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[Sowelu]

In my latest game, the modus operandi against a cyberdisk is/was "laser pistol firing squad from a safe distance". I've only recently switched to laser rifles, since I made personal armor (and other things) a priority.

Heavy Rockets, or maybe HE packs if the situation is right.

Remember:  Area weapons (explosives, stun bombs, etc) will hit ALL FOUR segments of the critter.  Unintuitive?  Broken?  Maybe but it's true.  Cyberdiscs have pretty high explosive resistance (60% or something?), but when you consider you're doing 100 damage minus armor, oh yeah and explosives have a lower variability to their damage...Not uncommon to one-shot a cyberdisc with a rocket.  If you don't instakill it, it only gets one reaction shot out of it, too.  Two rockets are guaranteed death.  (Note that with its armor and resistance, anything smaller than a heavy rocket is unlikely to do anything at all.  Rocket + one dude with a laser rifle or maybe even a laser pistol = dead Cyberdisc.

[andrea]

october 1999, enemies already have blasters and all the cool toys.
Aliens discovered my base in egypt, and then send a snakeman battleship to attack it.

Now, the bad news start: the base has 10 untrained soldiers with 1 laser rifle each. And that is all.
As you might imagine, I considered that battle lost before starting it. One of my soldier also spawned between the elevator and the hangars.

I built the base in a line, so placing soldiers for defense was rather easy. Then, a blaster bomb arrives and kills three soldiers, after that another was killed by Xcom reaction shot. a good start, isn't it?

Meanwhile the lone soldier between the 2 alien spawn points moved toward the hangar and while taking a step backward to get a better aim, he finds and kills the only chryssalis. That probably avoided a zombie invasion. Next turn, he kills a snakemen and is then killed by reaction fire.

so, 5 soldiers left, to reorganize a defensive line. And here come the surprise: several of the surviving soldiers have good reactions. first snake out of the elevator dead. But I am still fearing another blaster. Eventually, I get brave enough to make some steps forward, looking behind corners, while trying to steal a plasma gun from the snakemen's corpses.
Well, apparently the first alien killed was the one with the blaster!

at the end, after a bit of gunfight in the radar base, I kill the last 3 snakemen.
The base had survived, with 5 soldiers out of 10! I never had such a great victory. ( considering the conditions)

Unluckily, the radar got destroyed ( that is what they were shooting at while I couldn't see them!!), which removed the hangars, which in turn destroyed my firestorm and interceptor.
But in the soldier screen I saw that several of the surviving soldiers had nearly 50 reactions. I even had one of them moved to the main squad.

what can I say? this is proof that laser rifles are useful during all the game! ( and I'll definitely take them as backup weapons for the final mission)

[Sowelu]

When you've got the tech and the manufacturing capacity to spare, it's worthwhile to put a hovertank/blaster in each of your bases.  It doesn't even need ammo:  In base defense situations, your tanks get ammo for free.  Still need at least one soldier to defend though, or you lose the base automatically.

[andrea]

oh, I know about that trick... unfortunately, most of activity is in europe and my main base is in US. After a few early (rich ) UFOs conquered at the beginning, I started to run out of elerium. I still have more than 200, but I need all that for new power suits. My men tend to die quite often.

Now, forced by lack of elerium, I am starting to assault enemy supply ships again, when they land at one of the 6 alien bases in europe.
(the 7th one was in pacific, but that was MY sphere of influence, so I kicked them out uncaring of losses. Only 2 men and no tank survived that...)
after you get plasma cannons, getting any crashlanded UFO with its power source intact is incredibly hard. Usually they are so smashed that you can barely understand what they are.

[Thexor]

Six alien bases in Europe? Goodness gracious. If you're hurting for Elerium, clearing out a few of them would add up considerably. Sure, keeping one base alive is good for harvesting supply ships, but six is... excessive. 

Also, if plasma cannons are vaporizing all the ships' power cores, try a weaker weapon. If you've got cash, consider equipping a backup ship with Avalanche missiles instead, so you can down weaker vessels without worrying. Just remember to switch to your full-power ship when heavier craft arrive!

[Sowelu]

Spoiler: Crashed craft, damage, and power sources (click to show/hide)

Each power source has an independent 75% chance to explode, completely regardless of damage dealt.  Cannons or fusion balls, as long as it wasn't blown up in the air it doesn't matter.

In smaller ships, of course, there's only one power source.  But in larger ones, some ships have their sources close to each other, and some ships have them far apart.  If they're close, good luck getting any elerium out of a crashed ship...ever.  The PSes will blow each other up.

[MrWiggles]

I never rely on crashed ships for E-115. If I'm feeling for a challenge I'll do base raids for E-115, but in general, getting supply ships is where the real E-115 is.

Does either one of the utilities fix the E-115 fuel bug? 

[andrea]

Thexor, I have 6 alien bases in europe and you are suggesting I use WEAKER weapons? the only thing that keeps me alive is that I get lots of point just by shooting everything down. All offensive power that can be dedicated to destroying aliens must be used for that. 6 avalanches unluckily aren't always enough to crash land a supply ship (and smaller ships cost me more than I would get) Despite high casualties, raiding supply ships on the ground is still more efficent.
by the way... I never ,maaged to get elerium from alien bases , so that won't fix the problem ( would fix many other though, if I could afford the casualties).

Sowelu, I read that too, but in my experience ships get more damaged by more powerful weapons. Mostly seen in small ships though. medium scouts can land relatively intact after stingers/avalanches, but plasma cannons annihilate them.

EDIT: now I see mrwiggles post too... how do you people get elerium from alien bases? I never got any!

[MrWiggles]

Thexor, I have 6 alien bases in europe and you are suggesting I use WEAKER weapons? the only thing that keeps me alive is that I get lots of point just by shooting everything down. All offensive power that can be dedicated to destroying aliens must be used for that. 6 avalanches unluckily aren't always enough to crash land a supply ship (and smaller ships cost me more than I would get) Despite high casualties, raiding supply ships on the ground is still more efficent.
by the way... I never ,maaged to get elerium from alien bases , so that won't fix the problem ( would fix many other though, if I could afford the casualties).

Sowelu, I read that too, but in my experience ships get more damaged by more powerful weapons. Mostly seen in small ships though. medium scouts can land relatively intact after stingers/avalanches, but plasma cannons annihilate them.

EDIT: now I see mrwiggles post too... how do you people get elerium from alien bases? I never got any!

As I said, its a challenge.

You need to find the Alien Base power generator room, destroy the power plants, and if memory serves, pick up the E-115, place it in yer backpack and initiate the get the fuck out of there maneuver.

As long as you don't destroy the command consoles in the C&C of the alien base (Or kill all the aliens), they'll repair their power plants on a monthly basis (I think).

I think cannon wise, when you destroy the consoles in C&C, it sets the reactor to overload, which destroys the entire base.

Doing this + the chuck norris challenge, equals FUN.

[Sowelu]

Huh.  The wiki says you can recover elerium from bases at the end of missions, but if you're having trouble, you could always pick it up.

Destroy power supplies.  Shoot them with NON-EXPLOSIVE weapons (they won't blow up themselves during play).  Should just take a shot or two with a heavy plasma most of the time, though plasma rifles will work if you shoot it enough.  Then, step onto the square where it was, and pick up the elerium.  Be warned that using explosives will nuke the elerium, so...don't.  (Only half the power sources in bases have elerium, so if there's none in the one you're poking at, go to another.  Or check the overhead map, it's an item.)

[Shadowlord]

Oh the plasma rifle.

0-160 damage, 86% snap shot accuracy, 55% auto shot accuracy.

I'm liking its snap shots /very much/.  I'd often rather do less damage with more accurate shots than take higher chances, because the more you injure an enemy, the worse their aim is when they shoot back.

You're not really reading the to-hit correctly, I think. You've actually got a 90.8875% chance to hit at least once with that auto-shot on that rifle.

55% chance to hit, 3 times. 1-.55 = 45% chance to miss.

.45 * .45 * .45 = .091125 (that's the chance to miss all three shots)
1-.091125 = 0.908875 = 90.8875%
That is the chance to NOT miss all three shots, which is another way of saying the chance to hit at least once (one, two, or three times, since you fire three shots).

Thus, given your listed 55% chance to hit with auto-fire, you actually have a 90.8875% chance of scoring one or more successful hits, and this doesn't even account for the chance that you'll roll a "miss" but your shot will hit your target anyways due to the "miss" being directed at a location behind the target (because there's no way I could calculate the odds of that happening).

The math is simple (Well, perhaps not so much): chanceOfAnyRollSucceeding = 1-((1-chancePerRoll)^timesToRoll) (I showed the multiplications instead of saying ".45^3 = .091125," though), where the chances are the ordinary 0-1 range for this kind of thing, where 1 is 100% (So that when you multiply two chances, you get the chance of both things happening, etc). The ^ is just multiplying together the chances of each roll failing to get the chance of every roll failing. 1 - something is the chance of it not happening, e.g. for rolling to-hit, it's the chance of missing instead of hitting (which should be fairly obvious since it's basically 100% - chance).

[andrea]

wait... bases have power generators? wow... I always was too busy killing all the aliens and generally staying alive to see/ use them.

Is plasma explosive?

[Sowelu]

Oh the plasma rifle.

0-160 damage, 86% snap shot accuracy, 55% auto shot accuracy.

I'm liking its snap shots /very much/.  I'd often rather do less damage with more accurate shots than take higher chances, because the more you injure an enemy, the worse their aim is when they shoot back.

You're not really reading the to-hit correctly, I think. You've actually got a 90.8875% chance to hit at least once with that auto-shot on that rifle.

55% chance to hit, 3 times. 1-.55 = 45% chance to miss.

.45 * .45 * .45 = .091125 (that's the chance to miss all three shots)
1-.091125 = 0.908875 = 90.8875%
That is the chance to NOT miss all three shots, which is another way of saying the chance to hit at least once (one, two, or three times, since you fire three shots).

Thus, given your listed 55% chance to hit with auto-fire, you actually have a 90.8875% chance of scoring one or more successful hits, and this doesn't even account for the chance that you'll roll a "miss" but your shot will hit your target anyways due to the "miss" being directed at a location behind the target (because there's no way I could calculate the odds of that happening).

The math is simple (Well, perhaps not so much): chanceOfAnyRollSucceeding = 1-((1-chancePerRoll)^timesToRoll) (I showed the multiplications instead of saying ".45^3 = .091125," though), where the chances are the ordinary 0-1 range for this kind of thing, where 1 is 100% (So that when you multiply two chances, you get the chance of both things happening, etc). The ^ is just multiplying together the chances of each roll failing to get the chance of every roll failing. 1 - something is the chance of it not happening, e.g. for rolling to-hit, it's the chance of missing instead of hitting (which should be fairly obvious since it's basically 100% - chance).

Snap shots make a bigger difference in UFO Extender, where auto shots take a significant penalty at range.  Also, a missed shot follows a distribution that's based on your accuracy; whiffed autoshots are not nearly as likely to hit as a missed snap shot.  When you're at a range where snap shots have 3x the chance to hit of autoshots, that 'inaccurate hit' chance makes enough of a difference that the snap shot DOES hit more often...but mostly that happens with the plasma rifle, since its snap-shot chance is so high.  (Aimed shots with the conventional rifle at long range, too.)

I have seen snap shots have 3x the accuracy of an autoshot at certain ranges, btw.  Let's say snap shot is 45%, and autoshot is 15%.  Autoshot has 61% chance to miss all shots, or 39% chance to hit with at least one.  Okay, auto-fire usually has tons of other advantages, but...Meh.

Also consider reaction fire.  Reaction fire is ALWAYS snap shots.  If you're using a plasma rifle, your reaction fire is more likely to hit than any other weapon in the game.

Mostly I was comparing it to the heavy plasma though, which only even has a 50% auto-fire chance and significantly worse snapshot.  Heavy plasma DOES have a better aimed shot to the tune of 110% at least, which is super sweet. 

[MrWiggles]

Welp, all this talk has made me start up a new game of X-Com. Though this time around, I'm going to be introducing it to my little brother. Who has never heard the wonders that is X-Com.

[Pandarsenic]

Hey, can anyone give me a quick rundown of how to make sure I can set a non-Beginner Difficulty and keep it on that Difficulty? Does UFO Extender do that? I know XComUtil does but I might not want some of its other changes.