Countering Nukes

[Ov3rr1d3]

Soooo.  Just took my first stab at the Siberia mission.  As I had basically expected, I got murdered terribly-- my entire squad had been murdered repeatedly, so I was basically down to recruiting new hands, sticking them in guerrilla outfits, handing them a gauss musket, and telling them to gofightwin.  My start was literally surrounded by four tanks and three guys with nukes... so, that was just a thing that happened.  When the Bonaventura takes a reaction nuke, you're gonna have a bad day.  If I'd thought the game was salvageable, I would probably have just lifted off and hoped the mission was repeatable.

But I'd been reduced to that by previous mini-nukes.  Like... three missions where mini-nukes got fielded and left ~3 survivors for the operation.  Why are these getting fielded so commonly?  I can respect having terrifying weapons, but it seems like one month there were none, and then suddenly there were three launchers on EVERY Trader ship of medium or above.

I just can't help but feel like I'm missing something terribly important when the best armor I can field reliably is metal, and my enemy is fielding power armor and mini nukes.  Is there an important interrogation I was missing?  The only interrogations I managed were a Trader Engineer and... I think she was a Guild Rep?  After that, there was just too much gauss, and I didn't have the armor to stand up to it, so I had to field scavenged gauss and try to strike first, which had the nasty side effect of killing everything to bits.

So... yeah.  What am I supposed to do about the nukes?

[ivandogovich]

There are some great tips in this thread about Supply Ships, that directly relate to dealing with Nukes.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4477.0.html

Also, Meridian's Supply ship episode is classic, for both skilled and lucky as hell, play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgt_DpHNLzc

[Ov3rr1d3]

...Wait, those were supply ships?  I thought supply ships were large, not medium?

I'll take a look at those links, but right off the bat, that at least explains why I was seeing so many nukes-- I'm aware of the mod's stance on supply ship farming.  I had just assumed "Oh, this is a medium ship, definitely not a supply ship."

[Dioxine]

So... yeah.  What am I supposed to do about the nukes?

Since you can't face them, stop trying to farm Supply Ships and leave Siberia for later (it's not even mandatory to finish the game, by the way). Mini nukes do not exist outside these 2 missions.
And yes, Supply Ships are Medium now since they've been replaced by smaller model (with less loot) than the original, ages ago. It also has 'Jammed' signal.
In general, since you're so early in, do not engage top-tier ships so valiantly, attack weaker prey

[Ov3rr1d3]

I didn't think they were top-tier!  I'd moved out of small and into medium safely a while back, and it didn't register that there would be some medium ships that were substantially more difficult than others.  I'd just assumed that the game had passed a certain point on the clock, and thus people started fielding gauss weapons and mini-nukes.  Considering the relatively poor payout of the missions, and the fact that I never actually got a documentation item, it never even crossed my mind that these might be the supply ships I'd heard stories about.

Glad to know it was just bad luck/inexperience.  Now I know better, and knowing is... at least a fifth of the battle?  Probably?

[Hazard]

You can kinda avoid the nukes by attacking at night and taking at least two Mercenary Commandos with you as close combat specialists and scouts, they have an excellent 20 tile vision range at night. Make sure the immediate landing area is clear and then set up a firing line away from any light sources, i.e not right by, under or on top of your transport. Remember to use the personal light/"sneaky mode" toggle (default key is L) as much as possible, it disables the light around your units and prevents most human enemies from seeing or reacting to them due to their generally poor night vision ranges. Then just scout ahead slowly with the mercs and unleash hell on anyone they spot with your main troops. After enough enemies have been killed, the nukes sort of turn against them due to panic: they start going berserk and unloading the nukes at their feet or at other enemy units.

This tactic obviously works best on open terrain with clear lines of fire. Guild and Church are quite easy, and probably Academy, too, although I haven't attacked any of their supply ships yet. Mercs are another matter entirely; they're difficult to kill quickly and they have the same 20 tile NV range as the mercenaries you can hire, so they're going to kill you just as dead during the night as they would during the day.

[Dioxine]

As for knowing what you fight - visual ident is hard for beginners, but Hyper Wave Decoders never fail