Pre-Invasion questions

[karry299]

Speaking of formulas, what does "Accuracy modifier 0.01*Acc^2" actually means ? Depending of what "modifier" means, it is either replacing accuracy, or it is an extra bonus. If it's replacing accuracy - it's meaningless, just 100 modifier at soldier's 100 accuracy, what's the point of having an extra formula there. If it's a bonus - it should double your acuracy at soldier's 100 accuracy, which doesnt happen.

I don't think I've ever seen a basic goon survive a direct hit,

What about a sectoid ? Sectoids certainly dont fall from a direct knockout grenade under his feet, i tested this just now. He walked it off and kept shooting.

[DarthTheIII]

Gas and kockouts weapons don't do well against sectoids or most aliens.  But are very effective against pretty much any normal humans without gas masks.  A sectoid will take 4x less damage than a normal human.

The accuracy 0.01*accuracy^2 formula is used by weapons that are only effective for highly trained soldier.  Normally a soldier with 50 firing accuracy has a skill of 50, but using that formula they have 50 x 50 x .01 = 25 skill.  It means that before they reach 100 firing accuracy they are less accurate than the standard formula, and afterwards they are more accurate.  A soldier with 120 firing accuracy will have an effective skill of 144 using that formula.  Throwing knives use the same formula to determine damage, so they are very weak on low throwing accuracy dudes, but scale very well.

[Empiro]

I've found that Gas Grenades (especially from the Tactical Grenade Launcher) work quite well against Sectoids early on. They go through shields, and with the Sectoid's low health, it usually means that one shot will stun (or sometimes kill) it. It's a great source of captures as you're about to enter into the mid-game.

[DarthTheIII]

Can they one shot?  I thought it took 2.  They do 5-10 choke damage, but with the hp and stun damage effectivly do 10-20.  Sectoids have like 30 hp, so I didn't think they could onetap. 

It usually takes 2-3 to knock down a hybrid, and they are about the same as a sectoid in regards to choke damage and hp

[Stone Lake]

Yeah, gas doesn't one tap sectoids. But it's still best/one of best options when you want to capture them across the map.
Also knockouts are a bit stronger at 10-30 stun damage, but only on direct hit.

I don't think I've ever seen a basic goon survive a direct hit, but it's not too hard to throw a second one to make sure.

Against most humans gas deals ~5-10 + 5-10(stun) => 10-20 * 400% choke => 40-80, (to everyone in the cloud). Knockouts do 10-30 * 4 = 40-120, but on direct hit. For most explosives, power drops off in distance from ground zero by 10 per tile - not for gas because it just deals 5-10 damage flat * many bonuses. So if knockout is off by tile, it's half as much damage or even none.

This is usually plenty to OHKO common units pre-invasion and sectoids (rd goons have ~55 hp).

Also gas ignores (under) armor value (armor eff is 0), but knockout doesn't. Which is usually up to ~10 early on.
Knockouts are one of the best ways to stun a coordinator early, and maybe to nab sectoids. But otherwise are hard to produce and somewhat situational.

Speaking of formulas, what does "Accuracy modifier 0.01*Acc^2"

It means "to the power of two", aka "squared". So

but using that formula they have 50 x 50 x .01 = 25

Is correct.

For armored cars, you'll roughly have these hits-to-KO:

Spoiler:

1-8 grenades
5-7 napalm grenades
~8-10 incendiary grenades (or 8-10 hits of most incendiary ammo)
3-4 gas grenades (promo 3 or loot)
2-3 proximity grenades
avg 4 heavy mg hits
avg 3.5 blops sniper shots at 100 acc
avg 2.5 heavy cannon shots (HC-AP, 2-4 HC-HE)
avg 1.9 tac sniper AP shots at 100 acc
1-2 blops minigun volleys 1 tile away
1.5 dynamite sticks (precisely under one of tiles, don't seem to destroy each other)
1-2 rockets (promo3, shrapnel / smol / large)

I usually prefer proxy grenades (dmg + weight = range) early on, then switch to whatever. Gas is again surprisingly strong here - once I've blasted 3 APCs grouped up at RDHQ from one TGL x3 salvo, fun times. There are ghosts weapons to think about - I guess thato-manus would one-shot an APC.

Minitanks take 40% damage from EMP, meaning it would take at least 3 EMP grenades per minitank, and that doesnt help with armoured cars at all.

EMP calculations are tricky, too. 40% is actually "normal" or even "low-ish" resistance against EMP, because: 1) it ignores 75% armor 2) deals +4x stun damage, so 5x damage 3) damage per tile for 2x2 units.
Thus, for average EMP gren. hit of 65: 65 * 0.4 - 50*0.25 = 24 - 12.5 = x * 5 = 57.5 damage on main tile, and >100 from secondary tiles, one-shotting the minitank on average. If i'm not forgetting anything, that is.
EMP grens one shot light robotics (turrets, drones), minitanks, and, well, units in power suits... EMP mines one shot tanks (armor ~100) and sectopods.
Shrapnel rockets are your best friend otherwise. They work about just as well, but rockets can be a bit harder to use.

Spoiler minitunk hunt video:

https://youtu.be/7spzKqaahtI?t=5439

Like, peppering the terrain with fire or proximity mines...err...

"Being on fire" status DOES disable camouflage, IIRC. But proper use of dogs/rats/ai and their scanners is usually a better way. And you'll probably need them anyway, to see through the smoke / break reactions / take bullets for you.

Will there later be a better\faster way to increase the usefulness of AI drones

Once you get HWPs, minigun tanks with AIs are useful from the get-go, no matter how bad they are. "Invasion" often is a joke anyway.

Once you get X-Com Seeker Drones, they actually become very useful (20 night vision, 100 % thermal vision, huge amount of TUs and attacks).

Holy shit, no need to hunt for bats anymore 

[karry299]

Do commendations work within stat limits or in addition ? If i have accuracy at 80 and get 10 acc from commendations - will i only have the room of 10 more acc to train naturally ?

Also, what is this obsession people have with auto-sniper rifles ? The round is weaker, the autofire will never hit anything, and the additional accuracy modifier of the gun is offset by the lower accuracy of the shots. I dont get it. Is it about minimum range or something like that ?

And what does the distance measure device do ? The one on the drone that costs 9999 action points.

[Juku121]

Commendations add to the stat limit, no need to worry about them 'eating up' training space.

I've personally not been much of a fan of the Auto-Sniper, but if I had to guess... It allows you to shoot more, which is the most important thing in a TB game. Autofire can work at close range or with highly statted-up agents, and gives you essentially an assault rifle with all the sniper rifle damage boosts. Snap accuracy with the reactions bonus more or less evens out once you hit 100+. And it even has 3 more tiles without dropoff than the non-auto BO sniper. Damage difference is not too big, almost vanishes with alloy ammo, and is largely offset by the damage bonus from accuracy. And minimum range is indeed lower than on a proper sniper rifle.

The rangefinder measures distance: 1 tile = 1% to hit. I guess it's mostly used for testing? Counting 30+ tiles manually is kind of a pain.

[karry299]

It allows you to shoot more

Ah yes, that one "enough shots at 3% means it's actually 100% accurate if you look at it the right way" type math. In practice, chance is still chance, 5 shots per attack means it's 5 wasted shots that didnt hit anything.

[Juku121]

Well, in X-Com hit chance math, 3 'percent' is surprisingly accurate, especially at close range.

Yeah, if you can't boost hit chance high enough with reactions and general commendation overflow, the Auto-Sniper is a weaker BO Sniper. I guess quite a few weapons only start to shine with veteran troops who have a transformation, a mountain of commendations, armour boosts and whatnot.

As I said, I'm not a great fan of this gun, but I haven't played in quite a while. Others have and have found it useful. They can tell you what their reasoning was, I guess.

[Stone Lake]

Remember that value displayed isn't hit chance, but "accuracy". 3% accuracy is 99% hit as close range. Most autos never exceed 35-50% in accuracy either.
I'm not a fan of auto-sniper or snipers in general either, but at high stats you can reach 50-70-100% auto accuracy + comparatively big damage, especially on advanced soldier.

Ah yes, that one "enough shots at 3% means it's actually 100% accurate if you look at it the right way" type math. In practice, chance is still chance, 5 shots per attack means it's 5 wasted shots that didnt hit anything.

What's the point of asking questions only to jeer at answers given? "In practice" you're completely wrong. If you know your ranges, autos are monstrous even with low accuracy.