Talk:Best Starting Weapons (TFTD)

Excellent article, NKF. Spike 02:51, 10 December 2008 (CST)

Not trying to be nit-picky, but you left out the hand-held Torpedo Launcher. Muton commander 11:52, 21 December 2008 (CST)

As was the thermal tazer and grenades. It was intentional. Torpedo launchers are not weapons that you'll be wanting to arm the entire team with - at least in most normal games. The two stronger weapons that I do cover tend to be more medium-weights than heavies like the torpedo launcher. -NKF 22:48, 21 December 2008 (CST)

You COULD include your reasoning for the torpedo launcher in your discussion... actually, in TFTD, arming the entire team with torpedo launchers doesn't make a lot of sense... but it makes more sense than arming an entire team with Dart Guns. Do you believe me?

Also, Gauss weapons are terrible because YOU HAVE TO MANUFACTURE AMMO FOR THEM. It really screws up your production line. In addition, placing a Heavy Gauss among your starting weapons, but not putting Sonic Pistol in there is a bit weird. I mean, by the end of the first few weeks, you should have a sonic pistol and clip ready for research, maybe a blastaa rifle. So, given a choice, should you research Heavy Gauss, or Sonic Rifle... I would choose the sonic rifle! The heavy gauss is hardly a "starting weapon"... in XCOM, you would research Heavy Laser for 2 reasons. 1. Sectopods. 2. Laser Cannons.

As you said, gas cannons ability to be used above ground bumps them up many notches on the weapon rankings.

Why do you mention ION ARMOR as part of your combinations for STARTING weapons??? Jasonred 02:05, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

The minute you go on a land mission with nothing but torpedo launchers... I didn't include grenades as starting weapons either, even though I often encourage others to try out grenadier campaigns.

The gauss weapons' ammo manufacturing isn't as bad as it seems - at least for the pistol and rifle ammo. It's like buying the ammo - only it takes less time to arrive. The increased power of the gauss weapons (relative to the darts) easily make up for the higher cost, and selling a few recovered items every mission easily covers the cash invested. You won't get back the engineer time, but you'll still be able to crank out adequate quantities of gauss pistol or gauss rifle ammo very quickly at 20 and 45 tech hours needed for each. Even your starting 10 engineers can crank out ammo at a consistent enough pace to keep a few aquanauts well stocked for each mission until better stuff arrives.

The default Heavy Gauss just doesn't cut mustard, but is mainly included because you get it without gathering any equipment from the field.

As for the Ion Armor it was never a main topic of discussion and was merely mentioned once in the context of something that could assist the player use Hydro Jet Cannon in close quarters. That can be done any time during the game. -NKF 07:19, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

Hmm.. maybe. But I recall going on terror missions with Gauss and having huge ammo problems... ah shit, now I remember. The 80 item limit really hurts on those 2 part terror missions. It really makes the PAYLOAD factor kick in. ... One more reason to rush sonic weapons I guess.

As for manufacturing time, it is not a crippling amount of engineering time, but it is still pretty significant, especially on higher difficulty levels. You can easily burn through 15 clips per mission, if Gauss is your main armament. Admittedly, 4 missions a month only comes to 60 rifle clips, which is 2 days for 30 engineers, so it's not that bad... as for cost... gauss ammo is cheaper overall than Sonic ammo, right?

Jet Harpoon

I use the Jet Harpoon early on basically as a secondary weapon - in effect, as a pistol - for aquanauts who are carrying a Torpedo Launcher, or who are absolutely too weak to carry a Hydrojet Cannon / Gas Cannon. This means I throw almost all the Jet Harpoons (and ammo) away as soon as my shipments of extra Hydrojet Cannon and Gas Cannon arrive on base. Until that time, of course, you're more or less forced to use the Jet Harpoons as primary weapons since otherwise you just don't have enough weapons even to arm 8 aquanauts. Quite often, you don't get any mission before the extra heavy weapons arrive to replace the Jet Harpoons. But maybe this is a bit hard-core. For land missions (such as Base Defence), it might be good to have a weapon around that's a bit more fast and flexible than a Gas Cannon.

Dart Guns I just throw away immediately. As mentioned above, I used Jet Harpoons as "pistols" instead.

Spike 18:02, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Hydrojet Cannon vs Gas Cannon

I actually disagree with the main article statement that says HjC and GC are more or less equal underwater for ranged combat. Until you start fighting enemies with high AP/HE resistance and high armour, the HjC (on auto) is more effective, even at range. I tend to go with the view that you routinely equip mostly HjCs, but switch to GCs for land missions (terror missions and base defence, both of which are advertised in advance). I should make it clear I'm talking about HjCs firing on auto, which means they chew through ammo - basically you need to reload after 2 turns of continuous fire, vs 4 turns for the GC. So you can count on shipping twice as many spare clips into the mission, which is not great. In Aimed and Snap fire the GC is hands-down better, so unless you use the HjCs on auto all the time, don't bother with it. Spike 18:14, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

The fact that GC has an extra 33% ammo compared to the Heavy Cannon... is... HUGE. And 65 HE power??? WTF. It is SO GOOD. ... Would like to point out that the HjC gets only 3 AutoShots, and 2 Snap Shots, due to it's ammo of 14. Compared to the GC with 8 snap shots... hmm.

I had a hilarious experience with the HjC once.... one of my scouts spotted 3 aquatoids in a loose cluster, so my HjC guy goes full-Auto on them. And kills 5 aquatoids in 2 bursts. 3 I was targetting and 2 hiding off screen somewhere. 1 of those was REALLY far off screen, I didn't find his corpse til near the end of the battle. Being outnumbered = Target Rich environment.

Ammo logistics can be a hassle but at the end of the day lethality is more important. I'd rather have a battlefield of dead aliens and troops short on ammo, and figure out how to get some reloads to them, vs the alternative. The alternative is dead troops with full clips. :) The HE damage of 65 is good, but the HjC gets nearly twice as many hits per turn, on average. Unless your target has a lot of resistance/armour, the HjC will do more penetrating damage. For Lobstermen, yes, you want the GC.

Nonetheless the point you made elsewhere about reaction fire is a good one. For that reason alone you need to keep some Gas Cannons in the mix - even before the Lobstermen show up. Spike 21:09, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Gas Cannon with HE used to down Lobstermen

It can? ... It can??? OMG, IT CAN!!! Though it looks like by the time you manage to kill it, it's under armor might get reduced to zero, lol. Jasonred 20:55, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

It's slow, but it jolly well works. That's why I like it so much. However you're going to end up with very little ammo after taking one or two of the crustaceans down.

Hang on, something just occurred to me. Recalling your favourite current strategy of using the Incendiary bug in UFO - does it apply to the Hydrojet as well? That would make it a very effective anti-lobstermen weapon in underwater fights. -NKF 01:59, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't actually use the bug in UFO... I tend to kill my enemies one by one, not spread my squad out across the map and share out firepower... my current favourite strategy to burn aliens involves the fact that Incendiery ignores armor, does 4 times damage on large units, and does not provoke reaction fire. ... the trouble with Lobstermen is that they have 90-125 health, and 70% fire resistance, so it takes like 50 hits to cook them in the shell... VERY ineffective. Sigh. Jasonred 04:08, 6 April 2009 (EDT)