(Sonic) Cannons or rifles.

[Duvel]

Hi all,

 

couldn't find much info on this one. What I'm wondering is the following:

 

When fighting indoors (activity sites, USO's, bases) against lobbies/tentaculats, which is better ? Sonic cannons or blasta rifles ? Or maybe something else alltogether ?

 

My problem is this, Gauss is great against anything but lobstermen. But when they're around I really need the power of the cannon to finish most in 3-4 shots (not playing superhuman yet - at least not without reloading ). The cannon's accuracy is great two. But I can (almost) never get off more than one shot.

 

So what do you ppl prefer ?

 

Thanks for any input,

 

Duvel

 

PS I already know about the HTH, PDW's and stun weapons. I don't have the luxury off those yet....

[NKF]

There's no right or wrong answer, really... well, actually, there are plenty of wrong answers, such as the dart pistol.

 

All of the sonic weapons are useful against lobstermen. Heck, even the sonic pistol - which is much more superior to the Heavy Gauss at lobsterman hunting (except the sonic pistol is more expensive and its aimed shot isn't as good).

 

You must remember that even with the sonic cannon, you often need about 3 hits to just knock one out (at least this is true on superhuman). The lesser sonic weapons would need many more hits (with less damage), but you can get off a lot more shots than the cannon, which should offset this a bit.

 

Assume a lobsterman has 24 armour (that's superhuman level armour - it's less on easier levels). Also, lobstermen halve the damage dealt by practically every damage type in the game (except stun, and I think drill damage), before the armour takes away from the amount of damage dealt.

 

Sonic cannons deal 130. Halve this and you get 75. 75 - 24 = 41 damage. That's the maximum amount of maximum damage you should be able to get off per sonic cannon blast. If you do damage the lobsterman, the armour gets damaged too, so the next shot will deal more damage.

 

A blasta rifle does 95 damage, 95/2 - 24 = 23.5 per blast (rounded down to 23). Similarly, the sonic pistol only deals 80/2 - 24 = 16 damage.

 

Right, so the cannon does the best damage, but as you've pointed out, it cannot be fired very frequently. Let's look at the weapon speeds and see how much damage it can possibly do to our 24 armour lobsterman buddy, assuming all the shots hit:

 

Sonic Cannon:

Snap 50% - 2 shots (82 damage - with no TUs left for moving)

Aimed 70% - 1 shot (41 damage - with 30% remaining TUs for moving)

 

Sonic Blasta-rifle

Snap 40% - 2 shots (46 damage - with 20% TUs left for moving)

Aimed 60% - 1 shot (23 damage. 46 damage if you use your remaining TUs for a snapshot)

 

Sonic Pistol:

Snap 30% - 3 shots (48 - with a 10% TU balance left over for moving)

Aimed 50% - 2 shots (32 damage, but no TUs left over for moving)

 

Wow, I'm actually starting to like the sonic pistol more and more over the blasta-rifle... Just look at those numbers! It's a lousy aimed weapon, but those snapshots are pretty decent.

 

Note, the overall damage is assuming that our lobsterman friend does not lose any armour after every successful hit, so the overall damage values will actually be much greater. It also assumes every shot does full damage.

 

But looking at this, the sonic cannon is overall the best weapon for dealing with the lobstermen, as the armour penalty doesn't effect it as much as it does the rifle and pistol. Also the fact that it's much more accurate than either of the earlier weapons, it has a much better chance at hitting it than the rifle or pistol (a 10% - 15% improvement). Also, the cannon allows one soldier to practically cripple a lobsterman in one turn, whereas you'd need another soldier or another turn or two just to kill the lobsterman with the rifle and pistol.

 

But hey, these are just numbers. They don't mean a thing. Just experiment and find what suits your needs best.

 

I'd suggest a combination of sonic cannons, rifles and pistols (for highly trained specialists). That way you'll have a sonic weapon suited to every need.

 

---

 

If you're feeling suicidal, thermal tazers and magna-blast grenades or Gas Cannon HE shells are a great combination. Just knock out the lobsterman and kill them with the grenade or HE shell. Nothing can withstand a light explosive if it's unconscious, even if it has 255 all-round armour. But tazers are slow (50% of your TUs just for one attack), and you need to walk up to the lobsterman to pull this off.

 

Or worse still - gas cannon phosphor shells. They take forever, and only work well on land, and you need to apply them multiple times (to restart the flames if they go out). However, the fire does appear to ignore armour and the lobsterman's special 1/2 damage modifier.

 

- NKF

[Jman4117]

I prefer the rifle because you can get two shots off. The cannon has more power but you can't move AND get two shots. I usually take rifles and shock launchers on base attacks.

[Duvel]

NKF, what you're actually trying to say in 4 pages, is that you don't know ??

 

Just kidding, thanks a lot !

 

Master NKF lead us

Master NKF teach us

in your light we thrive

in your wisdom we are humbled...

[D'Haran devotion -- Sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind]

 

Thanks too Jman, gonna try rifles for a bit now... used to do eveything with cannons and non Lobbies with gauss.

 

Bring 'm on !!!

 

Duvel (off on a base raid)

[NKF]

Aye, witness the true might of procrastination and my Indecisive Powers of Doom(tm )!!!!!

 

If this topic had not sidetracked me, I'd probably have worked out the item throwing distance formula by now...

 

Or probably not.

 

That's it for the length of my post. Regarding my vague reply: Well, I know what's right for me. But what's right for me isn't necessarily right for you. The only way to find out is to give them all a go yourself and see which of them suit your needs the best. (yes, yes, I realise I'm not answering the question again).

 

I like to mix my weapons for the variety, though I often lean towards sonic cannons in the end once the midget illithids start switching almost exclusively to the cannons.

 

EDIT: By the way, before I forget, you did mention the words 'indoors' and 'tentaculats', which I seem to have forgotten completely.

 

I'll be brief (too tired to write and revise another huge essay). Use a M.C Reader and probe a tentaculat. Study it - take notice of its health and particularly its armour. They have a distinctive chink in their armour (or rather lot of chinks and only one tough spot).

 

- NKF

[VegasSte]

This might just be me and my psycho tendencies, but I always have a heavy thermic lance and lots of grenades on 1 guy and use him to take out the lobstermen(2 hits max)!

[Rasicar]

I've always been one of those kind of people who believed in peace through superior firepower, so definitely go with the cannon. Also I don't know about you NFK, but I've never had to shoot a lobsterman more then 3 times to drop one. But then again, I also have not noticed any difference between the difficulty settings either. Maybe I just have a really old version of the game.

 

-Ras

[Bomb Bloke]

Apparently some versions didn't care what difficulty you selected... but I think they fixed that.

 

We ALL have old versions. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/sarcastic.gif

 

To kill loby men, use drills. Oh yeah. That noise of crunching, and crackling... satisfaction in a job well done. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/smile.gif

[FullAuto]

Cannons all the way, projectile wise. Make sure everyones got a grenade or two, and have a few blokes with drills waiting. That tends to sort out lobstermen.

Just an additional note, do you reckon X-com drag the lobstermen corpses back to base and, y'know.....eat a few of them? Though if the lobstermen are man-sized or bigger, I guess everyone would tire of lobster pretty quick.

Though you could tin the meat and sell it. Another source of revenue.....

[NKF]

Depends on how much space the M.C implants and other cybernetic enhancements take up inside the lobsterman. Must not be a lot, since you still get to sell off $20,000 worth of lobster flesh.

 

Who the heck is this NFK person? He follows me everywhere I go! If I ever meet that annoying twit, I'll...

 

My pills? I was raving again? Oh yes.

 

Um, anyway:

 

 

Rasicar: In my analysis (see huge post above), on average, you should at least get 41 damage (give or take, depending on armour) per sonic cannon blast against a superhuman level lobsterman. Lobstermen have I think 80 health or so? I'll just use that in this example.

 

If that's the case, then you probably only need two sonic cannon shots minimum during a best case scenario; three should kill it outright. The blasta rifle would need at least 3 - 4 hits; the pistol would need 5 - 6 square hits. Less depending on how much you damage the armour after every damaging hit. More if the random number generator fudges the numbers in the lobsterman's favour.

 

---

 

As for the difficulty. TFTD's difficulty bug was always fixed. It's just that beginner feels like UFO on superhuman. Superhuman is worse. At least that's how it feels sometimes. You do notice a distinct difference between the difficulty levels after a while.

 

- NKF

 

P. S: I'm going to state the obvious here. Just to illustrate why the dart gun is useless against yon shelled claw monsters from the watery depths of evil... wait, if they're red, then does that mean they're already cooked? But I digress. Let's see, how much did the dart gun do? 16 damage, if I recall. Hah, even the ufo pistol did 26. Ah... I digress again. Anyway:

 

half damage modifier: 16 / 2 = 8

armour (superhuman): 8 - 24 = -16

Total damage dealt = -16

 

It's a good thing negative values are ignored, or else the dart pistol would actually heal the lobstermen!

[Ki-tat Chung]

hrm...if it did, how much does magion armor have again? you can use it to heal your own agents!

[Bomb Bloke]

* starts shooting his agents *

 

* gets very depressed at the results *

 

I really am confused, though. Why is TFTD so difficult again? Sure the Tasoths and Loby men take a bit of damage, but all that did was encourage me to us grenades. https://www.angelfire.com/games3/jeffy90/images/smilies/blink.gif

 

I had much more trouble against the Etherals.

[NKF]

TFTD is incredibly hard to start, since the enemy weapons and stats are ramped up while some of your starting weapons are downgraded (the gas cannon seems to have had a major improvement over the UFO heavy cannon though, and the thermal tazer is slower but stronger than the stun-rod, so you're not entirely left up the creek without a paddle).

 

But once you've got ion armour, things tend to level off a bit on any of the difficulty levels. Even though it looks a lot weaker, the ion armour is much tougher than the good old shambling alien alloy mounds. It's amazing how strong those fish tank helmets are!

 

Tasoth are actually quite easy to kill, though they have plenty of hit-points. Tenderised and minced one up with a Gas cannon the other day... Now, ethereals, on superhuman, seem to have armour that is equivalent, if not better, than the mutons. Their psi abilities aren't as grand as the Tasoths, but they do feel a bit more formidable - and I don't just say that because they've got the toughest armour unit in the game.

 

One other possible factor is that the psi-lab is a lot harder to obtain in UFO. In TFTD, you can get the M. C.-Lab very early in the game, thus you have a lot more time to gauge the mental defenses of your soldiers.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Yeah, I picked that up straight off. Took me ages to research a Tasoth, though, as I spent a fair bit of time thinking the Tentaculats were the psychic ones...

 

Tasoth go down easy enough. Just not if you insist on using guass rifles. Takes a few shots.

[Rattler]

I've always had a bigger problem with lobies and Tasoths then with all of the UFO aliens put together(excluding the crysallid of course) Why? Cause it seems the every type of Tasoth, cept for the soilder, has MC abilities. While the Etherals I only really had to worry about leaders and the likes. And Lobies, well they're lobies they get shot, and shot and shot and shot and shot and shot and shot then fall, turn later gets up chops off the head of the closest man then get shot and shot and shot and shot and shot some more then fall then get a sonic pulser onto them for good measure. Okay so that was an exagerration big deal, but mutons I've killed alot of them with just 1 or 2 plasma pistols, while the lobie usually takes at least 2 sonic cannons shot but usually 3

[Nightshade]

Lobies are the worst thing ever possible, They have stronger armour then mag-ion. shoot one of your agents from point blank front on and see the damage. Now do the same with a lobster man. If your agent is still alive (which if the shot is taken in the side or back it wont be) counts how many fatal wounds he/she has. I'll bet its more then the damage that was done to the lobster man. I've never played UFO So I cant jusge them on anything.

[Ki-tat Chung]

yes, lobbies are definatly the toughest anien in all the x-com series on that aspect, if i may say so (megaspawns go down in seconds with toxi-C, so that doesn't count. and overspawn is a bloody UFO almost!)

[Privateer]

Another thing to keep in mind is that you are not going to be fighting lobstermen all the time. At some point you will respond to gillmen or other non-tank mission, or perhaps there could be more than one type of aliens on the same mission. In this case it will pay to have a sonic pistol and a grenade in the other hand to toss at the odd gillman, rather than trying to fry the poor thing with a sonic cannon.

[Nightshade]

Well its better shot in half by a cannon then just wounded with a pistol. Plus your more likely to hit with a cannon.

[Jasonred]

The first time I fought a lobsterman, it took my entire team bombarding him with... well, everything, basically. I had just shot down a small scout equivalent, so it was only ONE lobsterman, running around. But...

 

He scared the beejebers out of me with that "invulnerability"!

 

Soon after, I landed and found a crash site with SEVERAL of them. ... needless to say, I dusted off.

 

Later, I found that thermal rods do AMAZING things to lobstermen. Anyone else try them out? It's both melee AND freeze, so it does ...mmm... double damage or something? Lobsterman go down to thermal tazers even faster than tasoths and stuff if I'm not sorely mistaken, Duvel. VERY nice once you're actually inside the ship with them.

 

Unlike mutons, if they wake up, they've got melee. urgh.

[Kriptor]

Later, I found that thermal rods do AMAZING things to lobstermen. Anyone else try them out? It's both melee AND freeze, so it does ...mmm... double damage or something? Lobsterman go down to thermal tazers even faster than tasoths and stuff if I'm not sorely mistaken, Duvel. VERY nice once you're actually inside the ship with them.

I'm just started playing TFTD, but my experience is, that sonic rifles/cannons can stun 1-2 lobstermen from 6-7.

[Zombie]

I'd like to ask a very stupid question relating to the Sonic line of weapons. What's the deal with the naming conventions for clips? I mean, the Sonic Cannon is fine but it's clip is called the Cannon Power Clip. Power? Why isn't the clip named "Sonic Cannon Power Clip" or just "Sonic Cannon Clip"? I personally like the second variant as it is less confusing. On the same token, why isn't the gun called the Sonic Power Cannon? Sounds stupid, right? What were the designers smoking when they came up with the terminology?

 

Same with the other sonic weapons. Sonic-Blasta Rifle --> Blasta Power Clip, Sonic Pistol --> Pistol Power Clip. The Pistol isn't too confusing, but I never know what the Blasta Power Clip is for. Aaargh.

 

- Zombie

[Tepid tasoth]

The clips power up the weapons, I suppose. Still, it's odd to call them power clips. Why didn't they name them "Sonic [weapon] Clip"? Probably not fancy enough, eh?

[Zombie]

I'm guessing that is the case, but it's downright confusing trying to keep everything straight.

 

- Zombie

[Shadow Dancer]

About the topic, Sonic Cannons or Rifles... it's simple. Know your enemy, if they are Tasoth/Lobster/Brain, you need Cannons because it kills in 1/2/1 hits usually and at full APs you can get 2 deadly accurate snap-shots. Other enemies can be killed in one hit with Rifle so it's better in this case. But in any case, keep a few MC soldiers to make sure the enemy has no chance of retaliating.

Now which weapons are the most effective vs Lobsters... it's simple. MC Distruptor and Vibro-blades. Snipers with Sonic Cannons are also quite powerful against them.