A thread for little questions

[CPLT-K2]

You overlooked armor damage on gauss.

[xcomfan]

How do i check if a laser is armor piercing?

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

"ANAL" button on bootypedia weapon page, then you have to pick ammo type from list and there it will be listed everything about % of armor ignored and such.

[DaEMon]

The way I deal with sectopods, is using high repetition lasers (autolasers and fattys) to remove the shield then hit it with a MAG rocket. 240 damage plus good armor penetration (60% armor effectiveness IIRC) is a guaranteed kill even if you hit the front armor. Of course your laser gals need to survive some nasty reaction shots. Using red shields seems to be a good option.

On a different topic, how do you shoot down a silver towers? Is it possible? I've tried with a barrage of plasma beams, hammermite missiles and plasma spitters but the shields seem to regen too fast. I haven't tried tesla coils (I've just researched them) but I don't think they have enough DPM to do the trick. Maybe I just need more advanced weapons tech. Also, what interceptor crafts would you recommend using? Silver towers don't seem to move slower than 3.2k, which means heavy crafts like the Kraken won't be able to catch it.

[Greep]

Looking at bootypedia, fusion ball launchers do more than double damage rate of hammermite, plus they won't run out of clips, and have 60 range so even modest shielding allows hit and run, so definitely possible eventually.

(edited out some stupid ideas)

Actually, a barracuda tank (300 shielding) + 3 brave whalers with avalanches (9 total) might be able to do hit and runs without repairing, due to the range and avalanches doing their damage all at once.  But this all seems kinda pointless since you're dedicating all of your hangar space just to take something out early that you don't need to.  Infamy loss is less than a science vessel, so it's only worth doing if you plan on assaulting it, which from what I've heard is a serious PITA.

The best tank is probably shadowteched shadowcraft or menace ships.  But you'd need ethyr orbs or a fast menace and fusion drives.  Sounds like gold codex has an advantage here, since a hawk/el fuego can throw together any random orbs you find and still have some shielding.

Edit: btw, anyone know how psionics works in x-piratez?  In vanilla, psi panic does 110-bravery morale damage, but your gals can reach 110 bravery.  Is there a minimum bravery loss to panic?  And if not, will the enemy then just immediately go for mind control if you have high bravery?

[arbee81]

You overlooked armor damage on gauss.

I did forget it has built in armor damage, but I'm not sure it changes things much.  I haven't tried it, but I imagine it would take a good amount of hits to lower the armor enough to make much a difference.  Maybe if you don't have any of the big lasers or only have standard clips for them gauss might work better with the armor damage.  My head isn't made for that kind of math 

Has anyone tried EMP grenades against sectopods?  They have 50% resist, but it cuts through so much armor that it seems like it would still be effective.  I've only fought 2 sectopods this game so far, and didn't have EMP at hand either time to try it

[Ashghan]

On a different topic, how do you shoot down a silver towers?

See here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3626.msg107447.html#msg107447
Basically same as Greep - 3 whalers/9 avalanche + tank craft. That's a setup viable only in the late game, when you have nothing else to spend your dolaros. Like I said in the post above - Towers are a last shot at getting a SG coordinator if you're getting ready for Mars and still missing the SG codes.

Supervision is a mission with a fairly low infamy loss, and the Towers are a fast ship so it doesn't last long - all in all, they're safe to ignore.

[Greep]

I haven't tried emps vs sectopods but have vs tanks.  1-2 is virtually gauranteed destruction on jack sparrow (91 under armor I think).  So on a normalish difficulty, that's about what you need for a sectopod (100 armor), probably 2-4 due to  increased health.  But you'd need to knock out the shields.

edit: nvm, sectopods have better emp resist, so probably would be much less effective. That said, looking at one of meridian's playthroughs, emp minibombs tickled a sectopod, which actually means a grenade should be at least practical.  Also, I forgot cutting doesn't ignore blue shields, so some silly ideas I had don't work well (although a couple chem grenades will kill them). 

Regarding guass armor damage: I don't think it'd be very effective, on average a heavy gauss is only going to do 5 points of armor damage/shot.  Unless we're talking x-gauss.

[legionof1]

snip
Edit: btw, anyone know how psionics works in x-piratez?  In vanilla, psi panic does 110-bravery morale damage, but your gals can reach 110 bravery.  Is there a minimum bravery loss to panic?  And if not, will the enemy then just immediately go for mind control if you have high bravery?

if you have 110 bravery or greater your immune to the dmg from psi panic, and the MC will have such shitty odds the AI will be unlikely to try.

[machinehater]

I just have seen, that you need an "alive" robot, drone, killer droid or whatever to get the robot disassembly. How the hell do you "capture" on alive?

[Greep]

Electric lasso, or any other weapon that ignores stun immunity (electric generally, emp generally doesn't) and has a very low health damage multiplier.  Lassos in particular are very good for capturing drones.  Tazoguns usually kill drones but sometimes you get lucky.

E-pulse also works, but will typically kill robots since they have such small health.  There's also good old cattle prod if a drone is on the first floor, like in a house or something.

[arbee81]

I've been playing this mod for years and only found out about stunning robots during this playthrough, both on accident.  One was an academy drone, I think with a stun rod.  I assumed it was immune and thought whacking it would just train melee.  The other was a cyberdisc in an academy base.  Melee gal with an electro sword, all on her own, checking a part of the base I "knew" was empty, just to be sure.  Opened a door and there it was.  I couldn't remember if cut damage triggered the explosion, but figured she was a goner either way, so I went for it.  To my very great surprise it knocked the disc out.  Only problem was I had to leave her there to babysit.  Last thing I wanted was that thing waking up and coming from a place I thought was safe.  It's not a sure thing, it happened maybe 50/50 after that and lately it's been more like a third of the time, but I'm more in the late game and have more gals with maxed stats and skill/stat boosting armors.

I think I also got one of those terminator drones with a lasso

[Ashghan]

AFAIK 2x2 units never wake up from stunning. So you didn't have to babysit it at all.

[amjh]

I'm not sure, but I think robots in general have no stun recovery?

A "stunned" robot represents a state where it's disabled, but not wrecked.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Academy drone definatelly wakes up from cattle prod stun after few rounds, so they do have it.