Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Arcvasti]

Blaster launchers are all fun and games until an Ethereal mind controls one of your troopers wielding one while almost everyone's still inside the transport. That's the most hilarious TPK I've yet run into.

[GiglameshDespair]

Blaster launchers are all fun and games until an Ethereal mind controls one of your troopers wielding one while almost everyone's still inside the transport. That's the most hilarious TPK I've yet run into.

My first TFTD enemy base attack, one of my guys with a HE-round gas cannon immediately got mind controlled and fired two shots, killing all but himself.

All I saw was a jellyfish.

[sambojin]

Xcom training 101, section 3: Bravery.
-------

You know those four unarmoured rookies you brought along just to fill up the transport? Well.....

Kill all the aliens bar 1-2 first. Then get your 4 rookies to stand near a wall, all nice and close together. Everyone else should be in smoke and be disarmed. It's a grisly sight what happens next.

One rookie should then fire a rocket at the wall, killing them all instantly. Then all your troops should run around for a few turns yelling "Oh the humanity", looking panicked or berserk, as though you don't do this every mission. A few won't though run around though. This makes them braver.

We don't know why.

You can finish the mission normally after this point. Reward your more apathetic soldiers with some nice new gear if you want.
-------

Yep, passing morale checks trains bravery. So force one on all your troops by nuking rookies every mission. 4 rookies and one rocket only costs $160,900, so every mind probe sold gets you about two missions worth of bravery training for the other 10 troops. You might get some bravery training unintentionally by having accidental casualties, but this way is far more reliable. That's science for you. Weed out the weak to make the others stronger.

In theory you could nuke less than four at a time, but once people start to get really brave, sometimes that's what it takes. It'll take a fair few turns for your soldiers to stop wigging out, but whatever. Four at a time is funnier too

It's right up there with pet murder and baby shields of dwarf fortress in ways of making people "better" at what they do.

Being a rookie REALLY sucks in Xcom.

[MarcAFK]

Nuke the rookies so your legendary troops don't care about anything anymore.
I should have expected as much in the dwarf fortress forums, but I'm surprised the strategy actually works.

[miauw62]

Is there a decent guide to xcom somewhere? I'm always baffled by the stuff that everybody seems to do and which seems to work really well but which I'd never come up with by myself.

[Bakuryu]

Is there a decent guide to xcom somewhere? I'm always baffled by the stuff that everybody seems to do and which seems to work really well but which I'd never come up with by myself.

The wiki, try starting with this: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Starting_Your_Shadowy_Paramilitary_Organization
Then branch out to related / linked pages.

The Field Manual is p. good: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Category:Field_Manual

[sambojin]

Very outdated and many of the "strategies" don't actually apply to OpenXcom (and several were crap anyway), but has some useful stuff in it.

Check out the profit table. This is why you keep researching EVERY laser thingy in vanilla Xcom.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/199362-x-com-ufo-defense/faqs/1825


But check out the ufopedia above. It has all the stuff.
This page actually has all the stuff:
http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Category:Enemy_Unknown/UFO_Defense

[ChairmanPoo]

Tried the Final Mod pack. Not satisfied either. Some ideas are good, but TBH I'd rather not have most of the additions.

I'm trying to put together a satisfying custom mod from lighter, simpler mods.

PD:

I've decided to work up from Vanillaxcom

- I'm disabling the arcing shot thing from cannons. It makes things waaay too easy. I honestly fail to see the point of going far beyond cannon spam + newbie stun rod rushes with arcing shots on.

- I'd like some comfort explosive thing, though, to blow up buildings from afar nonetheless. I'd love a mod that made the small rocket 2x1 instead of 3x1... it's not vital, but it'd make it less tedious to walk to and forth the skyranger to reload ammunition.

-

[Greiger]

I...vaguely do recall seeing that ingame once, with smaller missiles.  I might be thinking of xcom apoc though and the mini ricket launchers.  At any rate if openxcom is moddable enough for me to make a plasma sword and plasma knife from scratch in the space of a few hours with only df modding experience, it should be a simple matter to just find the raw files for the small rockets and reduce their size. 

Might look funny without a new sprite, but it would likely be functional.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's prolly rather simple but I want the sprite as well :p


I'm still mulling over the parabolic thing
The thing is that parabollic-weapons are really neat as a concept, but utterly unbalanced. At least with their vanilla versions I have to either reposition my shooters or blow up everything in between (which isn't that hard, TBH). With parabollic shooting your cannons basically behave as long range, ultraacurate grenades, which take less space, deal more damage, and on top of all that train stats.

[Puzzlemaker]

Could you add more random deviation, so the farther away the more (horribly) innacurate it gets?

[ChairmanPoo]

Making them snapshot/auto-only would work in that regard...

Of course, splash damage makes aim  largely moot. But if at the very least snipe-range shots were utterly random...

[sambojin]

Have you tried out the multi launcher from final mod pack? You might have to tweak it a little bit to ensure balance, but it might be a good template to start from if you want a custom rocket pack (or make a modified blaster bomb, which is a 2x1 to begin with, into a RL round).

I've never really had a huge problem with rocket sizes and weights though. If you have a bit of extra living space (which is the second cheapest installation afaik), you can over recruit a bit and only keep the strongest soldiers. After a mission or two all of your rocket soldiers will be able to carry a launcher, a reload, a laser pistol and some smoke. In some cases it'll be two reloads in their backpacks. Bring along large and small rockets for those fiddly strength amounts (you can go over a bit on the first four soldiers, because they'll be firing their initial rocket off pretty quickly anyway).

Given a sizeable rocket team (six soldiers), that's 12-18 rockets worth of explodey fun, which is plenty for most missions. At full TU, they can snap fire, and still reload from backpack to be ready next turn. Want more rockets? Bring more rocket soldiers. Even 10 isn't too many (giving you 20-30 rockets per mission).

If you really need more rockets, keep a strong soldier on the item square in the skyranger each mission (your commander, so he helps with morale as well and never dies) and have him throw more small rockets to other troops. At about 40 strength he can chuck a small rocket surprisingly far, even if he does have to run up and down the ramp a bit to do so.

You can also keep a spare in laser rifle/heavy plasma troop's backpacks. They usually travel pretty light anyway. If you need more rockets than that, then I hate to say it, but you might be doing something wrong. And I'm a rocket junkie.

[ChairmanPoo]

*shrug* problem is size more than weight. I tend to weed out my recruits early. The only ones that can really opt for permanent contracts in Xcom are those with STR>35 and AIM>66. All others are suicide scouts until further notice.
Nah, the problem is size. Only three-four rockets per character.  Keeping a strong character near the skyranger to toss rockets to the rocket team might solve my problem though. Although I might opt to stick with laser rifle + HE, at that. I love HE.
.... But then again, HE works fine with strong characters in open maps, but cant do shit in alien bases and inside ufos... hrmm.....

I modded the TANK-CANNON to work like a parabollic shot-heavy cannon btw. Figured out that since it has only 15 rounds might as well get an use for it.

[sambojin]

I'm pretty sure it's a balance thing. You're meant to have limited ammo on one of the most useful weapons in the game.

You could just up the ammo count for each rocket from one to two if this wasn't a concern though.

Also, it's a max of five rockets per soldier (if they're really strong). One in launcher, one in hand, three in backpack. You'll take an accuracy hit for the first rocket fired, but at least you have a pretty quick reload on hand for the next shot.

You could also carry two loaded launchers (36 weight all up, without reloads) and ditch the first one as soon as you've fired it.