UFO assaulting

[BULIGO]

Darn you, rsf77! You and your tanks! Now I HAD TO research the Scimitar and want to test it out in the field. My main base is the middle east one, so I do mostly desert battles. Tanks <3 desert!

Salivating in anticipation

I find I use 2 or even more troops to scout an area of the map. If the Scimitar can do that, those 2 rookies won't be missed. As soon as I develop the next-best dropship, they will be back.

P.S. How about repair times for damaged tanks? Do they get insta-fixed or need to spend days in 'hospital'?

Edited August 2, 2014 by BULIGO

[rsf77]

I believed they are fixed immediately when you finish the battle, so that even if you have a damaged tank and fly to another battle without visiting base you get back a full health tank! I'm pretty sure the game doesn't keep track of vehicle hitpoints outside of battle but I could be wrong about that.

Another reason I like tanks is it takes some of the tediousness out of finding and moving to the UFO with your troops, find and blaze a path to the UFO with the tank and not having to worry *so much* about moving there tactically, inch by inch, with soldiers so you don't end up losing valuable troops to an ambush or a reaper to the face. In fact I usually just set my troops up in defensive positions around the dropship until I scout out the UFO.

You lose a little troop experience this way though and, depending on what tank/gun you are using, you lose a small bit of cash from exploded salvage as well. But whats a couple extra bucks when you can have fun turning everything into gibs!

Xenonauts makes me miss jagged alliance so much just for one thing: when you are out of combat for a handful of turns you can command your units like it was a RTS and not have to move each unit individually, end turn, repeat, etc. Whenever another unit was encountered or spotted it would immediately go back into turn based, or you could just switch over whenever or just keep turn based on all the time. So for traveling across the map instead of moving each soldier individually, I just waited in position for a few turns for it to kick in then click, drag and move them all at once until something happened, maybe I'm lazy though.

Edited August 2, 2014 by rsf77

[silenced]

First priority: getting stun gas grenades. Without it's a pain in the ass to clear any UFO.

Second priority: getting Electro Shock grenades. Since there's always some Androns from time to time.

Going without grenade support is suicide.

Ships with multiple decks are a bit of a pain if you do not have enough TU to block the teleporters.

[BULIGO]

I didn't use hovertanks in X-com very much. They were sortof cumbersome, not very resilient and I hated to leave 2 good guys at home skipping XP to be able to bring in that THING. So, I skipped the first tank in Xeno, but just built the scimitar and brought it on mission. He is a great pointman alright, but I thought about his laser gun turret like a pea-shooter, good for plinking around and scaring stray cats.

So finally I brought him to the downed UFO, and let him take a shot at the door. Only 12 shots and no reload? Meh what a piece of junk. It will serve me exactly 2 times: his first and his last one. Will probably need all 12 shots just to crush the door.

But wait!

First shot: dor evaporated, 3 aliens dead right there, no more bulkheads. Only the alien officer is left alive. I don't need him alive. Fire! Second shot: alien officer gibbed together with his cover an all furniture inthe UF is gone (corvette). Barely anything to recover, the UFO is now just an empty basketball hall, everything destroyed. Plus the lumbering tank can crush chickenwire and who knows what else. I want him to have 500 hp!

That mission was fun! The Algerian military might file a complaint, I've left their nifty desert base in smoking ruins

Edited August 3, 2014 by BULIGO

[Dirk Ralthar]

That mission was fun! The Algerian military might file a complaint, I've left their nifty desert base in smoking ruins

Were they really using it though? I mean surely they must have dozens of other bases just like it. And if they do bill you for damages, just have your accountant forward the bill to the Xenos.

[ShadowDragon8685]

So, I skipped the first tank in Xeno, but just built the scimitar and brought it on mission. He is a great pointman alright, but I thought about his laser gun turret like a pea-shooter, good for plinking around and scaring stray cats.

...

That mission was fun! The Algerian military might file a complaint, I've left their nifty desert base in smoking ruins

How did you get a Scimitar without the plasma/mag cannon?

But yeah, the laser turret surprised the hell out of me, too. I thought "Meh, so it's going to be good for evaporating Endrons and big drone disks but not much else. Oh look, there's an alien hiding behind cover that is, unfortunately for him, on the wrong side of him and my laser tank. I think I'll drill him with this gun and see what it does."

The first shot evaporated the Casean, and everything in his immediate vicinity. I was all "HUMANITY, FUCK YEAH!"

The second shot evaporated my Hunter scout car, because Hunters evidently don't fire over low cover in front of them automatically, and the laser shot exited the Hunter's barrel from two meters above the ground, did a hard 90-degree turn and blew up upon striking the half-meter Jersey barrier in front of the Hunter's wheels. Rolling against cover-impact tables with an explosive weapon one square away from you sucks. I was less than thrilled with that outcome.

I just wish that the tanks would all carry a .30 cal coaxial machine gun, so they have combat options between "Explosive RUIN" and "Do nothing."

Edited August 3, 2014 by ShadowDragon8685

[skaianDestiny]

Have you tried Kabill's Armored Assault mod?

[BULIGO]

@Shadowdragon: Alien electronics + Heavy laser Weapons + Alien Alloy Fabrication = Scimitar Tank.

I agree, its a bit odd that you don't have the option to choose between 'normal' tank firepower and 'owepowered'.

@ skaianDestiny: not yet, I am at my first playthrough. You know, the one people do with new games where they can't find their butt with 2 arms and a mirror

But, I DO love Xeno, and I am a long-haul player with a knack for grind of any type, which means I wil go around the block a couple times on this forum

It's amazing how strong and vast the support is for such a relatively new game. This board, the Steam one etc. Really lots to learn, even for an old X-com defense fart..

Edited August 3, 2014 by BULIGO

[ShadowDragon8685]

@Shadowdragon: Alien electronics + Heavy laser Weapons + Alien Alloy Fabrication = Scimitar Tank.

I agree, its a bit odd that you don't have the option to choose between 'normal' tank firepower and 'owepowered'.

I was confusing the Scimitar and the Hyperion, that's my bad.

And yeah... Though, quite frankly, you ought to have the option to build the scimitar without the heavy laser weapons, defaulting to a standard ordnance gun like a mortar or something.

[BULIGO]

I was confusing the Scimitar and the Hyperion, that's my bad.

And yeah... Though, quite frankly, you ought to have the option to build the scimitar without the heavy laser weapons, defaulting to a standard ordnance gun like a mortar or something.

Initially I was convinced that you could customize your tank's (any tank)turret and mount various weapon loadouts from the ones you already researched, like you can do with interceptors I think. If you want a Hyperion with..twin LMG's? why not? Sometimes it's better to supress 3 aliens in a turn then to kill/wound one.

But that ain't gonna happen. Boo.

[ShadowDragon8685]

In fairness, if you're going to be suppressing someone with LMGs, a shot from the cannon is going to splatter anything that would be in machine gun suppression range.

I think you ought to be able to mount a cannon and a co-axial weapon on everything, though. Because you're right: Sometimes taking a shot with a .30 caliber machine gun is preferable to taking a shot with a world-ruining plasma cannon.

(Also, you should probably be able to upgrade the coaxial weapon to the equivalent infantry weapon, the heavy laser/plasma/magstorm guns.)

Or just bring an interceptor rapid-fire cannon.

[skaianDestiny]

There used to be functionality for secondary weapons on vehicles.

Dunno what happened with that, last I heard it's still coded in and can be modded, however the UI doesn't support it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Man, that would be very, very useful stuff, wouldn't it? The art assets would be kind of a pain to change, though not too much of one I'd think since you could borrow one of the .30s from the Hunter scout car's original armament for the coaxial weapon on the other vehicles. The in-game sprites would be worse, of course, and drawing in non-.30 cal coaxial weapons would be a huge PitA.

But sometimes, you really, REALLY need that coaxial gun. Like when you want to fire on an alien who's half-hidden behind some railway car which your tank is up next to, and it's 45% blocked. Perfectly acceptable if you're putting machine gun fire on him hoping to suppress or get a lucky shot, but far too high a chance of INSTANT SELF-FRAGGELATION if you fire the WORLD-WRECKER cannon.

[StellarRat]

The main problem with a secondary weapon is that the Ground Combat interface doesn't support two different weapons. There is only ONE fire button. Maybe the Community Coders can add the appropriate control(s) at some point. That would actually be very useful for infantry weapons also, as it would allow you to add stuff like an under the barrel grenade launcher to your assault rifle (203), etc... Some people have successfully modded in a vehicle secondary weapon, but I believe that actually telling it to fire is a bit funky.

Edited August 4, 2014 by StellarRat