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[Sowelu]

Blaster bombs seriously ruin the game for me.  Honestly I don't see how people play it once they get to the point where aliens have them...

I'd like to remove them (and I know it's possible), but I want some way to buff the aliens to make up for it.  I guess there's higher difficulty levels.

[Soulwynd]

They ruin a mission if you're not prepared for them.

What you need to realize is that they don't follow a straight path to the next waypoint. The best tactic to avoid them is to stick to walls. They will often hit the wall before they hit the unit.

[MrWiggles]

The blast bomb is my favorite weapon.

Its so much fun to use!

I like it using over Psi, as Psi feels cheap & broken to me.

[Tarran]

The blast bomb is my favorite weapon.

Its so much fun to use!

Same.

Only bad thing is that it is NOT good at selective fire near friendlies. It's blast radius is almost always larger than what I expected, usually leading to friendly fire.

[andrea]

if you think alien grenades are powerful explosive, you will have huge troubles dealing with blasters... those things are incredibly powerful, and guided. Good when you stand in the skyranger launching incredibly overpowered explosive in every place that may hide aliens, bad when said aliens then shoot a blaster into the skyranger, after making it avoid all the thousand obstacles between him and you.

By the way, in unmodified Xcom, blasters are the only thing able to destroy outer UFO walls. I remember using them to invade battleships from the top more than once

[MrWiggles]

The blast bomb is my favorite weapon.

Its so much fun to use!

Same.

Only bad thing is that it is NOT good at selective fire near friendlies. It's blast radius is almost always larger than what I expected, usually leading to friendly fire.

That just upgrades the fun, to FUN.

[Puzzlemaker]

Yeah, I am using x-com util so I can blast holes in UFO's with high explosives, which is fun.

I also encountered a blaster bomber or whatever for the first time.  My reaction was something akin to, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT"

After reloading, I decided to be cautious as one of the aliens obviously had some sort of super-grenade.  Then that fucking purple thing of doom came around the corner and landed square in all of my guys.  Queue another "WHAT!?" moment.

After figuring out that it was a homing missile, I managed to shoot that little alien fucker before he got a shot off and beat the mission.

Gah.

[0x517A5D]

3. Once you get PSI yourself, find 2 good units and make them exclusively PSI units. Use the rest of your team as spotters for them and you will see how two lil units can take the most horrible cruel alien base.

Two Psi soldiers that have 75+ moves.  (Is the accepted phrase TU, time units?)  So that they can get off three attempts instead of two.  I give them the Psi-amp, a laser pistol in the off hand, and 1 electroflare.

I believe that multiple panic or MC attempts on the same alien will have better successes than spreading the effort over several aliens.  That's because each attempt, successful or failed, drains the alien's morale, making the next attempt more likely to succeed.

You can only make an alien move, fire their weapon, or drop or throw their weapon.  You can't make them drop the grenades that may be on their person.  So they're still dangerous even if you disarm them.  (But there is an exploit.  Interested?)

[Soulwynd]

No, you don't panic them. You dominate aliens, make them drop their weapon and walk into other aliens.

The following will happen:

1. You get to see what's ahead and see other aliens to dominate.
2. The alien you dominated will get shot.
3. The aliens that shot him will see an alien die and lose morale.
4. All the other aliens in the map will lose around half that morale due to the 'radio/communication' effect. (Except for some pretty much immune badasses)
5. Dominate the next alien and repeat from 1 until there are no more aliens.
6. The entire alien base is panicking, dropping weapons, running around, shooting at random in the first round of combat.
7. win.

[Sowelu]

You know...I think my next game is going to start out with no auto-fire weapons.

Pistols are, in many ways, better than rifles--against sectoids at least.  Very nearly the same chance of a one-shot kill, faster snapshots for the same accuracy, and you can actually use aimed shots in reasonably close combat.  Slightly faster grenades too, since you can keep one in your hand at all times.  And with its superior accuracy, I think I might even prefer the standard pistol to a laser pistol.  Wow.

I always used to hate heavy cannons, but hey...a lot more damage and better accuracy than autocannons, better at knocking down walls, plus less chance of weapon destruction.  HE weapons will blow up stuff on the floor...unless it wasn't on the floor to start with; you can gib an alien with a direct HE hit and its corpse and gear will still be there on the ground unless you explode it again.  Heavy cannon is awesome for that, is very likely to kill a sectoid at two tiles away, and you won't be tempted to blow up valuable gear with auto-fire mode.

Plus...rocket launcher.  If you've got the strength for it, awesome.  And hey, a lot (most?) of your dudes can probably handle a rocket launcher + one rocket, plus a pistol with a couple clips.  Tell me that a squad where almost everyone has a rocket launcher isn't scary.

[Neonivek]

Ohh Sectoids you are either easy or deadly.

[Pandarsenic]

I think I might even prefer the standard pistol to a laser pistol.  Wow.

Bad. The capacity to fire harder-hitting shots in Auto mode makes the laser pistol a superior weapon by far. It even beats out the human rifle in my experience.

[0x517A5D]

Plus...rocket launcher.  If you've got the strength for it, awesome.  And hey, a lot (most?) of your dudes can probably handle a rocket launcher + one rocket, plus a pistol with a couple clips.  Tell me that a squad where almost everyone has a rocket launcher isn't scary.

That's scary, all right.  Scary to both sides.  Reaction fire does not care if there's a friendly unit in the killzone, or maybe standing right in front of the dude with the RL.  Mass friendly-fire incidents will occur.

What works even though it's counter-intuitive is a couple of Scouts that carry a loaded rocket launcher, a couple of heavy rockets for reloads, and a laser pistol.  They use the RL to demolish any and all structures in the area.  Just flatten them.  Then they discard the launcher and either act as spotters or plink away with the pistol.

These guys need to have very high reactions and just enough strength to carry the launcher without being slowed down very much.  Endurance doesn't matter, they're not going to lug the thing for long enough to get tired.  Marksmanship is nice but not necessary — splash damage, baby!

Note that rocket explosions create large areas of smoke.  There is a limit on how many map squares can have active smoke.  So lots of rocket use means that smoke grenade tactics won't work.

[MrWiggles]

I was never a fan of smoke grenades.

[olemars]

Blaster bombs seriously ruin the game for me.  Honestly I don't see how people play it once they get to the point where aliens have them...

Much like the enzyme missile in XCOM: Apocalypse. Aliens got it while I was still far from researching shields, and they decided to use nothing but that weapon. I ragequit and deleted the save.