maackey

Burst fire costs 40 TU's last time I checked. While we're at it, lets do some simple statistics then (even given your made up % values): Burst fire: 40 TU's, 3 shots, 20% chance to hit, 25 damage per hit .2*25 + .2*25 + .2*25 = 15 damage Snap fire: 40 TU's, 2 shots, 30% chance to hit, 25 damage per hit .3*25 + .3*25 = 15 damage They end up being exactly the same damage output (without taking into account armor/random damage/etc.), except with snap shots, you also have the versatility of firing once, then getting behind cover again. edit: not to mention using less bullets -> less reloads -> less TU's spent reloading + less weight for extra clips, etc. I loaded up the game to test some stuff, I managed to target a Caesan at maximum effective range behind a haybale with a corporal armed with an assault rifle. This is a common, real world example not just some numbers pulled out of thin air. Burst fire: 2% chance .02*25 + .02*25 + .02*25 = 1.5 damage 1.5/40 TU = .0375 damage/TU Aimed shot: 10% chance .1*25 = 2.5 damage 2.5/40 TU = .0625 damage/TU Normal: 8% chance .08*25 = 2 damage 2/30 TU = .0666 damage/TU Snap: 3% chance .03*25 = .75 damage .75/20 = .0375 damage/TU I'll just let you ponder that for a bit.

That stuff doesn't sound so bad, actually. (The doughnut sandwich isn't really my thing though) As a boyscout I made breakfast burritos (because we'd often forget to bring various accoutrements, like plates) which were basically a pancake, topped with eggs, bacon, and maple syrup and they are hands down the best breakfast food ever. And since waffles > pancakes, it makes sense that Taco Bell would sell them. McDonalds has the McGriddle which is basically the same thing in sandwhich form.

It's not cost effective unless you are at point blank range. Otherwise single shots have far superior TU/Damage output. I would really like to see burst fire cost slightly less TU's given its current accuracy, at 35 or perhaps 30, but overall I don't find it to be completely without merit -- for the same time units you can get three shots off instead of two with snap fire, but the accuracy is so low it is only really worth it in close quarter situations IMO.

To prevent players from aggressively going after all the crashed sites couldn't the fighter ufo's be scripted to protect and patrol around the crashsite, attacking any approaching ships? Then the player would be required to wait and re-fuel before sending another sortie out to take out the fighters before sending in the dropship. During all this wait the other UFO's would be raiding and getting away, unless you gave up attacking the guardian fighters and sent your fighters to another UFO to down *that* one. Not only does this discourage people from going after *every* crashsite, it adds another layer of depth for the geoscape aspect of the game. Patrolling fighters can of course be an addition to other solutions posted here.

I'm also a bit disappointed at how often shots pass through shields at the moment, especially when my soldiers are crouched and directly facing the shooter. I would imagine 95% of all frontal shots would be blocked, at the very least when crouched -- as the shield can still be pretty easily broken with a couple rounds of plasma fire. The lighter weight is nice and actually lets me use them, but I still find myself trying other breaching tactics as they just aren't reliable enough. A handful of soldiers in various instances died in a single round from plasma pistol burst reaction fire as I was trying to assault the light scouts. If my soldiers are going to get blown apart anyway I might as well equip them with shotguns or an HMG so they can at least deal *some* damage before soaking up reaction fire and dying.

When a soldier who has a custom loadout gets wounded, and returns from their medical leave, they are given only the basic assault rifle; not the weapons and gear associated with their template. Clicking on the equip default loadout still works, but I have to manually reset it any time a soldier recovers.

Maybe it has something to do with autofire, as I too really hate to use it unless I'm literally point blank. Not only do autofire shots miss significantly more often than snap shots, they fly out in wild directions up to ~90 degrees apart and have hit friendly soldiers standing *right next to the shooter*. I haven't had the same problem with single shot fire modes. The accuracy seems to be pretty straightforward, with exception of intervening cover/obstacles/smoke.

In the meantime check out Aufklarer's soldier role images mod. Lots of variation and world of difference in quality compared to the red background with a letter.

How exactly does research work? Does progress advance at set intervals (poor/average/good/excellent) or is it directly (and linearly) related with the number of scientists? I've always thought it was the latter. If taking off scientists from excellent progress items is really more efficient, how much more beneficial is it?

Well of course if you don't use them you won't suffer from them sucking. I do use them quite a lot, perhaps too much as I constantly get CTDs when multiple grenades are thrown. But aside from the game-breaking bugs, I don't think they are too bad.Its really disappointing that once you throw the new grenades you can't pick them up again and have bucket brigade/chain gang tossing shenanigans. It would work well especially with the extremely short range that grenades have. Without being able to pick them up, I think a range buff is in order, as they are otherwise outclassed entirely by other weapons, except in extreme situations like when a sebillian charges in right next to your soldiers and you need to take it out NOW. (but even then, point blank burst fire is pretty effective *and* doesn't destroy loot so... I'm hard pressed to find a situation where they are useful, without exploiting glitches)

The light scout is really small. A single smoke grenade could fill it entirely up with smoke, especially aimed in the middle.

Doesn't Ironman mode mean you can't reload your saves anyway? The only horrible implications for Ironman runs I can see is the CTD bug when you have two grenades in the same tile, but that sounds a bit different than this bug.

This happens to me with all the grenades that don't explode immediately (haven't tried with c4 yet though). To replicate, throw two or more grenades in the same square -> CTD edit: it also sometimes happens when you simply just throw multiple grenades in the same turn. This is starting to really be a game breaker.

By the time I got into the ship, I had already run out of rockets, which is why the one rocketeer was scouting from the outside (which is why I could see all three Androns poised to blast anything coming through the door) I actually quicksaved and tried this scenario a few times to see what would happen. Blowing holes in the wall for multiple entrances wasn't very useful because they just reaction fired if I shot at them once and killed my dudes. The accuracy buff at close ranges is devastating with plasma weaponry and little to no armor. Filling the room with smoke provided a little bit more success, mainly because my scout outside could see through the walls and spot for my other troops. I still ended up using grenades/c4 because I just didn't have the firepower to sit there and pour lead down their throats while the smoke thinned. And I still lost a guy to reaction fire. I ended up using another exploit with a third method, where I had everyone dump their grenades and c4 in a pile on the floor, and had my strongest elite commander ninja (Suzuki) lob them over the wall like a machine gun mortar. I ended up getting a bunch of CTDs from stacked grenades -- every time three or more would land in the same spot: CTD, most of the times two would land in same spot: CTD, sometimes CTD when they landed just *near* eachother, never CTD one total per turn. Anyway, as it turns out, advanced Androns can withstand two c4 blasts and an alenium grenade just fine. Regardless, because I never touched the wall, and they just stood there and took it, I was able to blow them all up without losing anyone. In the long run though, I think its gonna be better to just use a lot of smoke, because those exploits will probably be patched eventually, and you can save alien artifacts from destruction by shooting from the shadows. Its a bit tricky as you can't see through the smoke either, but with practice and patience it ends up being pretty good (even if grenades are much quicker and easier).

I don't recall a single instance of one of my troops causing suppression with the pistol. I recall one scout ship assault where I had my elite sniper go in under the cover of smoke and unload almost a full clip into the last sebillian, but it never got suppressed, it just died after the second round of shots. edit: I just realized that sebillians have 50% resistance to suppression now, so that may have been the cause. Still, that kindof limits pistol suppression to just caesans... and thats about it? Most aliens I've encountered so far are either immune or resistant to suppression in the new patch. I don't think harridans are resistant, but then I've never fought them inside a ship, they've always been out in the open where pistols are next to useless compared to rifles.

OMG it looks like throwing grenades over the wall will work!! Although they are the advanced version of the Androns and I'm not sure if even 4 grenades a piece will do the job. Hmm... perhaps 4 grenades and a block of c4 for each will be enough? > I'll try it out and let you know how it goes. Reaction fire is my biggest killer, and smoke grenades in the past haven't helped much in that respect. However, apparently there were some changes to smoke so I might have some luck with that. However, Androns are now also immune to suppression so flashbangs and stun grenades are completely useless in this situation. I'm also worried because I'd be funneled through a single chokepoint in the middle of all three of them. They also have cover, whereas I only have the wall. They also have insane amounts of hitpoints, so I'd be lucky to take out one if I zerged them. I don't really care if they all get turned into bits of shrapnel and goo, I just want to try and keep as many as my guys alive if possible.

I do very well with my troops in most situations, but I am constantly losing guys left and right in alien bases and ships. I'm curious as to what other people's strategies are for taking out the alien scum while keeping your boys and girls alive. Pic related, I'm in the game now, still contemplating if I should open that door or get back to the choppa and run away like a pansy.

I loaded up my save from 19.6 hf2, I'm not sure if that contributes to the problem or not, but it seems that aliens are still shooting through walls. Aliens spotted on upper levels in 19.6: Aliens spotted on upper levels in 19.7: Aliens firing reaction shots from upper levels (19.7): Aliens shooting *through* the floor/roof (19.7): slightly unrelated but new in this version, Invisible teleporters (they still work though, and upper level ones show up fine):

I start out with everybody being riflemen - 1 AR, 2 magazines, 1 C4 brick, 1 Medpack, 2 of each grenade in the belt. I try to keep the grenades for everyone in any role, as they come in handy. If they survive long enough to get 70 accuracy, I turn the first two into snipers, which replace the AR with the sniper rifle, and add a pistol to the backpack. If they have good strength, they get either a rocket launcher, and cram their backpack full of rockets, or a LMG. If I have the need for a shield guy for breaching ufos (I don't bother breaching scouts I just smoke them out with stun gas) I can turn him into a shieldbearer. Once I've gotten some experienced guys my troop loadout looks like this: 2 snipers 2 rocket/lmg 4 riflemen I'm not too fond of the shield as it is *really* heavy especially combined with armor, so I'm extremely limited with my offensive loadout capabilities, but it provides one helluva staunch defense.

I wouldn't mind if they could just see through the walls (and floors!), but shooting through them is too much. I just lost a crashed landing ship mission because 3 elite Androns shot all my guys in the lower level through the floor, and the ones who survived to get up the teleporters got instantly reactionfired through the walls.

+1 from me. Although I like to use a couple snipers to supplement my riflemen, and LMGs are about on par with rocket launchers in my games. Grenades with 1 or 2 extra range would be nice, but I think I would prefer even more if rookies had less of a range malus with them. Manufactured weapons of any type are way too expensive, not just lasers. I never had enough money/time to make laser weaponry for my troops, and ended up with a single laser sniper by the time I finished researching plasma weapons.

I just had my first alien base attack today, it was a small ceasian, on veteran difficulty. I was scouting with my charlie full of my regular strike team, one of them however was wounded and stuck back at base, and none of them had rocket launchers. (I was scouting with the dropship because my foxtrots couldn't make it over to east russia to spot the base) I lost everybody except for two (started with 7), but I cleared out the base. The first two of them died to an alien rocket launcher out of the blue (the first time I've ever seen the heavy plasma rifle! wow was I surprised and demoralised... blew up my heavy cover and half the room besides -- that explosion may have been a bug though, there were times flashbangs and smokes set off similar explosions) The third died legitimately to some plasma bursts. I had four troopers remaining by the time I reached the last room (with that *dreadful* hallway) There was a new Ceasian I've never seen with a helmet that one-shotted two full health elite commanders (one in wolf armor) with reaction fire. He had around six buddies with plasma rifles to boot. Before I had even reached that room I was running out of ammo, and was collecting weapons and clips off the ground to keep my shielded assault guy stocked. (He would have died too if he didn't have a shield *and* wolf armor) Long story short, I dumped all my ammo down that corridor into the room, mostly because the alien device still gave 100% cover even after being destroyed -- I couldn't shoot through its footprint. I won by using my *last* alenium grenade and only had 6 rounds for the sniper rifle left (all the alien pistols/rifles had been emptied as well). I sorta knew about blowing up the power core could win me the mission, but I didn't know what it looked like, there were sooo many alien doodads around the base. I also wasn't sure if blowing them up would make me lose out on selling loot. In retrospect it may have been the giant doodad the aliens blew up themselves in the first big firefight that was basically my crew in the double wide room firing at the alien crew in the other double room adjacent to it. But it didn't have any big explosion animation (it may have but it was out of los at the time) and I didn't get any notification that something important got exploded. When I got to the last room, I thought that maybe that was the power core, but the same thing happened: I blew it up incidentally, and nothing special happened, aliens kept shooting at me, so I kept shooting back. TL;DR: The alien base missions are really fun and difficult, but victory conditions need to be made clear to the player, eg. popup text saying, "The alien power core has been destroyed, chopper awaiting evac. Mission success. Optional objective: Take out the commander/command station" P.S. Next time I get another alien base attack, everyone is bringing rocket launchers, and I'm hauling ass as soon as the power core is kaput. I didn't have any with me this time, but the only reliable kills I had were with grenades, which wipe out loot anyway. Is it possible to effectively assault an alien base without blowing up all the tech? I don't want to loose all my guys next time, but I also like selling the alien artifacts because I can always use more money.

1.) They can not be opened/closed manually 2.) Units in the middle of a door are trapped These two when combined together are particularly annoying. My most veteran soldier is completely incapacitated inside the base doors. Additionally, the footstep sound loops repeatedly. I can rotate the soldier, but can't move/fire.

I created a custom role (Rocket) outfitted with a rocket launcher, 4 alenium rockets and 1 stun rocket in the backpack, a couple of each grenade type in the belt, and the rocket loaded with an alenium rocket. However, when I click the "Equip default loadout" button, everything gets equipped properly, except that the rocket launcher always starts unloaded. Manually adding a rocket before a mission works as expected, but it gets reset (to empty) after the mission automatically (without me clicking equip default loadout even).

This happened to me as well with a regular scout on mission 8.