Blasting through walls, and incendiaries

[Silverblade-T-E]

*waves hello* old XCOM fan and visited this site for several years. Anyway, been playing UFO, TFTD and APoc lately, getting my XCOM mania on hyper...so

 

BLASTS CAN GO THROUGH DIAGONAL WALLS!

 

Lot of folk don't know this, it seems. If a wall is diagonally positioned, blasts can go THROUGH them!

For example, the corner of the smaller, square UFOs. Hit them with a missile or grenade, and the blast goes INTO the ship!

-This is awesome because you can chuck proximity grenades into the angles walls of the X shaped larger scout UFOs. As aliens move around, BOOM! Other forms of Area Of Effect also work: smoke (stun the aliens!), incendiaries, HE.

-The big area of effect of demolition packs, heavy rockets and the like, reach far into the ship. You can also lodge them with a good throw/shot into upper reaches or UPPER FLOORS of UFOS. For example say your on the middle deck of a harvester. Blowing the crap out of the floor above will hit the aleisn above you!

-Note my tips on incendiaries below.

-You can use smoke this way to stun aliens inside ships.

 

 

INCENDIARIES

 

These babies rock for several things:

1) They don't destroy alien bodies or equipment. This is vital if you don't wanna waste cash, research etc.

2) Incendiary blasts can go through diagonal walls, as explained above. Cook the little bastichs in the UFOs without blowing up gear!!

3) The rocket launched incendiary rocket has a HUGE area of effect, so can penetrate deeply into a UFO.

4) Incendiaries don't kill quickly. Each ~action~ anyone takes, alien or XCOM seems to trigger a "tick" of incendiary damage. This means if you go hogwild and blast with an autocannon, either using incendiries, or not even on the burning target, you'll clock up lots of damage.

5) Splash damage from Area Effect weapons is superb, cause even a near miss does damage.

6) Nice tip on the 2nd smallest UFO, square shaped, medium Scout?, to avoid blowing up the engine and elerium, is to open the door and bvape the gits with a dose of autocannon incendiries.

7) Swap HE to incendiary ammo when your troops are covering a UFO exit, so you won't blow up all the gear etc.

8) My personal system is to have 3 or 4 folk with heavy cannons or auto cannons and 2 with rocket launchers. Using HE they can blast aliens, buildings, clear hedges etc, and then swap to incendiary ammo on getting to the ship.

 

Hope this helps!

[Slaughter]

These are good tips Silverblade-T-E! I'll be sure to test it out when I get to play UFO again. Thanks!

 

Oh, and welcome to the boards!

[FullAuto]

I love incendiaries. There's just something about watching an alien run about on fire that really makes me laugh.

I've always thought that I ammo was more effective than HE, because of the burning damage. I always use it when clearing buildings, just by firing a couple of rounds through any doors or windows and burning the place out.

Oh, the joy of the firebug.

[NKF]

Just to add to that:

 

1. Blast through walls

 

It's not just the diagonals that are affected, but the west and northern walls too (They're west and north when you're inside the UFO). Just look for any wall that takes up the whole tile (i.e. you cannot stand in the tile even though there looks like space for you to do so). The Skyranger walls are identical to these - but unlike UFOs, both sides of the Skyranger are made up of walls that you can shoot area effect weapons into! Glad thing the aliens don't just blindly fire explosives in your general direction, eh?

 

1.a Blasts go through ceilings

 

Try it, get a rocket launcher, guess where the enemy is on the level above you and shoot directly up at the ceiling, or if you can't, try to do it at an angle. Works with any type of area effect weapon.

 

1.b Anything can be thrown through the ceiling

Anything can be thrown through the ceiling if it's immediately above you. For a ceiling one tile higher, you'd need to throw it at an angle.

 

2. Incendiaries

 

Incendiaries deliver two types of damage, impact damage and damage over time. The impact damage isn't much, and is the same no matter how powerful the incendiary weapon is - the power only controls the spread of the flames. However, impact damage is a bit more mysterious as it doesn't just deal damage once, but it deals damage to each and every single unit on the map that's standing in flames. So if you hit three targets in succession with incendiary effect weapons, the first target will receive the chance of taking impact damage three times!

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

I'm confused. There are no other walls beside north and west ones... Discluding block type things, take dirt for example.

 

Is any of this version dependant? Like the way the Blaster Bombs seem to go spare in the CE version?

[Silverblade-T-E]

I don't liek Incendiaries though for building clearing etc as it doens't kill fast enough

Splash damage from HE can cause serious harm righ toff, enough to reduce an enemies accuracy...so if they fire back...

 

 

Hm throwing grenades through ceilings? will need ot check that!

[NKF]

I'm confused. There are no other walls beside north and west ones... Discluding block type things, take dirt for example. 

 

Is any of this version dependant? Like the way the Blaster Bombs seem to go spare in the CE version?

 

I was speaking relatively - if you're standing right in the middle of the UFO, all the outer hull walls along the north and western sides are block walls - hence why stuff can be tossed or fired into them.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Ah. I see.

 

(Not really, but if I test things out I'm sure it'll be quite clear. )

[JellyfishGreen]

In honour of this thread I've added the Incendiary page to the Wiki.

[Slaughter]

Well done, keep up the good work!

[JellyfishGreen]

So can anyone verify how much damage aliens take when they're on fire? Does the damage get dealt at the end of both XCOm and Alien turns?

 

& will aliens avoid walking through fire?

[NKF]

I haven't played the game in a long time, but I keep getting the idea it's either 4 points of damage or 0 - 16.

 

But there are a few factors that need to be addressed:

 

1. What does armour do to fire damage? High armour reduce smoke intake from smoke particles - but what about fire?

2. Are damage modifiers involved?

3. What difference does being set on fire compared to just standing in fire have on how much damage is dealt? (and by extension how long does the fire last if it sticks to you? It does have a limit, I can assure you)

 

What I can confirm is that fire damage is done right after the alien's turn and just before your turn.

 

It's nothing a few controlled tests won't solve. If I get a chance during the week (and remember - actually I think I need to remember and buy some post-it notes...) , I'll give it a go - unless someone beats me to it.

 

- NKF

[Blehm 98]

Well, we all know that fire affects bottom armor(right?) and that if you catch on fire you take damage for sure(that should make 4X units get 4X damage then, since i've seen reapers with all squares alight but i don't know for sure) so that is at least a start

[Zombie]

Ok, here's the scoop (according to the OSG and backed-up by some of my damage modifier tests):

 

Units that catch fire receive from 5 to 10 damage points per turn until the fire is out.

 

Units standing in a fire receive from 1 to 12 damage points per turn.

 

Armor, no matter what type, provides no protection against fire, although certain units and aliens are more or less susceptible than others.

Now, there are some things I'd like to point out. First, for units that catch fire, they can take anywhere from 5 to 10 points of damage, but there also is the possibility of 0 damage being dealt (as I found out). Secondly, if a unit is standing in a fire, it is guaranteed to take on anywhere from 1 to 12 points of damage per turn. I did a small sampling of this a while back and noticed this range was indeed correct.

 

Here is where things get sticky. The OSG mentions that armor does not protect against fire. This is not entirely true. For aliens, the OSG description is absolutely correct. For X-COM units, things are a bit different. See, an unarmored soldier supposedly takes 100% (normal) damage from fire (from the damage modifier table). But let's look at the numbers for personal armor, the power suit and flying suit. Soldiers wearing Personal armor take 80% damage, while those soldiers wearing the Power/Flying Suits take 0% damage.

 

How can this be? Isn't this in direct opposition to what the OSG says about armor ([armor]... provides no protection against fire)? Power Suits and Flying Suits are apparently hard-wired to be completely immune (and I tested this idea out to make sure). When the OSG says the word "armor", take it with a grain of salt. X-COM's power/flying suits are not true armor like the aliens have.

 

Damage modifiers are involved with fire. I just haven't got around to testing it out on the other alien types (beyond the Sectopod of course) to verify.

 

How long does a fire last if it sticks to you? Don't hold me to this answer as positive, but I did run a test on this at one time and found it stuck around for 3 full X-COM turns (max). I'll have to double-check this to see if it is the same for the different aliens/armor types though.

 

- Zombie

[Quantifier]

I think that what OSG says, is armour value is not taken into account. AFAIK in the game soldiers that wear armour suit (personal, power, or flying) are different type of unit.

[Bomb Bloke]

I can test the turn period pretty easily. Found the counter in the data files a while back.