. Not the last person to drop the grenade.

 

See, all grenades in the game remember as if they've been thrown by unit 0. Unit 0 is the soldier that starts on the equipment pile if you don't have HWPs. If you use HWPs, it'll be the first HWP that leaves the ship. This value changes every time a unit 'throws' a grenade. It is not given to a unit that drops the grenade. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Sure you do!

 

So, in order to arm your walking bomb, have the soldier you want to give the experience arm the high explosive of your choice. Throw it to the walking bomb and have ol' frag bait pick up the pack. Now when this soldier is murdered and the explosive goes off, the soldier that primed and threw the grenade will be credited for the kill.

 

A great way to give a hapless rookie who cannot hit the broad side of a barn some experience that'll increase firing accuracy.

 

Note, this same applies to soldiers that want to plant the explosives (such bombing an area with a flying hovering over ground zero and dropping high explosives). The last person to actually throw the explosive will be credited with the hits.

 

None of the above applies to proximity mines, by the way. As mentioned in another thread, proximity mines give hit experience to the unit that sets them off - not the one that sets it. This makes the proximity mine a lousy training weapon. It should therefore only be used as a means of surprising and softening up tough enemies and as an early warning system.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Shouldn't someone make some kind of patch the fix all these random inconsistancys in XCOM? Like prox-mine exp and how stun damage passes through some walls in UFOs and smoke passes through everything, and the downright stupidity in inc damage? And how you can shoot an alien in the face with a heavy plasma and have some possibility of it doing no damage?

 

Someone should really fix it. :/

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That's not really possible without recompiling the game.

 

Believe you me, should the source code of UFO ever got released to the public domain, I'll be amongst the first to dig into it and refactor the program code over and over until as many glaringly obvious bugs I can find are ironed and starched to my satisfaction. Or at least try to, anyway.

 

I highly doubt they'll ever release the source code, but you never know.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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...And that's why we should all be communists. But I digress... :OffTopic:

 

Another better setup for proxys:

    |
   |
   |
 P I P
   |
   |
   |

| = wall
I = door
P = prox

 

The idea here is that an enemy will have to walk through both to get through the door, although with most walls, the first explosion will open a huge hole in the wall so you won't have to. However it works very well in UFOs.

Edited by Dover
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...And that's why we should all be communists. But I digress... :OffTopic:

 

Another better setup for proxys:

    |
   |
   |
 P I P
   |
   |
   |

| = wall
I = door
P = prox

 

The idea here is that an enemy will have to walk through both to get through the door, although with most walls, the first explosion will open a huge hole in the wall so you won't have to. However it works very well in UFOs.

 

 

The prox on the far side of the door from the hostile will go off before the door gets opened, won't it? Thus shielding the bug?

 

wouldn't this be better?

 

inside |   outside
        |
     P I
        |P
        |

 

Of course, this assumes you can open the door without getting wasted...

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Nooo, your idea is worse. Proxys scan in all 8 compus directions, including diagonally.

 

In mine, both proxys are 1 tile away from the door.

 

I'll draw another diagram when I can.

 

 

Edit: As promised...

 

    |
   |
BBB|bbb
B2BDb1b      <-A
BBB|bbb
   |
   |

| = wall
D = door
1 = proxy 1
b = effective area 1
2 = proxy 2
B = effective area 2
A = alien
<- = Direction traveling

 

We're assuming that the alien wants to get through the door, but in order to even approch it (From either side), he has to go through a proxy.

 

This is particularly effective since to get through a UFO door the alien will have to go through BOTH, and assuming the door is close, there is no chance of one setting the other off.

 

There is one caveat, however. Using such a stratagy on less-reinforced doors and walls (Civilian homes, farm houses) will blow a huge hole in the wall, making it possible for the alien to go through without setting off the other (Although from personal experiance, they set it off anyway most of the time).

Edited by Dover
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