Crap I never use. . .[message #219181]
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Fri, 05 June 2009 04:13
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Cribbie |
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Messages:175
Registered:March 2004 Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan |
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I've never used smoke grenades. I rarely use grenades, thrown ones, anyway. Although my merc's are loaded for bear, each carrying at least six grenades, unless I have someone in my squad who's good at throwing, i.e. Sidney or Blood, they're more of a hazard to one another then to the enemy. Any one else carrying a bunch of stuff that they've never used, just in case? "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."
I'm very careful to not have my merc's go over 100% weight. But I'm curious, at what point does weight become an issue? 105% 110% How many action points do you lose at what weight? Just wondering. . .
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Staff Sergeant
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #219186]
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Fri, 05 June 2009 05:53
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usrbid |
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Messages:1506
Registered:December 2008 |
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Hi Cribbie, I am paranoid, I don't go over 99% weight, I don't know how the game would handle 100.4% for overland travel on foot, I know internally it still keeps track of the fractions, you can test that.
Stuff that I carry and rarely use: KCB knife (only used to cut 2 fences in Grumm), gas mask (usually wear extended ear and sun goggles), submachine gun with AP and HP ammo (only used for close 1-5 tiles enemy or bloodcat), cammo kits (only used to hunt down last enemy in sector), glow sticks (only used when enemies bunch up at night, the problem is that enemies will leave the lit area in their next turn), toolkit (usually do repair in cities and use the toolkit from the sector inventory), commando mortar & 3 mustard gas shells (only used when enemies draw in additional forces from adjacent sectors, and then not always).
Please keep in mind that I typically play on Insane in Iron Man, so some gear choices cater to this style like for example the extended ear is more useful at night to catch enemies trying to flank you.
By the way smoke grenades are highly underestimated, they provide close to perfect protection from being shot. Let's say you have enemies advancing toward your team, and there are more enemies than you can shoot down every round. Eventually one or two enemies will stop at a position where they can see a couple of your mercs and you won't be able to shoot them down before your round is over.
This means that these enemies left standing now act as spotters for all other enemies in the sector. In the enemies next round every enemy gets to spend all their APs to shoot the mercs from your team the spotters can see.
Other than the obvious, that the spotted mercs will be in a world of hurt, the other results will be:
1. The enemy snipers will raise their guns and look through their scopes allowing them to see other mercs from your team. Now these scoped gun enemies will act as spotters until they move and lose track of your team again.
2. Enemies with auto fire guns will start spraying bullets toward your mercs who have been spotted. This may result in stray bullets randomly hitting other team members.
Smoke grenades fix this effectively by imposing a severe aim penalty to the enemies who are further away, possibly also making it much harder for the enemy spotters to hit your mercs as well. Also if the smoke is think enough, the enemy spotters may lose sight of the mercs they initially spotted, completely fixing the situatiion.
Stun grenades are pretty good too when you have enemies bunch up at night. Also there are 2-3 maps where you need to throw a stun grenade into a room otherwise you will get shot. At night you may get into a situation where 6-12 enemies are bunched up 8-12 tiles away from your team, which is a big danger. If one of them decides to take the risk and get close enough to act as a spotter, the remaining may run toward your team and start shooting the same round.
The way you handle this is throw a glow stick, followed by a stun grenade in the same round. Now the problem is that the stunned enemies will get up and do stuff in the next round (mostly run away which is annoying too). To counter that you can throw two defensive grenades (which stuns them even more) or (my personal favorite) a tear gas grenade. The tear gas will have enough time to spread, the enemies usually drop their guns after the stun grenade hits them, now the enemies can't get their guns because they are still in the tear gas cloud on the ground.
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #219192]
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Fri, 05 June 2009 06:51
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Cribbie |
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Messages:175
Registered:March 2004 Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan |
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Hmmm. I don't use gas masks much either, well to be exact, never. I got burned in an early game, early meaning like five years ago, when I found that marksmanship suffered when wearing one, so now, no. I find myself carrying LAW's when I find them, thinking, "I'll need these for tanks", then I end up lugging them all over creation, when by the time I meet up with some tanks, it's late to end game and I can order them from Bobby Ray's. How's this for an idea? Of course you pay a penalty for too much weight, over 100%, but how about a reward for less weight, more action points when you're below 50%?
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Staff Sergeant
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #219442]
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Sat, 06 June 2009 05:23
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usrbid |
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Messages:1506
Registered:December 2008 |
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Yep, forgot shaped charges, never use them, well mostly because Barry with a couple levels can open any door (except the one in Orta) and disable any trap. However to be fair, shaped charges don't open doors, they just weaken the lock, you still need to use someone like Bull with a crowbar to pry it open afterward.
I am not sure if smoke will help for melee, once your merc gets close enough to the enemy to be able to attack *next* round, the enemy will see your merc I believe, even in smoke.
Mustard gas damages enemy equipment, I prefer tear gas and then hand to hand as I don't want to damge my own equipment. For some reason knuckle dusters don't wear down through use.
Mustard gas can also be used to do a silent kill at a distance at night (if the enemy doesn't have a gas mask). For example in I3 at night, if your team is in the north west (top left) corner, the enemies will run all over the map and not be able to find you - ever. You need to send a guy out to drag them in. A couple mustard gas cans can take out a few guys in the middle before the enemies pour into the corner.
Knives ignore armor. Someone like Haywire or Razor can kill an enemy in 2-3 torso attacks, 3 attacks in the majority of cases. It would be 2 attacks if they could hit the neck, which they are not so good at. Attacking wounded enemies lying on the ground kills them in 1-2 hits though, one hit in most cases.
Hand to hand can disable an enemy in 2-3 hits depending on the mercs strength. A new Bull has a 40% chance to make an enemy unconscious on the first hit. Malice can do it reliable in 2 hits, Dr Q and Blood need 3 hits. So knives are one attack less effective than HtH when the enemy is standing, but kill one attack faster when the enemy already dropped to the ground.
About throwing knives, something is not right with the CTH display, I get less than 20-30% in the CTH display (with Blood) but I almost always hit. Could it be that throwing skill bonus is not included when CTH is displayed?
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #221492]
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Tue, 16 June 2009 22:44
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Cribbie |
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Messages:175
Registered:March 2004 Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan |
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I've been very careful with mustard gas since my last game when I found my militia kept running into it and turning hostile towards me. But this makes me ask the question, how much damage can you inflict on a militia member before they all go postal on you? It's not just a stray shot, but do you have to outright kill one of them? And seemingly, the militia knows the difference between your mustard gas cloud and any of the armies mustard gas clouds. How? And with using smoke grenades, you still have to have a merc with decent thowing skills to use them, right? And at one time, after combat, you could run around and heal the critically wounded members of your militia and gain points in medical skill while doing so. This seems to be not possible any more, or am I all wet here?
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Staff Sergeant
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #234638]
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Thu, 08 October 2009 01:10
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Logisteric |
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Messages:3199
Registered:December 2008 Location: B |
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why not throw them first? or even better use 60mm ilumination shells
[Updated on: Thu, 08 October 2009 22:36] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Captain
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #234781]
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Fri, 09 October 2009 20:50
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At close range, I give my sniper a fn five seven with AET. He usually just puts about 6 or 7 shots in the head of an enemy.
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #235824]
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Sat, 24 October 2009 11:12
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Cloaked |
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Messages:18
Registered:October 2009 |
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Mauserbut much more interesting would be if the enemy would make much more clever use of smoke grenades himself, i.e. to block your snipers and machinegunners from suppressing him whilst he assaults with his superior numbers.
i actually had an enemy shell me with smoke with a mortar, blocking the sniper. he actually did it once per turn then i had 2 blocked snipers. intentional or not, it was effective in buying time for them since i had to move my snipers for like 2-3 other turns to find a firing position.
now, about useless items, just like many people apparently, i havent been using any hand grenades, i only carry them for the possible situation on which i might need it. but it never happened so far. grenade launcher does the job better since i dont need to almost be in range of the blast to throw it, i can actually hide prone and still hit them with extreme prejudice. also, i didnt notice a big change in the APs to throw a grenade and to launch one.
id say: make hand grenades use less APs. also adding an option for priming them and dropping where you stand, that surely would take way less APs than throwing it. doh, no not the explosive ones, but for gas grenades this might save u. im not sure this is possible though.
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Private
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Re: Crap I never use. . .[message #235907]
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Sun, 25 October 2009 19:40
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Cloaked |
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Messages:18
Registered:October 2009 |
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if i would correct everyone's little language mistakes, id have biggest post count in every forum. but thanks, i rly meant the guy giving orders to militia.
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Private
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