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United States4471 Posts
I like Heavies simply for demolition purposes and mobile mech-killing. The tactical portion of the game rewards keeping your distance, so I found the rockets to be invaluable as long-distance demolition. There's no free aim to break down cover/walls and grenades don't have nearly the same range. A leveled-up Heavy can be very useful with the potential to have 3 rockets, each with a huge AOE, if you choose those abilities.
It should be noted that Bullet Storm allows them to either shoot twice without aim penalty (only ability other than Double Tap that does) or shoot then move (only ability that allows it for troops and aliens). The added durability is just a bonus.
I tend to bring just one Support, as three heals is usually enough for most missions and I've found smoke grenades to be unreliable. One Assault is usually enough as well because I use them almost entirely for scouting and pulling aliens. When it comes to killing aliens, Snipers can kill anything you can see, and Heavies clear your line of sight while also giving you a way to kill a lot of lower-HP enemies at once via rockets or Bullet Storm.
One thing I'm planning to try at some point is using two Assaults with Flush in lieu of demolition.
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2 assaults specced damage totally destroy things with run&gun and rapid fire. Grab lightning reflexes as only defensive and then go RnG next to a sectopod and kill it with 2 shots.
One of those 3 ethereals at the end got 1 hit by my assault scout in my last playthrough with a shotgun crit of over 20.
flush + suppressive fire spec heavy (deals dmg on the suppression ability, 3 with plasma) is supreme at killing hard to hit enemies that don't have all that much health, since flush nearly always hits and deals dmg and suppressive fire from heavy is autohit that deals 3 dmg.
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Guys, I love this game at first.. but now I'm not too sure what to think anymore. I just got plagued by 3 gamebreaking bugs.. in both of my playthroughs.
My first playthrough was on normal ironman. I triggered a bug by sending more than one interceptor to shoot down the alien ship. I shot down the ship, did the assault mission on the alien ship, but my skyranger could never return back to base... I'm stuck on the spinning globe. I can still press the search for missions button, but time will just go on infinitely.
Alright.. No big deal. Let's go for the 2nd playthrough then. This time I wanted a bigger challenge so I went for Classic Ironman. Took me a few restarts to finally get my strategy sorted out. Everything was going well, I only had 3 remaining countries that didn't have satellites yet, and I haven't even lost a single country!
Here's the showstopper. On one of my UFO encounters, the council request mission suddenly came up. So now I have 2 missions going on at the same time. I couldn't have done anything differently, since the council request is a random event. Again this triggered a bug. When I completed my UFO encounter mission, I came home just to find all of my soldiers were "out on mission"!! I only had 4 soldiers (from the previous UFO encounter mission) that are fit to do the next mission. So I had no choice but to do a mission with a 4 out of 6 member squad. I got completely wiped out.
Things start to go downhill from here.. I lost 2 countries immediately after the failed mission, and I have NO REMAINING SOLDIERS.. they were still all on a phantom mission. I had no choice but to dismiss all of them and hire brand new rookies. Things were still going really bad and guess what? Murphy's Law -- if anything can go wrong it will go wrong.
I got hit by ANOTHER BUG! GODDAMNIT WTF?!
In my civilian rescue mission, for god knows what reason, I CANNOT MOVE MY SOLDIERS. I SIMPLY CANNOT MOVE THEM.
WTF.......
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United States4471 Posts
I find relying on Assaults to kill enemies is dangerous because you have to get in close to be effective. Getting in close is very risky because (1) you're screwed if you miss, (2) you leave yourself open to reaction shots from aliens and lightning reflexes only works once per turn, and (3) there's always the risk that you end up triggering another pack of aliens and get overwhelmed. With the way your troops can whiff on shots even with high %s, it's simply not worth the risk, particularly on Ironman.
The way the game is set up right now, it's much better to maintain your distance and let your snipers do the killing because they deal plenty of damage while exposing themselves to the least amount of risk. Maintaining your distance also allows you to make the aliens come to you, which usually results in your troops having the initiative and getting free shots at aliens. Anything that gets to mid-range can be taken out by Heavies, who will have two shots via Bullet Storm or grenades and rockets for AOE. Assaults and supports are used to mop up and are my backups for taking aliens out.
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I must say, I rather like the idea of 2 heavies. Did you take holo-targeting on one and bullet storm on the other, or 2x bullet storm? Also, did you find Mayhem of any use?
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I honestly just go 2x bullet storm. Holo targetting doesn't outweigh the benefits of a second action, whether said action be used for movement, reloading, or shooting.
Mayhem is the extra AOE on rockets/suppression right? Its kinda nice because you can nail 2 aliens hiding behind a wall with suppression or get that extra umph out of a rocket.
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Pro Tip: Don't "Unbuild" your Officer Training School before going on a mission. I planned on replacing mine with a Sat Uplink (to get the adjacent bonus) before rebuilding it elsewhere and found out that my squad size limit was dropped down to 4.
Decided to try the mission anyway and encountered 3 Berserkers. Good thing I had Double Tap/plasma sniper and an assault with Titan armor.
It went back up to 6 once the OTS was built, but I was expecting the upgrades I had researched to stay even without the facility.
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I just got my blaster launchers. Now I am so happy that I have 2 heavies in my squad :D
Damn, 12 damage blaster launcher damage with mayhem. 24 to robotic units. No chance to miss, longer range and no more blocking to target. I am just sad you get the blaster launcher like 2 missions before last one. I would have liked to be able to play around with this baby sooner 
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I normally run 2 Assault | 2 Heavy | 1 Sniper | 1 Support. Snipers are great and all, but very unwieldy. When things go according to plan, a second sniper doesn't add much that a single one cannot do. But when things get hairy, I'd much rather have an additional mobile guy or an extra rocket or two. Assaults with Rapid Fire and Heavies with Bullet Storm have comparable damage output to a sniper and are just more reliable in sticky situations when you have to improvise.
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On October 25 2012 07:54 Scorch wrote:
I normally run 2 Assault | 2 Heavy | 1 Sniper | 1 Support. Snipers are great and all, but very unwieldy. When things go according to plan, a second sniper doesn't add much that a single one cannot do. But when things get hairy, I'd much rather have an additional mobile guy or an extra rocket or two. Assaults with Rapid Fire and Heavies with Bullet Storm have comparable damage output to a sniper and are just more reliable in sticky situations when you have to improvise.
See for me having 2 Squad sight/double tap snipers with plasma snipers just can't be beat. They're pretty much out of harm's way, and can kill pretty much any enemy by themselves. I like 2 assault so far- shotgun range doesn't matter when you run right up on dudes- but that's quickly changing. Then 2 support for all the healing and I'm good. Might switch the assaults to heavies to tank and creep up slower though, since rockets and suppression are great. Basically just sit back and let my scoped-up snipers do everything.
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Alternatively, utilizing 2 heavies and snipers with in the zone means that any enemy you meet can be shot out of cover with rockets or grenades and the mowed down by your snipers.
This is all assuming we're not using psi powers of course because then the game becomes unfun.
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Just did my first play-through (classic, no iron man). I had 1 assault, 1 support, 2 heavy, 2 sniper for the final mission and I really liked that composition, even though I messed up my skill choices (no anti robotic on heavies). I'm planning on iron man on hardest difficulty next.
Btw, anyone tried to play with like 3-4 assault shotgun-types and just rush through the maps?
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On October 25 2012 08:30 VoirDire wrote:
Just did my first play-through (classic, no iron man). I had 1 assault, 1 support, 2 heavy, 2 sniper for the final mission and I really liked that composition, even though I messed up my skill choices (no anti robotic on heavies). I'm planning on iron man on hardest difficulty next.
Btw, anyone tried to play with like 3-4 assault shotgun-types and just rush through the maps?
I have now tried ~100 games on impossible ironman and Firaxis wasnt joking when naming hardest difficulty "impossible".
All talk about tactics with snipers vs heavy´s and all simply doesnt matter whatsoever on impossible. It takes sick rng to just survive the first month without having most of your soldiers killed.
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On October 25 2012 09:33 DaCruise wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2012 08:30 VoirDire wrote:
Just did my first play-through (classic, no iron man). I had 1 assault, 1 support, 2 heavy, 2 sniper for the final mission and I really liked that composition, even though I messed up my skill choices (no anti robotic on heavies). I'm planning on iron man on hardest difficulty next.
Btw, anyone tried to play with like 3-4 assault shotgun-types and just rush through the maps? I have now tried ~100 games on impossible ironman and Firaxis wasnt joking when naming hardest difficulty "impossible". All talk about tactics with snipers vs heavy´s and all simply doesnt matter whatsoever on impossible. It takes sick rng to just survive the first month without having most of your soldiers killed.
What's the difference between classic and impossible? Is it just hit-rates?
I think if you just survive the first few months until you get beam weapons and a solid income, the rest should be manageable.
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On October 25 2012 09:40 VoirDire wrote:
What's the difference between classic and impossible? Is it just hit-rates?
I think if you just survive the first few months until you get beam weapons and a solid income, the rest should be manageable.
Your soldiers start with 1 less health, and the enemies start with 1 more when compared to classic (aka enemies have more health than you).
In addition, it seems that not saving a country from an abduction causes 4 panic in that country, and 2or3? (not 100% sure here) on the other countries in that continent.
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On October 25 2012 08:30 VoirDire wrote:
Just did my first play-through (classic, no iron man). I had 1 assault, 1 support, 2 heavy, 2 sniper for the final mission and I really liked that composition, even though I messed up my skill choices (no anti robotic on heavies). I'm planning on iron man on hardest difficulty next.
Btw, anyone tried to play with like 3-4 assault shotgun-types and just rush through the maps?
I did it on normal in a side game once for fun and it worked out ok, probably wouldn't once you start hitting cyberdisks/mutons stage though. And ofc that's on normal.
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On October 25 2012 10:08 HoboJoe20 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2012 09:40 VoirDire wrote:
What's the difference between classic and impossible? Is it just hit-rates?
I think if you just survive the first few months until you get beam weapons and a solid income, the rest should be manageable. Your soldiers start with 1 less health, and the enemies start with 1 more when compared to classic (aka enemies have more health than you). In addition, it seems that not saving a country from an abduction causes 4 panic in that country, and 2or3? (not 100% sure here) on the other countries in that continent.
Yeah, sectoids have 4 hp, which makes a HUGE difference as a single grenade wont kill them. There are also 8 of them in the first mission compared to 6 on classic. Thin men and floaters have 6 hp compared to 4 on classic and your soldiers have only 4 hp.
When chosing abduction mission the options are difficult (10 aliens) and very difficult (12 aliens). There are no easy choices on impossible.
Each country starts with 2 panic instead of 1 and those you dont select on abduction goes batshit panic right away.
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On October 25 2012 04:47 daemir wrote:
2 assaults specced damage totally destroy things with run&gun and rapid fire. Grab lightning reflexes as only defensive and then go RnG next to a sectopod and kill it with 2 shots.
One of those 3 ethereals at the end got 1 hit by my assault scout in my last playthrough with a shotgun crit of over 20.
flush + suppressive fire spec heavy (deals dmg on the suppression ability, 3 with plasma) is supreme at killing hard to hit enemies that don't have all that much health, since flush nearly always hits and deals dmg and suppressive fire from heavy is autohit that deals 3 dmg.
What stage of the game are we talking about? I find that snipers before they get plasma rifles are iffy. Even with 60-70% hit chance on classic they can miss 2-3 shots which cost you the game, assaults almost never miss. But having said that, in later stages when you have plasma sniper rifles and ghost armor I dont see the point of the other classes -- maybe a medic in case the robot randomly spams missiles in your general direction -- because you can just move a pixel at a time forward, find something, cloak, move a pixel back and kill it.
The last etheral battle was a joke, as soon as they trigger their speech the 3 snipers insta shoot him.
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On October 25 2012 06:32 MooseyFate wrote:
Pro Tip: Don't "Unbuild" your Officer Training School before going on a mission. I planned on replacing mine with a Sat Uplink (to get the adjacent bonus) before rebuilding it elsewhere and found out that my squad size limit was dropped down to 4.
Decided to try the mission anyway and encountered 3 Berserkers. Good thing I had Double Tap/plasma sniper and an assault with Titan armor.
It went back up to 6 once the OTS was built, but I was expecting the upgrades I had researched to stay even without the facility.
Whoa I had no idea! that's a good item to know.
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Canada8033 Posts
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EPT
