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Messages - MonkeyHead

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31
Tactics / Re: 2.5 Early game builds+what effect the amount of TU's?
« on: August 25, 2014, 09:32:14 pm »
There is literally no point in carrying both a laser rifle and plasma rifle. I don't get where you think that Laser rifles do little damage - they will tear through pretty much anything other than heavy armoured enemies with ease. I drop plasma rifles totally once I get lasers into the field.

32
Artwork / Re: dragon
« on: August 24, 2014, 07:05:20 pm »
The image I have of a Dragon fighter is a bit of a rushed lash up needing refinement - alien engines "bolted" on to a human frame, with some minor modifications to load bearing surfaces inspired by alien craft in order to cope with the increased forces. Think "early jet fighter" - and how they were often basically prop aircraft bodies with jets attached. Integrated engines would come with the Starchaser.

33
Tactics / Re: 2.5 Early game builds+what effect the amount of TU's?
« on: August 24, 2014, 07:02:39 pm »
For me, armour is a bottleneck. It takes so long for armours to be available for purchase in the quantities I would like that I find myself spending a long time making them.

EP rounds though are well worth the time and money investment, when compared to needler and laser weapons, and for rookie snipers.

34
Tactics / Re: 2.5 Early game builds+what effect the amount of TU's?
« on: August 24, 2014, 12:55:33 am »
The whole buy it earlier thing is true, but only for things you can buy.

35
Tactics / Re: 2.5 Early game builds+what effect the amount of TU's?
« on: August 23, 2014, 06:53:25 pm »
I am not sure where your complaint comes from. Games are not meant to be "push button and win". If you are not winning, you are doing something wrong. Next time, do something different.

FWIW, I break ground on my second base immediately, and keep both small (one or two labs or workshops at most, 10 or so soldiers) for a few months, running 4 interceptors and 2 ground combat teams. Other than for research purposes, I sell most downed UFOs, and am quite aggressive at selling alien gear I have no immediate use for, and the products of UFO dissasembly. For around 6 months I am very short on cash as I build up my bases, focussing on production as even with 4 labs at most I can keep my research on top of my workshop orders list, and 2 bases (one in the USA, one in eastern Turkey) allows me to keep nearly everyone on the globe happy despite a high casualty rate amongst my troops using captured alien weapons. This shortage of cash continues until 12 months or so in when I can send out nanocomp armoured and laser armed squads - by then, the balance of force on the ground is in my favour and I can begin turning a profit through selling the alien weapons and build up a stock of cash from better funding. It is very easy when new to the game to allow your research to outpace your production capacity, leading you to think there must be something wrong as you have 4 or 5 newly researched things waiting to be made - reel in your research a little and add in some more production capacity. Things that have been researched are technically useless unless you can get them into combat, and often this means making them. Why rush researching things if you lack the capacity to utilize them?

TL;DR - go for smaller bases to establish more of a global presence to secure funding rather than one megabase - labs and workshops are expensive and you can do most of the early to mid game production and research with a small number of labs and a slightly greater production bias.

36
Feature Requests / Re: Few things I want to tell
« on: August 22, 2014, 02:49:20 pm »
Regarding sidearms:

Early game, I use them a LOT. Rookie troops often are recruited with not enough strength to carry what I would call a typical loadout (IR goggles, armour, medkit, knife (which I have actually used on more than one occasion to get useful kills in when ammo runs dry or low on TU), flashbang, smoke grenade, 2 frags and 2 incendiary grenades, plus primary weapon and ammo) so will go into combat with the SMG (if decent accuracy skill, to pepper aliens from range), or Microshotgun if they lack accuracy as it is hard to miss with it from close in. Troops with high explosives skill get an automatic pistol and a grenade. I do notice that as a result, early game, I get to capture lots of stunned aliens - I can fill the 10 slots in a containment in 3 months or so. Snipers , Grenade Launchers and Rocket Launchers get the best sidearm they can carry as their weapons are not always practical - nobody else really needs one (so starting at the basic pistol, working up to the SMG). After the first month or two though and I have plasma pistols and their ammo in abundance, all sidearms get sold and swapped for the plasma pistol. By the time I get laser pistols, they replace the plasma pistols wholesale. Late game, PB pistols will replace the laser pistols for soldiers with decent accuracy, if I have enough ammo. Regardless, all sidearms are a great way of skilling up the close combat skill - these troops will be the ones who tend to die the most for me, so skilling them up to be strong enough to carry a plasma blaster (if decent accuracy) or flamethrower (if not so accurate) is always on my mind. The shotgun is a very useful defensive weapon with solid reaction fire , but lacks the range to be useful in anything other than mad suicidal rushes into rooms.

Regarding Snipers:

Despite skill increases, snipers are invaluable late game for a few reasons. Firstly, through wall kills. Secondly, late game, armour and a sniper weapon is beyond the strength of most new recruits. You simply have to skill up snipers and keep them alive from early game.

Regarding HMG:

Nothing is better than the EP HMG for mowing down groups of enemies. Nothing. Taking down 3 or maybe 4 enemies in a group for 20 TU is glorious. I have never managed multi-kills of that nature with anything else (not even anything explosive), and late game, with 12 or more enemies on the map, you will need that kind of stopping power. I see the standard HMG as a weapon for harassment saturation fire at range - use it to wound enemies, then finish them off with other soldiers who have been closing in. I have seen armoured Taman take a full burst of standard AR full auto fire and keep on coming - a full burst of standard HMG though will put them down. That, and sheer volume of fire makes it more likely that you will get one or two hits, even at range. Considering the effects of wounds on TU, this is still useful.


37
Tactics / Re: "Hit the ground" option (Shift + fire)
« on: August 20, 2014, 11:41:51 pm »
TBH I only ever use the RL when there is some kind of background for the rocket to impact on - all too often it will fly harmlessly over the horizon.

38
Feature Requests / Re: Suppressing fire: For those hard to get aliens
« on: August 19, 2014, 10:41:39 am »
Correct me if I am wrong, but shooting at an alien does drop their morale. I have noticed on many occasions that after shooting at an alien from long range with HMG/SMG/Assault rifle and hitting a whole lot of nothing or maybe one or two light wound hits, the alien will panic, or go berserk. I am sure we have all noticed our own soldiers becoming shaken after far too many rounds get sent their way, too.

39
Tactics / Re: Money trouble
« on: August 19, 2014, 10:39:02 am »
Smoke does have 2 downsides though - firstly, it does not last forever (which could be made even shorter to nerf it a bit), and secondly it does destroy your own line of sight, preventing reaction fire. Yes, it is easy to pop out of the smoke, and pop back in (or use a trooper already in the smoke) to shoot, so maybe a serious accuracy hit for shooting in smoke could be implemented somehow... it also causes stun damage in the dev version.

In any case, I have noticed that I still suffer casualties in smoke, mainly when an alien will path into the smoke and get a point blank kill - most noticeable with Sheevar and Plasma Blades, but early game Hovernets and Taman both do this too, but this is possibly a function of how the AI has knowledge of unit position and how it paths rather than anything else.

40
Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Infrared glasses don't work !!!
« on: May 22, 2014, 11:31:51 pm »
Hmm. I have to say that I have only ever spotted aliens with the IR goggles, not civvies. Maybe something is up there. It is fairly rare for the enemy to start near you and in cover. Near you, yes, but probably in full vision (if they arent the other side of the map). As a result, by the time they come into what I think is the range for IR detection they are probably not hidden all that well.

41
Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Infrared glasses don't work !!!
« on: May 21, 2014, 11:25:32 pm »
FWIW, I can say that this is not an issue in 2.6 - enemies are spottable from behind cover and through single walls if you are "close" when you activate the IR goggles, or move to within a short range which I have not really determined - this is most useful before breaching buildings/UFO's through doors or before going down stairs, for fairly obvious reasons, or in forward CQ units acting as spotters for troops armed with coil guns and bolter rifles. So, yeah, they seem to work as intended in 2.6

42
Discussion / Re: UFO:AI sucks ? Where ? (Part II)
« on: May 05, 2014, 09:17:48 pm »
Gonna go for the AI - though it does seem a little dumb at times, it does kind of fit the whole "brute force hive mind individual is meaningless" approach.

43
Discussion / Re: Soldiers shooting soldiers
« on: April 27, 2014, 10:11:44 am »
If you are shooting, and the aiming line has gone red, then you only have yourself to blame. If it has not, then there might be a number of other factors at play. I have managed to hit my own troops that are in front of me and one square to the side with weapons with a high spread carried by soldiers with no so good accuracy while disembarking my dropship - shotgun + plasma blaster are the worst offenders, but I have managed it with any weapon with full auto or area of effect. The reaction fire not hitting is AFAIK a function of the reaction fire checks. I agree its not great that this occurs, but it is really not that hard to not so it - are you really keeping all your soldiers so close together for enough time that this is constantly an issue? This will probably make the aliens job so much easier. I put at least a 1-tile space between all my soldiers when on the move, and that was before I ever found them accidentally hitting each other.

44
Tactics / Re: What do I have to do to win?
« on: April 17, 2014, 11:55:47 am »
2 Alien launchers on an armoured Stiletto or Dragon will take down pretty much anything - anything more than that is overkill and will waste valuable ammo. Fill up any weapon slots above the second with PB's for finishing off craft from close range who are badly damaged by AM warheads to avoid wasting the very valuable missiles.

45
Discussion / Re: UFO:AI sucks ? Where ?
« on: April 16, 2014, 05:37:57 pm »
I voted for difficulty, but this will need some explaining.

The difficulty level is spot on around when the enemy first start carrying plasma rifles and wearing medium armour.  Losing between 2 and 4 soldiers on each mission feels right. Thing is, when laser weapons come around, the difficulty level drops significantly due to the aliens lack of long range lethality until their medium armour and PB weapons come around. This is where my minor gripe can be found - you end up with elite troops that hve survived most of the middle game, and they will almost certainly get killed late game like the early game (2 to 4 a mission feels ok if it were not for the fact they were being replaced with greenhorns), and you have to replace them with rookies unable to carry weapons in combat that will level the playing field and that will not last more than a few missions. Either the middle game needs to be made harder somehow (though laser weapons do not need a nerf as they feel just right), or soldiers need to skill up faster so losing higher skill troops is not so game breaking in the late game.

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