And now for my next trick, I will eat a Nuclear warhead.

[Boaal]

Ok, this was so absurd I just had to post it, if not for notification then for the laughter that this incident received.
This on the Mac Development Build r28016 so things might have changed blance wise since then, but still, one way or the other I simply had to share this.

So on a mission in some place, might have been Berlin, not really sure. Either way standard terror mission, aliens and a ship, early in the campaign, like second or third mission. So I'm busy looking for all the aliens that aren't holing up inside the cockpit
and making my mission a bit more annoying by being hard to kill before they get off a flurry of shots before I have a chance to even though I am the ambusher. But I digress.

So I have a grenadier and a sniper working their way along the open ground, there's nothing there and everywhere else is cleared so it seems. Until A Taman pops out from the far side of the ship and lots off a couple of shots which miss. So I perch my sniper behind a couple of crates and have my grenadier run into the safety of a little hut building thing. The Taman can't see her, and has to cross a fair amount of open ground which the sniper has covered. If it survives that then I can pop out and blow it up. Easy win, right?

Well... The Taman goes first to the cover of a big grey thing that looks like a computer. My sniper fires off a shot, misses. Fair enough. Next turn, comes out of cover, has to cross all that ground, sniper time. Two or three shots, all of which my sniper dutifully misses. Taman goes aorund the corner, into cover. Gotcha, I have the grenadier right around the corner. I see what you're doign and I'm going to beat you at it, ha ha! So I swing her out, she takes about seven steps, ends up with 13 Time Units left. There are two tiles between her and the Taman. Aimed shot- airburst, in the face. That's pretty much a grenade at point blank range. She was just outside of her own blast radius. Taman is just standing there as if a particularly stiff breeze had rolled over it.

It's response was to nonchalantly sidle up to this poor girl, put it's little blue pistol in her mouth and pull the trigger several times.

My reaction was to gawp at my screen and then laugh.
This little alien is invincible!

[Rockwolf]

Yeah, those little buggers can be pretty tough.

I especially love how these soldiers are supposed to be the best of the best, but they can't seem to hit anything that's further than 10 squares away, even the snipers, with a clear line of fire, and Aimed Shot...  miss!

I don't even use grenadiers anymore, those guys just carry around flame throwers.  A lot of combat tends to get pretty close (especially inside a ship) and my flamethrowers are the ones who rack up the kills pretty quickly.

[Beric]

Yeah, the pathetic accuracy of your soldiers is incredible. You need lasers to get any sort of accuracy. A thrown grenade goes 8 squares tops and is just as likely to hurt you as the alien. And a grenade launcher fires 2 squares further than a thrown grenade. I simply don't use grenades or launchers anymore. Sniper and assault rifles for the beginning of the game, and then switch to lasers, merely because these are the only weapons that can hit anything at all at range.

[Destructavator]

I've had similar and just as appalling results with the rocket launcher, which IMO needs to be beefed-up in stats considering it's size, lack of multiple shots, and inconvenience, not to mention accuracy (you would think it could be guided somehow, at that size).

[Viento]

Grenade launchers kill almost everything in 3-round-burst, so they are highly efficient. Later with PB-grenades you can kill everything (eben medium-armour Mutons) with that burst. Single shots are mostly non-lethal.

If accuracy is a problem (which it actually is with many weapons), use the machine gun in 25-bullet-burst. It hits and it kills pretty much everything at almost every distance.

SMGs are okay, too... in long bursts.

And snipers are only good, if the sniper skill of your character is sufficient. Since there are no aimed shots in reaction-fire mode, he needs to be pretty good to hit.

Watch the stats closely and use the right weapons with the right skills, this is my advice.

Andy

[Rockwolf]

Started up a new campaign with the most recent build.

One of my starting soldiers had a pretty high skill with explosives, so I decided to give the grenade launcher another go.  I must be just getting really lucky with her, because she's already racked up 12 kills in 5 missions.  A couple times there were aliens right next to each other when she turned the corner at the start of her turn, and yeah...   a 3 round airburst later, and they were done for.  She's also been a pretty useful soldier in the 'check out the crashed ufo' missions where your soldiers spawn around the dropship, with as many as 5 aliens surrounding them with guns leveled and at the ready.

I've hit restart so many times on those kinds of missions, it makes me sad.

[Rockwolf]

I've had similar and just as appalling results with the rocket launcher, which IMO needs to be beefed-up in stats considering it's size, lack of multiple shots, and inconvenience, not to mention accuracy (you would think it could be guided somehow, at that size).

I don't bother with the rocket launcher at all.  You get one shot, and the next turn you have to reload, so their max rate of fire seems to be every other round, maybe you can squeeze off a shot a round if you don't move. 

Would be nice if the rocket launcher had a very minor guidance system.  As long as you have a line of sight to the target, and the percentage indicator claims a 5% chance or better to hit, then the rocket will weave around the partially obscuring obstacles, lock onto the target, and blow him away.  Considering the cost of ammo, and the inconvenience, without some better hit calculations for a rocket launcher, it's only purpose, as I can see, is to sell it and all of its ammo to make a few quick credits at the beginning of a new campaign.

[theotherhiveking]

Uh, i never really had a problem with accuracies.

I can tweak the numbers and the rocket launcher a bit. Maybe the devs will be ok with a small buff.
However, i think that it would be better to boost the accuracy stat influence instead.

[ovvldc]

I agree that the chance to hit at range is pathetic for many weapons..

My feeling is that it should not be too hard to hit an alien in plain view. When crouched and using a sniper rifle with an aimed shot at 15 squares, fired by a supposedly elite soldier. Maybe the bugger will be too tough, and respond by toasting said sniper to a crisp, but a shot like that should have a decent chance to hit.

I remember cloaking devices in XCOM:Apoc. That made things more difficult later on.

[Destructavator]

I agree that the chance to hit at range is pathetic for many weapons..

My feeling is that it should not be too hard to hit an alien in plain view. When crouched and using a sniper rifle with an aimed shot at 15 squares, fired by a supposedly elite soldier. Maybe the bugger will be too tough, and respond by toasting said sniper to a crisp, but a shot like that should have a decent chance to hit.

I remember cloaking devices in XCOM:Apoc. That made things more difficult later on.

Many of those "buggers" are tough in the beginning against starting weapons.  I've hit Tamans square in the face on normal difficulty with the rocket launcher, and in some cases they just take it, not going down, not even panicking.

Against some enemies I've also found the basic SMG to be useless, with a full-auto spray not doing much even if every shot hits.

[Borsti67]

Many of those "buggers" are tough in the beginning against starting weapons.

This makes even more true what ovvldc states: It is already hard to hurt an alien with a direct hit, so you're nearly chanceless when (felt) 95% of your shots hit the air!

[cerevox]

I reccomend that the human forces invest in javelins. Not the spear things, the missle launcher ones. the ones that you can lock on to an exact location, then the missle goes 10 feet foward out of the tube, and heads straight up. After getting like 10 stories up it goes over to the target and drops straight down on it. And its main purpose is an anti-tank weapon. 100% accuracy and 100% splatter everywhere rate.

seriously though, why is the last hope for humanity using handicap guns and getting the bottom rung troops? I expect to have marine-navyseal-ninja-commandos who eat pure macho 3 times a day and shit c4 and energy blasts.

[Rockwolf]

They're the extra 'special' forces.

After each mission, they get lollipops and cool-aid.

[poppadrake]

I actually love the rocket launcher in sniping situations.  I've had the most success hitting with that and the damage radius has even knocked off aliens that were out of direct LOS but in range.  Terrible to reload, ammo production is slow, and no moving and shooting in same turn are the big drawbacks that I hit.

[Viento]

Before lamenting about tough aliens... advance further in the game and encounter Aliens in medium armour armed with heavy needlers. You can shoot these with amost everything (exceptions: PB-grenades from launcher, Coilgun, machine gun 25-round-burst) with hardly any or really no effect.   To make it even better: every hit of their weapon kills.

And to make it even better: Medium armored aliens appeard in hard mode around the 4th month.

Andy