Laser Pistol Gifts

This is about training your soldiers' reaction stats.

Right, first off, you have to know how to access alien's inventories.

Next, you need to get a mind-controlled alien to stand on a Laser Pistol, force him to drop everything else, and hold the pistol.

Now, WHY would you want him to do this? Well, laser pistols do a LOT less damage than Heavy Plasmas. Laser Pistols cannot penetrate the front armor of Power or Flying Suits (they can penetrate the back armor, so make sure all nearby soldiers are facing the alien).

Why would you want him having ANY weapon at all? Aliens often won't move when disarmed, and won't trigger reaction shots. An alien can safely be given a laser pistol to create one-sided firefights where your reaction stats go up ridiculously fast. At no danger to yourself.

Plus, it looks pretty.

I admit, I'm sadistic. And petty. I need vengeance for all those times I plinked uselessly away at a Sectopod's armor in Superhuman. (anyone have any good techniques to down those, BTW? Other than making it shoot itself with Psi.)

Note: THE fastest way to raise reactions is using normal Pistols, if you can be bothered to carry them into battle. AFAIK, pistol rounds bounce off even Personal Armor, and barely scratch Mutons. So, make a Muton armed with a pistol face off with a soldier in armor also using a pistol, and just keep hitting end turn. Racks up reaction fire experience like crazy. EVEN if the soldier had horrible reactions in the first place! This is THE method of choice when you hired a soldier based on his high Psi Strength or whatever and he happened to have horrible reactions (even a soldier with 20ish reactions can gain lightning reflexes this way).

Once you empty the pistol clip (12 shots), you will have maxed out that soldier's chance for Reaction gains during that mission. Reload the pistol and give it to another soldier whose reactions you want to train.

While this way hugely accelerates your reaction progress, it's entirely dependant on the number of aliens you're facing.

There is a way to do this without the problem of number of aliens. Prerequisites:

• One psi wimp (I mean it)
• One discovered ethereal (or sectoid) base or ethereal missions widely available
• Team of soldiers you want to train (preferably very strong in respect to psi defense, and a few good MCs)
• One Laser Pistol for all your operatives
• Collector's Edition is a plus as it allows you to use base camper tactics
• One Flying\Power suit for all your operatives

As the front face of Flying and Power suits is invulnerable to laser pistol shots, both your psi weakling and training team will be safe from their fire as long as you keep them facing each other. Say you have cleared the base, you've killed all of the more powerful psi-aliens (commander and leaders if fighting ethereals, commander in the case of sectoids) and only a soldier or three are left, all are disarmed. What you do next is moving your whole team in their direction, preferably while keeping them MC'd so they don't move. Very good thing to do is to ensure that the aliens are in a place they can't escape from which is also safe from your soldiers' fire. Now you line up a firing squad in front of the wimp, making sure that everyone's facing the wimp and that the all your soldiers can't be hit in other armor parts than the front one. You press the end-turn button. The aliens will MC our unlucky guy and make him shoot his teammates. This will, of course, trigger reaction fire of your soldiers. But wait, neither side can damage each other, causing everyone to take their reaction shots without any risk. It also improves firing accuracy of your soldiers because they score hits. When you are sure everyone's had enough, you just panic the aliens so that they leave the guy alone and retreat from the mission\complete it by killing the aliens.

After some test results from Mike the Red, apparently all your soldiers's reactions are "queued" and the next guy's reaction counter is ticked before it checks whether the alien is still up. This means that, it should be beneficial to Arm the enemy with weapons which use up a lot of TU per shot, since that will make them slide VERY far down the initiative queue and perhaps ALL of your soldiers will be queued to fire a reaction shot. Hence, perhaps laser pistols, the fastest firing gun after the normal pistol, is not the best weapon to arm the aliens with... the best weapon should theoratically be... the Rocket Launcer! With Incendiery Rockets as ammo, even PERSONAL ARMOR is sufficient to be completely invulnerable, unlike the Laser Pistol which requires Power Armor, and only facing front. Or if there are a lot of aliens, bring along an AC-IN... uses up less TU per shot, but also uses up a lot less of your 80 item limit.