Yeah, mercs are really annoying like that, they also have the stats to give their gauss rifles some high damage. 37mm rifle can still kill them tho but it typically takes about 3-4 shots although 1-2 shots gets them bleeding and I usually ignore the bleeders to avoid taking more reaction fire. Problem is the academy and the star gods are plasma resistant, as are a lot of terror units but I never see anything that's massively resistant to piercing that also has very high armor so there's nothing my 37mm rifles can't take down. Additionally they have a decent clip size, at 120 aim they are very accurate within 15 squares for snapshot 2 shots, and massively accurate with aimed shot across the entire map with a TU cost that let's me walk a couple of squares, fire and walk back again while wearing harbinger armor
IMO the faction difficulty is:
1) Star Gods - total psi screw, invisibility, flying, sectopods, super tanky things they bring with them
2) Church - a close second because of chrysalids, and also they get some psi from reverends/cardinal which can be hard to track down, and flying church exalts which can come rushing up on your flank and chop you to pieces. Really it's the chrysalids/psi combo that makes them hell, sometimes the chrysalids derp out but when they're taking it seriously they're just awful, but I'd imagine this wouldn't be so bad with psi resistant, flying annihilator armor
3) Academy - Because these guys get psi too. Now I'm using 50 voodoo power people it's not too terrible, and at least they go for psi panic over mind control but the panic has led to some of my people running out into the open and dying quite a few times in situations we otherwise had well under control. The cyberdisks were terrifying pre-power armor but they barely damage harbinger, even if they're tanky to piercing damage. They don't have any units that can one shot us, except maybe the exalts and only then if they're very lucky and don't spend too much TU reaching us
4) Mercenaries - No psi, no particularly terrifying terror units. Their gauss hurt like hell and with their reactions they cause consistent wounds, some can also fly into my ship elevators as well so I have to be careful about keeping track of them. But in the end they're just tanky units with high reactions, half of them fly and they do consistent moderate damage, inflicting wound recovery time, but have no instant death attacks
5) Traders - Their tanks can one shot my harbinger users rarely and consistently inflict damage with retal fire, but they aren't all that accurate and this is really the only dangerous thing that they have. No psi, no chrysalids, low damage with their gauss/plasma rifles that rarely gets through armor.
Aside from the consistent low level damage they cause which inflicts wound recovery time I think mercenaries are one of the safest factions to fight since they don't have any source of instant death or mind screw that the other factions have, the difficulty for me comes from psi > units that can one shot me > units that are generally well armoured and can hurt us
Does anyone know what the formula is for crackdowns. I've been dealing with like 20 crackdown missions searching for me a month and I've resorted to only shooting down the crackdown ships now. It's like the crackdowns are spawning more crackdowns
Is there a better weapon than the tech blade for melee?
