SalsaDoom

I'm going to answer my own question since it just now occurred to me that I could look in the xml files. kinetic/energy/chemical/incendiary Basic is 0/0/0/0 Jackal is 35/35/0/35 Wolf is 65/65/0/65 Buzzard is 50/50/0/50 Predator is 100/100/100/100 Sentinel is 80/80/100/80 So... chemical weapons? Are those in the game? (yet?) There isn't a lot of wiggle room for a new suit of armor, although I wish there was one.

Just as soon as aliens invade earth, I'm totally going too.

Huh, now that you mentioned it. A few battles ago, there was a group of three soliders, complete with a lmg who just sat there like lumps. I just assumed there was a sight range issue, but really, thinking about it, they should have seen the aliens clearly. They would rarely get kills later on, but one time this badass cop saved one of my troops lives. He just burst into this room and shotgunned this alien to death that caught my guy with his pants down. I always imagine he was one of those action movie cops who doesn't follow the rules but gets results. His Captain probably shouts at him all the time.

You playing on veteran (or above)? On normal armor is fairly effective... I'm still pretty curious about the actual protection values though.

Ah! Good Because, yeah. MOAR guns!

Hello.. So! The Hyperion tank. Its very cool, although not as big a jump as the Hunter -> Scimitar is. Either way... the thing is... it clearly shows a pair of missile pods. Yet, it does not actually posses them. It is teasing me with the delightful experience of having a cannon AND missiles, yet it doesn't deliver. Its a missile tease. This being added later?

So yeah, thats brutal. Three shots would be challenging enough. IMO anyway...

Hey fellas. I haven't really found any place that shows the actual stats (weight, protection, etc) of the soldier armors, but I did search In my game, I just got the sentinel armor, and boy is it super cool. I have been assuming its better than the wolf armor in terms of protection, since... its newer. But I so far have no idea. If it is better, it kind of feels like I'm missing a suit of armor that would be jumpless, but between the sentinel and the predator in terms of protection. So question 1: Does the sentinel have more protection than the wolf armor? and question 2: Anyone else feel like having nearly a whole troop of flying guys seems a bit excessive and would like a ground-based option? That's assuming the sentinel is actually superior to the wolf in terms of protection anyway.

Hi fellas. Holy crap. Here I was, thinking (quite ignorantly, as it happens) that I was sitting pretty with a team equipped with wolf armor, a few buzzards, sweet plasma guns and a squad of captains, majors and one commander, with a scimitar as a bonus. I just got those plasma guns and had a few battles with them -- the first time I've used them actually. So an alien terror mission pops up and I'm not all that worried about it. I was so wrong There was like, more warriors that I could easily count, a few drones and a handful of alien boojums. The drones and the alien hover tank things blow up if you give them a dirty look, but the warriors... man, they are evil. They have reflexes like bruce lee, I was literally stacking grenades on them like I was playing Ikari Warriors. Now, difficulty is a fine thing keeps things interesting. But here is the troubling bit. They can fire their plasma shotguns 4 times per round, that is truly evil. Thats enough to turn hard cover to rubble and kill the guys hiding behind it. I lost two majors that way Three guys got crimson hearts the same way. To be specific here. One warrior across the street could take out the hard cover, and kill the guy hiding behind it in wolf armor in a single turn. That is rough because there isn't a lot you can do about that. This wasn't an isolated thing either, the whole time I was scrambling for (all distressingly temporary) cover. But at the end just about the whole map except for a few buildings were smoking ruins. Is that right? I mean I survived and won the day, but the whole thing felt pretty pyrrhic.

I think that's a problem lots of people have, is that it seems inefficient to take a vehicle in terms of soldier improvement. If you think you can manage to scout ahead safe enough, vehicles large size and inability to use cover effectively makes them a bit of a poor choice in a lot of ways. Unlike soldiers, vehicles have to pretty much take all incoming fire right on the chin too. Even if they comparatively have lots of hit points and armor, they still tend to be fairly vulnerable.... although that actually feels about right here. I usually take a vehicle after I get the Shrike. Before that there isn't really room. Six guys and a vehicle isn't efficient in any way really... 10 guys and a vehicle on the other hand isn't bad. I completely forgot there were androids in Apocalypse, I think I probably didn't use them for the same reason. I doubt anyone used them. All of these would be sweet and go a long way to making the vehicles more fun to use and worth taking! 5 in particular would make one be a bit more careful with the fate of their vehicles if a soldiers life was involved too.

Irrelevant anyway. So? So what? It makes no difference to anything. Things work however someone says that's how they work. I think I made that point fairly clear already. No, it doesn't mean that. That's a weird assumption. That is a possibility, sure, but not the only one as you bizarrely suggest. I'm not sure what your point here is. Again more nonsense here. Where are you getting this from? Its all fluff and can be said to work however the devs want it to work. So again, irrelevant. Accurate fire from within vehicles is possible. Modern tanks still use human eyes to target, after all. Once again I don't see your point, other than from what I can tell just to rain on my parade here. You don't like the idea, fine, but try and make sense at least. Strange, because I see them commenting in many places that they don't use them for the very same exact reason that I said they didn't, which would make sense because that's exactly why I said that. I've not, on the other hand, heard them not use them because of AI. Maybe we are looking in difference places, but probably we aren't. What AI on a player controlled vehicle is the problem here anyway. Moving on here, I gather you disagree with me here. Totally fine But I'd like to hear some other opinions on the subject.

Do higher end solders with powered armor not use enhanced targeting? I think user skill could still make sense here, I don't see why not. Also the accuracy on any vehicle weapons are truly awful, so yeah. Maybe it could start out lower but work its way higher. Anyway, that's a fluff reason one way or another to be honest. I'm pretty sure even in modern day drones and tanks gunner skill still counts for something so I don't buy that as a reason. True enough, in this very particular case. Vehicles COULD panic. Actually manned vehicles anyway, although I don't suppose the scimitar would. I haven't gotten the later vehicles yet so I have no idea what form they take to be honest. TU's though, I think you could say that TU's should rightly and logically be a combination of both the equipment and the crew. Saying the skill of a crew has no effect on the vehicles performance is absurd on its face. Yeah, I disagree or really, I think a lot of the reasons here are fluff that can be made to go one way or another depending. Look at the Scimitar, its apparently remote controlled. Ok, well, you could just as easily say its a two person vehicle without changing anything but the flavour text. Its big enough, after all. These last statements are bizarre, sorry. You could just as easily say the soldiers are trained to shoot their rifles so they shouldn't improve any. Driving -- especially driving armored vehicles -- in combat yet, is definitely a skill that can vary. Right now it doesn't but again, thats fluff hand waving and it could go either direction. Shooting, again, thats just more fluff. If the electronic targeting is so damn great why can't they hit a damn thing. A guy peeping through the iron sites of his rifle is far more accurate than the electronic targeting on vehicles and that's obviously a very silly thing. No offense man, but that's all thinking very much inside the box here. Lots of people don't use vehicles because they aren't as interesting as the soldiers, why not make them more interesting? There just isn't a reason here.

Hi! I'm aware in the originals vehicles didn't gain experience (for some reason) but I think its a shame that they don't here too. Unless they are robots, but at least the Hunter and Scimitar aren't. Hell, the hunter even has a couple of poor sods inside the damn thing. I see many people comment they don't ever use them because they don't gain experience of any sort so.. that's too bad really. I'd rather that what I view as an oversight in the original not be carried over here for mere traditions sake. It made no sense there and I don't think it does here either. Part of the fun is risking the units you've become attached too, and as it is you just don't care what happens to your vehicles. But actually more importantly.. anyone else find the Hunter missiles to be WAY more powerful and useful that then the pulse laser turret? Those hunter missiles are just a good time, let me tell you. When I got my scimitar the first time I was very disappointed to see there wasn't a missile turret for that since the pulse laser is basically crap. Its just too inaccurate, with the good old missiles you just have to get in the general vicinity -- also its great for blasting aliens hiding in thick cover, the pulse laser will just miss the alien and its cover entirely most of the time, even in burst fire. I suppose its possible that some people might prefer the pulse laser, although I honestly can't see this because its awful, so it would be nice to have missile options on the later vehicles too. Anyway, yes, I'd like to see the vehicles be a bit more fleshed out then they are now in general, to be honest.

I haven't read every post on this topic yet, but I haven't seen anyone direct answer this yet: How will auto-resolve work unless this feature is present? As it is, auto-resolve would be complete suicide. Basically, any situation where you lose your irreplaceable aircraft isn't going to work with auto resolve. I don't mind the air combat system, but sometimes when you have a swarm of little fighters going all over the map it gets tiresome to deal with them individually, I'd consider using auto in those cases -- but not if it ended up costing me the game. I can't see auto-resolve being of any use at all unless the system that is exactly in place remains so -- or, auto-resolve uses this system and manual control uses another system someone above has mentioned.

Except that many aircraft get one-hit insta-destroyed by the larger UFO's, so you couldn't really press the button unless you did so before you even took a point of damage. This sucks, because sometimes your not sure how much damage you'll actually take from a single hit unless you have memorized it from previous encounters.

You know most of them will just end up dead :-) That said, download a hex editor, open up a save game and search for the soldiers name, the format is incredibly simple. I've poked around it a few times and made tweaks, is pretty easy.