Author Topic: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?  (Read 5871 times)

Offline XCOMJunkie

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Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« on: October 02, 2017, 10:49:51 am »
My second space mission I'm up against a pair of what appear to be robots. I've managed to sneak up beside them from underneath and have been hammering them with blasts from my nitrogen guns in my rescue pod suits, but they don't seem to go down. I've been at it for more than 5 turns and am about to save and head to bed. Is it possible to take these things down with this weapon or am I wasting my time here? Also, I've never managed to find a syn, is that what these become once I defeat them? Or am I looking for a different space mission?

Any help is appreciated, all the best,
XCOMJunkie

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2017, 11:45:14 am »
Killer-Droids have 25HP and block 95% of fire-dmg.
I guess you need real equipment first before you can beat them or take high casualties.

To get a damaged syn you need the space mission "lost spaceship". The mission isn't that tricky if you have a good melee soldier breaching the room and slashing the inhabitants to pieces.
Remember that the *damaged syn* will be lost once researched so you need another *lost spaceship* mission to get your first syn.

Considering 0-G missions seed is randomly assigned, you shouldn't count onto fielding many syn soldier or a single one at all.
Also remember that syns have a very very small HP-Pool and low resistance to laser weaponry. They can't tank high-damage rolls so you're better off using them for the massive TU-Pool to bash your foes heads in.

Offline Marza

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #2 on: October 02, 2017, 05:40:03 pm »
You don't. Come back with a proper space suit!

On Syns, I'm pretty sure you get to keep the body after it has been researched

Offline XCOMJunkie

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2017, 11:46:12 am »
Yeah, it was the killer droids I was up against, never fought them before. I just aborted the mission, and managed to take them down a few months later once I had a spacesuit and could use my bardiche. Apparently space robots don't respond well to medieval technology ;).

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2017, 04:15:31 pm »
Because they've 25HP and a bardiche does massive damage like most heavy-hitting melee weaponry due to amazing scaling.

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2017, 02:20:31 am »
You don't. Come back with a proper space suit!

This. The mission allows you to win by just showing up pretty much, the despawn penalty is only for not engaging the mission at all (however you only get 0 pts for aborting after you show up). If you want experience credit you'll have to shuffle your hands outside the ship for at least one turn I think, though that does potentially expose them to reaction fire.

To get any benefits from the droid mission you'll need space suits, and you'll need some kind of Laser weapon because thats pretty much all you can take out into space (the advanced launcher works, but thats even further down the tech tree).

You could do melee but I severely DOUBT that you will get close enough before being reaction fired on and seriously raped. I don't know how powerful their weapons are but you dont get armor* in space and they are highly accurate (plus you usually get 4 shots from them). Getting from your ship to the satellite is like charging the MG bunkers on Omaha Beach.

In fact its so bad that if you even take an Aimed Shot with your laser you're still going to take reaction fire, so you had better use snap shots (because it will reduce the amount of reaction fire you take, and these guys have often taken 2 hits from a lasgun to put down).

The benefit of defeating and capturing the robots, besides some basic building commodities, are the Nuclear Batteries they cough up, and the EMP grenade that you get to research because of the droids. Im not sure if the nuclear batteries can be used for anything down the road as I haven't got that far yet, but they're probably worth keeping around just in case.

Quote
Space Suits
Although its quite a climb up the tech tree and you cant buy space suits, there is at least one place I know of that space suits can be found:

Trader's Warehouses, sometimes there is a (singular) Space Suit drop in the loot. The problem is im not sure if these start showing up early on since I only started noticing it in 2nd year, they may be random seed.

There definitely needs to be some way to get access to a space suit early in the game besides picking the type of codex for the menacing hull that provides a few.

The mission isn't that tricky if you have a good melee soldier breaching the room and slashing the inhabitants to pieces.

The lost spaceship map IS playable with rescue pods. The guild spacemen usually stick to inside the ship so you can often approach it without being fired on. Once you get there you're going to need to rush them with like 6-8 hands in pods just to "fumigate" them securely, it'll take 2-3 blasts from the nitrogen gun to put them down and considering the small jaunt to get into the ship you're not going to get more than one shot each. Make sure that you have your fastest (highest TU) hands ready to move all the way from outside into the cockpit and still fire on the guy in there (if you go into the ship and you see nobody, they are probably both in the cockpit which means you should probably go back outside the ship and wait til next turn to get them separated or both in the rear compartment).

Sometimes these ships just have drones though, and while im not completely sure, I dont think the nitrogen gun is going to work on them (their armor is too high).
« Last Edit: October 09, 2017, 02:25:27 am by RSSwizard »

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #6 on: October 09, 2017, 02:54:22 am »
Just found a great take down on these terminators once you have Space Suits.  ( I had 3 from my codex ).  These machines are very vulnerable to Electric damage.  With Electric Lassos I darted under their space platform.  Then the next turn, darted up and stunned two of these beasties with 2 shots each.

Offline Marza

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2017, 03:30:19 am »
Bootypedia says these droids have 50% electrical damage resist! Mind you, electric lasso does ignore 50% of armour, deals a fair amount of base damage and inflicts reaction disrupt, so this may still be a weapon for the job. Sure beats flying at them to melee them down with cattle prods. I would recommend the awesome new EMP grenades and the double damage they inflict on droids, but I found out the hard way that they're not usable in 0g.

Exploiting the open nature of space maps and plinking away with lasers from beyond their visual range is the least painful way that I've found.

That said, your hands will be taking volleys of plasma to the face at some point. Disruptive Transmission missions are unforgiving.

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2017, 04:28:03 pm »
I'm still in year 1 without unlocked 0-G missions due to no space-suits so far (and a fortuna with max rescue-pods looks too risky for my taste).

Considering the limited arsenal of weaponry and armors the gals can bring to space against those T-100 replicas I would go for long-range pod-shots and LOS abuse since a space suits doesn't bring much in terms of protection and even a superhero-suit shouldn't be too viable against plasma weaponry.

Going close range with high melee-skill gals wielding some sort of axe (or any high base dmg tool) with considerable scaling to cut down those 25HP in one swing should do the trick once inside.

I don't know the map and this encounter so far so it's just a guess that worked for refueling station so far.

Offline XCOMJunkie

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2017, 11:08:43 am »
Thanks for all the advice, it's appreciated. I eventually worked out that if I drop straight down to the bottom of the map from my ship the bots can't see me. I can sneak along the bottom of the map without fear and then pop up near them for melee once I'm rocking at least one spacesuit. Bardiche works best because of the strength scaling, as mentioned earlier. Takes another extra turn or two because of the extra distance, but 100% success rate so far and haven't had an injury yet.

Offline Absalom

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2017, 09:37:10 pm »
You CAN kill droids with the NO2 gun, and if you have gotten a lucky map where you can sneak below them and pop tart them to death you can certainly do so.  It's going to take a long time though, and clearing the center spire is much trickier.  Might be better to take the corpses and leg it

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: Take down space robots with rescue pod weapon?
« Reply #11 on: October 27, 2017, 06:57:08 pm »
Should be doable with the base-damage of fireweaponry.
Still risky and an easy way to waste gals.