Terrifying Terror Site

[MajorPain]

After several games of being a save-a-holic sissy, I've finally decided to do an iron man game of Veteran - not a big deal for any of you, but for me it is :/. On January 20th, just as laser rifle was finishing on research, a terror site popped up in Brazil, quite a trip from my Europe base. Without hesitation I sent out the Skyranger, full of rookies and the occasional squaddie. To my horror, there were two enemies right outside my ship upon landing, and - you guessed it - they were both cyberdiscs . Even worse, I forgot to bring smoke grenades to give me any chance of living. Every single move I made triggered a 3-shot burst from these beasts, and with only standard grenades and rifles my squad fell within a few turns. This was greatly facilitated by the arrival of a third cyberdisc at my Skyranger exit. Had I brought smoke, could I have survived this ordeal? Or was it just a case of bad luck and bad timing?

[[NKF]]

Sounds like bad luck, but it happens. Treat it as a learning experience.

 

Smoke might have helped against enemies off in the mid distance. Those right up close as these were need a more direct treatment. I recommend having a few Large Rockets or High Explosives ready at the lip of the Skyranger. Just leave them on the equipment pile - or arm them on the first two soldiers in the list. One good hit with the rocket or high explosive and the Cyberdisc, even on Superhuman, would've gone down.

 

Do not hesitate to use heavy artillary like the rockets and high explosives at a terror site.

 

- NKF

Edited August 16, 2007 by NKF

[Robo Dojo 58]

No squad is complete without a complement of heavy weapons guys. I recommend following the philosophy that you should ALWAYS use high ex UNLESS it's a bad time. High explosives have several advantages over conventional firearms, including:

 

- It leaves smoke which can immediately stop reaction fire. No sight, no shot.

- The damage range leaves a more reliable injury, which hinders reaction fire.

- X-COM has many many close shots, like missing by a few tiles. Explosions will connect for those shots. Aliens near a wall can not be missed!

- Explosions blow up around corners.

- Explosions remove walls and cover. Flatten the map, and your sniper worries are gone!

- Direct hits use the underside armor, which is the weakest armor point for units. So even though an explosion does less damage than heavier rifles, it is defended less as well.

- Large units take 4 hits from explosions. So even a reaver, with over 140health, can be taken down with one ~50 damage grenade.

- It will attack multiple aliens at once. A large rocket can clear a small scout UFO in one shot.

 

And last but most importantly:

- High explosive rockets work on everything! Even the mighty superhuman sectopod can be taken down with a few lucky hits.

 

So deck out those rocket rookies, and use kneeling AIMED shots for the best results. Any shot over 70% won't miss by more than a tile or two to the side. I also prefer the more precision based heavy cannon over the autocannon(Edit: Use HI-Ex!). On easy it will 1-shot most anything you come across, its power makes it pretty much a grenade launcher.

 

Yes, explosions will hurt your guys too. The heavy cannon is mostly harmless for units in personal armor, and takes effort to injure someone in power armor. The heavy rocket needs only a few tiles of breathing room in personal armor, and will be safe nearly point blank in power armor. Just don't hit adjacent or behind your armored units, it's bad

Edited August 16, 2007 by Robo Dojo 58

[MajorPain]

Thanks for the advice guys, since I haven't been using a lot of these strategies.

 

In regards to NKF, I always used to bring just enough equipment for every soldier to have a weapon and at least one grenade, but now I can see the strategic importance of having extra (powerful) equipment up at the front in case of a situation like the one I described. Perhaps next time, those cyberdiscs are in for a surprise of their own in the form of a large rocket or two.

 

And as for you Robo, in the past, I only equipped one or two men at MOST with explosive weapons, but I can see your point. That's a lot of positive side effects in addition to an almost guaranteed kill! I never knew about the underside armor or the large unit aspect of explosives. Rookies in general piss me off anyway, so even if I lose a few men in the process of nuking the map, I can sell a heavy plasma and buy four more! I just can't wait for blaster bombs...

[[NKF]]

The beauty of the high explosive also allows it to mix well with rookies, who frankly aren't always capable of precision attacks right off the bat. Granted, if their strength levels are low, they'll not be able to throw the high explosive very far. It's twice as heavy and thus requires twice as much strength to throw than a normal grenade. My magic number of throwing high explosives has always been 40 and above. That gives you a fairly reasonable throwing range. Anything under that may give you some trouble, but shouldn't stop you from trying.

 

Also one thing to remember: Planting high explosives (or any grenade) confers experience in a very weird way. It will only give it to the very last person to throw the explosive, or if you've never thrown it ever, it'll be the very first unit off the Skyranger. This is always a tank if you've got one, or the person who starts on the equipment pile.

 

I mention this because you may end up using the high explosives as proper explosive charges than as oversized grenades due to their weight. Just a bit of sloppy programming that can be used in a rather unusual way of passing experience on to someone else.

 

---

 

By the way, brand new rookies with the rocket launcher should kneel and stick to aimed shots. That +15% kneeling bonus and the 115% aimed bonus translate to a 132% boost to the soldier's base accuracy. A soldier with 62 accuracy would end up with an 81% accurate shot. That's a very generous improvment, and a few good hits will set the soldier on his or her path to becoming a very useful soldier indeed.

 

One tip: You're going to definitely be using the large rockets. There's no better rocket (besides the fusion balls, obviously!). However they can be heavy for rookies, which could very well encumber them. If you set the rookies in a sniping position, consider dropping all the rockets on the ground, as reloading them into the rocket launcher costs the same from any location. Alternately have someone act as a pack mule for the rockets to distribute the load. Toss over rockets as necessary and take care of the rocket soldier in any dire situation.

 

- NKF

[MajorPain]

I've actually been using the rocket-tossing tactic, something I picked up from reading previous posts of yours. I always keep one soldier in the Skyranger in case the situation deteriorates quickly and I need to abort, so I use that guy to throw the rockets out to the soldier with the launcher out on the field. Also, I edited the high explosive pack to the xcomutil strength. Although I feel as though I'm cheating, I can't argue with the ability to punch through UFO walls with ease and make my own entrance so early in the game.

[[NKF]]

Fair enough, but it's still a potent weapon without the modification. You just have to live without the ability to breach walls until you get the blasters. The wall breaching is part of what makes the blaster bombs so special.

 

Don't worry about it. Take a few steps at a time. You can always switch back to the plain vanilla explosives later on and see how you fare with them just to up the challenge a bit.

 

- NKF

[MajorPain]

Wow, another one, but this time I came with high explosives .

 

 

 

 

 

Wahahahaha ROFL.

[Zombie]

Man, I would have aborted that mission even with HE packs due to all the Cyberdiscs in close proximity to your landing craft. But the HE packs certainly made short work of them. Good job! ROFL

 

- Zombie

[SaintD]

Wow, another one, but this time I came with high explosives .

 

 

 

 

 

Wahahahaha ROFL.

 

Did you do all that damage with 1 HE pack? Note to alien commanders: Self Destructing Units shouldn't clump together.

[Warface]

Man, I would have aborted that mission even with HE packs due to all the Cyberdiscs in close proximity to your landing craft. But the HE packs certainly made short work of them. Good job! ROFL

 

- Zombie

 

"The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster."

 

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Edited August 29, 2007 by Warface

[gufu]

Do you have a save of that?

[Sangrahl]

Did you do all that damage with 1 HE pack? Note to alien commanders: Self Destructing Units shouldn't clump together.

Actually, 2 well-placed HE charges. It really reminds me of an old 'return to Vietnam' movie called Uncommon Valor... namely training on the use of explosives used in series against a predictable enemy. (Wow... that was a flashback... haven't seen that movie in at least 10 years.)

 

Nice job clearing them out, Major. I hope the collateral damages weren't too high for that much destruction. (only thing worse than having a Civie die, is having to eat the score when it was due to a blown Tin-can's deadman switch)

[Hidden Sniper]

hmmmm i budget high barely using alot of equipment but now i have a high disregard for Civilians i was talking to my friend and told him civies was costing me rookies and he said if you must bleed make everyone bleed soooooo i figured large number of dead civies with small number to no dead soldier equals a ok rating wich turned excellent at the end of month

[EtherImp]

In a situation like that where you're trapped in your skyranger and there's 2-3 units outside taking potshots at you with reaction fire I find playing extremely aggressive in round 1-2 can often turn the tide.

[Munkeh]

Indeed.

I'm in the habit of playing slow-research games where I'll frequently be using basic kit against mutons and the like, and the hi-explosives are invaluable.

On top of the tank, grenades, rocket launcher, 2 autocannons and a hvy cannon, I always try to have at least 4 or 5 explosive charges to toss around.

Even then it's frequent to end up out of ammo.

 

Just now I took on a muton battleship, which after the initial rush for cover (two buildings which made excellent snipers nests until being mostly dusted by a stray BB) ended up being a drawn out 30-turn siege, which by the time of the mutons final charge (consisting of about 6 wounded muties, mostly unarmed, rushing my position) saw most of my men down to sidearms. I'll just say that demolition packs are always worth having around.

Even if I'd had lasers, with such a tight group of enemies, all that smoke, and at night......well, you can't rule out the chance of a blaster-launcher being in there somewhere. Better to just nuke the entire area and be certain.

 

Anyway. Imp is right. In situations like that you're better to just lay smoke and push forward as quiick as you can. Give the enemy more than a couple of turns' luxury to respond and you'll likely find yourself pinned.

 

Funny thing is....on this last mission, even though I was pinging lots of rounds off the mutons armour, largely to little effect, I'm sure I still saw them backing off a few times. It's not the first time I thought I'd seen this, but usually they die to quickly to be sure.

I thought the AI was too basic to be intimidated. If not, it makes Imps point even more pertininent.

 

Edit:

In fact, on the mission previous, a muton harvester, I had 3 or 4 muties pinned in the leftmost 2nd floor gravshaft by a heavy weapons team taking cover in the bottom leftmost corner. At the time I couldn't remember the floorplan perfectly, so imagine my surprise when they apparently ducked into the gravshaft, went up to the bridge, across, down the other gravshaft, and dropped through the central hole to escape the ship via the first floor entrance!

Fortunately I had my tank parked outside, and had a man hidden in the far corner with a few grenades.....but, bloody heck, I never thought the pathfinding was so....sneaky!

Edited May 30, 2008 by Munkeh