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[axident]

Originally posted by Juan Rayo@Apr 4 2005, 07:06 AM
Whatever happened to Avenger 2?

“New Albion” complex. X-COM central Command. January 03, 2000.* 1100 hours.
---
Aide: sir? Commander Rayo sir?

Commander Rayo:* hey, what is it soldier?

Aide: well, it’s the damnest thing sir, begging you pardon, but we haven’t heard from the “Santa María” in a couple of hours…

Commander Rayo: the “Santa María”? that’s Coronel Ruhskin’s ship. (scratches chin) I dunno, why is this a problem? That’s a very capable crew he has, and the ship is a brand new AVENGER class craft, pride of the force.

Aide: well, that’s just the thing sir, they were called upon Nairobi to stop an ATerror operation in progress, they downed an alien craft and decided to land and mope up. Last we heard, they were in site and ready to proceed, and then we just lost them…

C, Rayo: (Menacingly) “Lost” them?

Aide: (gulp) er, well, yes sir. No radio contact, no static, nada. But our scanners don’t pick up any residual earth treated E-115 radiation, so we don’t think it was destroyed.

C. Rayo: hmmmm. Call SurafriCOM, get them on alert, tell them to send a couple of Firestorms, do some air recon. It IS strange… right now, we can handle pretty much ANYTHING those sneaky bastards can throw at us, even the Mutons are no match for a high ranked psi officer like Rushkin… so what could be the hold up? *shrugs)
Well, you have your orders (starts walking away).

Aide: yes sir!

C. Rayo: (turns around) one more thing kid. If you have no news in an hour, let me know… and tell the chief down in engineering to start prepping the “Batavia”, we might want to take her out ourselves and visit Nairobi…

Aide: yes sir.

C. Rayo: hmm, odd indeed. Whatever happened to Avenger 2?
--

I'll tell you guys what happened. ETHEREALS and Sectopoids happened*
I finally got a signal from an Ethereal ship, attempting to carry out a terror mission in Africa. Dispatched and Avenger with some troops, I dunno, not as good as my "elite" forces but pretty good anyway, psi trained and experienced soldiers them all. They didn't have a chance.

First Sectopoids went down fast, couple of plasma and laser shots mixed brought them down, and I even mind controlled one of them (plus an Ethereal) and brought them right in front of my troops to be shot at short range. Then, all of a sudden, my people were being shot from every direction, and 3 of them got mind controlled (in the same turn, mind you) so they killed most of my surviving crew. It was over in a turn. ARGHHH!!! (bangs head against wall some more).

I'll be sendind in my elite team this time, see how THEY fare.* Any tips on how to best fight these critters are, as always, welcomed. Thanks.

Sectopods: 145 front armor (on Superhuman difficulty, anyway). Use blaster bombs, don't bother with anything else except Mind Control, if you happen to have a high-psi strength soldier with 80+ psi skill.

Ethereals aren't that hard if you have high-psi soldiers (and by that, I mean soldiers with at least 80 psi strength; psi skill is irrelevant and only good when you want to MC/panic aliens with psi-amps), so just buy hundreds of soldiers at a time, sack the guys with low stats (especially if they have less than 40 or 50 bravery), and stuff the rest into a lot of psi labs. After a month, sack the ones that were low-psi. Repeat this process until you have a lots of high-psi guys. Don't mix the high-psi guys with low-psi guys at first.. separate them so one Avenger is full of high-psi soldiers with HP and blaster bombs. That is your anti-MC crew. 6 high-psi soldiers is way better than 26 mixed high-psi and low-psi soldiers, because the moment a low-psi soldier gets MC, he or she'll start killing off all of the other soldiers--including the high-psi soldiers.

The other Skyrangers and Avengers can carry general-purpose soldiers who may or may not have high psi; they are for everything else.

[another_guest]

A more radical method: if you know you don't stand a chance against ethereals, just take blaster launchers, and some laser rifles or such but equip everyone with the launchers. Fire as much as possible from within your skyranger/avenger, targeting buildings. Don't reload any of the launchers until the next turn, then shoot again. Pick up laser rifles to shoot any MC'ed soldiers at close range, then drop the rifles. Or leave the MC'ed soldiers momentarily, since they won't reload their launchers anyway.
Every civilian in the city will probably die, but that would have happened anyway if you lost the battle. You'll randomly hit some aliens, evening the negative scores from your own soldiers that died. And you won't suffer the penalty of having ignored the terror site.
Not a great tactic, but it works in extreme situations. Even with only rookies. Just make sure to take off before you've lost all your soldiers.

[Jman4117]

could also just touch down and take a -300 or so, instead of the -1000 for ignoring

[Sharp]

-300 still affects your rating pretty bad. Only thing you can really do is use heavy firepower. And definitly get a tank out, it can spot for you and cant get mind-controlled. I think an avenger can hold 4 tanks so make use of it against Etherals.

In the terror missions mabye bring a laser one as well, i still think the lasertanks damage is over 100 making it extremly effective against sectapods with the 150% damage modifier.

Etherals on the other hand are hard to take down, my advise would try and snipe em. A nice HP to the head should deal with any etherals you see. Although its the ones you cant see which are the problem, bring a few stun launchers, they are extremly effective against etherals and have a nice splash damage so accuracy isnt too much of a factor.

Although the best thing to do is shoot down the terror ships, I havent had many etheral terror missions, just a lot of dead terrorships :evil:

Also Lizard, I can only think that the best way to deal with mutons is to snipe em, chuck a grenade, then snipe, should work. You cant really chuck more then 1 because 1 grenade will destroy the other one, same with HE Packs(i think).

Luckily though those lil blobs which accompany mutons are easily taken care of. In terror missions you could try and guide the mutons to the petrol station, then fire a rocket at him and pray.

[another_guest]

I'm not so confident in using a single grenade to take out a muton. I've always found grenades (even alien grenades) to be rather weak, particularly proximity grenades. It's nearly never happened that aliens stepping on a proximity grenade were blown up. Another annoying thing is that many soldiers can't throw a grenade that far. I mean, in real life, who couldn't throw a grenade over a distance of 10 meters? :blink:
I would have increased the throwing distance by a lot, while lowering the throwing accuracy. And while I'm at it, I would have increased all firing accuracies as well. It's ridiculous that soldiers (or aliens) could miss someone standing next to them.

[Rogue]

Originally posted by another_guest@Apr 4 2005, 07:02 AM
I'm not so confident in using a single grenade to take out a muton. I've always found grenades (even alien grenades) to be rather weak, particularly proximity grenades. It's nearly never happened that aliens stepping on a proximity grenade were blown up. Another annoying thing is that many soldiers can't throw a grenade that far. I mean, in real life, who couldn't throw a grenade over a distance of 10 meters? :blink:
I would have increased the throwing distance by a lot, while lowering the throwing accuracy. And while I'm at it, I would have increased all firing accuracies as well. It's ridiculous that soldiers (or aliens) could miss someone standing next to them.

Ever been in the war or training?

[Spookyfish]

Originally posted by Anubis+Apr 4 2005, 02:11 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Anubis @ Apr 4 2005, 02:11 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-another_guest@Apr 4 2005, 07:02 AM
I'm not so confident in using a single grenade to take out a muton. I've always found grenades (even alien grenades) to be rather weak, particularly proximity grenades. It's nearly never happened that aliens stepping on a proximity grenade were blown up. Another annoying thing is that many soldiers can't throw a grenade that far. I mean, in real life, who couldn't throw a grenade over a distance of 10 meters?* :blink:
I would have increased the throwing distance by a lot, while lowering the throwing accuracy. And while I'm at it, I would have increased all firing accuracies as well. It's ridiculous that soldiers (or aliens) could miss someone standing next to them.

Ever been in the war or training? [/b][/quote]
I agree, it's not ridiculous at all. Adrenaline pumps through your body, you're afraid, and suddenly this THING stands in front of you pointing its weapon at you. Of course there's a good chance for missing.

[TwoHedWlf]

What I would have done is give the rifles something like a 100% accuracy(For the gun itself) for aimed shots or a bit better. At least for the rifle, laser rifle, plasma, heavy plasma. They should be very accurate at least for aimed shops, I think it's safe to assume they'd have good scopes and sites on them. Snap shots and auto shots are about right. Though, hoooorrrrriiibbbllleeeee for noobs. They couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at point blank.

Or maybe it would have been nice to have a sniper rifle. Like whatever the .50 caliber sniper rifle is. Does only aimed shots and only like a 5 round clip, but very high accuracy and damage.

[another_guest]

Originally posted by Spookyfish+Apr 4 2005, 02:47 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Spookyfish @ Apr 4 2005, 02:47 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Ever been in the war or training?

I agree, it's not ridiculous at all. Adrenaline pumps through your body, you're afraid, and suddenly this THING stands in front of you pointing its weapon at you. Of course there's a good chance for missing.

[/b][/quote]
I'm not talking killing shots here, just hitting somebody standing right in front of you. While missing 1 or 2 snap shots should be possible, it's hard to believe 2 auto shots of 3 shots each miss the target.
If an amateur like me can hit targets of a few centimeters at some distance, then trained soldiers should at least hit a full body next to them most of the time

[axident]

Originally posted by another_guest@Apr 4 2005, 09:20 AM
A more radical method: if you know you don't stand a chance against ethereals, just take blaster launchers, and some laser rifles or such but equip everyone with the launchers. Fire as much as possible from within your skyranger/avenger, targeting buildings. Don't reload any of the launchers until the next turn, then shoot again. Pick up laser rifles to shoot any MC'ed soldiers at close range, then drop the rifles. Or leave the MC'ed soldiers momentarily, since they won't reload their launchers anyway.
Every civilian in the city will probably die, but that would have happened anyway if you lost the battle. You'll randomly hit some aliens, evening the negative scores from your own soldiers that died. And you won't suffer the penalty of having ignored the terror site.
Not a great tactic, but it works in extreme situations. Even with only rookies. Just make sure to take off before you've lost all your soldiers.

Hey that's pretty innovative. I use it with experienced troops sometimes when I feel lazy.. usually I don't have max soldiers on a troop transport, so I scoot people back a space or two and then have the front two kneel and the next to standing, waiting for aliens to just walk by.

To other posters:
Yeah I think grenades blow each other up, so it's pointless to use more than one grenade at a time against an alien. You can also touch down and lift off a terror site, though it's pretty bad either way. Not sure if you get a penalty for ignoring crash sites, but to be safe, sometimes I intentionally down UFOs over water if I know I can't deal with the crash site anyway (e.g., I have no hi-psi troops against a crashing Ethereal battleship).