I'm playing as MexCOM and got the All In 20% supply drop boost for North America.
On capture or kill missions is there any penalty for killing your target instead of capturing them?
If you kill them you don't get any Intel.
I'm thinking of not training any rangers on my new game, they are alright but the only real unique value they have is with conceal/phantom and they cost a lot to keep upgraded with the swords + shotguns. With some battle scanners and scanning protocol, you get plenty of scouting and with some luck someone may get phantom as a bonus skill.
I just give my rangers rifles and don't bother spending supplies on upgraded shotguns. The savings have been really nice so far.
You should. Once you get Superior Laser Sights and Talon Rounds on the Storm Gun you have a
base 55% crit chance, and extra crit damage to boot. It's crazy even if you aren't lucky enough to have a Ranger with Shredder.
Oh, and hey, I just found a chest o' loot in a City Center. That's nice.
I looted one and couldn't tell that I actually got anything despite it saying I got something (can't recall exactly what, but it wasn't obvious). Was it because I was on an evac mission?
Same on my end. I'm not sure if they actually give you anything (though I'm sure mods will fix it if they don't).
Got Vulture from the Guerrilla Tactics School (more loot from those who drop). I'm not impressed. Only about 10% of the enemies in any given mission seem to drop anything, and I'm not even sure the ability's working in the first place. Just killed a Viper, and she only dropped an Elerium Core: wouldn't Vulture increase drops to a minimum of two items per event?
Also, it seems engineers need some sort of protection when excavating around exposed power coils, according to Shen's off-hand comment. Is that true or is it just fluff?
It's worth. Most of the drops I get now are four-item ones. That said, I'm pretty sure there's a limit on how many drops you can get per mission (in the sense of how many enemies will drop stuff), capped at one. Might dig around in the config files to see if I can find that defined anywhere.