What's your favorite weapon?

[Neonin]

4 rounds? I wonder if that's related to an issue I noticed in 2.5... I've had numerous weapons firing more "rounds" than they're supposed to, double sniper shots for example, and the MG firing about 30-40 shots instead of 20. I have seen the Botler unload 4-5 shots in a 3-round burst but I assumed it was just a graphical glitch and may even have been something I accidentally added while modding. I'll have to try an un-modded version of the game and see whether I still get extra shots.

[Jon_dArc]

In 2.4 it seemed to me like the bolter had a strange glitched interaction with throughwall—if a shot hit a wall it would stop rather than continue through, but an additional shot would be fired on the same trajectory that would pass through that wall, repeat up to the throughwall limit. I was all excited about three-round aimed shots until I realized that only one projectile could actually hit a target.

~J

[Kiki]

I break my eight man group into two four man squads each armed to support the squad, and if need be the other squad. The squad functions as single body, sorta like a hive mind working together as a whole. Each squad has grenade launchers, armed with plasma grenades or ic grenades. The plasma grenades are ground clearers, while the IC grenades are are little more surgical. I call it shake and bake. Then I have two plasma blasters in each squad. They have poor range, but who needs accuracy when the gun is shoved in some orifice? Then I have one plasma rifle, which gives me a little movement and I can still go full auto. Never seen full auto fail at point blank range ever. 
    First I take cover always. Then each man either moves or shoots, not both. Once I'm in cover I wait for them to come to me. When they get close the grenade launcher allows me break cover shoot three rounds, and take cover again (Shake and bake). Those alien that sneak up have to find me in my cover which in most cases burns Time units. Most times they don't have time to shoot, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. The biggest problem is moving my men out the line of fire while in cover. Then I use the plasma rifles to clean up. You can move a little with a plasma rifle, full auto kills, while aimed shots finish off wounded foes.  Except for large battle fields were you have chase down wandering aliens this works every time.
    I never make weapons, except plasma grenades for the launcher.
    With this tactic newbies work as well as harden vets. I have to keep selling alien junk or my store rooms fill up.

[Sims]

"What's your favorite weapon?"

2.5 -dev

1.) Machine Gun - Enhanced Ammo
2.) Assault Rifle - Enhanced Ammo
3.) Lasser Rifle
4.) Grenade luncher PB

Before Enhanced Ammo

1.) Plazma Riffle

[Noordung]

Plasma blaster is great for RF at close range.

But sniper rifle is my favorite. And as long as aliens will stuck i will be.

[Sarin]

2.5-dev: Assault rifle with EP ammo and sniper rifle with EP ammo.

[Unisol]

Plasma blade. Quick, deadly, close to the point of intimacy.

[Griever]

Really? The assault with the plasma bullets? I tried it but it didnt Seem to be all that good.
Must ve missed their awesomeness somehow.
I do however LOVE the sniper rifle with the new ammo. Give it to an unarmored soldier; you get 2 aimed shots of pure compressed pain to fire at anything you dont like.
I still think the coil gun is not good enough to compensate the weight.

Since 2.5 i also learned to appreciate the laser rifles!

And as a classic: pb grenade launcher.

[GPS51]

I'd go with either PB rifle or plasma grenade/bp grenade launcher. I don't see any use for plasma ammo for assualt or machine guns. I have repeatedly tried them on both medium armored ortnoks and tamans. I find it takes 35-40+TU to kill them or I can use a pb rifle and for 15 tu either kill or severely maim them. From what I can see the plasma ammo for human weapons isn't getting any AP bonus (and is fairly useless). Would love to see them useful.

A. How to folks go about using a RPG soldier and do they use a back up weapon for when his 4/5 rockets are fired? Do folks wait to fire until targets are within 20-50 tiles or use it more like a long range sniping weapon?

B. Machine guns, such a fun weapon, so useless in my troops hands, how do YOU use them efficiently? Do you use them as a close range/last resort shotgun effect? What ways do you use them?

[Sarin]

I found plasma ammo fairly useful. A decently experienced soldier will severely injure even ortnok in medium armor on range roughly 10 cells or less with full auto. The 3-round burst is excellent RF tool if you can set it up properly late in game when you have no good 8 TU weapon for RF. Of course, PB weapons are better, but their ammo is limited to what you can scavenge.

RPG is mostly heavy sniper for me, generally restricted to killing aliens near walls and sometimes using the splash as indirect damage. Due to its huge and heavy ammo, I often issue spare rockets to soldiers who have some spare carry weight, so in the end I sometimes have like dozen rockets distributed throughout my squad.

Machine guns...well, they're not that bad. 5-round burst is good as heavy support for a RF soldier when in close quarters and you need to take down something in medium armor or such, and full auto is good for crawl around the corner-fire-crawl back kind of action, like in small street map for example, or long range "tagging" aliens to induce bleeding. Early on, this is IMO best way to take down some aliens at dam map.

[Telok]

B. Machine guns, such a fun weapon, so useless in my troops hands, how do YOU use them efficiently? Do you use them as a close range/last resort shotgun effect? What ways do you use them?

The MG is a slow, heavy, less accurate, assault rifle when using the 5-round burst. It's unique niche is when you have a clump of three to six aliens close together, then the 25 shot full-auto mode and it's spread can turn it into a super shotgun. Unfortunately at a 25 TU cost you have issues with soldiers surviving the alien RF at less than long range.

For the dam map you want sniper rifles for range and accuracy, or grenade launchers for bounce and indirect fire. The MG isn't accurate enough for full map distance fire and sucks in alien RF at short ranges.

[GPS51]

I found plasma ammo fairly useful. A decently experienced soldier will severely injure even ortnok in medium armor on range roughly 10 cells or less with full auto. The 3-round burst is excellent RF tool if you can set it up properly late in game when you have no good 8 TU weapon for RF. Of course, PB weapons are better, but their ammo is limited to what you can scavenge.

Isn't it just easier to throw a plasma grenade at said alien? (is there a way to see how much hp /dmg per attack I'm doing to the alien?)

[H-Hour]

Isn't it just easier to throw a plasma grenade at said alien? (is there a way to see how much hp /dmg per attack I'm doing to the alien?)

Obstacles can sometimes make it difficult to get a plasma grenade in the right place, and the wide splash damage means sometimes its tough to hit an alien without hitting your own team.

From a logistics side, I typically have a lot more EP ammo to spare on a soldier than plasma grenades, especially late in a battle. And in terms of production time, EP ammo pools at the end of a battle, so firing 3 shots from a magazine is often much less costly than throwing an entire plasma grenade.

Grenades are certainly an important part of any strategy as well, but I personally make excessive use of EP, straight to the end of the game (well, I'm almost there!), simply because PB ammo is not numerous enough.

[GPS51]

I assume the medium armor (there is no heavy right?) alien armor takes off 75% of dmg from plasma assault ammo and machine guns?

[H-Hour]

I assume the medium armor (there is no heavy right?) alien armor takes off 75% of dmg from plasma assault ammo and machine guns?

No it doesn't. Armour doesn't work by percentages but by subtracting its protection value from the ammo's damage value. If you want to know the exact protection for any given matchup you should add the protection values for /base/ufos/armour.ufo + /base/ufos/team_aliens.ufo and then subtract this from the weapon's damage value (EP is in weapons_plasma.ufo)