viability of using different teams for different missions

[Evil Beejeebers]

would using different teams be useful for different missions namely ship misions?

 

I find these missions a pain and struggle to get out of the sky ranger in one piece never mind continue to resue the ship.

 

obliviously this is a 3 plus months into the game tactic.

[Zombie]

It really depends on a number of factors, but I certainly use different teams whenever possible. Mostly I use a team to train up new members of a squad. "Guilt by association" as I always say, just by being on a squad a new recruit will normally increase his/her stats faster than an all-rookie setup. When I get a few soldiers with some decent stats, those soldiers form a new squad and they help to train new recruits. And so on, and so forth.

 

If I know what type of alien I'll be facing on a mission, the squad may get changed to fit. For instance, Ethereals require your best soldiers with decent Psi Strength and Blaster Launchers. For Mutons you'll need lots o' Heavy Plasmas and a few soldiers with high Psi Skill. The more aliens on a mission, the more soldiers I'll need to bring along etc. Usually I'll have about three advanced transports, each with a different team. One only deals with the small UFOs, another for the medium and large and a third for bases, battleships and "nasties" (Ethereals mostly but Sectoids too).

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

It's a good habit to have a good pool of soldiers and rotate them once in a while, leaving a few experienced chaps as chaperones to get the new guys out of trouble if necessary. It has the advantage that you'll spread the experience around. Making a lot of experienced soldiers, thus losing one every so often will not feel like such a heavy blow, and you can quickly train a new recruit up with plenty of assistance. The other benefit is that if you do lose soldiers, there'll be some available to immediately fill the gaps until new ones arrive.

 

I assume you're referring to TFTD since you posted in the TFTD section. For deployment, make use of the Triton's doors for protection and take your time before exiting the sub completely. Unless you are being bombarded with mind control and panic attacks, the sub is one of the best places to weather a hot landing zone until you've managed to clear it of hostiles.

 

Open the door, shoot anyone outside and wait a turn. Repeat for as long as necessary until you no longer see hostiles outside. After that, move a few paces outside and scout around. Shoot or throw grenades at any aliens as necessary, then flee into the sub and wait. Repeat a few turns until you're sure it's clear. Grenades help a lot at this point as you can use a particle disturbance sensor to check if any enemies are prowling the other side of the sub between turns. Lob a pulser over the top of the Triton to deal with any enemies on the other side.

 

Definitely not a luxury you can afford when fighting against enemies with strong MC skills, but works well against Lobstermen and Gill Men missions with no Gill-Man Commanders present.

 

You can do the same in UFO, however because the Skyranger's rear is exposed, you don't have the luxury of waiting for very long. You can often survive a few rounds before disembarking to clear the immediate area. Again, use the motion sensor to check for any enemies that may be approaching from your blind spots. Use large rockets or high explosives to deal with them if the blips are very close to the ramp. Smoke grenades work better in UFO, so a screen will help mask your units from distant enemies as they travel down the ramp.

 

- NKF

[Sarariman]

OK, improving the scores of a trooper by putting them with more experienced soldiers is good, but I really can't be bothered. But using different teams for different kinds of aliens is horrifying. The name of the game is to reduce the amount of work you do, and also keep the number of teams at a minimum.

 

I have one team to do alien bases and two or three to do both craft assaults and ship missions. The first team has six disruptor pulse launchers, while the others have two. I don't have teams for different sizes of alien craft.

[Sarariman]

That was interesting. I never, ever use motion detectors or smoke grenades. I thought the former were useless, while I think I used the equivalent in Enemy Unknown. If it's a motion detector, does that mean aliens don't show if they stay still? Which they often do?

 

I've spent an eternity playing TFTD and can only remember one occasion when I wished I'd had smoke grenades.

 

Any change of some more detail on the use you make of these things?

[Bomb Bloke]

If it's a motion detector, does that mean aliens don't show if they stay still? Which they often do?

The motion detector shows the exact location of units relative to the soldier with the scanner. How big the blobs are depends on a value based on the unit's size vs how many tiles it moved recently.

 

Four-tile units (eg tanks) get four seperate blobs. Units that didn't move at all - or didn't move enough - indeed remain obscured.

 

Since the scanner range doesn't really trump visual range, even at night, I've never personally had much time for it. About the one use would be to check if something's on the other side of a door - if it picks something up, you can camp for a few turns and hope the alien's dumb enough to walk through on it's own (at which point it should promptly get peppered with reaction fire).

 

I've spent an eternity playing TFTD and can only remember one occasion when I wished I'd had smoke grenades.

 

Any change of some more detail on the use you make of these things?

Smoke grenades are a lot more useful in UFO, due to the dangerous nature of the dropship ramps. The aliens can see you coming down them well before you can see them (because your sideways view is blocked, but aliens can see your soldier's legs as they walk down), and smoke helps combat that fact. TFTD dropships are a lot better designed in terms of trooper safety.

 

Basically, each unit can see about twenty tiles, and any smoke between them reduces that amount somewhat. Once enemies have been located in/around a cloud, smoke then means nothing - it won't mess with the accuracy of shots or anything, it just makes it harder to find units in the first place.

 

They're best deployed when you have some good reason to get up close to aliens without risking reaction fire, or if you want to try a retreat. For example, you might want to use a drill against a Lobsterman (they're very effective, and most other weapons do very little against them, even on low difficulty), or perhaps it's a night mission (the penalties for low light levels don't affect aliens, so smoke can be used to even things up - though really flares and IN shells are a better choice there).