OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: AncientSion on April 10, 2016, 08:40:14 pm
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How are you supposed to deal with them ?
I downed a medium ufo and by accident had my first mutant advisor with me. After smashing one guy with a spiked mace for a number of times, i ordered my advisor to scan the guy and i see he took no damage whatsoever and has like 60 to 100 armour ?
Which weapons do you use versus them ?
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Axe, spiked mace and hammer should be able to do the trick, eventually.. ;) High explosives and other high powered ranged weapons could too.
I've even had decent results with a HMG and plastasteel ammo on anything but front armor.
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Axe, spiked mace and hammer should be able to do the trick, eventually.. ;) High explosives and other high powered ranged weapons could too.
I've even had decent results with a HMG and plastasteel ammo on anything but front armor.
Or something like
(https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/battlenations/images/f/f6/S_laser_machingun_front_attack.gif/revision/latest?cb=20150704234241)
:)
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How do you read the WIKI ?
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Marsec_Bodyguard_(Piratez)
Incendary 15 %, does it mean he takes 15 % damage or damage is reduced BY 15 % ?
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Percentages are always the exact percent something takes. Less than 100 means reduced. More means extra.
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High explosives, HE mortar shells, flamers (in large quantity) and hammers. That's how I deal with them; ranged weapons were ineffective (aside from stuff like portable lascannons, but they're kind of mid-game).
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I also like to use looted gauss weapons at their back armor. Heavy gauss is great for this with its auto shot.
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Buy panzerfausts at blackmarket and equip every gal with one.
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On raw values the best solution is grenade type weapons since the under armor is only 55. Spears are also a potential solution since they have armor pen and TU damage. Marsec bodyguards only have 45 TU so it reasonably possible to effectively paralyze them. Chem grenades are the ideal weapon since that hit under armor and have a damage bonus. And just like any armored unit sufficient volume of hits will degrade the armor value.
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Marsec bodyguards only have 45 TU so it reasonably possible to effectively paralyze them.
Enemies get their TUs back on their own turn, so you can't do that.
Unless you're counting on reaction fire, in which case someone's going to facetank whatever weapon he's carrying.
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As mentioned, explosives. And flamers. And maces. And hammers. And cattle prods. Kind of in that order.
Killing plenty of other people beforehand does wonders, because flamers can and do hit their morale pretty hard (and the AI tends to "bottle up" around flames). As soon as it's low enough, you get a free turn or two as they drop and pick up weapons. Being on fire also goes through armour for free, for 5-10 damage. Worthwhile hitting them with 1-2 bursts of it a turn, until they're on fire and/or panicking.
Maces reduce armour, and 40-50 strength gals often get some damage through (at lowish TUs per swing).
Hammers are slow, but they hit hard enough to crack armour. Very hard in fact.
Prods still do 70 damage. Even if it's stun damage, it's often enough to go straight through. They're slow too, but you'll have a few laying around, or being carried, somewhere.
Assault Cannons w/Exploding Cannonballs are still 60 damage, and hit bottom armour within 3 spaces if they hit close enough. 80 damage with Steel Balls basic can still pip them.
Panzerfausts, Mortars, etc, all do more than enough damage to crack that armour, and are buyable from the start. Having 2-3 Panzerfausts is a reasonable thing to carry on the Bonny, just in case. Even Heavy Machineguns can do a bit if they're close and they've got sighting on the enemy (even if I don't actually like the weapon, you can spray and pray). RPGs tend to be early game too. About 35-40 damage+ is your minimum on it being worthwhile to fire at them, otherwise just smoke/bomb/grenade/molotov with that gal. Or smoke and bring out the cattleprod for next turn. 40'ish damage has a ~25% chance of doing something on a hit from behind, so don't rely on it, but it all stacks up. It scales nicely from there.
Smoke grenades do cause a bit of stun damage, and as fatal wounds/damage ticks them down, a barrage of them thrown accurately can actually do a bit. You're going to have some ready to go, and it's better than getting hit by heavy plasma AoE on gals that aren't outfitted to go through heavy armor. Smoke the area, or pile on some potential "damage ticks" through smoke grenades. I have no idea if it counts as "damage" for morale knockdown/panic purposes, but damage is usually damage, and does all that. 50-150% should count on under armour at their feet on stun, maybe with morale tick-down. Very theoretical, so it's best to use smoke to blind rather than stun them.
Remember the 0-200% damage of normal weapons, and the 50-150% of explosives. Everything counts in large doses, just so that you don't get entirely RNG screwed. Even a Linux SMG from behind will crack through occasionally, and a Boarding Gun at point-blank range from behind (or hand cannon at worst) has it even easier. The morale hit and fatal wounds will all add to the Marsec a'hole's problems in life. You can only rely on averages, so average the f*ck out of him.
50 health ain't that much, when you can pop smoke around him and keep averaging him. Having just 45 TUs turn them into statues if they can't see you, or spend most of their TUs trying to, to the point that they can't shoot that horrible, big, plasma, explodey thingy. It makes it less likely that they'll react as you run around behind them too. 20 square nightvision is scary, but only because it's as good as your gals'. Even through smoke, that normally chops enemy vision down. If your gal couldn't run, had 45TUs, and a weapon that took 16-18 TUs to fire (sometimes more), you'd hate smoke or anything fast moving around. Even with awesome armour. Approach it like that. Contain and destroy. But know their power, as well as their weaknesses.
They're hard, but they can be killed with "basic" weapons. Don't expect to go 1-on-1 with them until later. At the start they're an "all-hands-on-deck" proposal. Or smoke and run and smoke again. Until you can average them with enough gals to count.
(this is just "initial weapons" advice. Marsec Security are scary early on, but that's why I advise a good array of high damage weapons early on, regardless of accuracy or standard-use. You never want to come across something that you can't hurt)
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Enemies get their TUs back on their own turn, so you can't do that.
Unless you're counting on reaction fire, in which case someone's going to facetank whatever weapon he's carrying.
Good point guess the TU dmg property is less useful then i thought.
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Being on fire also goes through armour for free, for 5-10 damage.
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Prods still do 70 damage. Even if it's stun damage, it's often enough to go straight through. They're slow too, but you'll have a few laying around, or being carried, somewhere.
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Bodyguards only take 15% inc dmg so burning will be quite slow even with ignore armor.
Bodyguards only take 80% stun so stun rods hits would need to roll 118% dmg to do 1 actual dmg through rear armor
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Whereby giving you about a 40% chance of some damage with a cattle prod getting through (by a 1st level research tier weapon that you've probably got a few of), and it doesn't require great stats to hit with. Squidgy maths, but close enough.
It's not great, but they were last on the initial queue. Better than lots of weapons early on, anyway.
Setting stuff alight isn't hard with flamers, and it comes with a 30'ish% morale debuff. I kind of mentioned the morale debuff. It might not kill them, not even the damage from being set alight, but it gives you time to kill them. And that's what you need mostly, early on. I've even got an idea that "set slight" damage isn't modified by incendiary damage %, but there's a very good chance I'm wrong.
edit: From very vague memory, it was 8-10% chance to be set alight. This may be modified (or not) by incendiary armour % reduction. 1.5% chance seems low considering how often I've set Marsec Security on fire. 16x 10% seems about right for two flamers firing, considering how often it happens on hit 'n run flamer attacks, minus actual misses and bad RNG. Entirely allegorical, but it definitely happens more often than never. Quite regularly actually, and they do drop dead sometimes between turns due to it (unless it was fatal wounds that did it). So I don't think "set alight" gets incendiary % damped. Could be very wrong on all accounts though.
edit 2: It's kind of hard to give advice to an Xcom player in a mod of it. Especially when the mod creator's content says "it doesn't work like that". Especially when there's all kinds of weird shit in the basic Xcom engine that says "Yeah, it works like that". So take my advice with a grain of salt. I really don't know the differences between the OXCE+ and original Xcom engines (nor do I know specifics of the original engine). But allegorically, it seems to work like that, in that ball-park of figures. It might be 4% "set-alight" and I'm lucky. Who knows.....
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So I don't think "set alight" gets incendiary % damped. Could be very wrong on all accounts though.
It does - try setting yourself on fire while wearing Guerrila armor. You might be confusing Marsec Bodyguards with Marsec Security. The Bodyguard would need, on average, about 75 flamer hits to be killed by fire alone (being on fire & standing in fire counts as 1 extra hit/turn each). Not sure if it holds true for the lowest difficulty as it's more of a cheat mode than a real difficulty level.
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I'm probably just lucky then.
16-32 hits out of 75 "average" still isn't bad odds, which explains the allegorical account there-of.
Oh, you mean damage.
What's the "set alight" %? Is it standard, or reduced by incendiary armour %?
Even high morale gets hit at 30-35% debuff. Allegorically.....
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"IF" the alight is incendiary the effect would be reduced. so 15% of 5-10 or .75-1.5 dmg per turn.
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Fair enough. Fatal wounds it was then. I'd hit him with plenty, and panicked him once (this was on my recent nudie run playthrough base defense), but I've panicked/killed/bled out/torched plenty of security and bodyguards. Thus the allegorical story of "what works".
All the hits add up.
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if it bleeds it dies most certainly. Fatal wounds are actually rather easy to cause since even 1 dmg has a 9.1% percent chance to wound. This climbs to 100 chance at 11 dmg. That is if fatal wound mechanics are unchanged from vanilla.
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I'm also wondering if what I've seen is morale drop due to hits, not damage. Do hits drop morale of an enemy, regardless of damage?
It's not as though Marsec Bodyguards aren't brave, and maybe it was due to everyone else dying around them.... But would 8 "hits" from a flamer do the same as 8 "actually did damage hits" to their morale, regardless of the flamethrower morale debuff thingo?
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From the wiki:
Own unit hurt - no effect on squad morale, unit hurt loses points according to this equation: Morale Loss = INT( (110 - Bravery) * Health Loss / 100)
Panic and berserk begin to occur at less then 50 morale.
So in the case of the Marsec BG the formula looks like this: Morale Loss = INT( (110 - 80) * Health Loss / 100)
So if a Marsec BG takes 10 dmg he loses (110-80)*10/100 or 30*1 or 30.
ally Death follows this formula ((110-Bravery)/5)
Plug in the values and a marsec BG loses 6 morale per ally.
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It's not 30% debuff. It's 30x damage against Morale. Max damage from fire against Bodyguard is 1 point. That's 30 damage against Morale. With 80 Bravery, it's reduced to 9 (+1 for being hurt). With multiple hits you might get them to panic, although they get a good recovery at the start of their turn, so you basically need to get them close to 0.
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Hum... (110-80)*10/100 looks a lot more like 30*1/10=3..
Fire does have extra morale damage, but as said above, you'll be lucky to do 1 damage with fire, which means you'd get 0.3 times whatever the bonus is.
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You are correct about the calculations being able to be further simplified but i was sticking to the formula the game uses. The most important factor in morale dmg is how close you are 110 bravery which is morale immune. that's the 110-value portion.
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I am not simplifying the function, I am merely evaluating it properly..
So in the case of the Marsec BG the formula looks like this: Morale Loss = INT( (110 - 80) * Health Loss / 100)
So if a Marsec BG takes 10 dmg he loses (110-80)*10/100 or 30*1 or 30.
The above is wrong. If you have 80 bravery and take 10 damage, you should suffer a morale loss of
(110-80)*10/100 = 30 * 0.1 = 3 morale, not 30 as in the quote. Or if it is indeed 30, then the formula is wrong..
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I think the formula is correct and you'll take 3 Morale damage. It is very rare for the gals to suffer any serious Morale consequences for taking even a grevious wound.
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Ah yep what i get for 3 am math. 3 is correct.