[esarai]

If you hadn't enabled damage roulette I'd still be alive ... maybe.

[NGTM-1R]

The E is listed as Future Shenanigans?
What does that mean and what can we apply for?

It means he's now the protagonist of the Slingshot DLC. And aside from cannon fodder we'll eventually need more pilots and you can always run the labs or the engineering section if you want.

I'd assume this is the start of the Slingshot content, yeah? Count me as doubly interested then, since I never picked it up myself.

It is!

So if you hadn't enabled that Damage Roulette option, would those rifles be doing more than giving the aliens paper cuts?

Technically they don't have to be giving the aliens papercuts at all. The rifle has a max damage of four and with Damage Roulette could be doing anywhere from 1 to 4, but the Dice Gods hate us.


So, I said housekeeping and abilities. Let's talk special abilities.

Every class has a basic ability they get at Squaddie when they become the class. Assaults have Run & Gun, which lets them make a running move and fire. Snipers have Snipe, which increases their critical hit chance by 30% and does extra damage on the crit. Heavies get to fire a rocket. Supports get a smoke grenade.

After that, they get to pick from two abilities at each promotion, except for Major where there's only one ability for everyone. I'm going to crib from the XCOM wikia here because frankly they've got it layed out really nice and simple in a way that would take me about a dozen screenshots to duplicate and many words and it wouldn't be as good. I apologize in advance to everyone who might be offended by this, please don't kill me, I think it's under a license that lets me do this if I attribute. (If it's not please warn me so I can throw myself on a convenient sword.)

This is the Assault tree.

Now, my picks are usually a little schizo for Assaults. I typically go Tactical Sense, Lightning Reflexes, Rapid Fire, Close Combat Specialist, and Killer Instinct. (You'll note that you have no choice on the Major ability.) My reasoning is that Assaults are designed to close the range through enemy fire before blowing their heads off with a shotgun blast, and this is a risky business. Some defense and some offense are both required to do the job well. I could end up with huge Crit chances based going more or purely offensive, but also my assaults would be a lot more likely to die. Dead troopers kill no aliens.

This is the Sniper tree.

For me, it's typically Squadsight, Damn Good Ground, Disabling Shot, Opportunist, and Double Tap. If you ever take Snap Shot you are either screwing around or a waste of oxygen. I'm sure somebody out there could construct a decent argument for Gunslinger or Executioner, but In The Zone requires you to be swung wide with your own flanks hanging out in the air to get shot or the use of a lot of explosives, and the ugly truth is a lot of the time there's something better for your guys to be carrying than a grenade.

This is the Support tree.

If there's room for flexibility anywhere, I think it's here. The essentials in my eyes are Field Medic, Revive, and Savior. Pretty much anything else could be justified. I'm bad at using smoke, so I generally opt for Combat Drugs and end up never using them, but if I wasn't I'm sure I'd like Dense Smoke. Sprinter is kind of lackluster but probably useful for a spread-out team, while Covering Fire's benefits are obvious to anyone who ever played the original X-COM games and had reaction fire triggering on enemy shots. You could even make a pretty decent argument for Sentinel over Savior, I think. Still, Supports are on the field to patch my people up usually, so I go with the skills that help them do that.

This is the Heavy Tree.

My choices are usually Bullet Swarm, Suppression, HEAT Ammo, Danger Zone, and I've recently shifted to Rocketeer rather than Mayhem. A second shot's value is obvious, I've heard people argue for Shredder but when I'm trying to capture people or the guns they're carrying I like having Suppression, Rapid Reaction isn't very helpful given that Heavies have a native low hit chance and reaction fire takes a penalty to accuracy. Grenadier encourages you to carry grenades, but your heavies are usually better served by carrying a S.C.O.P.E. to improve their hit chances for their powerful weapons. Rocketeer and Mayhem are kind of equal, one gives you more rockets, one gives you more powerful rockets and grenades plus some damage on Suppression.

If anybody has some alternate reasoning, however, I'm open to discussion.

[carbine7]

For Snipers I've always preferred using In the Zone instead of Double Tap, though I can see the utility, just due to the sheer amount of kills you can rake in while Double Tap limits it to two. It's also especially useful for cleaning up those pesky Drones repairing that Cyberdisk that's trying to murder you without wasting a shot from your other troopers' rifles. Also, Archangel armor works wonderfully with In the Zone, as your sniper will usually either already be at a flanking angle or can easily move to one, not to mention doing so from across the map courtesy of Squadsight. The other 3 are essentially my exact builds, so can't argue much there.

As a side note, Nuffle is apparently very displeased with your virgin lambs, as we are getting royally screwed. Then again, XCOM does enjoy being a dick...

[JGZinv]

If you check the middle pages posts NGTM-1R, there quite a few meatbags willing to be used and disemboweled

[crizza]

Count me in...for...hm...uh...Pilot/labs or squaddi...heavy if possible, but I'm perfectly happy with one of the two options I named first...since I was shredded on my first mission in the last run^^

[deathfun]

I've always preferred Double Tap simply because most of the times, I reserve heavy hitting snipers for the larger folks while everyone else picks off smaller units

[NGTM-1R]

Operation Blinding Dirge
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Present: The E, IronBeer, StarSlayer "Crit Miss", SpardaSon21, Kobrar44

I should note the mission is fought at night. This is despite the fact it is broad daylight and sometime in the late morning local time if the geoscape view is to be believed. XCOMMMM!

So we flush a couple aliens before we even finish our opening effort to grab cover. One of them runs straight into the overwatch of StarSlayer, with the shotgun, and Sparda, who's overwatching with a pistol because his sniper rifle doesn't let him move and shoot. No hits. Some other people have shots as the turn ends, but only bad shots. So I don't take them.


The aliens retaliate by firing at IronBeer. Badly.

StarSlayer once again does Run and Gun to get to a good spot for his weapon. The odd thing is I'm now kind of stuck with trying to decide who to shoot, as I have two shots with a 70% hit and 20% critical chance and a 70/70 chance because one of the aliens didn't bother taking cover. Ah well, let's go with the 70/70. The 70/70's boosting so if that Sectoid dies, both of them do.


Not bad, not bad at all.

And then everything goes quiet again for a few turns. This is our third terror mission. We ought to have at least six enemies here. Finally, on turn four, we get contact...on both flanks at once, four Sectoids, two to a flank. Then they retreat out of view after being spotted. Come ON, this is just silly.

Okay people, move out and find them. The next turn..we've not found as many of them as we should have. Just two, one from each group.



However, unfortunately for them, Sparda has a shot on the one most distant from him. Not the nearest, weirdly enough, but hey, I'll take it.


Good kill.

IronBeer advances a little further and spots the other one...it's not even in cover, from his perspective. Problem it's also very far away, and he has a shotgun. 30/70 hit. Ah well, let's take it.

...hey, he hit and crit. Marksmanship award for the hit there. 30% was pretty low probability.

StarSlayer runs up and fires at the boosting alien again, so...scratch two.

And we're done here. That was oddly simple.

For reference, the current roster:

Soldiers
Lieutenant "Crit Miss" StarSlayer, 5 missions, 10 kills. Assault.
Lieutenant The E, 1 mission, 0 kills. Heavy.
Corporal CommanderDJ, 3 missions, 5 kills. Support.
Corporal SpardaSon21, 3 missions, 4 kills. Sniper.
Corporal IronBeer, 3 missions, 2 kills. Assault.
Squaddie KyadCK, 1 mission, 3 kills. Heavy.
Squaddie Scourge of Ages, 1 mission, 2 kills. Support.
Rookie Kobrar44, 1 mission, 0 kills.
Rookie Trashman, 1 mission, 0 kills.

Pilots
Scotty, Raven-1
Phantom Hoover, Raven-2

Base Personnel
Droid803, Control
Spoon, SHIV Ops

KIA
Squaddie esarai, 2 missions, 1 kill. Support. Deceased 3/9/2015.

We've also just picked up a Sergeant Sniper as a mission reward, so I guess Gortef got lucky and gets to skip the usual grind.

[NGTM-1R]

For Snipers I've always preferred using In the Zone instead of Double Tap, though I can see the utility, just due to the sheer amount of kills you can rake in while Double Tap limits it to two. It's also especially useful for cleaning up those pesky Drones repairing that Cyberdisk that's trying to murder you without wasting a shot from your other troopers' rifles. Also, Archangel armor works wonderfully with In the Zone, as your sniper will usually either already be at a flanking angle or can easily move to one, not to mention doing so from across the map courtesy of Squadsight. The other 3 are essentially my exact builds, so can't argue much there.

As a side note, Nuffle is apparently very displeased with your virgin lambs, as we are getting royally screwed. Then again, XCOM does enjoy being a dick...

Hmm. That's actually not a bad use for it. I don't normally use Archangel or even the Grapple armor, though, because of either paranoia about survivability or a struggle with a lack of materials. We'll have to see how it plays out this time. Still, deathfun elaborated on one of the other reasons I like Double Tap: it lets me eliminate a Cyberdisk or a Sectopod in a single turn of fire from one person.

If you check the middle pages posts NGTM-1R, there quite a few meatbags willing to be used and disemboweled

Don't worry, I saw. My current list of unassigned is as follows:
Patriot
Turambar
MP-Ryan
Mongoose
deathfun
swashmebuckle
-Joshua-
FireSpawn
JGZinv
DireWolf
Hobbie
Aesaar
Dekker
Rodo
FlamingMamba
Hobbie

EDIT: missed some folks.

[crizza]

Îf this pretty sweet moment is something like the crazy old man in Independence Day did...I'm all yours
Or labs...your in charge

[carbine7]

I look at this two ways:
1 - This is a reprieve from the harsh lash of the dice god.
2 - This is a break before we get absolutely screwed over next mission in payment.

Either way I don't like it.

EDIT: I am slated for a pilot's slot, right?

[Hobbie]

Can I be on that unassigned list pweeeeeease?

Eventually enough people will die and I'll be able to shoot things and die horribly, right? Right?

[NGTM-1R]

EDIT: I am slated for a pilot's slot, right?

You are now. Slated for Demon-1.

Can I be on that unassigned list pweeeeeease?

Okay! Actually I apparently missed several people on the list anyways, so I need to fix it.

[Scotty]

I usually take In the Zone, simply because I ****ing hate Chryssalids, and they're criminally stupid at not taking cover.  I've burned through four Chryssalids in one turn with my best sniper before, because he kept critting them.

[Spoon]

Please tell me about the tanks.

[NGTM-1R]

Please tell me about the tanks.

The SHIV, or Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle, comes in a variety of flavors we'll explore if I have the money. They're interesting that they're not really classed the same way as the old ones. SHIVs go through three models, but the models are unrelated to the mounted weapons system, which is upgraded for all models via the Foundry and once you research your laser or plasma upgrades, all your SHIVs are equipped with that sort of weapon. They follow most of the normal rules for HWPs/SWS from X-COM otherwise but only take one slot in the transport.

[StarSlayer]

How's our Recon Sat coverage looking?  Need that funding for upgrades.  I'll be looking forward to donning some Carapace Armor for all that running and gunning.

[NGTM-1R]

How's our Recon Sat coverage looking?  Need that funding for upgrades.  I'll be looking forward to donning some Carapace Armor for all that running and gunning.

Two up. Working on power for another uplink. Have about five under a tarp in storage, waiting on more uplinks.

[esarai]

Eh it's a long list but put me on for reincarnation if we get around to it.  I died so early

[deathfun]

I usually take In the Zone, simply because I ****ing hate Chryssalids, and they're criminally stupid at not taking cover.  I've burned through four Chryssalids in one turn with my best sniper before, because he kept critting them.

While I agree on it being extremely effective against them (making the perk more situational), the higher end enemies don't usually go down as easy (let alone *not* be in some form of cover)
And with damage roulette, putting them down one right after another will certainly be a feat which requires many sacrificed goats

[TrashMan]

No kills yet?
What sorcery is this?