Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!

[KateMicucci]

Why go for lethal melee weapons over nonlethal? It's not like nonlethal melee weapons are hard to acquire. Are axes better than fuso sword?

Nonlethal can't reliably take out a mechtoid or an armored car and even against a normal human there's a decent chance of whiffing. It's easy enough to carry a nonlethal secondary anyway.

I ran the math about a year ago and found sabers and cutlasses turned out to be top damage per TU for most of my gals, even better than some more advanced weapons like techblades. But this was a year ago and I haven't checked for changes. Still, axes are my preferred anti-armor weapon as they are still 3x1 and 1-handed, and not so slow that they can't be used against a group of lighter enemies.

In my six-gal team I have specialized them into archetypes so that I don't forget something important when the roster changes. Sniper, heavy gunner, arc shooter, nurse, wall breacher, melee monster. While the others may carry cutlasses for melee work (recently my heavy gunner took out 4 osiron security in one turn with her cutlass) it is vital to have the melee monster carry an anti-armor weapon. There are a few early-game enemies that are nearly
 impervious to any other weapon besides maybe a crate of violence or barrel bomb. It's not cool when the last enemy is an armored car and you already used all your high explosive.

Camo works best at night. It's not great in daytime. Bootypedia entries will tell you who has nv/tv

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

No, tac-vest is not guaranteed. There can be spawned runt outfit also or even space suit. Parrots could resolve your problem with dogs, or if you don't want to lose slot (especially when using airbus) use grav harness. It's suit that grant gals ability to fly so no melee creature could do you any harm.
Archer gals should have bootle of moonshine in their eq for stamina problems. Hunting rifle is good long range weapon, but mid-armored can survive even two front shots. Researching hunting rifle also should grant ability to transform it into scoped rifle just like with rusty niner. 


Only researching corpses or live captives can give you information about NV and TV, but it's fairly logic. Beastman could sniff you, and they see better etc. I think early available camo paints work better for snipers than melee gals. It's better to lure enemies to melee gals, than trying to rush them. Also sneaking around buildings and attacking from behind is best camo availible. Just need to be carefull when enemies have "sense" like "fartbag".

[KiriKaneko]

Muahahha, I've developed a devilish early game tactic!

I've equipped my soldiers in warrior armor and on wide open missions I just make them stand in the open far from the enemy at the map border. The AI shoots from well out of effective range and misses most shots, the ones that hit are front shots that rarely do any damage, and it's mainly small arms fire that hits, the shotguns don't have a chance

Downside is they kill each other a lot while shooting at me but soon they run out of ammo and I can mop up with lots of lovely captures, if I missed anyone then the warrior armor seems to greatly improve our survivability since small arm fire is much less likely to do damage, and does only minor-moderate damage on a crit, and I just play it somewhat safe as I advance, making sure to stop outside doorways and in full cover. When 90% of the enemy are out of ammo I can easily handle the survivors with 6 soldiers, and if anyone with a big gun appears I just shoot them (I equip shotgun in main hand and stun rod in offhand, if I want to fire I just put the stun rod in quick slot, since shotgun is 2H there's no risk of reaction fire killing potential captives)

[KiriKaneko]

God I love warrior armor. It's not quite tac vest but it's pretty reliable survivability for this point in the game

[Yataka Shimaoka]

In terms of tactic, warrior armor is far more powerful than the tac vest

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

There is a button in HUD to drain all remaining action points. It is placed in left down corner and you need to right click on it.

[KiriKaneko]

Yeh but its a pain when I'm skipping a lot of turns while waiting for enemies to get closer. Got heavy shotties now

I got one of those distress beacons but they didn't have any lasguns this time. It was some of those guildies in carapace but molotovs and black powder bombs made short work of them. Probably gonna have to attack a base when one appears and sacrifice some people to make off with a gauss gun or something XD

[sinisteragent]

Quick note also that it only takes one stubborn enemy (ie: usually high bravery, or robotic) to keep everyone from surrendering even if they all want to. Anyone who's panicked or been knocked out at least once will surrender, but only if everyone else left alive agrees. Leaders tend to have higher bravery (and when killed, cause higher morale loss), so you'll want to locate the leaders as soon as you can.

On one terror mission, for example, I went in merciessly lethal for several turns, carving down humanist mooks and a few mid-level guards, and one leader. It then only took one hand cracking the remaining leader over the head for everyone to surrender. I got 14 surrenders that way, plus several captures including the leader, more than half the total number. It's a great trade, as hitting them all over the head wou ld likely have cost me a few soldiers, or at least major injuries.

[Solarius Scorch]

Ah so that`s what it was. I had thought it was some strange bug that affected the AI and saved me many times from shotguns lol

There is even an explicit message displayed when it happens...

I'm off to cut my wrists or something.

[greattuna]

There is even an explicit message displayed when it happens...

Not when it's the enemy who whiffs it.

-----

Gee, this early-game tactic is something. You should probably think of something else by the time normal crafts, mutant pogroms and crackdowns roll out, because you won't be able to just tank their hits like that. Against plasma it's a straight-up suicide.

[Solarius Scorch]

Not when it's the enemy who whiffs it.

I thought it should be pretty obvious because the same happens to you... And there's a Ufopaedia article... But maybe it's not as obvious straight away.

[KiriKaneko]

In my last game I used the zerg tactic for late game. Just went in there guns blazing, focused on capturing specific things and nuking the rest. If I was desperate for a capture I'd get it, drag it into my ship and abort. If I just wanted to get a whole bunch of stuff like a star god ship I would get in there with one of the really big ships and just kill everything with explosives and recoilless rifles and fuso swords. Problem is right now I cant do that since A) I don't have an industry and most of my income is from captives, B) my craft isn't so replaceable atm and C) I can only bring 6 people so if things go FUBAR it's entirely possible that I'll fail to make it to the ship and harder to leave people in the ship as a dedicated escape crew. The dynamic of the late game vs the early game is so different for me, with the easy missions and industry supporting the meat grinder of the harder missions for progression

I just had a WONDERFUL mission! A small ship landed and when I got there it was one of those + ships full of carapace armor osiron security. Those guys tank heavy shotgun shells like a champ, are hard as hell to stun and are dangerous to anything that isn't power armor. What's more they had laser guns, I decided to take the chance to get that laser for advanced weapons rumors and the next step towards delicious tac vests/armor!

Anyway I carpeted the place in black fire bombs and molotovs. Just kept stepping out of the ship to throw. I had a dedicated heavy shotgunner for the research personnel and a couple of people had axes. Our warrior armor surprisingly held up quite well against some retal fire, no one died. Those enemies were really persistent and wouldn't give up but when we got into bug hunt mode I got the last 2 with blind firing molotovs over the ships and they surrendered to me

So I got a whole bunch of las weapons and mid tier ballistics, plus a mind probe! I love molotovs and black powder bombs so much, I never used them much before since I went with captures in my last game prior to transitioning to mortar and grenade launcher use, but these really are excellent! Still haven't had a chance to try these axes but I really wanna give it a try, I'm gonna use sabers too and decide which I prefer. I think this game is relatively safe now since I've got quite a bit of cash saved up, I expect to be getting armor soon, warrior armor is surprisingly good and my troops are getting better. I can afford to take a much more proactive playstyle now and it's alleviating the boredom for me a lot. I'll keep using armor to rack up capture income on the easier missions and use my explosives/axes for tougher mission homicide sprees for the tech and high value captures, and see if I can unlock pachy soon (forgot how to get it but I love that ship)

[KiriKaneko]

Haha, got pwned by a chrysalid. Black powder bombs and molotovs don't work so well against those. I thought lining my people up might make it do the little dance thing but it just made it easier for it to murder 3 of my people

Finally got tac vests tho. I'd like tac armor to cover my sides but for now I can effectively tank bullets in the open and lock down doorways against gunfire if not melee attacks. Got myself an air car with 25mm cannon too so I think I'm past the early game difficulty hump. From now on I'll be getting my cash through captives in easy missions and I'll probably send expeditions to bases when they appear to gather some tech at the cost of life

Got the chance to try my axes too. Zombies and carapace guys just get destroyed and this is with total untrained scrubs lol

[KiriKaneko]

Academy Nurse fails CQC check, shoot self and dies XD

Should I research Dr X now? I heard it unlocks a special mission, but in my last playthrough I did this Russian Files mission and barely won, it was full of tanks and power armor people with gauss so I'm afraid this one will too! :O

[Ethereal_Medic]

Academy Nurse fails CQC check, shoot self and dies XD

Should I research Dr X now? I heard it unlocks a special mission, but in my last playthrough I did this Russian Files mission and barely won, it was full of tanks and power armor people with gauss so I'm afraid this one will too! :O

The Dr. X mission allows only the airbus or airvan to be used as vehicle.
You can only use shiv as your weapons.
Your gals can only wear nude/topless or rags.
Have fun :3