What's your favorite weapon?

[jerikojerk]

those who like sure kill may love plasma sword in close combat. they never mention it! But it's the only weapon i never see failed.

grenade are great cause of their unique ballistic and rocket launcher cause aliens asked my to stop to use it. To give more details, a assume that i switch rocket launcher for flamer in big city stairs.

explosive mustn't be overused in small pieces

[gargy2002]

Hi all,
I have played this game since 1.X so I can say I'm a bit experienced. I have 2 grenade launchers(the best soldiers - 222x266 and 132x166, means more than one killed alien per game) equipped by PB grenades, then 2 sniper riflemen and the rest is equipped by laser guns, mostly rifles and just one by heavy one. I can usually finish the crash site games by the first round(scout and fighter) but harvesters are more complicated, especially in the desert..

[Kanjejou]

My favorite weapon is the flamer. Burning alien is so good and it's an excellent weapon in most map when their is  not only long range shooting, storming buiding and ships with it is pure gold .

[Tamanfodder]

I am not wery far in the game so my expirience is a little limited: So far my favorites are Flamethrover and GL! I usually have two GLs on mu squad! One is armed with the basic `nades and the other one is used as the evil big  brother of the shotgun! One soldier, GL + Flechettes and 6 tamans on a harvester. Three turns later there are One soldier, GL + Flechettes and a LOT of ground meat on that same harvester! 

[Lew Yard]

Nix on the flechettes once you run into well-armored aliens -- a flechette blast is weak shots, each of which has its damage massively reduced by armor.  At that point, stick with the explosive rounds (or plasma, once you have some).

Flamethrowers tend to stay useful, particularly for ambushing at convenient choke points where the short range doesn't matter.

[Tamanfodder]

No worries! My new favourite duetto is Lazor + plasma rifles! You just CAN`T miss with the lazors! And you get an IMMENSE supply of plasma weaponry for free! (How generous the dead aliens can be!)Bolter rifle`s armor penentration is nice though... Armored Ortnok bites the dust after three hits, but to hit that ortnok three times you have to be at kissing range which isn`t something you want to do... So Plasma and Laser rifles are my favorites! Bolter COULD be if it would hit something!

EDIT: MG is also on my list of favorites! Hawing a soldier spraying full auto to scare those pescy aliens to shooting everything useless near them (even eachother) is just great! It is funny that a soldier shoots the MG like the RAMBO! 

[Lew Yard]

Bolter rifle`s armor penentration is nice though... Armored Ortnok bites the dust after three hits, but to hit that ortnok three times you have to be at kissing range which isn`t something you want to do...

Bear in mind that you can *shoot through most walls* with them, at reduced damage. You can't shoot through the exterior side walls of an intact harvester (too thick, AFAICT), but you *can* shoot through, say, from the ground level to the upper deck through the ceiling/floor, or from right outside the back through the thin walls around the doorway.   You can shoot through a window, through the roof of an ordinary building, and nail a target to whom you didn't even have line of sight (with that shooter; *somebody* should spot so you know where to shoot)...

A Bolter has a 'throughwall' factor of 2.  The first wall the shot goes through, divides damage by sqrt(2) (to 46-65 from the original 65-85); the second wall, by an additional sqrt(3) (to ~26.5-34.7) and /then/ you subtract the armor's value against the shot's damage weight.  Medium alien armor subtracts 22 from the relevant damage weight, so

# walls / no armor /  light alien armor (12pt) / medium (22)
0     / 65-85 /  53-73  / 43-63
1     / 46-60 / 34-48 / 24-38
2    /  26.5-34.7 / 14.5-22.7 / 4.5-12.7

So vs. medium armor, a burst through one wall can still hurt nastily (72-114 if you hit 100%), and against an unarmored opponent a three-round burst through two walls is still vicious, but it's not that useful against a medium-armored opponent.

For comparison, a sniper rifle has a throughwall of 1, so it can penetrate one wall, but it has a higher base damage of 105 (always) and the same damage type (normal_heavy), so again 12 or 22 pt reduction.

# walls / no armor / light armor / medium armor
0  / 105 / 93 / 83
1  / 74 / 62 / 52


The coilgun has a throughwall of 3, the same damage type, and a damage of 180+/- 36 (thus 144-216).   This results in

# walls / no armor / light armor / medium armor
0 / 144-216 / 132-204 / 122-194
1 / 102-153 / 90-141 / 80-131
2 / 59-88 / 47-76 / 37-66
3 / 29-44 / 17-32 / 7-22


For reference, civvies should have ~5-10 health, Tamans 100-130, Ortnoks 150-190, Shevaars 120-160, Bloodspiders 150.  So a three-round Bolter burst through a single wall (100% hit:  138-180, 102-144, 72-114 health for no armor, light alien and medium alien respectively) is pretty significant.   Now consider that  judging from the 2.3.1 source there seems to be no penalty to precision or accuracy for shooting at a completely obscured target (just significantly reduced damage for when you hit, up to the number of thin walls allowed -- zero for most weapons), and therefore the odds of hitting somebody who's just on the other side of the wall/ceiling are pretty high, and that the aliens have no weapons which can return fire through a solid wall...

[LuckyLindy]

AutoCannon in support of squaddies with rifles.  Beware of the splash, though.

[XCOMTurcocalypse]

I am starting to like lasers immensely now that I have found some time to produce them en masse. A tightly packed group of 4 heavy LAZOR and 4 LAZOR riflemen are an invincible nut to crack. I occasionally swap 1 laser rifler with plasma rifle, to go to assault mode and lay down autofire.

[mf_nor]

My favorite (start and mid game) is for every soldier i have -  to have:

either grenade launcher or sniper. The other gun in the backpack. And medikit and one piece of sniperammo and grenade ammo extra.

Since its impossible for me to know where my soldiers start at every map, and the map is not possible to prepare for I think 8 versatile killers is the best way to go strategicly. I figured this out pretty fast.. And its kind of dull that I guess I am actually right.

I think weapons should be some way restricted to skills (or classes like sniper, assault  heavy, Flamers etc)
If its possible to equip everyone with the same kind of weapons (which is the pretty much the best setup) , and it works very good for all players, some of the strategy concept (which i like) that includes having diverse weapons and relying on teammates, etc get less important.

With my setup I can just throw away the sniper and use the grenadelauchner if necessary (or otherway around). The Sniper from kneestanding kills most aliens giving some chances from all over the map. grenades wipes all mid-close combat. even snapshots from sniper is good in close combat :/

The tactics and weaponchosing should be based more on what skill the players have. SOme should really suck at sniper and grenadelauncher, and maybe just be good assault men. 

I think its a bit imbalanced that every player do (pretty) well with sniper rifle and a grenade launcher. There should maybe be training courses (target shooting) to learn using the weapons so less can use them (with good results)

I also thinks the old weapons get obsolite to quick. There should be a incentive to use them for a longer period. Maybe other ammo should be much more expensive. And maybe e.g. 7.62 ammo etc could be replaced by better tech bullets or covered with poison etc later on.

This is my experience playing hard difficulty playing maybe 70 missions on 2.3.1 - guess im newbie compared to many here, but hey - i want to make the game better - hope this helps

[OmniscientQ]

Picking just one favorite weapon? Man, that's a tough job.

As has been said, the Bolter isn't necessarily a BAD weapon. It's more inaccurate than a sniper rifle, shotgun, or assault rifle. But it does a decent enough job of combining all three into a single package. The three-round burst on a Bolter is especially dangerous. Ortnoks beware. I generally only carry one on my squad, but he's the guy who can do any job. You don't want a laser rifleman running into a building to trade blows with a medium-armored Ortnok, but the Bolter guy can do it. Hell, the Bolter guy probably doesn't even have to go into the building himself. He can just blast the Ortnok through the walls.

The Flamer is another nice one. As has been said, it's reliable. No randomness involved. If the target is in range, it's going to take full damage (barring partial cover), and that full damage is more than enough to roast any alien when set to Inferno mode. You'll find no better option for reaction fire at close ranges. Setting a flamer on either side of a Harvester's doors is a perfect death-trap. They're the perfect weapon for an untrained rookie.

Grenade launchers are another fine choice. Not exactly my style, but they have their uses. Firing over obstacles with a three-round airburst is a death-sentence for most aliens. Within their range, they're great. I haven't had much success with the flechette rounds, though. I've fired a three-round burst into an unarmored Taman from 1 square away and it didn't die. I'm using 2.4-Dev, so it may be a bug. *Shrug*

Then, of course, there are the riot shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, lasers, and the lot. They all have their charms. In the end, however, I'm gonna have to go with the coilgun as my favorite weapon, despite the assorted drawbacks, if only because I built one of my own back in highschool. It was barely powerful enough to fire a slug more than five feet and wouldn't have put anyone's eye out even if they were staring straight down the barrel, but coilguns will always have a special significance for me.

[Hertzila]

If I had to pick only one weapon, it's laser rifle. Extremely accurate, fairly good damage, low TU cost equal excellent all-arounder for your average assault rifle grunt.

That's the top one, but the flamer and grenade launcher would go to the top three. The flamer is the most reliable weapon in it's range and kills anything as long as the agent has at least 12 TU and some ammo left. The GL, on the other hand, is very versatile weapon, capable of arcing through windows, air-bursting in the middle of a field or turning aliens into Swiss cheese with flechette indoors.

After that, things get rather situational, but one of those things can usually handle it at least decently.

[Sarin]

My favorite is Machine Gun. Full auto can mow down any enemy on close range, even multiple enemies when placed right, and the amount of lead almost guarantees a couple of hits even across most maps. TU cost is just right for look-shoot-back to cover tactics...

Second is Grenade Launcher. Its huge power and area of effect can result in such extremes as six aliens killed by single soldier during one battle, especially at maps where some groupings of aliens occur.

Heavy Laser has been my primary sniper weapon for most of the game. Versatile, high powered weapon capable of hitting bullseye through entire map. Only problem is high ammo consumption.

[Coyote]

I'm going to have to give my vote to the humble Bolter.  It doesn't handle any one job particularly well, but it's just so damn versatile that it's impossible not to love it.  It's pretty much the perfect battle rifle, capable of dishing out incredible damage at point-blank ranges and making precision shots at longer distances, not to mention the fact that it's able to shoot straight through most cover.  Bolter troopers should never be sent in unsupported, of course, and it takes a skilled trooper to use one effectively, but they're still handy weapons.  I keep exactly two Bolters in every one of my team loadouts at all times.  The remainder of my standard team loadout consists of two longer-ranged troops - snipers in the early game, Laser Rifles in the mid-to-late - two dedicated CQB troopers armed with either flamers or shotguns, and two heavy weapons troopers  - one explosive, one not - whose loadout I change situationally based on the mission description, usually settling on an MG and a GL in the early to mid game, and a Heavy Laser and a GL in the late game.

For backup weapons/sidearms, the Plasma Pistol wins in my book, decent accuracy at mid-range and absolutely terrifying damage output at close range.  It's a big weapon but it balances that out with small magazines.

[parjlarsson]

SMG for fun - but it's dead useless after armour starts showing up.

MG will last a while, though, and is crazy good on "bridge" and a few others.

I'm one of those weird people that think that "old" tech is cooler.

I'd rather see pistols and basic weapons be more useful. As is, if you play smart it's a cold day in hell before you get much use out the smaller secondary weapons. You basically have to screw up for them to be useful.

The plasma/laser/blaster stuff is cool and all, but ...meh. I guess I'm just steampunk and old-fashioned. Bigger and flashier and glitzier and more fantastic and nuclear explosion-y isn't always better.