Do you ever use pistols or autocannon? Motion sensors?

[kharille]

There are many features which I love to have but I never get round to using.  The motion sensing mines for example.  Love the many features but I always use rookie wave tactics usually. 

Are there any tactics you like to use?  I've found incendiaries to be slow, but I'm curious as to how you feel about that and other features.

[OwenQ]

Short version, my basic pattern is to make use of most of the standard weapons (sans Heavy Cannon), and then marry myself to Laser Pistols and Heavy Plasmas.

I prefer to keep as many soldiers alive as possible, so my standard doctrine with the base game has been to have three 'classes' of troop; I select troops with high Accuracy and Reactions to designate as Riflemen, troops with high Strength as Heavies, and basically everyone else is a Scout (although I may prioritize a soldier with high TUs even if he's decent in the other stats). A Skyranger carries fourteen soldiers, separated into three squads of four and an extra pair. A squad is one Scout with a pistol and motion scanner, two Riflemen with rifles, and a Heavy, usually armed with an Autocannon. Everyone has a grenade and a spare clip, sacrificing the grenade on lower difficulties and the clip on higher ones if weight is an issue. The Scout carries a Medkit and there's usually one or two more on a strong Rifleman.

The Scout runs face-first into danger, the Riflemen move up to cover with some TU left for reactions, and the Heavy provides (or destroys) cover, usually with HE shells. The Scouts aren't wholly suicidal, and I do use the motion scanner whenever it makes sense (usually to detect movement in those darned large scouts, but they're also useful on most Terror missions). I find the pistol is actually a fairly decent weapon in the early game with a high snap-shot fire rate and decent killing power versus Sectoids and to a lesser extent Floaters. Riflemen do the bulk of the killing, of course. The Heavy is usually for rearranging the landscape or saturating distant targets with explosions. I rely only on electroflares for night missions since I like to have more control than I imagine there is with Incendiaries.

The squads are usually set up such that two are roughly equal and one has the two best riflemen. Of the remaining two soldiers, one is usually another Scout that goes with the team expected to meet the most resistance or with the most ground to cover (based on where the Skyranger landed). The last is the most accurate Heavy on the payroll, armed with a Rocket Launcher. He usually accompanies the 'sniper' group, tries to find a high vantage, and lets the other schlubs do the spotting.

Once research starts rolling, Scouts and Riflemen get Laser Pistols as primary weapons. Heavies may eventually see a pistol as a sidearm, but are usually surrounded by three guys with guns to keep them safe. Riflemen get Heavy Plasmas when the time comes, and usually by then something happens and I drop the game for whatever reason.

[Sharp]

I feel like im the only person who uses the Heavy Cannons

Starting off your highest damage weapons are rocket launcher, heavy cannon and autocannon. Now heavy cannon does more damage and is more accurate then the autocannon but has it's own drawbacks with no auto-shot and low ammo count. However if you equip a squad with mainly heavy cannons then the shots which connect will generally do a lot of damage. Auto vs Snapshot generally results in auto being the better choice but with the higher accuracy and heavier damage of the heavy cannon it can make it more even.

Code: [Select]

Heavy Cannon Auto Cannon
Snap: 33% (Accuracy 60%) Auto: 40% (Accuracy 32%)
Aimed: 80% (Accuracy 90%) Snap: 33% (Accuracy 56%)
AP Clip:Power: 56 AP Aimed: 80% (Accuracy 82%)
AP Clip:Power: 42 AP

So using snap shot and aimed shot Heavy Cannon beats Auto Cannon on both counts, however comparing HC's snapshot vs AC's auto is more interesting.

32*3 = 64% which is the combined accuracy for autocannons auto-shot, beating heavy cannon's snapshot by 4%, but it does take more time and it does less damage. Of course if 2 or 3 autocannon hits connect then it can do much more damage but generally your only going to hit 1 out of 3 shots assuming you can hit with 1 heavy cannon shot. If your using the ranged based rule-set then it skews it even more in favour with the heavy cannon as the accuracy diminishes by range far more for auto shot then snap shot, and aimed shot has no range limit so aimed shots are your best chance to hit at range and heavy cannons do the best damage and accuracy with aimed.

Of course you can also argue that if you use HE rounds which have an area of effect damage then auto-cannons can actually out-damage heavy cannons as it can be likely that 2 or all 3 shots overlap with their AoE hit but I have had too many bad experiences with HE round accidental friendly fire to want to use it frequently as well as it destroying precious loot, but it is very useful in a tight situation like facing off 3 sectoids all looking at you when you open the door into a Large scout.

Motion Scanners I used to use but ended up not bothering to anymore because most of the time I find out where the aliens are before I can use motion scanners due to them shooting me.

[djemon_lda]

32*3 = 64% which is the combined accuracy for autocannons auto-shot

how did you actually compute that ?

[Sharp]

Yeah I know that's not actual maths, it would be like saying if something has a 50% chance then doing it twice means it will be 100%

However in terms of the game it's close enough that 3 shots of 20% would have a similar hit rate (on average) as one shot of 60%.

[Yankes]

Yeah I know that's not actual maths, it would be like saying if something has a 50% chance then doing it twice means it will be 100%

However in terms of the game it's close enough that 3 shots of 20% would have the same hit rate (on average) as one shot of 60%.

This is math :> if you shoot 2 times with 50% on average you will hit once (aka 100% :>).
This have simple equation:
probability * number of trials = number of hits on avg

Its because two extremes (2hits and 0hits) have same probability and they nullify each other.

[OwenQ]

I feel like the Heavy Cannon does fill the 'high damage, accurate' niche, but its low ammo makes me shy away from it. It has a clip that weighs twice as much as most weapons and has half the ammo of anything else in the arsenal (excepting launcher weapons). It also seems to me that the niche isn't useful, at least on the lower difficulties - Sectoids and Floaters seem to only take two or three shots from a rifle to go down, and by the time most of the tougher enemies roll around you're probably using something better. It's not a bad weapon, but I find others easier to work with.

Even in the base game with no rules modifications I use my heavy guys the least, and then only when something needs to be saturation bombed for whatever reason. I've been playing with range-based accuracy on and I have to admit that makes my usual strategy quite inaccurate.

I can see folks finding Motion Scanners not being worth the trouble - they're only really useful for detecting ambushes right around corners or, as I said, large scouts. The enemy is, as Sharp observed, usually content to announce their relative location with a plasma shower from several times the Scanner's range.

[djemon_lda]

Its not actually like that, this is a drastic facilitation. it actually comes from this:



where EX is the expected value of the random variable X.

and for discreete random variables this is:



where the x-s represent generated values, and p-s are probabilities of getting them.

what is important in deciding whether to pick snap vs auto is answering the question:

is getting one hit in an auto shot more probable, than a hit with snap?

actually a chance to hit exactly once with an auto-shot using an autocannon has a 44.4% chance of succeeding.
hitting exactly two times is  20.8%
and hitting exactly 3 times is in turn just 3%

that in a sum gives a chance of 68.2% of dealing damage with an auto cannon making an autoshot.

if you want, I can give you a tool to compute that with an explanation and possibly ( if I didn't get too rusty with maths ) a proof that it actually works

I will also compute an expected value of damage output dealt with heavy and autocannon

[Sharp]

It is true that sectoids can be taken down by pistol fire fairly easily

but now you have given me more crazy stuff to put down!
He = health, AF = armour front, AS = armour side, AR = armour rear and AU = armour under

Code: [Select]

Alien Race/Rank He AF AS AR AU
Floater Soldier 35 8 6 4 12
Floater Navigator 35 8 6 4 12
Floater Medic 35 8 6 4 12
Floater Engineer 35 8 6 4 12
Floater Leader 40 16 12 8 12
Floater Commander 45 24 18 12 16
Sectoid Soldier 30 4 3 2 2
Sectoid Navigator 30 4 3 2 2
Sectoid Medic 30 4 3 2 2
Sectoid Engineer 30 4 3 2 2
Sectoid Leader 30 4 3 2 2
Sectoid Commander 30 4 3 2 2
Snakeman Soldier 45 20 18 16 12
Snakeman Navigator 45 20 18 16 12
Snakeman Engineer 45 20 18 16 12
Snakeman Leader 45 20 24 22 20
Snakeman Commander 55 26 26 22 20
Ethereal Soldier 55 35 35 35 35
Ethereal Leader 55 40 40 40 40
Ethereal Commander 55 45 45 45 45
Muton Soldier 125 20 20 20 10
Muton Navigator 125 24 24 24 15
Muton Engineer 125 28 28 28 20
Reaper 148 28 28 28 4
Chryssalid 96 34 34 34 34
Silacoid 114 50 50 50 10
Celatid 68 20 20 20 20
Sectopod 96 145 130 100 90
Cyberdisc 120 34 34 34 34
Zombie 84 4 4 4 4

Heavy Cannon does 56 AP, Rifle does 30AP, Pistol does 26AP.
Cyberdiscs are 20% resistant to AP, mutons and zombies are 40% resistant to AP

Weapons can do 0% to 200% of their listed damage but for purposes of test let's just assume they do listed damage.

All sectoids are the same regardless of rank, 30 health and 4 front armour. This means to kill them in one shot you need to do 34 damage so rifle and pistol can't guarantee a one-hit kill, where a heavy cannon can (although technically nothing in XCOM can guarantee 1-hit kill as all weapons can do 0 damage), however you can fire more shots with rifles and pistols and 2 shots will take down any sectoid.

Floaters are a bit more tough, 35-40 health with armour of 8-24 meaning you need to do 43-64 damage to do a one hit kill depending on floater rank so heavy cannons are far more likely to take out any floater except for a commander in one hit when compared to rifles and pistols. Pistols in-fact will only barely scratch a floater commander but seeing as they will only be in alien bases and battleships it's unlikely you will be using standard human weapons vs these alien scum. Floater leaders however are a more common threat. With 16 armour it means rifles will do 14 damage, pistols 10 and heavy cannon will do 40 damage, given that floater leaders have 40 health it means you will need 4 pistol shots, 3 rifle shots or 1 heavy cannon shot so vs that foe a heavy cannon might be a better choice.

Snakemen have even more health and armour so obviously heavy cannon is much better choice but snakemen are generally seen later in game when you are likely to have lasers and lasers > heavy cannon.

Cyberdiscs though are a real and present danger while only armed with puny human weapons. Cyberdiscs have 120 health and 34 armour (on all sides!) so they require a big punch to do any damage, in fact as rifles and pistols only do 30 and 26 damage respectively they are likely to just bounce off a cyberdisc's armour harmlessly. A heavy cannon will pack a punch though to at least do a bit of damage, after armour they should be doing 22 damage thus taking around 6 shots to take down a cyberdisc with a heavy cannon. However lest we forget cyberdiscs are resistant to human bullets! That 56 damage a heavy cannon does will actually be doing ~45 damage instead and when taken after cyberdisc armour it means doing damage of 11 per shot meaning you need 11 shots to take down the floating heavy weapons platform.

So in conclusion if you want to kill aliens in 1 shot then heavy cannon is your human weapon man, if you want to kill aliens in one turn then rifles and pistols are fine, if your facing cyberdiscs though then it's probably better to just pack rockets, a cyberdisc would probably need 1 rocket and 4 heavy cannon shots to kill, or 1 large rocket and 2 heavy cannon shots. When you consider reaction fire though sometimes it's better to be take that 1-shot kill instead of needing 2 or 3 which means that although rifles and pistols are fit for purpose vs sectoids and floaters, a heavy cannon can let a soldier live longer, although that's assuming they are strong enough to carry the heavy cannon and ammo in the first place otherwise the TU reduction can make them like turtles who don't react very fast

This is math :> if you shoot 2 times with 50% on average you will hit once (aka 100% :>).
This have simple equation:
probability * number of trials = number of hits on avg

Its because two extremes (2hits and 0hits) have same probability and they nullify each other.

If you shoot 2 times with 50% chance then the chance that you hit at least once is 75%

[djemon_lda]

Weapons can do 0% to 200% of their listed damage but for purposes of test let's just assume they do listed damage.

this is true for vanilla version, but - as I've seen in the code - false for OXC. in OXC these vary from 50 to 150 percent. it works the same, having an expected value of 100%, it's just that the sigma of the distribution is smaller here.

If you shoot 2 times with 50% chance then the chance that you hit at least once is 75%

that is not what Yankes meant. he IS right. on average, if you shoot twice having 50%, you hit once. this is the estimated value of a discreete random value that returns if you hit or not with uniform distribution.

what you have written is true, but it is a totally different thing. what Yankes has written is like "well, having maths.. lets estimate how many times statistically we will hit, if we shot twice, and have a 50% chance to hit", while what you've written is "well, what is the probability that we don't miss, if we shot twice having a 50% chance to hit".

you are both right, but you can't compare your results, because they are different thing in nature

OK! SO I'VE COUNTED THE AVERAGE (or in other words estimated ) damage for the auto/heavy cannon per action and per turn ( this is all computed for a soldier having 100 accuracy for convenience, as the relation between these numbers is the same no matter the skill ):

Auto cannon:

a single autoshot expected damage value is : 40.32

in one full turn, using autoshot with autocannon the expected value is 80.32

if you use 3 auto shots then on average you will do 70.56 damage in a full turn.

if you use aimed you will on average make 34.44 damage in a full turn.

if, on the other hand, you chose to use the heavy cannon you get:

average damage done with snapshots in a full turn is 100.8 damage
average damage done with aimed shot in a full turn is 50.4

I will also add rifles to this comparison if I finish computing it while my europa universalis IV is updating

[Sharp]

I didn't mean to imply Yankes was wrong, just also showing how probability can be interesting.

I did do a bit of research into probability after trying to do a martingale system on roulette , worked in GTA:SA but game skews actual odds in that more for players favour, doesn't work in real-life house always has the edge

I do still value the heavy cannon due to it's one-shot kill, poking a floater on the head with a rifle is likely to kill the floater but can also cause him to pop you with a plasma shot, whereas hitting him with a heavy cannon is very unlikely in getting him to remain standing/floating.

If you use range-based accuracy option then autoshot loses it's appeal greatly outside close range with accuracy penalties which makes snap shot and aimed shot much more improved choices.

[redrat9595]

I NEVER bother with Heavy Cannons. The only time I use pistols is the first mission or two before my orders come in for better human weapons. After that, I might slap one on a rocket launcher guy but most of the time I just plan on someone dying by the time he gets his shots off.

Auto-Cannons are a different story, though. I LOVE those things. The AP is practically useless, but firing at some impossible to hit bush in a jungle with incendiary results in a pretty good, spread out, anti-jungle inferno that destroys cover AND increases visibility. The HE is great for low accuracy troops because you can, in a lot of cases, just aim at the ground instead of the alien and almost every shot does damage. On top of that, an autoshot spread destroys cover like there's no tomorrow. Anyone too weak to hold an Auto-Cannon gets a rifle.

On that note, I kind of wish there was a "No Line of Fire" override for firing through walls. If we can shoot at things too far away to see, we can aim roughly through a wall. Ctrl+LMB maybe.

They become less useful when you get Heavy Plasma (obviously), but in all honesty, I bring Auto-Cannons to Cydonia EVERY TIME. They fill in when nothing else can do the job.

[moriarty]

On that note, I kind of wish there was a "No Line of Fire" override for firing through walls. If we can shoot at things too far away to see, we can aim roughly through a wall. Ctrl+LMB maybe.

(Phew, I'm not the only one who posts brilliant ideas that have already been implemented...)
Ctrl+LMB as "force fire" is in the game! Try it out, you'll love it!

[Hadan]

Ctrl+LMB as "force fire" is in the game! Try it out, you'll love it!

Didnt know this, neat!

[redrat9595]

(Phew, I'm not the only one who posts brilliant ideas that have already been implemented...)
Ctrl+LMB as "force fire" is in the game! Try it out, you'll love it!

Sweet! I'm going to use that later when I test the new AI. Is there a list of commands somewhere? I know about the one in the options menu, but I don't think it has the ones with modifiers.