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[Sirus]

Lasers also have fantastic accuracy and are light weight. Even a low-strength soldier can usually manage a laser pistol and a grenade.

That's always been my impression, anyway.

[pisskop]

Yea.  The real benefit of lasers is lighter gear, and less reloading.  The increased penetration helps though.  Adding the new armor helps with staying power, and is heavy as hell too, so it balances out.

[Telgin]

Lasers also have fantastic accuracy and are light weight. Even a low-strength soldier can usually manage a laser pistol and a grenade.

That's always been my impression, anyway.

I've actually been wondering about this.  Laser pistols still do respectable damage from what I've seen, and if you try to carry a rifle and grenade at the same time it gives an accuracy penalty.  Is it worth it to just use laser pistols and grenades?  That way you have the grenade ready if you need it, and can save on the cost of manufacturing the rifles.

There's been a couple of times I was sincerely irritated that I only needed 1 or 2 more TUs to use a grenade and I would have saved them if it was already in hand.

[Rolan7]

Probably not, since X-COM armor ratings are damage reduction.  Along with highly random damage rolls (0-200% IIRC), but that still means the extra ROF from laser pistols isn't worth their lower damage.  Too much of it gets ignored entirely.

A similar case is easy to make against laser rifles, but using heavy plasma for everything gets boooring.  Even if it is just better, I was able to beat the game with a focus on laser rifles.  See, the trick is to scout with a disposeable rookie - then have all the actual soldiers, pretty much anywhere else on the map, just let loose.  Original X-COM doesn't have distance penalties, see, only a mechanic for "misses" to hit despite going off-target.  Which matters at close range, but you can still auto-fire across a map with impunity.

Why's that good for laser rifles?  They're accurate and you can literally just autofire them forever, of course!  Law of averages (kidding) means that with enough "snipers", some are going to land, and some of those will overcome the armor.  With heavy plasma you can burn through clips... technically.  Once all the aliens carry it, that's not usually a problem, but it at least calls for a *little* restraint.

Also one of the worst late-game terror enemies is vulnerable to lasers.  Bonus!
Laser pistols are safe to stick on rookies though, good for training their reactions and accuracy if they happen to survive.

As for personal armor:  For me, it is literally for color-coding the soldiers I care about from those I don't.  There's statistically a difference, but heavy plasma barely cares about full power armor much less alloy.

Edit: And yeah X-COM's line-of-fire rules are kinda BS.  OpenXCOM dutifully recreated them as a matter of design philosophy.
The colorful chart halfway down this page, showing unintuitive blind spots, probably applies to OpenXCOM as well.

Not to mention the "Line of sight comes from eye level, line of fire comes from shoulder level", which is to blame for a lot of window situations.  Remarkable attention to detail/"realism" which basically just means frustration in actual gameplay.

[Mathel]

I do not know if it happens in OpenXCOM, but in X-Com: UFO Defence, I sometimes had a situation where I could see and rarely even shoot aliens through corners of the UFO. Most common with a medium scout.

About lasers. Laser rifles are my go to in unmodded X-Com. They are powerful enough to take down any threat (with enough hits), do not need to be reloaded, and a sniper with very high firing accuracy can get 2 shots in without being in danger. And they can be even acquired before the first terror mission.

[Ulfarr]

Build a deck that relies on playing lots of cards in each turn with a focus on damage/self buffing and healing (because it didn't realy have any  defensive capabilities) and the game decides to throw at me the one boss that punishes you for playing lots of cards.

Slay the Spire: Ironclad vs Time Eater, Ascension 12.

[AzyWng]

Tried to do a run as the thief. I made it to 1-3, and the disaster for that level was "Bounty on your head!"

I didn't really pay this much mind, and killed a slavemaster, freeing his slaves.

As I approached the slaves to pickpocket them (as you do when you're a thief), one of them pulled out a shotgun and attacked me, and his colleague picked up the sword that the slavemaster had dropped.

I didn't survive their combined assault.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Streets of Rogue.

[heydude6]

Decided to do the Final Exam scenario, a 4v4 mirror match scenario with a Catapult, a shadowhawk, a locust, and a commando on each side.


Catapult fires Particle Projector Cannon (guy didn’t want to play with Long range missles) at my locust. Hits my Center torso and does just enough damage to bypass my armour and do 1 damage to my internal structure.

Roll for Crits. Hits machine gun ammobox. Ammo explosion instantly kills the light.

...

Commando fires at the rear of my commando with his Short Range Missiles. Hits the back of my Left torso. Does enough damage to strip the fragile rear armour and damage the internals. Roll for crits. Hits the Short Range Missle ammobox of my commando. Ammo explosion finishes off the rest of my Left Torso and overflow damage takes out my centre torso as well. Mech is dead.

...

Whacks my shadowhawk with a tree he uprooted in the previous turn. Attack hits, roll for location. Location is head. Head is hit for massive damage, but leaving only 1 point of internal structure remaining. Roll for crits. Gets a crit in my cockpit, instantly killing the pilot. Mech is dead.


All of this happened in a single turn. Since we were running low on time, we decided to call it a game after that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Battletech Tabletop

[Iduno]

Build a deck that relies on playing lots of cards in each turn with a focus on damage/self buffing and healing (because it didn't realy have any  defensive capabilities) and the game decides to throw at me the one boss that punishes you for playing lots of cards.

Slay the Spire: Ironclad vs Time Eater, Ascension 12.

Yeah, the game is pretty good on lower difficulties (depending on your luck and skill), but higher difficulties it's pretty much just re-trying until the RNG gives you good rewards for easy fights.

Decided to do the Final Exam scenario, a 4v4 mirror match scenario with a Catapult, a shadowhawk, a locust, and a commando on each side.


Catapult fires Particle Projector Cannon (guy didn’t want to play with Long range missles) at my locust. Hits my Center torso and does just enough damage to bypass my armour and do 1 damage to my internal structure.

Roll for Crits. Hits machine gun ammobox. Ammo explosion instantly kills the light.

...

Commando fires at the rear of my commando with his Short Range Missiles. Hits the back of my Left torso. Does enough damage to strip the fragile rear armour and damage the internals. Roll for crits. Hits the Short Range Missle ammobox of my commando. Ammo explosion finishes off the rest of my Left Torso and overflow damage takes out my centre torso as well. Mech is dead.

...

Whacks my shadowhawk with a tree he uprooted in the previous turn. Attack hits, roll for location. Location is head. Head is hit for massive damage, but leaving only 1 point of internal structure remaining. Roll for crits. Gets a crit in my cockpit, instantly killing the pilot. Mech is dead.


All of this happened in a single turn. Since we were running low on time, we decided to call it a game after that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Battletech Tabletop

Yeah, that's what commandos are known for. Less so the locust, but lights shouldn't have ammo.

The head hits are unlikely, but not impossible. My last game involved my awesome getting hit twice during the entire match, with a PPC and a medium laser. Both were head hits. Being unable to run far enough to increase the TN to hit me doesn't help that (there were hills and trees, and the awesome barely moves normally).

Also, what was the other person's to-hit that he got 3 units in one round?

[heydude6]

The shadowhawk tree had a DC of 6.

The commando rear missiles was against a 6. I walked him that turn, because I wanted to shoot someone in the rear.

The PPC to the locust was an 8. I made him run through a lot of trees that turn so his evasion wasn’t the highest.

[Ulfarr]

Yeah, the game is pretty good on lower difficulties (depending on your luck and skill), but higher difficulties it's pretty much just re-trying until the RNG gives you good rewards for easy fights.

RNG is surely a huge part of the game, I've lost countless times because the game refused to give me any way to generate energy (either with relics or cards) or cards that synergize well together but it's not the sole factor. I feel like I have lost an equal (if not bigger) amount of times due to either mistakes, deck bloating or bad risk assessment.

For a game that uses RNG that much, I have to say StS doesn't feel that unfair.

[Egan_BW]

In StS, you get an RNG at least five times at the start of each of your turns, lots of cards can do random things, enemies can do random things, and floors can do random things. You're rolling so many dice constantly that any one of them matters less, so you'll only lose for sure if you roll ones constantly, which is unlikely. The game is basically so random that luck doesn't matter as much as a game where, say, success depends on a few dice rolls with high significance.

[MaximumZero]

Forgot to close a bracket in a very small, very amateur mod. Game crashed for about an hour until I fixed it. Some programmer I am.

Crusader Kings II.

[Akura]

During a pivotal moment of battle, I order a squad to throw a grenade right at the center of enemy mass. Pvt. Dumbass drops the grenade at his feet, killing about 8 friendlies. That was after several other attempts to throw a grenade into the same enemy force only for the squads involved to decide to retreat. And after ordering aircraft strafing runs only for the plane to just fly over and do nothing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Company of Heroes, Great War mod.

[PTTG??]

Forgot to close a bracket in a very small, very amateur mod. Game crashed for about an hour until I fixed it. Some programmer I am.

Crusader Kings II.

What's the mod do?