Proximity Bombs

[Dogar]

Hello all, I'm new to X-com I was wondering if anyone here would be able to give me any info on how to use proximity bombs effectively? I absolutely love the concept of them, but I'm not too sure on how as to what situations they are best applied to. I've tried putting them in front of UFO's and waiting for an alien baddie to blow them up, but this rarely happens, I've tried using them in other situations as well but usually to no effect. I really want to make use of these cool little things.

[[NKF]]

Well, you must first understand the proximity mine in every inch and detail. Well, you just have to understand it well.

 

First of all, the proximity mine only detects movement within a 9 tile area. In other words, the tile its on and all the 8 surrounding tiles. So any units walking into these tiles will set it off.

 

Note that units flying or dropping into these tiles or walking away from the trigger tiles will not set it off. And no, the proximity mine does not detect movement above or below it.

 

If you're standing on top of an armed proximity mine, you can safely pick it up and reposition it.

 

The proximity grenade has one very nasty flaw that you must be aware of. It does not give any experience to the user. Instead, it gives experience to the person stepping on the mine - if they survive. Therefore, you'll want to use mines sparingly and only in a crippling capacity.

 

Now, for actually using them.

 

For mining UFO doors, always place it 1 tile away from the door or else the alien will walk up to the door and set the mine off while the door is still closed. This ends up wasting your mine. Also be very patient when mining a door, as not all the aliens will move out straight away.

 

If you see an alien out in the open, you can sometimes throw an armed proximity mine directly at it and rush off to safety. If the alien moves, it'll hurt itself. This is quite an excellent strategy to use against large terror units like the cyberdiscs when you don't have enough initial firepower to take them down. Be aware that for large terror units that the quarter of the unit that triggers mines will be the top-most quarter on your screen. All remaining 3 quarters will not trigger the mine.

 

Mines are also great as early-warning systems if you think the aliens will double back on you, or when you're caught in the middle and are not sure where the aliens will be coming from. For example, in a snakeman attack on your base, you want to sometimes mine some of the rear passages so that chryssalids don't sneak up on you from behind while you're dealing with the main force coming through the hangars or access lift. Note, the aliens AI doesn't really 'sneak up' from behind on purpose - it just happens that way. You can do the same when you're out in the field - only the aliens have more room to avoid them.

 

Speaking of mining your bases in general, it's sometimes a good idea to mine any choke-points the separates the hangars and access lift from the rest of your base. As the aliens will have to go through them to get to your soldiers, it's often a good way to soften up a few aliens.

 

Oh, one major tip: Remember where you place your mines. Nothing like losing one of your best soldiers by accidentally walking on your own trap.

 

-------

 

If you're using the collectors edition of UFO, be aware that there's one serious flaw with using proximity grenades. If you don't spend all of the ones you armed by the time you finish the mission, there's a very high chance that a random object in the next mission will be tagged as an 'armed proximity mine'. This means that a random object on the field will behave exactly like an armed proximity mine, but the blast power will depend on the damage type and damage strength of said object. Most of the time it's safe enough, but at other times you might just be a large rocket.

 

There area few simple ways to avoid this.

 

1. Use up all your proximity mines where possible.

2. Save in the Geoscape, exit the game, restart it, then reload. This works very well.

3. If you're using XComutil and its split executables, you should be fine. The game automatically exits when it switches between the Geoscape and battlescape.

 

- NKF

[Dover]

Also, don't try using proximity mines on Mutons, Ethereals, or Sectopods. Mutons have too much life, Ethereals have too much armor and can fly over, and Superhuman Sectopods won't even be scratched.

[Zombie]

Ethereals don't have that much armor. In fact, all Superhuman Ethereals can be killed by a Proxy Mine explosion. Not only that, but Ethereals aren't smart enough to recognize that they can even fly half the time. Proxies work, you just need time and a little luck. That's my rant at least.

 

- Zombie

[Dover]

I thought superhuman Ethereals had something around 30-35 armor. A proximity mine deals...50 damage? It's been a while since I've used one. That means there's a chance that the ethereal will walk away with not even a scratch on it.

[[NKF]]

It's 70. With the 50 - 150% damage multipliers, that's 35 - 105 damage.

 

- NKF

[Dover]

Fair enough. I'm wrong. Use them on Ethereals, but they're not so great on Mutons, and Sectopods will just run over them and laugh at you.

[golem]

It's 70. With the 50 - 150% damage multipliers, that's 35 - 105 damage.

 

- NKF

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

So a good new weapon to develop would be a plasma-bomb?

[Patrick1994]

ive experimneted with PROXIE AND HEAVY EXPLOSIVES

 

1 proxie with 2 he bombs

and makes a big bomb

 

ive used it to try and breach ufo but it never works can he blow open ufo walls i know blaster bombs can

[Zombie]

High Explosives do not have enough power (110) to open up the hull of a UFO. Neither does the Hovertank/Launcher's Fusion Bomb (140). The only thing capable of this feat is the Blaster Bomb (200). Even then it can barely breach the hull and opens it up one tile wide. :wink1:

 

- Zombie

[Snakeman]

The proximity grenade has one very nasty flaw that you must be aware of. It does not give any experience to the user. Instead, it gives experience to the person stepping on the mine - if they survive. Therefore, you'll want to use mines sparingly and only in a crippling capacity

 

I always knew that using other grenades meant that the experience went to the guy arming it (right?), but I didn't know this about the proximity grenade. So does this mean that you could not only reaction train troops with pistols as the most efficient way to do this - but also have them walk on planted proximity grenades?

 

If true, I pity the next time I train up some rookies. Looks like they'll have a lot of hospital downtime between sessions

[[NKF]]

A slow and completely unpredictable way of training them, I'm sure.

 

Patrick1994: I'm sorry to say that stacking explosives doesn't quite work. Explosives have such weak hit-points that they get completely destroyed by other explosions, and do not go off.

 

They fixed this problem in TFTD, but all this resulted in was explosives that are invulnerable to the same or weaker explosives - and will only explode when armed.

 

- NKF