Talk:Sectopod

Spike, re the effectiveness list you added and the stun bombs.

Don't forget that stun bombs (including HE) work against under-armour on direct hits, and this also counts for all adjacent tiles that it affects. Directional armour only comes into play beyond ground zero + 1 tiles, so direct hits on the Sectopod are obviously the most effective.

The higher the difficulty level though, the less effective the stun bombs become as the armour increases. On easier difficulty levels you can often knock them out with just one bomb with a fair amount of regularity, even with non GZ+1 attacks. On superhuman, you have to make direct hits, even then you might need several tries. Still, I suppose it's a lot better than whittling them away slowly with the other weapons.

- NKF 22:31, 3 September 2008 (PDT)

Armour and Explosions

Thanks NKF! I had forgotten the mechanics of directional armour and explosions. I will definitely review in the light of that. Are you sure about armour level and difficulty though? The Ufopaedia article Alien Stats that I checked for this note says the armour is halved at Beginner but otherwise constant at all difficulty levels. Obviously Health (damage capacity) does increase with difficulty so this will affect the numer of hits required to kill, but not whether the weapon is effective/totally ineffective. Spike 01:53, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

A combination of higher health and armour is the most likely result. I don't remember ever comparing mid-level aliens to see if their armour levels matched their beginner/superhuman counterparts. -NKF 02:50, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

OK right you are! With armour mechanics working that way, impacting Bottom armour for all squares of the Terrorist with a direct hit... you'd get about 50 total penetrating damage from a typical Stun direct hit, around 200 total from a Blaster Bomb direct hit. The Large Rocket enters the equation, albeit with a negligible 5 points for an average hit. I can't compute the actual averages because I haven't modelled the step function of HE damage reduction in my averaging function. This compares to 30 points per turn of fire from a (standard) Heavy Laser (74/turn from an XCU Heavy Laser) - assuming hte 130 point side armour is the 'typical' target of the Heavy Laser. I'll tweak the rankings - thanks for the input! Spike 14:14, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

Checking the Explosions page, I see the Under Armour rule applies to thrown Explosive weapons as well as fired/launched Explosive weapons. So I've added in the HE Pack as well (average 10 points/explosion, plus a small splash effect I haven't calculated). Spike 13:00, 5 September 2008 (PDT)