Floaters. Why?

[NickAragua]

Well, I've actually seen a Reaper bite people. The problem with reapers is that they have incredibly poor pathfinding (more so than their floater counterparts), so they will often run back and forth in front of my soldiers while getting peppered with reaction shots. In my years playing X-Com, I've seen (once) a reaper take a bite out of (and kill) a civilian, and I've seen a reaper take a bite out of (but not kill) one of my troopers. They're a bit of a pain near the start of the game 'cause all you have is little pop guns that are woefully inaccurate and do piddling amounts of damage - so while you're busy whaling on the reaper, some floater is walking up to your troops and throwing grenades.

 

Speaking of floaters, they're not horrible, but they aren't exactly the cream of the crop. I mean, they do have guns and grenades, and it doesn't really matter if they don't hit your T-Shirt wearing rookies dead on with a grenade - the blast still gets them pretty good. Still, they don't really use their upward mobility to any decent effect, they're fairly weak, and they're not very good shots.

 

Let's just say that when my soldiers pee their pants, it's a good bet that it's not because of floaters.

[EclipseDog]

You want to nuke something? Just keep a blaster launcher (pre-loaded during the initial weapons check) stashed in your backpack of each trooper.

 

Speaking of which that brings me to my most fun experience this particular month...

 

Here's the scene... Alien Terror battleship I shot down but with no visible damage upon impact. Chocked full of sectoids and cyberdisks, only two sectoids had actually come out of the ship so I was pretty sure some kinda plot was awaiting me inside... so... I blaster bomb the door on the ground floor. After the door turns into slagged metal leaving 1 square hole behind I see inside a disk. So I shoot a second bomb through the hole and directly aimed to the disk. Major explosion. Battleship goes from a 3 lvl monster to a 1 level destroyed husk. Now that's what I'm talking about!

 

:devil:

[JellyfishGreen]

I don't have BB's yet in the game at hand, but how did you nuke the upper levels with that shot at ground level? Vertical cyberdisk chain reactions must be pretty rare. (And are rookies cheaper than blaster bombs when it comes to opening doors?)

 

MHoz: Well, he was. Swelp me if someone else has chosen to overuse the phrase. :hmmm:

[NKF]

Rare indeed. Vertical chain detonations are practically impossible. You can go so far as damage the floor tiles of the level immediately above the explosion, but you go no further than that. And cyberdiscs only detonate on the level they were on. Their corpses on the other hand will drop down to the nearest available floor.

 

In which case, I would assume the central lift would be involved, as you can move blaster bombs up and down them with no trouble.

 

---

 

 

Rookie vs Blaster bomb.

 

Let's compare.

 

Blaster bomb:

Pro:

1. Instant Boom! Enough said.

2. Can sometimes be collected in the field.

3. Can go anywhere in the field on the same turn.

4. A lot more portable than carrying a bunch of rookies in your pocket.

5. Cannot be interrupted by reaction.

 

Con:

1. Costs zrbite to build.

2. Rare.

3. You've got to give these rockets a lot of space to move. Clip an edge too soon - and it's all over. i.e. it doesn't necessarily fall exactly where you want it.

4. Loot + Boom! Enough said.

5. Reuse? What's left to reuse?

 

Rookie:

Pro:

1. Does not cost elerium.

2. Far more versatile. Can be rigged with a high explosive and other throw-away weapons.

3. Can by hired in bulk.

4. If the rookie survives, and isn't an outright vegetable, the rookie can go on to be a pampered veteran.

 

 

Con:

1. Can easily turn a hardened veteran into a gibbering mass after sending in the n-th rookie to his or her doom. Seriously folks, lose a rookie, lose morale. Do this too much and even your commander's going to panic (heck, even your tanks will start to panic).

2. The last-ditch armed explosive will not always fall exactly where you want it if the soldier is killed.

3. Much more limited than blaster bombs in terms of mobility.

4. Cannot be collected in the field.

5. Opportunity fire can be a real problem.

 

Personally, I find it better to save the rookie and waste the blaster bomb. Cheap though rookies may be (relatively speaking, of course), I don't find the morale loss to be particularly desireable. Fear can really render the strong useless (in this game).

 

- NKF

[Pumpkinhead]

<<No more you know what references please>>

No, I don't know what... What are you refering to? :dontgetit:

[JellyfishGreen]

<<No more you know what references please>>

No, I don't know what... What are you refering to? :dontgetit:

"weakest link"

[Pumpkinhead]

"weakest link"

Oh... Is that all...

[Pumpkinhead]

On topic again, I still don't know why you chose to pick on the Floaters... I mean, Sectoids are equal or lower in every stat... Why not pick on them instead?

 

NB - Except of course the Leaders and Commanders with their Psi-Skill...

[NKF]

Psionics is exactly why people don't pick on the sectoids. That and the relatively nasty terror unit they associate with.

 

But when you look at it, even a light breeze would kill them.

 

Snakemen are just as bad, though they may excel in some stats and are hopeless in others. But people don't pick on them because they've got very nasty companions.

 

Why not pick on something even worse? How about a silacoid (or was it celatid? the hot stone organism thingummywhatsit)? Sure, they're paired with mutons, but on their own, they're not any better than reapers (apart from being smaller and they set fire to the ground).

 

- NKF

 

edit: In retrospect, it wouldn't die very easily from pistol shots. Sectoids, floaters and snakemen will. So, I guess it wouldn't count as one of the fodder aliens.

[Nightshade]

I think the post had to be modified by a mod.

[Pumpkinhead]

I posted this in another thread cuz I wanted to find out where each Alien ranked in a combat situation, so by multiplying all of the relevant stats on a Superhuman difficulty, the ranks come out in this order:

 

1. Sectoid

2. Zombie

3. Floater

4. Snakeman

5. Silacoid

6. Celatid

7. Reaper

8. Muton

9. Ethereal

10. Cyberdisc

11. Sectopod

12. CHRYSSALID!!

 

Note #1: This includes a damage stat in which I gave all the main aliens Heavy Plasma...

 

Note #2: I left out Psi-skill purely for a "fighting" rating, but if it's included it brings the Ethereal to #12, beating the Chryssalid!

 

 

So as you can see, Sectoids do actually rank lower than Floaters

[Lonestar]

If I had to pick between a ship full of sectoids and ship full of floaters. I would rather face the floaters. Even sectoids by themselves are more dangerous than floaters. I don't care what the stats say. I have more trouble with sectoids than floaters.

There was one time when my soldiers (veterans and rookies) were going after a ship full of sectoids. After killing all but one sectoid they started getting shot off. I found out that the last one was in the vicinity of a two-level farm house. I sent some soldiers over there and they got shot. So I decided to have a soldier sneak over to the building to view the sectoid and kill it. Well the sectoid killed him. Fortunatly one of my men shot the sectoid with a laser rifle, but it didn't kill him. Instead the sectoid shot him. Now I have my remaning soldiers obliterate the farm house and the fields around it with high-explosives. This didn't kill the sectoid. He just decides to shoot another one of my soldiers. So I now have no choice but to fire blindly into the smoke and have the other soldier perforate what's left of the farm house. This doesn't work. The sectoid kills another soldier of mine. Now I decide to have my last soldier R.L.H it of there and go to the skyranger. Mission over.

I have more tales of horror like that concerning sectoids. Only one with floaters. That one had rookies with rifles that had little ammunition going up against a medium craft full of floaters at night.

[the_dead]

The best way to take the mick out of floaters is to just send in one veteran to kill the lot of them single handedly* this will make a complete mockery of the pink floaty fools.

 

 

*I didn't use in battle save to cheat at any time**

 

**honest***

 

***well not much

[NKF]

Speaking of making them a mockery... Is it time yet for me to bring back my good old Solo Floater Base Assault With Pistol and Handful of Grenades challenge?

 

- NKF

[the_dead]

I take it the use of save game will be banned for this contest

[JellyfishGreen]

Explicitly banned in the rules, yes.

 

I would like to save a game just after you prime all your grenades, before leaving the entry lift, before you spot anyone, but that doesn't allow the base to re-randomize.

 

How about heaving explosives through the ceiling of the command centre and exploiting other quirks of the game tiles? Would that be allowed?

[EclipseDog]

Heh that challenge isn't all that tough that you should even need to ask that. Now if you really wanted to challenge yourself into overcoming nigh-insurmountable odds you could one-up this challenge.

 

Go in with 0 *anything* except armor, medikits, and one weapon that cannot be used until there was only a single alien left (since it's impossible to kill the last alien without it). Use the alien's own fire to kill aliens by using them as bullet guards. Just to make it *really* fun, consider making that single weapon a stun rod so you're forced to move next to it and survive in order to take it out.

 

You'd be surprised how quickly doing a battle or two in this manner will teach you proper duck and cover tactics that can be useful later to less extents in actual combat.

[NKF]

You know, that reminds of the time I played Doom... sort of.

 

I tried a lesser version of that at one time by playing a normal campaign, but I forced myself to only kill the aliens with reaction fire only (unless it refused to trigger after so many turns).

 

It was possible, but certainly not the best method of doing things.

 

- NKF

[Psy Guy]

I pick on floaters mostly because they can't throw very well and are easy to kill. Floaters are alot easier to kill because they always seem to stare at walls or float in the middle of an open field. Also floater commanders like to stay near the entrence area of floater bases.

[the_dead]

I think the floaters have been sampling the earth cannabis, which explains their slow reactions and incredible ability to get shot a lot without doing anything about it.

 

I hope the floaters weren't named after an inability to flush toilets after use

[EclipseDog]

No... I'd wager they were named that for their ability to... erm... 'get high'. Heh, couldn't resist that one.

[Bomb Bloke]

She's so hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh...

High above me...

She's so lovely...

 

There are some songs you just can't take seriously. Another is that one that goes "she likes me for me, not because..." https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/sarcastic.gif