Why is this so goddamn hard?

[H-Hour]

No AM (or nuclear ) hand-held weapons ammo please, but an EP shotgun slug could be a thing — in fact I wonder why it wasn't included with the rest of the EP ammos, seems like it would be easier to fit a miniaturized plasma blade in a shotgun shell than in a rifle one...

There was a weak justification in the original proposal. But if the late game is better with it than I say go for it. I never found the plasma blaster insufficient for CQB needs but a late-game upgrade might be fun anyway.

[TC]

This thread has been about the difficulty of 2.5 and the changes in that version which make it harder than previous versions. On that subject, I have a question:

Are the battlescape starting positions more difficult in 2.5?

I'm doing okay in my 2.5 campaign so far. I lose a soldier from time to time. The only time I take heavy losses, however, seems to be when the dropship puts my soldiers in the middle of the action on Turn 1. I don't remember that being a problem the last time I played in v2.3.

[Rodmar]

In those situations, I use stun and smoke grenades and later, even gas grenades to ward off possible ambush from behind nearby cover (e.g. some ice and frozen maps).

[anonymissimus]

-Know the spawn point positions to know where they may come from - play a lot of missions. So you may even shoot blindly onto a spawn point with snipers, if you here them cry something was hit.
-Put fire fields onto spots such as a door where they tend to rush out. They will either take severe damage or, more likely, use a suboptimal firing position and miss.
-Cannon fodder units placed with reaction fire and facing the directions they may come from force aliens to deal with that cannon fodder and attack the fodder instead of plasma blading your colonel.

I don't use gas grenades, as that's about the only really useful thing coming out of the autopsies research tree. Need to really put priorities as research time is so precious on the hard levels.

[Rodmar]

Yes, but when gas grenades are researched quite soon (if they are researched), tamans and shevaars are still very vulnerable to it (perhaps one or two tiles walking in the cloud).
By the way, by the middle game, with tier 3 armour, PHALANX soldiers can walk in the midst of fire and gas fields with no prejudice.

[Pharaufein]

I don't use gas grenades, as that's about the only really useful thing coming out of the autopsies research tree. Need to really put priorities as research time is so precious on the hard levels.

Are gas grenades even better than incendiary grenades?
I dont think so since they do not even work against hovernets and bloodspiders.

[anonymissimus]

The combat versions of those also move through fire basically unharmed.
Against the humanoid aliens, gas is a lot more effective than fire. Used to be at least. Fire got an upgrade recently, it's causing bleeding and thus can increase movement costs, making it much more useful.