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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Multi-bomb And Stasis Bomb


Blehm 98

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are the Multi-bomb and Stasis bomb useful for anything other than attacking other organizations? I know the multi-bomb wipes out hoverbikes, but does it do anything against bigger ships or is it just plain worthless
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Well, for use against multiple probes and scouts, the multibombs are great. Although the same could be said about using a single bolter laser cannon, and you rarely get lots of probes or scouts together in the one area. No, the multibomb isn't all that useful outside of attacking other organizations. For use against larger ships, the multibombs can damage them, but they don't do too much damage - and having only 12 rounds doesn't help. The disrupter inversion missile is vastly more superior against single large ships. (It's more practical to just arm another medium disrupter - but we cannot dismiss the auto-homing ability of missiles)

 

The stasis bomb is great against UFOs that are trying to get away when they're attacking the city. Just freeze it in place and it becomes a sitting duck. Even if it's easy to hit such as the mothership, having it stuck in place allows more of your shots to hit it. There's no real reason to use it in the alien dimension, but it can be useful to freeze a ship or two to temporarily reduce the amount of attackers if you suddenly land in a very hot zone just as you're entering the AD.

 

Like the one-shot launchers, you have to tell your ships to manually switch the stasis bomb launcher on and off or else they'll just keep firing it at UFOs that are already in stasis, wasting each shot.

 

Between the two you've mentioned, the stasis bomb is the more useful of the two. The multi-bomb just doesn't quite cut it as UFOs don't cluster together very often.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Does the multi-bomb actually split? I've never seen it happen before, but I always avoided fighting the gangs and never saw it work on clustered UFOs.

 

I messed around extensively with the stasis bomb and found that it really didn't seem to help you avoid damage as having more guns put UFOs down a lot faster. With a large group of X-Com craft, it probably doesn't hurt but with only 2-4, I think it's a waste.

 

The alien missiles would have been a lot more interesting if they had ones for hovercars and their range wasn't so lousy.

Edited by Pherdnut
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Actually, I've never seen the multibombs split - graphic wise. It may just be implemented by way of having a larger explosion radius (i.e. hits every small target within range of its explosion point). I certainly know how nasty it is to go up against one. I lament for my poor hoverbikes! I've never successfully used it against the aliens in the way that it was intended.

 

Pherdnut: Have you checked the range on the disrupter inversion launcher? It's not too shabby. Although, yes, it would've been nice to have it come in a smaller size. I hate using a medium disrupter hardpoint, even for a weapon that loads 50 rockets. Would've done wonders as a 2x2 or a 1x4 rocket pod - for use on the Bio Trans or the Explorer.

 

Blehm: The only way to find out is to try it. I wager that you're better off with a inversion missile, or even a Retribution or Justice missile for building damage.

 

- NKF

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Well, here's my take on weapons as a whole.

 

Generally speaking, the best projectile weapons do more damage when you take ROF into account, do far less damage to buildings, and are much less costly if you have to pay for ammo. Even the lasers are superior to all the missile weapons you can start off with in these respects.

 

The only advantage of missile weapons AFAIK is that vehicles can maintain a constant stream of fire while evading. Since it's worthless to set anything larger than a hovercar on evasive (too big/slow to avoid shots), there is no benefit to putting missile weapons on those vehicles.

 

Once you hit week 2 and the first UFOs with medium disruptors start showing up, hovercars and bikes will start eating it fast if you don't set them on evasive. If they're equipped with guns, they're just not going to be able to fire often enough to do damage worth speaking of. My favorite weapon for cars on week 2 is Prophet missiles. While janitors have 3 times the ammo and do only slightly less damage, the extended range of prophets cranks up their survivability in a big way.

 

My weapon get upgraded as follows:

 

Week 1: Only probes and scouts to worry about. Cars and bikes can actually take a hit from these and the UFOs die quick so there is less time to get shot at. Everybody gets the best lasers possible. Janitors are less effective and give a nice boost to your starting cash if you sell them all. Rendors are overkill and it's not worth wasting the elerium.

 

Week 2: The first medium disruptors show up and UFOs take much longer to shoot down. Cars and bikes (I usually stick with cars) get Prophet missiles. If I kept the Valkyrie, it keeps the Bolter 7000s. Nice range/ROF for a gun and no ammo costs. The first Air Warriors get the plasma multisystem and autocannons.

 

Autocannons? Yes, autocannons. Look at the ROF and do the math. These things are roughly as powerful as Rendors but have a shorter range. The ammo is cheap, and you'll have a whole other week of extra elerium stockpiling for not using the Rendors so you have no elerium shortage worries when the first lineage cannons show up. Also, they do almost no damage to buildings. Plasma multis are fantastic weapons capable of nailing UFOs at a steady ROF even while your less maneuverable Air Warriors are turning to face them.

 

Week 3: You might see your first missile equipped UFOs. My Air Warriors keep the multisystem and upgrade to as many Lineage cannons as are available. I usually have plenty of elerium at this point and Medium Disruptors aren't far off so it's worth the range advantage to trade out the autocannons for Rendors. Valkyries are now pretty much a liability (can't take enough hits and can't evade to avoid dying) so I'll sell them even if there aren't any more Air Warriors available. Missile equipped UFOs are likely to show up soon so the cars and bikes are no longer safe evading from the max range of prophet missiles. I upgrade to Justice missiles. YES, Justice missiles really do fit on cars and bikes. They are smaller than Retributions. These missiles are only a one shot but can be fired from extreme ranges allowing your cars and bikes to fire from way outside of effective disruptor ranges and a dozen or so justice missiles plowing into a heavier armored UFO can really make the job a lot easier for your Air Warriors.

 

Note: In Superhuman and maybe hard difficulty, the buildings are much higher. I've generally found that it's not worth using the long range missiles at these settings since they only hit buildings half the time and aren't worth the liability. In Superhuman, I just sell all vehicles and upgrade my entire fleet to Air Warriors until I start getting new X-Com craft, which get a higher priority since I can't rely on the smaller vehicles to help out as much as they do in easier settings.

 

Other gear: All gun equipped vehicles get as many targetting systems as possible. Targetting doesn't seem to help missiles at all. While vehicles at 100% accuracy will still miss, their shots tend to go less off course on the vertical plane, which results in less property damage. Once I get shields, I try to keep accuracy at at least +75%. Cars don't get shields since they're perfectly safe firing from the other side of the city anyway.

 

I got sucked back into XCom 1 & 2 so haven't had a chance to give the evasion matrix a shot. People seem to really like it though. If it causes missiles to miss even when aircraft aren't evading, I could probably learn to love it too.

Edited by Pherdnut
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My take on missile weapons is that they are the ONLY weapons that automatically home in on their target. That's about it. The evasion matrix messes up the tracking slightly, and you can sometimes end up with the missile overshooting and may even spin around your vehicle a few times until it disappears in a puff of logic. I tend to leave a 2x2 slot open for one in my Annihilator fleet. It never hurts.

 

In general, I like to stick to bolters and lancers for starting weapons (and yes, those hoverbike miniguns are pretty awesome weapons to start with - they're not too strong so they're safe to use in the city and the rate of fire certainly brings them into their own), jump up to Lineage plasma cannons (the ammo consumption is a bit more efficient than that of a Rendor - but it's bloody expensive!), then move up to medium and heavy disrupters.

 

When I do use rockets, I generally stick to Janitor missiles only because I like to use them on swarms of hoverbikes, and Janitor rockets get sold in generous amounts. Nothing like a heap of homing rockets striking their target at the same time, even with their apalling range. Otherwise I prefer bolter lasers for hoverbike or hovercar as their general armament. That's not to say I don't mix in Prophet missiles as well.

 

The alien rockets are just playthings for the rich and bored. ;)

 

The plasma multisystem is a sweet weapon - but it doesn't hold enough ammunition for my tastes. It's one of the few weapons with an almost 360 degree firing arc. Ever see what a Retaliator can do with three of these? Amazing. The plasma defence guns has a 360 firing arc when you fire it manually, but it's too weak to do any damage against capital ship hulls - but simply rips up other human vehicles. It's not too shabby against enemy missiles either - but you absolutely must combine it with a jammer so that it can damage the missile sufficiently.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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The alien rockets are just playthings for the rich and bored. ;)

 

yes, i find myself constantly building inversion bombs, even with three advanced workshops working constantly building medium disrupters, shields and bombs

 

I've always gone the expensive way in the beginning, Rendor plasma guns and prophet missiles, the only problems are FASs which will kill anything but hawks in seconds.

 

although, my way kind of requires you to take some time, and in my game where i advanced way beyond what i should have by week three, i've had absolutely no senate funding for 8 weeks and i'm on week 13 :(

 

Also, i've been wondering how good the heavy disrupter is. Of course i put it on my annihilator just because i can, but is it really all that good, or is it just hyped up to make the annihilator look a lot better than the retaliator, because i've heard that retaliators with shields and medium disrupters are almost as good as annihilators...

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The large disrupter packs massive firepower. The only difference between it and two medium disrupters are the firing rate and the firing range.

 

Two medium disrupters can fire more frequently, but get half the range of a large disrupter. So, effectively, an annihilator with 1 large and 2 medium disrupters will have the firepower of 4 medium disrupters (80 + 40 * 2) .

 

- NKF

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Large disrupter will lose less % of their damage due to the target's armor. If data in Wong's FAQ is correct, the battleship's armor will take away 17 points of damage, that leaves 23 points for medium and 63 points for large disrupter, 63/23 = ~2.7
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Well, I've still never tried miniguns myself, or actually stocking up on Hawks.

I tend to stock up on hovercars and then upgrade them to retallitators.

As always, missiles are never used (yea, I've completely given up on missiles, even janitor and prophet ones).

 

An idea would be to actually use statis bombs, but I find mindless zerging more fun than activating and deactivating the firing mode of a single statis bomb (or two) on a vehicle.

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If you're using cars exclusively until Retaliators, I'd recommend giving prophets a shot. Guns work great in the first week, but the effective rate of fire is drastically reduced when you have to start having to evade more. Let me sum up that ridiculously long post I made about how I tech up my weapons.

 

Week 1

 

Cars and Valkyrie with bolters and lancers. The Valkyrie's speed is handy for chasing down UFOs and the extended range of the Lancers really helps a lot. The lasers have nice range and damage and have no ammo cost. You can easily shoot down all the UFOs in the first week with this setup.

 

Week 2

 

Cars and Air Warriors. Cars with prophets so they can evade m. disruptors and maintain fire. Air Warriors to act as damage cushions equipped with multibeam and autocannons to help conserve elerium until lineage shows up.

 

Week 3

 

Air Warriors exclusively in Superhuman and maybe one difficulty lower. Buildings are higher and long range missiles are too much of a liability. In lower difficulties Air Warriors with full plasma (lineage where possible or rendors on the side slots) and cars equipped with justice missiles. Once the alien missiles start showing up, cars are toast at close range. Better to use them from really far away as missile artillery.

 

If you like Retaliators, Air Warriors are a pretty close matchup if you look at the stats. The only signifigant difference, IMO is the side weapon slots and ability to go to the other dimension. IIRC, they aren't particularly faster or tougher than the Hawks.

Edited by Pherdnut
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Retaliators don't need fuel, so if you equip them with shields and med. disruptors they don't need to land ... ever. This can significantly reduce interception times. Also, for the price of one hawk you can produce 2-3 retaliators, IIRC one retaliator costs 35k.
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The Explorers are more of a match for Hawks, only with smaller upgrade module slots, faster speed and the interdimensional skipping. They're cheaper than Retaliators too. $22, 000, if I'm not mistaken, and sell for $44, 000.

 

I believe it's the smaller upgrade slots that turn most people off it. Having two less small disrupter shields doesn't inspire much confidence in it.

 

- NKF

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well, i've found that the explorer is better than the hawk, i still use both vehicles (don't take as long and aren't as expensive to build as annihilators) and they pack reasonable firepower. The only problem i've had so far is when there is a mothership/battleship/two bombers. I lost my first annihilator in that bloodbath, but at least i go large shields

 

oh yeah, what is the largest ship with small shields? Right now i only get escorts, bombers, battleships and motherships and i'm not sure exactly how to get small shields without cheating

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Right now i only get escorts, bombers, battleships and motherships and i'm not sure exactly how to get small shields without cheating

Well, if you have large shields you had to research small ones before, so ... manufacture them? At least that's what I do.

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i got large shields without getting small shields and i can build them fine

 

i got my score up really fast, and i'm wondring if not getting small shields was just another side effect of that

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If I'm not mistaken, large shields are only supposed to be available on the two capital ships and all the others use small shields.

 

What about fast attack ships? Are they still appearing? Or assault ships? Bombers? Escorts? You'll definitely get a Bomber to spawn every week and every so often you'll get Escorts. They're relatively low-levelled for UFOs, so you should get small shields off them.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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alright, i'll check and escort, last one i saw i accidentally killed, but i'm pretty sure the bombers have large shields
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If you know what the shields look like, you can see what ships should have what when you raid them. I thought even destroyers had large shields. I just assumed it was transports, fast attack, and whatever that big horizontal pooh looking thing is called (assault?) that have small shields.
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  • 5 months later...

Multi-bombs DO split, both visually and effectively. Not very often, but I have seen it.

If there are many targets packed tightly, a single multi-bomb sometimes becomes several bombs (I've seen three and more), which look exactly the same (but smaller, though I'm not 100% sure) and target independently.

I don't know how their damage is distributed among the pieces, but they remain very powerful against Hoverbikes/Hovercars.

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Multibomb splits if/when it misses its first target. In moment of missing it changes to 3 quite nimble warheads. If you are using crafts bigger than hovercars, they rarely miss that first strike and thus you don't see them split up.
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  • 5 years later...

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