Talk:Hallucinoid

The comments in Overviews of Aliens (TFTD)#Hallucinoid - Terror Unit say that this unit just attacks

"with its tentacles which do precicely [sic] nothing, while completely ignoring its built-in Thermal Shok Launcher"

I did some testing on this and I could not reproduce that result. My results were:

1. The Hallucinoid does seem to have a preference to close for short range attacks
2. Its melee attack seems to be lethal against unarmoured Aquanauts
3. Its long range attack is definitely used (though perhaps melee is preferred if there are targets nearby)
4. The long range attack is also lethal against unarmoured Aquanauts
5. Neither of these attacks do stun damage - or if they do, they still contain enough lethal damage to be fatal

Does anyone know the basis for these comments in the Overview? If not I propose to remove them. Spike 14:13, 15 November 2008 (CST)

It should be Melee type damage. The freeze bit is just fluff text in the ufopaedia, otherwise your units will just be knocked out rather than killed outright. To confirm if it's got a ranged attack, it's probably worth making a savegame with a hallucinoid present and check the unitref.dat entry to see if it has an associated turret attached to it. Otherwise it's effectively no more than a flying Reaper - a brutal one at that if it manages to catch you, plus it has fairly good protection to round it off. -NKF 14:36, 15 November 2008 (CST)

Thanks for your help NKF. It definitely has a ranged attack, I saw the 'freeze bolt' or whatever it is travelling six squares to hit and kill my (previously uninjured) Aquanaut. I'm not quite sure if its definitely using the tentacles at melee range, or just firing its ranged weapon at point blank. I don't believe the ranged attack is an area effect (as implied by "Built in Thermal Shok Launcher) but I'll check that by offering it multiple targets at once. Spike 14:56, 15 November 2008 (CST)

The ranged attack is definitely not area effect. It uses an icon that looks similar to a plasma bolt from XCOM-EU. It looks like it has autofire capability - either that or it just likes to fire at corpses. I'm not sure if anyone knows where these alien built in weapon definitions are located in TFTD? Spike 15:32, 15 November 2008 (CST)

I've changed the Overview article to remove the claims about ineffectiveness. It's still possible that this alien is ineffective, IF your Aquanauts armour levels are sufficiently high. I was only testing with unarmoured Aquanauts and the Hallucinoid had no difficulty killing them at long range, at melee range, and pursuing them to attack them and finish them off. Spike 06:12, 14 December 2008 (CST)

UPDATE - as per Zombie's investigations, the ranged attack only works on land and not underwater. This is probably a programming error and was meant to be the other way round. Spike 15:49, 25 February 2009 (CST)

Is it really not working at all or just as effective as the Bio-Drohne melee attack?--Tauon 22:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)