Regarding green: I believe it's "killer app" is the crystal skull. Basically a blood ax but with any weapon.
Oh, my. That's pretty terrifying. I have actually recovered some as loot in my current game, and was uncertain as to what they did or how to use them. I think I will try deploying them soon. If Green can bulk-manufacture this stuff, that is just frightening. It appears from the bootypedia raws that it drains stamina on use, the thing you perpetually run out of, so it would need to be offset by something that returns it somehow...although Green also has Moloch, so that might work.
Oh is there any point to keeping Corpses of demons and such? Used to be they gave you half the essence as a capture but now they dont have the option. Yes I know about the skulls (still dont have anything to build with demon skulls).
Various demon corpses are used in the manufacture of weapons and armors (Demon Corpses are part of the Blood Axe, Hell Barons Corpses are used to make Moloch Armor), but if you don't have access to these items, then they're useless to you.
Concussive damage verses blue shields MOST CERTAINLY can take them down. If its rapid fire. Yes damage is 25% but theres no Armor so it just soaks directly. I forget how much N-Ammo for OGRE does but if its like 30x12 then its like 7x12 damage on those shields if they all hit.
OGRE fires both barrels on the burst, so 7x24 = 168.
But remember if the shields come down before that, whatever gets through is Rather High damage. And then they get set on fire too. Its doable.
Well, the main blue-shielded offenders are Hovertanks, Marsec Heavy Robots, Guildmeisters, and various Academy honchos. The shields-down damage vs. a tank or a heavy drone obviously does nothing, and accidentally blowing through and wasting valuable prisoners is similarly undesirable.
Ive taken down Academy Scientists before with the Chaingun + N-Ammo so its definitely possible. That be like 48x6 but because of blast youre almost guaranteed to hit with most of it.
In my game, I've scored a few Herder Staffs. These things are absolutely amazing for taking down these guys, because they seem to punch right through even the toughest power armor in one or two hits.
I thought Chem Blunderbuss was the way to take down Stargods? Chem goes through blue shields.
Unfortunately, my experience with using Chem is that Chem is very weak, and eats through armor very slowly, delivering decidedly underwhelming performance. It will go straight through blue shields, but then very little seems to come of it afterwards.
Axe To The Head?
Melee takes a backseat to me always. Ive usually got 1-2 hands with a melee weapon and its usually in the backpack. The Syn lady and Xeno have claws and thats delightful enough.
This is where our styles differ, clearly. Melee is my primary mode of attack on high-TU characters because it costs 15 TU to deliver an axe to the head, but 40+ to fire most guns. Melee also has better options for prisoners.
There's another advantage to the AXE TO THE HEAD approach: Have you ever noticed that the mapgen annoyingly likes to put walls where doors are supposed to be? Well, if you've got an axe, 15 TU will fix that for you, and this is generally cheaper than trying to find where mapgen put the door, which is usually on the wrong side of the building completely, and a hell of a lot farther than 15 TUs away.
Guns are much less reliable in this role, especially since they have scaled, not fixed, TU cost, so firing that shot is gonna cost you way more than 15 TU. It will also cost you ammo in most cases.
I've encountered far too many scenarios where I wanted to reach an enemy and there were no less than *4* separate misplaced walls in my way, the only alternative route being some ridiculous detour through half the map. Screw that. If I'm going to have to be carrying this axe anyway to avoid being caught in this situation, I may as well also be using it to axe them some questions. There are very few things that can withstand interrogation in this way: Not even tanks.
Also armored zombies are vulnerable to Super Shotguns and Boom Guns, which yknow are shotguns (HVAP SSG ammo does 55x4, but make it x12 because Burst doesn't cost much more than snap).
Armored Zombies are also rather susceptible to AXE TO THE HEAD, as well as a surprising contender, the Heavy Chainsaw, which I've seen one-shot an armored zombie, because of its sequential attacks that carry through onto the replacement "lost the arm" zombie, whereas even the mightest single hit can only blow off the arm otherwise. Not sure what would happen with a shotgun in the same situation, since a shotgun releases all its projectiles at once.
Blitz or fastest Harbinger lady usually carries an Electro-Claw on the 2x2 belt slot. I dont usually end up using it.
"Fast" and "Harbinger" are not words I would put together. At -25 TU + Cannot Run, the only thing a Harbinger Armor would be good for is sniping from the dropship. No wonder you don't end up using it in such a loadout. I ultimately never deployed Harbinger Armor because, manufacturing-wise, it's a dead end, I went with Annihilator as my heavy suit of choice instead, sticking with Assault and Blitz otherwise.
Cut Vulnerable monsters like Lobstermen can also be DESTROYED by the Arena Slaughter Cannon.
Lobstermans are not exactly what I would call high-threat targets: They're slow, cannot fly, and normally don't carry weapons although for some reason they can pick up weapons despite their lack of actual hands. Also, axe-to-the-head destroys them just as effectively, while not requiring the use of any ammo. It'll cost you 30+ TU to fire that cannon at its most generous, but only 15 to axe, and I usually one-shot them with the axe on Jack Sparrow, so...
Also, since we're talking about surface encounters, as the Arena Cannon cannot be used underwater (while AXE TO THE HEAD still can), the usual method of dealing with lobstermans is probably just to gas them, as Lobstermans have little to no live capture value, and their accompanying Deep Ones are actually more desirable dead, since you need 300 corpses for Deep One Destroyer, so simply poisoning their asses with poisonous gasses is way faster.
Frankly I have a soft heart for the Fatty though, its an unlimited minigun. With good base damage. Weighs 40 just like the B.Laser.
I tried the Fatty. It did a passable job stripping the shields from a Hovertank, but a far less impressive job actually causing any damage to it. In every other situation, the accuracy was absolutely wretched. It has ultimately failed to supplant any of my usual weapons of choice.
offhand question the 8000 hours build time for the Advanced Rifle may be a typo? Description says restoring an assault rifle to its former glory but it costs the integrated devices up front. Its not particularly better since it still uses assault rifle ammo. I think 800 is more believable. Custom Lasgun even costs less, like 1500 or somesuch.
Wouldn't know. It didn't strike me as a particularly amazey weapon. Custom Lasgun similarly failed to make the cut for me, since with basic or Adv ammo, it has very little advantage over the Adv Lasgun, with the added hassle of ammo management. The AP-laser ammo could give it a new run, but I've already committed to the Battle Lazor for that role, which is harder hitting and never runs out of ammo. The ability to indiscriminately hose the battlefield with it is fairly significant.