Talking tactics

[karadoc]

One thing I like about this game is that there are a wide range of viable tactics - and different tactics are powerful in different situations. And today I thought I'd share a powerful strategy I've been using recently.




I set up a 'safe zone', where the enemies can't get line of sight to - either because of physical obstacles or smoke. I have my heavily armoured units peek out from the zone to spot enemies, and then snipe the enemies with long-bow archers from within the safe zone. If all goes to plan, the enemy gets wiped out and my units don't even get shot at, because enemies don't take reaction shots against units they can't see.



The archers wear amazon armour for the damage bonus and stamina regen. They also carry melee weapons and shurikens, just in case they need to go indoors.



A seductress or two helps deal with high-armour foes. (I think its a bit bizarre that a seductress can knock out a foe in power armour at long range, through smoke, such that they can't even see each other. That's some serious seduction. It's a pretty cheesy tactic.)




Clearly the archers are most effective in open areas and hilly maps. Maps with buildings or lots of trees make it a bit harder. Usually I bring reaper-rifle snipers and some high damage guns, but when I expect an easy mission I don't always bother.

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[ohartenstein23]

I'm a great fan of this tactic, as it was similar to my go-to for farming landed supply ship missions.  Send the gals on the Pachyderm for a quick response team, composed of fast melee scouts, some heavier assault armor, and lots of long-range fire support from longbows, mortars, and snipers.  Smoke the LZ, peek out with the scouts or the heavies, then bombard.  It got easier the more sniper gauss ammunition I looted from doing this.  Strong melee scouts can sometimes even solo power-armored foes if you can sneak up on them from behind.  Also, spam enough grenades at anything and it will die, even if just from bleeding out.

I found this tactic was easiest to learn when the price of failure was a baby nuke going off in one of your gals' faces.

You might not want to use it against Church missions, as a sudden chryssalid hiding in just the right shadow off the side of your Pachyderm can unravel the entire setup, speaking from experience here...

[karadoc]

The traders have successfully scared me off raiding any supply ships after my first attempt.

I didn't really know what to expect going into it, except that the Bootypedia said there was a limited number of turns. I figured the traders weren't much of a threat against my armour, so I wasn't being super careful.

There's one over there, I can kill him with an aimed shot with the heavy laser.
Oh well. He didn't die, and he's turning around for a reaction shot...
*KABOOM*



I figure that if I can lose half my team to a single reaction shot, it probably isn't worth the risk.

--

In other news. I've recently been getting good value out of the arena fireball launcher. Here's tactic I've been using a bit against landed ships of all sizes.



I use the fireball launcher to shoot the side of the ship. The fire actually penetrates the walls, and burns whoever is inside.

But the best part is that the hit-log can be used to tell if there is anyone in there. So if I hit someone, then I fire again. If I don't, then I fire somewhere else instead.



This is also a decent way to scout areas outside of ships too; particularly for stealth units such as star gods or cat girls. Just shoot some empty ground with the fireball launcher; and check the hit log to see if there was anything there.

I'm not sure how the soldiers are working out if they hit anything. I can only assume they are listening for the screams of pain from the enemies... or maybe this is just an unintended exploit of the hit log.

--
It's also pretty good for accuracy training. Whoever is using the launcher doesn't need good accuracy, because they only have to hit somewhere vaguely close to where they are aiming. If any enemies are caught in the explosions, the soldier will get some accuracy experience. In fact, you can get a heap of experience points from a single shot.

It seems a bit silly really - blindly firing fireballs at the side of a building tends to net far more accuracy experience than taking carefully aimed shots with a rifle.

[Dioxine]

OK, the Ret ships are leaking, that's a proof there In my defense, I was using 100% original tilesets to construct them

Reducing the training effectiveness of the Fireball Launcher seems like a good idea tho (previously, the best acc. training weapon was the Flamethrower).

[ohartenstein23]

Baby Nuke reaction fire is dangerous for everyone on the map, it forces you to learn a few new tactics, especially with respect to reaction fire triggers.  Getting a few hellerium grenades or a mortar concealed by smoke is first priority for me to deal with power-armored nuke wielders, and night ops plus the fireball launcher to light up targets comprised my SOP.

It's a fun trade-off, wanting to deploy as fast as possible to beat the timer, but not wanting to call reaction fire right into the open door of your craft.  Also, the Pachyderm's giant light-up butt is absolutely wretched for night ops - I had to spend a turn or two just smoking that ass before I could rush safely to the cover of darkness.

[ivandogovich]

Speaking of Night Fighting tactics:

I think the light produced by the ship can be reduced by ensuring that flares and torches are not in the ship's stockpile.  I need to test this to be sure, but I believe I've seen that true in the Pachyderm.  If you have only "lights" in your gal's inventory, it doesn't add to any of the Ships Landing Lights.

Also, Night Fighting has gotten so much easier with the "alt" button.  Hitting "alt" lets you quickly identify where units are (both yours and the enemy's) .  It helps when targeting enemy units from afar (click on the number on the screen, you are centered on enemy.  Click on your weapon and chose firing mode (aimed, etc).  Hold down alt, and move the aiming reticle over the unit until it glows.  Click to fire).   Now you can hide your gals in the darkness on the map edges and let them fire into lighted target areas.  I feel that it helps alot with the new early game with smaller and weaker crews, as you can't just light up the map and storm out of the Bonny and kill everything in sight.

Navigating challenging terrain in the dark (jungle, forest, mountain caves) does get trickier.  Sometimes I'll make sure I've dealt with any enemies in sight, then I'll flip on the lights (L key) to see the terrain around my gals, then flip them back off and navigate.

As I understand it, if an enemy spots you when you flip the lights on, they will then know where you are for as many turns as their Intelligence allows.  Once you flip the lights off though, they won't be able to target you until they can "see" you.  They may move toward your position to reacquire you and target you, but it may be too far for them to do so.  In the current AI, enemy don't target things beyond line of sight or anything that is blocked from view, whether by smoke, darkness, or other obstruction.

Also, the poor AI does really poorly with lights.  Jagged Alliance 2 had enemies that would react to a flare tossed in their vicinity by running out of it on their turn.  Overall the Xcom / OpenXcom engine didn't really try to make night fighting a thing other than making it more dangerous for the player by giving the enemy much farther vision in those situations.

[ohartenstein23]

I never bring flares for the reason that I'd have to place them all in inventory to keep from lighting up my LZ, and the Pachyderm's engines still give my position away.  The Deliverator was a welcome change in that aspect, but still gave off some light.