Author Topic: A thread for little questions  (Read 1034744 times)

Offline Greep

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2760 on: February 12, 2021, 01:03:11 pm »
Well tractors have less influence based on the size of the target, and forcing a landing also requires getting it's speed to 0.  Battleships are "very large", highest size, and move reasonably fast.  Not sure it's even possible but I've never used tractors.

Edit:  Alright did the math, I believe the answer is "not possible" (4 dragons, 4x tractors is just barely not enough).  This is assuming tractors work off max speed and not current speed, although I'm not sure this is the case.

RE: shotguns. They're highly affected by difficulty since they're so sensitive to armor, which is probably why username doesn't like them.  Even the change from jack sparrow to davy jones makes a huge difference, they tend to only be useful for unarmored targets until you get a mammoth which can armor rip (slowly).  I usually end up replacing them with throwing axes since they scale to skills and can hurt armor.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2021, 01:16:36 pm by Greep »

Offline Alex the KatanaCutlass

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2761 on: February 12, 2021, 01:38:39 pm »
Thanks. Hm... So let's then attack when the target slows down.
And, let's AX the enemies a question.

Offline username

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2762 on: February 12, 2021, 01:55:23 pm »
Tried the tractors, sure was fun:) How many tractors would stop a Battleship? I can send two so equipped Scarabs right now. A Kraken would be too slow, I'd wager and a Dragon - well, that'd certainly stop anything with 4 tractors and maybe the worldmap, too.
Even if tractors could stop a battleship, they wouldn't be able to do so mounted to Scarabs because a battleship is speed 4000 and a Scarab is only like 2K and change, so unless you're somehow able to attach Ethyr Drives to all your Scarabs, they're not going anywhere.

As for the shotguns, I do recommend the O.G.R.E. beastie with N-Shells - kills a star god with a burstfire for me.
Concussive Damage vs. Blue Shields? Useless. Against the White Robe guys without the shields? I sorta want them, you know, NOT dead, and for this I go with the Neutral Whip.

And also the Smasher.
Smasher's particularly good at stripping blue shields before I then introduce them to my axe, but as a tool for dealing damage, it's meh.

Shotguns are great vs Zombies, as well, especially with incendiary/nuclear shells
What, the regular, slow-moving zombies? These aren't threatening enough to warrant a weapon specific to them. Their melee evasion is basically nonexistent anyway, so AXE TO THE HEAD! Against the armored zombies, shotguns are pretty useless, like against most other armored targets.

OR, the Death Blossom SMG with inc ammo from a closer range, autoshot (8 bullets).
Close range? AXE TO THE HEAD!

Otherwise a Lasgun with AP ammo for longer ranges, or Heavy Particle Accelerator or Trishot Plasma Rifle as well.
I think my current long-range weapon of choice for lethal ops is the Battle Lazor. The accuracy is great, it's not 60% TU to fire, and it never runs out of ammo. I tend to avoid mass-issue of a weapon that requires custom, non-looted ammo, because if you start actually using it, you will consume ludicrous quantities of ammo, fast.

But the Battle Lazor requires no ammo and also is particularly wicked as a night-ops weapon because even when you miss, odds are it will set something on fire and give you light to to aim your subsequent shots with. And you will GET subsequent shots because it doesn't cost most of your TU to fire.

Generally, however, I use the Reticulan Electrogun, although it makes me wonder: Given how heavy it is and how scrawny Sectoids are, how is it that they have created a weapon they cannot even use? Even my maxed-str Hybrids have difficulty wielding this thing. Because Ah, Slaves, you can never have too many slaves.

Offline Alex the KatanaCutlass

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2763 on: February 12, 2021, 07:28:34 pm »
Hm, I like your take on the matter, username. Wanna try it, so...
Say, WHICH kind of axe?
I use weaker SGs only vs unarmored guys. VS armored ones - AP lasers or XG guns, as soon as I can get them. Until then, poison arrows and other uga-huga stuff. I love the poisoned daggers:)

Offline username

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2764 on: February 13, 2021, 09:23:14 am »
Blood axes and vibro-axes are my usual axes of choice. Blood axes are particularly brutal vs. high-HP enemies with poor cutting resists and armor, like mercenaries and large demons, because they consistently return more TUs on strike than it cost to attack. On mercenaries, particularly at higher difficulty where they have more HP (but still die in one hit many times), this leechback effect can result in a situation where striking down an enemy is strongly TU-positive, giving you enough TUs to sprint to the next enemy and repeat the process. My current killstreak with one is some 80-odd kills for one gal in Purgatoria armor with a bloodaxe, because Purgatoria adds stun recovery on strike that eliminates the one remaining cost of the Blood Axe, resulting in a near solo-clear of the entire map on turn 1 (someone else had to take care of the tanks).

I know it seems like the Gray Codex is the preferred popular choice, but I really can't find the killer app that it has that beats toys Red will give you. No endless bloodaxe rampages. No vampire swords to massively increase uptime by effectively immunizing you to chip damage. What's the big killer app there, an outfit that lets you mindcontrol through walls, something Hybrids can already do? This isn't original X-Com, psi just isn't that great, and since your goal is to wipe the entire map, taking over one enemy just doesn't do it.

Offline legionof1

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2765 on: February 13, 2021, 09:40:25 am »
I will point out that the vast majority of opinions given here about codex are very old. Grey used to be pretty much the best because other codexes had fewer of there unique toys. Back in the early days it was more about the results of the drill project and which codex was more feature complete.

Grey had the best menace class cause it went to all environments which let you cheat out a massive numbers advantage in space, the next nearest in size was 8 but at much later tech in an era when you could pop the drill and build the ship in the first few months. Also could mount the weapon from the codex, which was not a feature all menaces had at the time.

These days gold(huge upfront cash hit and decent toys down the line) and red(best toys overall) are the clear leaders.

Offline username

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2766 on: February 13, 2021, 11:37:20 am »
I will point out that the vast majority of opinions given here about codex are very old. Grey used to be pretty much the best because other codexes had fewer of there unique toys. Back in the early days it was more about the results of the drill project and which codex was more feature complete.
Possibly true, but even those old reviews mentioned the BLOOD AXE as Red's killer app, and, frankly, if Red had nothing else special to offer, it would STILL be the best one just for this one item alone. That weapon alone just completely changes how you approach combats in which you can deploy it.

Grey had the best menace class cause it went to all environments which let you cheat out a massive numbers advantage in space, the next nearest in size was 8 but at much later tech in an era when you could pop the drill and build the ship in the first few months. Also could mount the weapon from the codex, which was not a feature all menaces had at the time.
The ability to mount that weapon is of very little value, though, because it's so expensive to use that it's wholly unprofitable to use it, and with the pokey speed on the Menace, it is incapable of pursuing and shooting down anything more impressive than civilians anyway, as everyone else outruns you, and you can't intercept anything faster than you, not even with a head-on approach.

These days gold(huge upfront cash hit and decent toys down the line) and red(best toys overall) are the clear leaders.
Honestly, it's really more like best toy, singular. What's Gold's killer app?

Offline Alex the KatanaCutlass

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2767 on: February 13, 2021, 02:48:26 pm »
OK, thanks. Will axe a bit, then.

ATTN Nilex:
Yea, the South Africa. That's where I had the Harbinger of Doom myself!

Offline Greep

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2768 on: February 13, 2021, 02:53:33 pm »
Re: username

Grey in particular suffered with bugeyes I think, since it's main shiny toy, mind control, is something everyone has access to now.   

Regardng the weapon mount: it's more complicated than that.  You used to be able to immediately buy seagulls from contacts:smugglers and put it onto an airspeeder, then use that airspeeder to shoot down megapol for cheap cannons.  This pretty much made green's charger laser redundant.  Additionally, HKs used to not be a thing and seagulls outranged everything, so you could safely shoot down a crapton of things immediately on a flimsy 30HP airspeeder if that was your style.

Nowadays seagulls are gated behind authorized dealers, which you're not getting until april tops, probably june. Of course, you could get lucky and find seagulls behind a secret door, but it's very rare.

Grey also has a gnome which can be repeatedly researched, which theoretically can give sci books/light machine gun/shadowmasters/guild stapler, but unfortunately takes 25 brainer days per research so it's honestly not worth it.  The gnome also has gauss coils tech, but you can also just raid government ships if you really need school graduation earlier.

Honestly gold's biggest toy IS the cash: codex stuff is nice, but not much beats getting a full decked out base with a ton of brainers on march 1. Gold is more the "research" codex than grey is oddly enough.  But the combination of fairy and ghost later on is nice.

Anyways, codexes are very subjective, none of them are really bad, although I would say grey feels very weak to me.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2021, 03:27:19 pm by Greep »

Offline username

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2769 on: February 13, 2021, 05:12:18 pm »
Grey in particular suffered with bugeyes I think, since it's main shiny toy, mind control, is something everyone has access to now.
Mind control isn't even that amazey, though. First, the effective range of it is very short. It will most likely not work at all, except on the most weak-minded of enemies, and even then, it usually doesn't work. It lasts only a single turn, and if anything interesting will happen, pretty much everything has to align: There has to be target worth controlling, in a place worth controlling, within reach of a usually low-mobility and risk-averse controller (both hybrids and Fairy/Witch offer really poor protection), AND it has to actually WORK.

If you simply want your target alive, it has to either be the last target, or someone else must still dedicate a turn to beating your target unconscious after you take him over, so you could have probably just skipped this step. If you control two guys and attempt to make them beat each other senseless, they'll probably fail at it.

If you want your target dead, well, I hear you get a penalty condemnation for doing it because you've killed a "friendly" unit. You could try making them kill themselves, but they'll probably fail at it.

Regardng the weapon mount: it's more complicated than that.  You used to be able to immediately buy seagulls from contacts:smugglers and put it onto an airspeeder, then use that airspeeder to shoot down megapol for cheap cannons.  This pretty much made green's charger laser redundant.
That, and there's a mission to raid some bandits to get a cheap cannon anyway.

Anyways, codexes are very subjective, none of them are really bad, although I would say grey feels very weak to me.
Green honestly feels the weakest, mostly because it seems aimed at newbies and so while it makes the early and midgame easier, it doesn't really contain much in the way of a killer app, merely lots of redundant solutions to problems I regard as solved.

Offline Greep

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2770 on: February 13, 2021, 05:48:24 pm »
Well, mind control is weird because some really powerful enemies are weak to it.  Namely:  Mercs and raiders, although megapol or hilariously weak to it if you just want to screw with them.  A plain old savvy girl may have 38 voodoo power (on blackbeard) but a merc soldier has 29, and a raider firebat has 28.

If for whatever reason you feel like taking on mercs early I guess it's possible with bugs trained on civilian ships. It's mainly more effective on lower difficulties, where voodoo power isn't as high on enemies, and obviously you need to do the whole "panic then MC". Also if you're being a total munchkin, UAC space suits give your bugs +5 voodoo power which actually makes a difference.

Regarding green:  I believe it's "killer app" is the crystal skull.  Basically a blood ax but with any weapon.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2021, 05:55:32 pm by Greep »

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2771 on: February 13, 2021, 08:25:29 pm »
Too much of a coincidence to be a product of chance (and the only three HoD I ever saw in 4 in-game years) so I guess it's a great farming method for Demon corpses/essence.
So the demon ship is basically a staging platform for attacks-everywhere and if you blow it up they stop. Reminds me of the actual plot of Final Doom/TNT evilution, a flying spaceship made of demon bones.

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).

@username
The Reticulan Electrogun is mainly used by Sirens, so the Rets clearly made it for their tank characters. Sectogres are pretty strong.

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.

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.

I thought Chem Blunderbuss was the way to take down Stargods? Chem goes through blue shields.

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. 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).

Blitz or fastest Harbinger lady usually carries an Electro-Claw on the 2x2 belt slot. I dont usually end up using it.

Cut Vulnerable monsters like Lobstermen can also be DESTROYED by the Arena Slaughter Cannon. Which I guess Dioxine made do cutting damage because of shrapnel tearing streaks on people's faces. But that in no way constitutes a genuine cutting damage style. But anyway 38 base damage I think and like x8 or x10 pellets, with a burst option. Non-tech version of the boom gun.

I agree with you about the Battle Laser in general though. But its because it does Heavy Laser damage with a BURST option. Hey if one shot doesn't royally screw them take 3.

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.

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.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2021, 08:34:35 pm by RSSwizard »

Offline Nilex

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2772 on: February 13, 2021, 10:27:14 pm »
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).
Red Codex has good use of Demon corpses. Otherwise nope.

offhand question the 8000 hours build time for the Advanced Rifle may be a typo?
Has to be a typo, good eye. Report it.

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2773 on: February 13, 2021, 11:19:33 pm »
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.

Offline legionof1

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #2774 on: February 14, 2021, 01:31:01 am »
Lobster-men actually do have manipulators. They have 4 upper limbs if you look at the paperdoll. So yeah the big chonky claws cant wield stuff but the other 2? seems plausible to me.