I Got The Point: How To Avoid Return Fire.

[muxec]

When I played this game long ago I was too young to understand some tactical principles. (Oh, the game is 10 years old, half of my age ).

I thought that grenades are bad as short range slow rate of fire and only moderate damage. Once I thought that scouts are useless and all you need is firepower. I played a lot now and understood that I was wrong even without strategy guides. Your main objective in combat is avoiding enemy autofire. It's even more important when you face tough aliens like lobstermen triscenes or xarqs. Suppose you have a triscene at the end of very long corridor. It's day, you see him when he spots you. So you advance and see him. If you move now you will suffer as his reactions are excellent. You have a sharpshoter ob the second end of the corridor. Your scout steps back, and Alien already can not see him and your sharpshoter can fire at already spotted enemy. Scout-sharpshoter specialization is also important on UFO recovery missions, when you have Magnetic-Ion-Armor scouts are even more important as sharpshooters can target almost any surface point.

 

Grenades also help in avoiding fire from aliens with good reactions. Aproach this nasty triscene from his back (use obstacles) throw grenade and run to cover. Even magna grenades are very strong, pulsers are devastating. Also pulsers are much easier to handle and construct, than alien torpedoes.

[[NKF]]

That's the good old scout and sniper fire team. Like the saying goes, they cannot shoot you if they cannot see you.

 

To understand reaction fire you have to know how it works.

 

See, your reaction stat is influenced by the percentage of your remaining TUs. Say you have 50% left, then your reaction score is really only 50% what you see in the stat screen.

 

It works defensively and offensively. Offensive reactions are the good old reaction shots. The defensive use of reactions are used passively and works by stopping enemies from being able to use offensive reactions. In a nutshell, it's really just a comparison of your remaining reactions and the alien's reactions. So as long as you have higher reactions, you'll not suffer from reaction fire.

 

Reaction shots also only happen if the unit that's going to use reaction fire can see the enemy, has enough TUs to make a shot, and has a much higher reaction score than the target. Or if it cannot see the enemy target it can be alerted to the target's presence if the target makes a ranged attack on it and fails.

 

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Which brings me to the wonderful world of M.C.Readers. Use it, study the stats of your enemies and you can go a long way. If you're going to use tazers or the drills, have someone use an M.C. Reader (preferably give this task to one of your reserves that's hiding in the safety of the Triton) and scan the enemy. Look at the TUs. Often you'll be able to easily tell whether or not it's safe to attack the enemy.

 

An enemy unit needs 50% of its TUs to use a snapshot with a sonic cannon, 40% for a blasta-rifle and 30% for a sonic pistol. As there are no auto-shots with the three main handheld sonic weapons - aliens in TFTD only ever use snapshots for reactions (except the Deep-Ones - they've got auto-fire. Not sure about biodrones, Triscene or Xarquids).

 

Apart from studying its TUs and reaction level, take time to have a look at its other stats such as armour. .

 

I know the M.C.-reader isn't as grand as the M.C.Disrupter, and is slower, but it doesn't need any M.C.-Skill to use, and always works. But if you've already got the M.C.-Disrupter, you never need worry about reactions ever again - let it happen to other people, preferably the people with the tentacle beards.

 

- NKF

[muxec]

Also grenades are great against tentacs hiding in pyramids. Throw it, than go to lift, go up and throw and so on.