Personal Disruptor Shields

[penchant]

I'll soon be tackling my fourth building in the alien dimension and I have noticed that, as one might expect, the missions get progressively harder. I'm playing at Medium difficulty level and, so far, I have taken each building with a 10-squad (3-3-3-1) of my best troops all equipped alike: full X-COM armour, a Toxigun with 4 spare clips, a Megapol grenade for Brainsucker emergencies, a Personal Teleporter, a Cloaking Device and a Medikit. After the first mission, they all had a Vortex Mine as well but they can still really motor!

 

I returned from the third mission with a seriously wounded agent and no fewer than 37 dead Poppers. There would have been more of both had it not finally dawned on me where the aliens were coming from. I had to go scavenging for more Vortex Mines to stop them and destroy the "concrete blocks" to complete the mission. So who needs Disruptor Shields? Or am I in for a rude awakening?

[NKF]

It really depends on how you play. If you're the sort that just likes to barge in, guns blazing, and throw strategy out the window, then yes, shields are absolutely essential.

 

Strategy is a big part of it but having good equipment helps a lot. Turn based players can also get by without shields.

 

You are wearing full suits of disrupter armour - full suits are practically impervious to explosives (i.e. "Poppers? What poppers? Was that a popper? Oh. I wasn't paying attention."), you won't feel disrupter missiles or boomeroids, though I'd recommend that you keep your feet moving and avoid getting attacked by vortex mines like the plague (don't get attacked by them, but by all means use them! They're the only thing that can destroy the spawn pads). They're the only explosives I know of that can punch through your disrupter trousers easily - though only if you stand right on top of them when they detonate. Also watch your armour durability. Even though you're practically invulnerable to explosives, excessive exposure to explosions can have an entropy-missile like effect, and you may end up running around with no pants.

 

The disrupter armours' weakness will be devestator beams and entropy missiles.

 

You have teleporters. Apart from the millions of tactical uses, they can be used to counter the entropy missiles, before and after they hit. Before - teleport out of the way. After - teleport to safety, strip and run about until the entropy enzyme wears off. General bullet fire can be dodged by simply teleporting out of the way or just killing the shooter from point blank range. So the teleporter counters both of the disrupter armour's weaknesses.

 

Cloakers. Make you half as visible, so you can shoot the enemy before they see you. Counters yet another of the armour's weaknesses

 

You have toxiguns - the bane of the aliens. Need I say more? You'll probably also find the anti-alien gas grenades to be your best friends later on (especially against brainsuckers), once you've captured every alien specimen there is. That won't be for a while, but they're well worth the wait.

 

With good use of all the resources available to you, anything can happen. That's the beauty of X-Com: Apocalypse.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

My troops carry toxigun clips on all (spare) belt spots, shoulders, and... uh, whereever else I can think of.

 

I tend to keep the packs free though.

[VegasSte]

I think you have to wait far too long, having completed three quarters of the alien dimension before getting the alien gas and by that time you hardly have to fight them compared to when they are always raiding your dimension!

[NKF]

True. The fact that you have to destroy the building that allows UFOs to get spawned every week before you are able to capture the queenspawn doesn't help you much. No more UFOs means no more city visits.

 

They would've been great for the alien skirmishes in the city.

 

- NKF

[knight_of_the_ravens]

actually...i'm on medium difficulty and still have'nt gotten the personal teleporter yet....what the hell is up???....i've never beat apoc yet and am still working on it....currently taking on my second alien building...also...is there any disruptor armour that flies???...cause i have my disruptor armoured personell with marsec flyer torsos...I NEED MY FLIGHT MAN!!!!....i found a solution to my UFO incursion problem....every week or so i send two retaliators and two ahnialators into the alien demension...armed to the teeth with large disruptor beams and medium on the ahnnialators...and medium disruptors on the retaliators...i don't use the large shields on the ships either...they only give 400 in protection and take too much space...i use the small ones...just 2 of them will give u 400...so my retaliators carry four...and my ahnialators carry six...so they're pretty well protected...one retaliator can take on a battleship by itself!!!....i send them in and destroy any alien craft that fly.....then come back and can spend all my time robbing the government of its cash every week for doing nothing...lol...and sit back building all my stuff and selling it and making ships and stuff...i've never beat this game yet and have already found out how to make a little over $400,000 a week...i own three buildings...The Hive (original base),Main Laboritories (full of only biochemistry labs and quantum physics labs,and X-COM Arms (full of only big and small workshops)...he lab and arms are both heavily guarded with security stations at the lifts,and all android soldiers...but anywho....i play with complete strategy...and only use 7 men in every mission...disruptor shields are a MUST HAVE!!!

[Bomb Bloke]

I armed my troops more or less the same way, with the flying torsos... but I think I'll stop that... to many fatal chest wounds.

 

The teleporter is a late game thing. As in, you might not even have time to research it if you're in a hurry to finish the game. But if you're at the stage of air supremacy in the alien dimension, you've pretty much got it wrapped up.

 

Once I let the aliens pull off the Apocalypse. It was actually very good for me, as just about everyone in the city allied with me on the spot. Then I finished my avengers, and the rest is history.

[NKF]

Bomb Bloke: As long as your shields hold, you don't need to wear any armour. But that's just being overly optimistic and/or crazy (I sometimes do it with newbie hybrids that I hire late in the game until I can beef them up a bit) .

 

So as long as your shields hold, your marsec/disrupter combo's fine. It's when you lose the shields, then you ought to worry.

 

I'd recommend getting a mule/packrat that hangs on the side of the maps to carry a spare Marsec torso plate (in a hand slot), or just have one or two flyers and let the rest go on foot with disrupter plates.

 

Knights of the Raven: The personal teleporter is pretty much the very end of the alien tech tree. To unlock them, I think you needed something around 175k (give or take a couple of zeroes) points on the superhuman difficulty level. That's just an estimate, as I cannot remember the exact number.

 

It's harder to obtain the teleporters on the easier levels because your average scores tend to be slightly lower than on superhuman (less enemies == less points). So you're going to have to gather up points.

 

Since you already have air superiority, you might as well keep at it for a few weeks. Just whizz by on ultra fast and send in a team on Sundays to clear out the new ufos. The points will build up, your soldiers will train uninterrupted and you'll soon get your teleporters. Just run a raid on the alien building to see if they have teleporters. Run in, grab some teleporters, escape, research them, then you're all set to prod some righteous green goop buttocks, and wipe your soiled boots on the welcome mat of evil. Oh and you should be able to collect teleporters by the dozens after that.

 

As for ship shields - true, the small shields are better for their space to protection ratio. Though this is only true for the smaller ships. The Annihilator is the only ship that truly benefits from the large shields. Two large shields and three small shields give them enormous protection. On the other hand, you do lose the thin slot you'd have used for three medium accuracy modules if you were to use six small shields. As a rebuttal, consider this: The accuracy modifiers are only used to modify the chance your shot will hit a stationary target. Disrupters are pretty good as is and the fact that most of the really dangerous UFOs have such broad sides that there's no real need for percision attacks. Alternately, just swap a small shield out and fit an X-Com advanced accuracy module instead. You will still have enormous protection provided by the two large and two small shields and a much better accuracy booster than three medium accuracy modules.

 

But as for the Bio-Trans, Retaliators, Explorers, Pheonix Hovercars, Valkyrie Interceptors and Hawk Air Warriors - they should go with small shields all the way (well, in the case of the valkyrie and the hovercar, they're the only ones that'll fit )

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

My shields hold... for the first parts of the game anyway... but then I get attacked with those dimension missile things and they tend to fall a bit after that. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

Once you've cleared all the alien craft, that's it. Sit back, tool up, research anything and everything, and raid the cultists till you get bored. Then raze the rest of the alien dimension.

[penchant]

It's interesting and informative to read about all the different techniques that we employ. As NKF has mentioned, what suits one player might not suit another but their ability to cater for most styles of play is one of the things that give the X-COM games lasting appeal.

 

From comments here, it appears that many players resort first to carrying one, then two and then three Personal Disruptor Shields in response to increasing alien firepower. I know that I did. Also like other players, I find it advantageous to have agents who can fly and shields are necessary because of the vulnerability of the Marsec torso units.

 

What led me to abandon flight and shields was Marsec and Transtellar both going hostile. This meant that flight plates were impossible to replace and that other equipment was difficult to shunt around. The main problem, however, was that PDSs were forever in short supply and so I tried kitting out my troops in full X-COM gear and going entirely without shields. It was NKF who mentioned the efficacy of a full set of X-COM armour and I decided to see whether that might be an answer to my logistics problems. I discovered that it works great for me. I set my agents on "fearless" to stop them prancing about while they aim that expensive ($64.25 per round, retail) C-Toxin and they seem impervious to all, except the dreaded entropy.

 

As others have observed, those Entropy Launchers are a real menace. Without shields, one hit will kill and so a quick jog/teleport to somewhere safer while the agent strips and runs about is essential. Admittedly, entropy is ineffective if a shielded agent withdraws to cover immediately, but the temptation is to linger and seek out the alien with the launcher, often resulting in more hits, destroyed shields and the same smoking agent with melting armour. I find that knowing an agent is definitely going to die, unless I do something about it, leads to fewer mishaps overall.

 

With regard to flight, I soon found that being earthbound was rarely a real drawback. There was only one occasion where I could not reach a hostile because the means of access had been destroyed - it was a Psyke rent-a-cop on the roof of a slum and the external ladder got broked rendering the roof inaccessible. Since the advent of teleporters, however, even that sort of thing is no longer a problem.

 

Anyway, a full suit of X-COM armour, no shields, is now my preferred kit.

[Ki-tat Chung]

yep, it all depends on style of player. i have everyone decked out with full disrupter armour, two PDS's, and depending on which team i have either the left/right hand side full with toxin c's (main team) or bottom of pack with c's (secondary team). everyone has one toxigun and cloaking, leg has medikit and boomoroid/vortex mine. belt has two ap, two stun and two smoke 'nades. this does well. on the teleporter topic, im up to the third building (i think), the farm and they just got the teleporters. no matter, i psi a skeletoid, teleport it to a team doing nothing right now, and bang!, its dead. oh, and btw, i don't destroy the pads. i put a small devision (3 people) per set of pads. then i can stackup the points and equipments. sometimes i just leave one thing undestroied so i can kill more aliens. plus, i never sell sheilds, i i got over 50 in storage and growing. and i got my first mill.... :nostalgic: almost up to my second....i got no money probs! oh, i relised something with money. you struggly with money for quite a few weeks until the aliens start getting the tech, then the money starts rollin' in!

 

edit: oh, and btw, if you don't have a helmet, whether you have sheilds or no sheilds, you get stunned fron simple smoke. just thought i'd let everyone know...

Edited November 12, 2003 by Ki-tat Chung

[Nightshade]

Makes sense, I remember when I first figured that out, I had Xcom armour but I hadn't got around 2 making helmets yet so no-one had them.

I do what I usually do with Alien transports, sit all of my agents outside the doors on auto fire and wait a few turns, 10 usually does the trick.

I also usually drop a smoke grenade and on this occasion I did, 18 out of 21 agents dropped in 1 turn and the other 3 the next turn. Then cam the aliens with their vortex mines. 4 mines=16 dead agents only 1 agent got a away in the end.

Thank god for saving at the start of a mission eh

[Ki-tat Chung]

ahh...another fellow reloader!

[penchant]

I have just realised that I have never used smoke grenades in Apocalypse. I used them occasionally in the original UFO game but they have never been a favourite weapon of mine. I've forgotten, did TFTD have an equivalent?

 

Have you noticed that the aliens use Megapol smoke grenades? They certainly use them to great effect, rendering my troops almost sightless while the aliens continue their assault, seemingly unaffected. I think that this is why I have never used smoke grenades. Are they effective against the tracking devices like entropy and dimension missiles?

 

And that reminds me... I have noticed that when aliens fire off tracking missiles they need not be aimed at anything in particular. When discussing right of way with security stations, for example, I have seen them launch missiles that had to loop a full 180 degrees to find a target. Nutters!

[knight_of_the_ravens]

As for ship shields - true, the small shields are better for their space to protection ratio.  Though this is only true for the smaller ships. The Annihilator is the only ship that truly benefits from the large shields. Two large shields and three small shields give them enormous protection. On the other hand, you do lose the thin slot you'd have used for three medium accuracy modules if you were to use six small shields. As a rebuttal, consider this: The accuracy modifiers are only used to modify the chance your shot will hit a stationary target. Disrupters are pretty good as is and the fact that most of the really dangerous UFOs have such broad sides that there's no real need for percision attacks. Alternately, just swap a small shield out and fit an X-Com advanced accuracy module instead. You will still have enormous protection provided by the two large and two small shields and a much better accuracy booster than three medium accuracy modules.

well NKF...yes i have been using the three medium accurasy mods below the six small shields...it fits well and i'm not really having any problems nailing a small craft from even the MER of the disruptor beams...small shields give 200 and the large shield only gives 400...if u mix that with three small,u have 1000...mix the six small shields though and u have 1200...the only thing i've been using the X-COM accurasy mod for is the $8,000 dollars of cash each one gets me...today i just became a millionare!!!...also...the newest weapon i found today was the demension missile...took on the food supply building today...am i any closer to getting those teleporters by the order of the technology?

[NKF]

Only 1000? Why just use one large shield when there's room for two!

 

Let's do some math here:

 

Three small and two large shields will net you:

 

400 x 2 = 800

200 x 3 = 600

800 + 600 = 1400

 

Or if we take away a small shield and install a X-Com advanced accuracy module (or any other module - I like to install missile jammers):

 

200 x 2 = 400

800 + 400 = 1200

+50% accuracy (or 40% jamming; or even limited teleportation)

 

Now back to six small shields and three medium accuracy modules:

 

200 x 6 = 1200

+36% accuracy (they may be 20% each, but additional mods actually decrease in effectiveness)

 

Oh, just to avoid confusion, there's an additional 700 for the above totals. That's the Annihilators hull hit points; the unrechargeable bit. With 1200 shield points, the game will report that the annihilator has x of 1900 hit points.

 

Though they end up being roughly equal in the end, and the small shields leave more module real estate for you to work with, there's not much you can fit into the slots besides the small and medium accuracy modules. Now, with the large shields, you have less module space, but its shape leaves you with a more robust selection of different modules to choose from.

 

---

 

Dimension missiles eh? Well you're getting close. For equipment you can use in the battlescape, the teleporter should be next on the list. You might find a few ship gewgaws to research prior to that - like the ship teleporter. Just keep at it and you'll get one of the teleporters.

 

Looking back at an old superhuman savegame of mine with teleporters, my score is at 144, 705 points (not the 175k that I mentioned earlier). That's probably more than you need, but try raise it to or above that level and see if you can find one off an anthropod or skeletoid after the week has passed.

 

- NKF

[Ki-tat Chung]

hrm...after maybe several more hours of ambush (remember the orange pad ambush plan i mentioned?), i'll go check my score, cuz this mission im doing is the first i've seen teleporters...

[penchant]

Three of us seem to be at about the same stage of the game, namely the third building in the alien dimension, give or take a building. Ki-tat Chung and knight of the ravens have been more adventurous than I have in tackling the AD because I had personal teleporters a long time before I ventured forth. My current score is 83K and, as far as I can work out, I had PTs before my score reached 65K. I'm playing on medium difficulty level so NKF is probably correct when he says that his suggested 144K is "probably more than you need." The difference must be attributable to difficulty levels but we'll have a definitive answer after Ki-tat's current mission finishes. I'm assuming here that you do intend to return home eventually, Ki-tat?

 

I take the point about the cloning pads because I scored a miserly 670-odd points after I destroyed them as quickly as I could in the Maintenance (4th) Building. This contrasts with nearly 3K points in the previous mission so it does, indeed, make a big difference.

[knight_of_the_ravens]

well see...this is my first time playing apocalypse...i've benn playing X-COM ever since UFO came out...but i could'nt get apoc until last year (a friend of mine works at a computer and game store called "Micro Nation" and he ACTUALLY had the X-COM collector's edition) so i dumped my old DOS versions in the attic and have used my collector's edition since then...have'nt had too much game time anymore,so i've been slowly progressing on apoc for the last two months now...my current score is 53K...i'm gonna be working on the third building tomorrow...

[M. Hoz]

::Prays that someone will notice at last:: :angel:

 

Raven,your'e at the maintenance building right?

So these huge towers,they fall when you shoot their

TOP,but if you try collapsing them from below,they

HOVER!

 

Apocalypse at first seemed to have brought

Gravity into X-Com,but it's reverse!

 

Maybe it's because of the alien dimension.....?!

:alien2:

[NKF]

Hmm, I find that the mound doesn't really get affected, but the pillar itself seems to get destroyed easily when shot from the middle. In fact, the whole thing falls down and explodes. The only thing that seems to survive is the green mound.

 

 

Kitat: while you're still at it, how long do your spawn pads keep generating enemies? Every time I destroy the others and surround the remaining pads, the aliens stop generating after a while. Either the alien generation is finite, or you need to have a certain number of pads in each pad cluster to be active. I don't know. Sometimes they just churn out aliens by the handful, yet at other times they don't seem to operate at all. Perhaps it was a dummy pad? Or are the alternate methods of disabling them that I do not know of? Ah well.

 

I wanted to generate a few shields since I'd spent all of mine and all the ones I'd collected during the mission. (small squads + reckless tactics == high shield consumption) I didn't want to go home empty handed. Didn't quite turn out how I expected it to.

 

Once you get the hang of the various layouts of the alien dimension buildings, you end up getting into the habit of cutting off the alien supply route(s) very quickly. A blessing and a curse.

 

- NKF

[MildCat]

 

Oh dear. I feel incredibly noobish now...

 

Personal Teleporters? Eh? What the hell is the apocolypse?

 

What the hell did I miss out on?

 

Maybe I need to play the game on a difficulty other than the easiest for a change...

Yeesh...

[Bomb Bloke]

Don't worry, NKF just likes reeling out stats.

 

I don't want to know how he got them all. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/sarcastic.gif

 

To get teh teleporters, you must play for ages. You can often finish the game before the aliens start using them.

 

The apocalypse refers to the stage when the aliens decide they are loosing, and fly their whole fleet into meaprimus in an attempt to level the place.

 

If you've flown your fleet into the alien dimension and cleaned up all their ships, the apocalypse doesn't happen.

 

If it does, everyone allies with you, so regardless it's good for you either way. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Though the damage bill will effect your score a bit. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/sarcastic.gif

[MildCat]

DAMN! I would have loved to see megaprimus get levelled... Especially the stupid farm building that always seem to get hit when I'm in a fight and I have to pay their sodding fee's...

 

If you sell some of your own Xcom manufactured spaceships, do you get to see other companies using them, as I think you see other companies using any alien technology when you start to sell it off.

[Nightshade]

It dont matter if u sell the technology or not, they get it regardless, theres a thread on it somewhere. Dont worry I've never seen the apocalypse or the teleporters and It doesn't look like Im going 2 either. But the first time I went into the alien dimension there were only about 16 ships and half of them were the probes. So I'm guessing that the Apocalypse aint much. Anyway even if they did all the corporations should launch all their ships so that should take care of them pretty easily.