You do know about the night vision mode, right (holding spacebar or pressing scroll lock, can be changed in options)?
had... no... idea...
glad to know now, that could be crazy useful based on my game style
yeah the blue reticulan laser thing is just insane accurate, thats why I throw explosive apples at the hybrids (and a musket ball to the back if she's still standing), I mean it usually doesnt kill my ladies but I prefer not having my best hands spend 40 days in the infirmary.
also whats the deal with the gazer/cyclops aliens? they spit purple goo thats real nasty but... ive landed like 20 hits on them and they're not going down from anything, are we talking power armor defense here or what... I could literally do nothing to them and I just died so I didn't even bother with the mission. I can understand if they're just immune to stun damage, but it just means im going to have to go after them with plasma/explosives later on and walk away from any missions I find them in.
It is interesting to hear other people's strategies. The clockwork gun is one that I never used because
Functionally different? What changed?
Yeah it does 40 damage 3 times, if you're a melee person like me thats like ~100 damage on somebody if you can get all of them to hit. Even with the +armor adjustment its still pretty nasty since it only takes one of those to roll high and with personal armor they're still going to be hurting for 10-30 health. I also use it as a scenery breaker in maps like the shanytowns because for some reason musketballs can blow a giant hole in a wooden fence.
(but it is slow to reload, and accuracy means if you're not right up on somebody you're probably gonna miss at least once, and it means every 3 ball musket clip is now 1 shot).
Its cheap, and more importantly its a pistol, it can be used with something else in your hand like a magna-lite. The ammo is cheap. An i-Gun costs a ton for its batteries and it only gets a 2 shot burst, and as the bootypedia explains many enemies with armor have added resistance to plasma anyway (and because of statistical clips rules id rather not shoot it more for the favor of possibly keeping that clip).
re underwater:
Some guns can fire underwater but rather than accuracy being impacted its the weapon power that will be, and every space is going to cost at least 10 weapon power (maybe 2 if its something like a jet harpoon rifle).
In real life navy seals carry glocks and may use them underwater but its basically like a melee reach weapon so that you can shoot somebody 5 feet away from you before they get up close with a knife. Underwater a bullet will only travel about 7 feet and retain lethality (whether its .22 LR, 9mm, or 45acp they're all the same). Rifle bullets travel about the same, except that if you're shooting into water the high velocity will shatter the bullet and you end up with about 3 feet of lethality instead of 7.
This was slightly unrealistic in regard to TFTD... but the hydro-jet weapon was okay, a high speed supercavitating magnesium fuelled miniature torpedo (supposedly with a tiny explosive tip warhead, much larger warhead for HE rounds). Firing a 25mm mini-torpedo underwater going about 250mph is like being shot with a big Crossbow and it would have just as much range too.
My question is I wonder if it would be possible to Replace items temporarily in openxcom based on the environment, then give you back the equivalent normal item if you still have the temporary one...
Then you can have the game "gives the player the Underwater Harpoon" and takes their normal Harpoon, the underwater version looks the same and everything but its got a short maximum range and loses power. End of the mission for each underwater harpoon they recover, they get a Harpoon back instead.