There is an upgrade to the Combat Shield doubling the amount of hit points it has. Ass well as the Tactical Module, upgrading to a +8 to hit. To carry the extra shield on the snipers, place the Rifle in the bag, then place the Shield in the Primary. First turn, drop the shield and take the Sniper into the primary slot for a total of 10 TUs. I typically take 2-3 Shield guys with the same number of Assaults, depending on the Transport I have, after I clear the map, I leave the Assaults on the sides and Snipers way back and in front of the UFO while my Shields grab a new shield if needed. Then I place a shield wall in front of the UFO before opening. You are close enough that the shotties can clear the initial breach. Accelerated vs Laser, I find that the Accelerated Shotgun and Sniper Rifle are incredible. The Sniper I don't replace with the Laser until I get the self charging ammo, you never run out ammo on that then. The thing to remember about the Laser is that they take Alenium, which can be very rare, and I have also found that despite the extra damage, it still takes the same number of shots to bring down an alien. Add in the math, the Accelerated against armored targets are doing about 25-30%% increase in damage, the rifle in your example, while the laser is about 30-35% from the basic rifle. Costs Elenium and costs 60% more in money, plus all the extra weight and TUs of swapping ammo cartridges. I generally don't need extra ammo with the Accelerated, which leaves more room for grenades which are far more accurate, and once you get stun grenades is big. I think that they both have a definitive place, and neither should be discounted. I tried the Advanced medkit vs the automed. There is an issue with the automed is when it applies its heal. If you take bleed from reaction fire, it won't proc until after the bleed hits. Great review, definitely learned somethings here!

Unlike all the other weapons, the grenade launcher uses 24 TU and 34 TU for every soldier regardless of their max. I found them really useful for 2 things. First to disable cloaking on enemies because you can target the ground next to the alien with no penalty. Also can be used in the same way against an enemy in cover. The second use was to make sure I could capture an alien since it wasn't going to do enough damage to kill them. It will also suppress them when it hits.

@IamCoalfoot

11 ай бұрын

Huh, just checked in game; yup, has specific TU requirements, not a percent. Which means a soldier with 100 TU could fire four grenades in a single turn. That's a lot of explosions, neat.

@HalIOfFamer

11 ай бұрын

I hope in 1.0 mods come out quick to make it this way for every weapon. Firing a couple of times a turn feels cool.

A really fun to use squad composition is what i call the "overwatch/reaction shot" comp. It basically consists of a full heavies squad with 1 sniper and it's pretty good in the late-game since your soldiers will have a crap ton of time units and good armor. The heavies are lethal at close quarters with their burst-fire and the sniper complements at long range. The tactic you'll mostly use is get your heavies into cover so next turn they can blow the alien full of holes and get back into cover in case the xeno doesn't die in the first salvo; and of course you're gonna use overwatch to scout the map so you don't get punished by aggressive aliens.

Apparently, MOST items only initially sell for half the money cost it took to build them. EXCEPT accelerated weapons, which intially sell for DOUBLE the price! 😮 (so, an accelerated rifle costs £25k & 5 alien alloys, sells for £50k, although this will slowly decrease).

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

Prob a bug but you can then make those weapons and sell them for a profit.

I load up pretty much all my troopers with flashbangs and thats also what I use my shields for. Situation teleport room. Let shield go in first, they sometimes take a hit but generally dont, throw in flashbang, surpress everyone in the room (if they dont, then the shield takes the hit anyway). Send in shield 2, do the same. Result: 4 surpressed aliens and 4 happy assault troopers with shotguns to deal with them. If my shields run out of flashbangs, everyone else still has some more :p

Real life claymore (enormous scottish broadsword with a 42" blade) weight - 5.5 lbs. Xenonauts tactical combat knife weight - 10 lbs. Kabar Combat Knife Weight - 0.7 lbs. We're going full Anime swords on these motherfuckers now.

@Cethinn

Жыл бұрын

I would be ok with full sized swords if they do enough damage. As is though, the knife doesn't have a role at all. I do equip stun batons to my shotgun guys often to get some free captures for the last few aliens in a fight, but other than mopping up, being in melee is not a good idea without a guaranteed kill.

@TheoreticalString

Жыл бұрын

@@Cethinn The joke is full sized swords weigh 2-5 lbs. Nothing you wield in hand-to-hand combat weighs 10 lbs.

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

FOR THE WARHAMMER!

@hanzolos1852

11 ай бұрын

Apparently xenonaut knives are made out of osmium

Great guide ty, Cheers!

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

I allways choose Mag Weapons, because of the higher Mag capacity and then switch to Gauss i allways skip lasers.

I believe if you "build" Alenium Grenades, it will provide you with an unlimited amount of those and also upgrade your other basic explosives. Same with Alloy Plating and shields if I'm not mistaken.

You said defender armor is trash, but I disagree. I think everyone should have armor on top of a sapi plate, armor is more important than weapons. Preserving your soldiers is key. What works for me is swaping out fresh Pvts leveling them up in the begining of the game in case they die they will have a replacement. Other than that great video. BTW I only play on Veteran or higher on Ironman*

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

11 ай бұрын

The reason I said its trash and I don't have any is because you can get alien alloy plates in the first 1-2 missions of the game and its a straight upgrade with less accuracy penalty. Weather you use defender armor is up to you. You start with some I just wouldn't make anymore considering its expensive heavy and accuracy penalty. When an upgrade is right around the corner that will last you until mid/late game.

I was hoping you'd talk about the MARS vehicle. In X1 I never used vehicles because they were too big (4 soldier spaces, I think) and their stats didn't improve. Basically, they were robbing 4 soldiers of XP. But in X2 they only take one soldier slot and can be very useful for taking down cover and creating alternate paths by ramming through doors. But ... rockets vs cannon? Are they at all useful in mid-to-late game? I'm only 44 days in, so I'm not sure about them now.

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

I Built one for 250K and lost it in a raid against Cleaners and it was gone. I think I mention it somewhere in the video but MARS is trash. X1 vehicles were useful in in most combat situations as a bullet sponge and a mobile cover destroying device. X2 MARS dies in 2-3 hits so it can't take hits even with upgraded armor. And its worse for sniping then a semi- trained solider. So I personally wouldn't ever build them in my games because for 100k more I get a fighter forever. and for 250K I could get 25 soldiers for the money. that will outclass a MARS if they survive till sergant.

@TheoreticalString

Жыл бұрын

@@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming They can be rebuilt... for $125k. Yeah, they really need a price decrease to like $100/50k. The missile is useful for doorbusting, and the secondary weapon is pretty good, but overall they're so much more expensive than a soldier. I also think the heavy armor upgrade should be more equivalent to shields.

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

@@TheoreticalString I agree with everything you said.

@hanzolos1852

11 ай бұрын

The MARs unit is almost mandatory to have early game as it bolsters your relatively weak squad. The missile and smoke launcher combo is probably the best as it gives terrain destruction without stealing kills with the option of just erasing a group with salvo fire. I'd say the steel plates are worth it so it can draw fire if you're in a dire situation. I'm not too sure how well itd work late game but its unupgraded and still pulling its weight mid game at 90 days for me. Once your main squad get strong enough, you can just move your MARs unit to fresh base and repeat the process

@IamCoalfoot

11 ай бұрын

The MARS does two things for me: Fills in a space when I _must_ launch short by a trained (usually injured) or equipped soldier (short by an armor or a weapon somehow), and runs around ahead of the crew to draw fire. Every once in a while it will get exploded, but it frequently alerts me to aliens I wouldn't have otherwise known about, and draws reaction fire. I don't care about it getting damaged because it's repaired for free, and even a full rebuild isn't all that much. Periodically, I can also just triple-rocket that Reaper I want turned into purple paste. One MARS usually lasts me enough missions to pay for itself, and once I have a full team again, it can sit at base and be a base defense.

The way I go around my normal difficulty run (currently on day 150) was 1 sniper, 2 machinegunner and 6 shotgunner. Add 1 sniper and 2 MGs as soon as I got the dropship upgrade. I personally finds that the smoke grenade and suppression combo from the MG and flashbang is enough for the 6 shotguns to get close and kill the enemies as well as being more reliable than the normal rifle. I completely ignored the shield, the rifle, the launcher as well as the stun equipment since I know that smoke are absurdly strong and despite getting close meant more accurate fire from the aliens, I could just use the excessive amount of smoke I have to block their aims. Rifle seemed way too unreliable since I rely on blocking line of sight/applying accuracy penalty with the smoke and if I ever have to shoot somebody from far away, both the MG and Sniper can do the job better, with the MG even having the advantage of suppression and potentially much greater burst accuracy since they typically goes on high str/power assisted equipment units. It also helps that I can just give high str and low acc troop MG and they could still contribute through volume of fire and grenades. Equipment wise, Tac module goes onto both the sniper and heavy, replace with smoke and flashbang depending on the mission, frag (and alienium frag, haven't completed the engineering project for them yet) if I can spare the slots. Demo Charge and C4 can be substituted with laser MG or Sniper fire, despite their smaller clip size I find the +5 range from the MG to be worth the drawback, not to mention the same weight as the ballistic variant and doubled terrain damage even if I had a couple close call where they blew up their teammate's covers. I didn't use either accelerated or laser shotgun, couldn't spare the money to build either since other project get priorities and just went straight to gauss shotgun for the alien base assault, ballistic shotgun can surprisingly remain viable even this far into the game.

Demo charges can blow ufo doors. And can be useful for blowing up cover to let your snipers have clear shots. Shields can be upgraded once you've captured medium sized ufo

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

Huh never allowed me with an observer, destroyer and abductor guess I need a bomber.

@tzuchan

Жыл бұрын

@@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming That's odd. Unless different difficulty levels also affect what you get from which UFOs, I'm pretty sure it was one of the items you'd get from the Abductor. Unless it can be destroyed in a firefight🤔

I call them medi packs good old core design tomb raider

Why didn't you go over plasma weapons?

@TheoreticalString

Жыл бұрын

Plasma weapons are currently sir not-appearing-in-the-game. Gauss is the end of the tree.

@ExploringMilitaryHistoryGaming

Жыл бұрын

Gauss is the end of the tech Tree RN and they are straight better then every other weapon so why not upgrade. They also come on line at the end of the game so.