Topics

16

XPiratez / Balance of bows and bullets

« on: June 13, 2016, 05:33:38 am »

In my first playthrough, I didn't use bows much - because I kind of assumed that rifles would be more powerful.

However, this time around I'm feeling that bows are super-strong. Their accuracy is very high and their damage is respectable - but most importantly, they can hit targets from behind cover. I find it a bit absurd that my archers can fire arrows over the top of the airbus to hit targets that they can't even see, with close to 100% accuracy; while at the same time, my soldier with a blackmarch SMG can only get ~60% with a couching aimed shot.

Meanwhile, muskets and other low-tech firearms are completely overshadowed. Better guns are plentiful, especially if the player is using bows and melee to conserve ammunition.

I want to feel like my tech is progressing forward; but at the moment I'm thinking that I'm probably going to be using bows against anything that isn't heavily armoured for a long time. I'm thinking that maybe bows could afford to have their accuracy reduced a bit. I imagine that it's easier for people to dodge longbow arrows than dodge bullets!

What do others think about this?

17

XPiratez / Effective uses of Ghost armour?

« on: May 23, 2016, 02:13:57 pm »

I kind of like the idea of having stealth assassins sneaking around an slaying enemies while unseen; which is what ghost armour can do. But I haven't had much success so far.

The problem as I see it is roughly this: a soldier needs to be pretty well trained to use the armour effectively. (The need high psi skills, and high melee for the dagger.) So ghost soldiers are not simply throw-away cannon fodder. They need to be looked after. However, the protection of ghost armour is very low and the invisibility effect is unpredictable (as far as I know). So... maybe the ghost soldiers don't get shot at 7/8ths of the time, because of invisibility, but in that other 1/8th, they just die.

Ghost soldiers die easily to a stray grenade, or reaction fire. The invisibility effect is strong, but without some way of predicting whether or not the enemy will be able to see me, I can't see how to use the armour without very high risk of getting the soldier killed.


I'm interested to hear how people are using their ghost armour, and whether they think it's useful.

18

XPiratez / Confused by XG weapon requirements

« on: May 14, 2016, 10:34:21 am »

I've just researched XG assault, and XG rifle. I can now build the ammo, but I cannot build the weapons themselves. The game hasn't given my any hints as to why I can't build them.

I just checked the wiki to find out what's going on, and I discovered that I need Gauss Defences in order to build the XG weapons. That seems strange to me, because I can't yet build gauss defences; in fact, I can't even research them yet.

Why can I research XG weapons without this prereq. even being mentioned? Have I done something weird?

(By the way, I'm still on 0.98B. So if this has already been changed, then I'm sorry for bringing it up. I didn't see anything about it mentioned in the changelog; other than maybe "Research & manufacture updates & fixes".)

19

XPiratez / Cyclops corpse more valuable than prisoner?

« on: April 27, 2016, 02:07:42 am »

I recently encountered cyclopses for the first time; and since it was relatively easy to capture them alive, I brought home 6 live ones.

For every other species I've encountered, it has been more valuable to bring them back alive rather than dead; and so I was surprised and disappointed do find that I can't seem to do anything useful with my live cyclopses. I can't butcher them, or rob them, or enslave them; and I could only research them once. The random payment is small. At the same time, the corpses are actually quite useful for producing high-quality armour. So I'm wishing that my 5 remaining cyclopses were actually corpses!

Am I missing something? It seems a bit silly to me that I can't use my live cyclopses to produce the same stuff I could with the corpses.

20

XPiratez / How does 'choking' damage work?

« on: April 23, 2016, 07:27:07 am »

I'm a confused about how choking damage works. Weapons which list their damage type as "choking" seem to do all sorts of different things. I'd like to get a better understanding of what's going on so that I can decide if the choking-type ammo for grenade launchers and mortars are worth building...

Smoke grenades are listed as 60 choking damage - but they apparently don't take away any health, and they have a relatively small stun effect.
Poison gas grenades are listed as 50 choking damage; but the description also mentions that they do damage. I'm not sure if the damage mentioned in the description is additional damage, or just the damage from the choking part.
Tear gas is listed as 50-choking, but the description also talks about a heap of other special effects; again, I'm not sure how the 50 power choking damage is related to all the rest of the effects.
Rope does some about of choking damage, and the description doesn't mention stunning... but apparently the 'damage' done by ropes does in fact stun enemies. Sometimes enemies die from rope, but I suppose that's due to the special effect mentioned in the description.


In short, I basically have no idea what choking damage does, or what it means. With other damage types I feel like I can do a few easy calculations to work out if it is going to be effective; but with choking damage I have no idea what any weapon will do until I try it. For example, will the choking ammo for the mortar kill my enemies, or stun them, or just make a huge cloud of smoke which doesn't significantly damage or stun anything?