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[AzyWng]

What kind of weapons are you using to put enemies down?

If you really want to preserve the lives of people with guns who are shooting at you, you may want to employ weapons dedicated to this function. The base game has the stun prod and the small launcher. Both X-Com Files and X-Piratez have a number of items that can KO enemies, including a harpoon launcher with stun bolts, riot grenades, a "ninja stick", and punching (though note that it's possible to kill enemies if you inflict too much stun damage).

[amjh]

In X-Piratez, handle is available from the beginning, small, has a very low lethality and scales well with user stats.

[Rolan7]

Handles aren't bad but stun batons are stun-only, faster, and do comparable damage until strength gets high.  Armor is also 75% effective instead of 122% for handles.  Neither is *really* good against armor though, being low-damage, which is where cattle prods become useful despite their size and speed.  Prods are particularly useful for low-stat soldiers, as long as they have TU to use it.

The slaver's cane from research aqua-plastic stuff is basically a souped up handle and is pretty reliable.  Like the handle it is somewhat harmful, but not enough to worry about.  And heck, I think a bit of damage reduces the target's stun recovery.

Manacles and rope are useful to stack stun on downed targets, I guess, though they're usually harmless and count as "defeated" anyway.  If they get a ghost icon they're taking health damage per turn from overstun, but it's not a lot.

Hrm, I really should try Spiked Maces against armored targets.  They're half-and-half damage and stun, so risky, but they pierce *and* shred armor pretty well.  Slow, is all.

[notquitethere]

I've tended to not bother with the handles (maybe because they look pretty puny?)- rather using the stun rod, baseball bat and sometimes the bone club (of which I'm not surprised when things are killed).

[sluissa]

(X-Pirates) As long as I'm dealing with anyone squishy, I stock handles on anyone that has the extra strength to carry them. My higher ranking gals usually have cattle prods in their backpack slots. When you have over 100 TU you can get a lot of prod hits in with that flat 20 TU cost.

I don't TEND to carry too many stun batons, but there are usually a few scattered among low ranking gals and peasants simply because they're light and more reliable when you haven't trained up.

All that said, rifle butts are surprisingly effective. Ol' Carbines and Hunting rifles have captured me more than a few prisoners.

Also once you unlock them, hallucinogen grenades can be REALLY fun.

[AzyWng]

I've tended to not bother with the handles (maybe because they look pretty puny?)-

Pro tip for capturing: you do not want to hit your capture target over the head with a fuckoff big club.

bone club (of which I'm not surprised when things are killed).

Please refer to my previous tip.

Also, for ranged options, harpoon guns (which you can get from some Academy enemies) are pretty much the way to go.

[Sirus]

There are also rubber slugs for some shotguns that inflict stun damage. They fire like bullets, so you don't necessarily need to get up and close and personal with foes like with normal shells, and IIRC they're available for purchase on the Black Market much earlier than harpoon rounds. I don't know if harpoon rounds ever become available, come to think of it.

[Rolan7]

Huh yeah, it's just Contacts: Merchants which is very early on.  Looks like they can't be loaded into Military Shotguns, just Domestic and Police (I note this because I mostly kept the military brand around, as they're otherwise superior and share the 18x7 Shotgun Shells).

They're single rubber "slugs" instead of pellets, but shotguns still have pretty great accuracy at "short" ranges (14 tiles for aimed shots!).  My main concern is the damage, looks like a mere 20 (so 0-40) for 38% TU.  Not exactly penetrating armor, but it is an affordable and early ranged option.

And yeah, stun bolts aren't buyable.  I forget what medical tech unlocks them for manufacture, but harpoons kinda suck like most aquatic weapons.  Heavy slugthrowers being an exception, sorta, I forgot they were aquatic weapons for a while.

[notquitethere]

Recently had surprisingly good success rate knocking foes out with the barbarian shield. It has a better accuracy than a lot of melee weapons.

[Rince Wind]

I used night missions with my LockNaar against civilians to train them. The rubber slugs are great for that.

[Nelia Hawk]

in piratez it said something about "it changes background color for cold/hot climate" or so...  but how do i actualyl find out what it will be then?
i have a landed ufo and went over there in castaway armor and few turns later it showed its cold and all the people fell over over time

how would i have known its a cold area before starting that mission?

[sluissa]

If it's a purple marker, like the vanilla terrorism missions, then you can click on it again after the initial notification and I believe the button says something like "Huh?" and it'll give you mission details... for crash/landed ufos... not so sure... unless it's simply decided by the biome the ufo lands in.

[AzyWng]

Just as a side note: Castaway armor isn’t all that great, if I remember correctly.

While Tribal Clothing isn’t all that great for armor or storage, it comes in two forms for either hot or cold weather, so at least your gals won’t keel over as fast.

[sambojin]

Got an idea there might also be an indicator on the mission start screen. Like a snowflake or something for cold, and a few wavey lines and an arrow for hot (like a heatwave symbol). Much like the day/night symbols before you actually embark on a mission. So you can know if you have to turn around and pick up better/different armour.

Or, you know, just feed your gals heaps of grog. Works in Australia in summer as well as Russia in winter irl, and it works in Xpiratez too

If you've got an expedition in a base, it's also a good way of keeping crash sites up if you have to about-turn with your proper craft. The expedition still counts as a "vessel", and crash sites don't disappear if there's a vessel on the way, so you can keep them on the map indefinitely if you need to. Works for scripted missions as well I think, but not landed craft. Probably. Not sure about pogroms, but it might keep them going too.

"We're on our way! Like, next month or so! Just you wait!"

[sluissa]

Not actually true. I think having a craft on the way might keep them up longer than otherwise, but I do believe there is a maximum amount of time any given point of interest will stay alive... specifically to counteract the "just keep craft going towards it" to forever delay something.

Originally it might have worked that way(I used that tactic more than once on old school DOS vanilla x-com), I think that's a change made either in openxcom extended or in a mod file.