User talk:NKF

NKF:Talk

Welcome to NKF Talk. Pardon the mess.

The NKF-Centric TO-DO-List of Doom

• "X-Com Apocalypse Starter's Guide" - kind of there. Kind of not there. Perpetually.

UFO Base Kit

The UBK is a transclusion template I created so that you could plug base layouts into your articles and discussions. Go see the template and its documentation at Template:UBK to see how to use it.

Test of Gallery markup

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Note to self: The new wiki software is really case sensitive these days! A good thing in one respect.

Smoke Grenades

IMO they're only useful turn 1. And even that goes out the window if you have a tank. A tank is worth it in the early game, if only because it draws alien Plasma Pistol fire away from your squishy unarmoured dudes. Later on, though, when you have armour and the aliens switch to Heavy Plasma, tanks become less useful and you can bring out the Smoke Grenades. Magic9mushroom (talk) 00:02, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Like the tank (or 4 rookies, for the budget conscious), the smoke grenade is just another tool at your disposal that you can use depending on how you like to play. The smoke grenade is certainly most useful for the initial deployment, but that's not so say that is the only time you can take advantage of it. I know I've had many occasions where I managed to save a bunch of soldiers that were stuck out in the open in full view of some aliens by throwing a smoke grenade between them. The Smoke Grenade page has some scenarios listed. NKF (talk) 03:26, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Four rookies die to four plasma pistol shots or one alien grenade. A tank can take either and keep trucking. It's also faster.

I guess Smoke Grenades are okay if they're pre-primed and kept on the shoulder straps. Otherwise there's too big a TU cost to use opportunistically. Turn 1, on the other hand, you're not doing anything anyway because of all the full-TU aliens.

At least we can agree that Dye Grenades are terrible! Magic9mushroom (talk) 05:59, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

I'd take the tank myself as it has plenty of merits, and the later Plasma Hovertank/Sonic Displacer are superb. However those that prefer 4 rookies do argue that they are cheaper, can spread out, carry more weaponry and still take the 4 (or more) shots to dispose of. Those that live through can go onto greater things. The tank just needs one bad roll of the die and it ends up a very expensive afterthought. Bit of a RTS peon pumper meat grinder mentality going on here methinks.

Grenades are in the same boat as the smoke grenade and do cost a lot to use. That's probably why they are best relegated to the support units that back up those on the front. Then again, front-line units carrying pre-armed grenades are handy for ninja-style retreats. NKF (talk) 16:21, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Well, like I said, the main advantage of the tank is against aliens with Plasma Pistols at the very start of the game. A tank's front plate is guaranteed to survive at least 7 Plasma Pistol shots even if they all roll absolute max (which they won't), so you can park it on the opposite side of a UFO hatch to your firing line, close in, and draw fire from the aliens coming out until they use too many TUs and get reaction-fired to death (since on Superhuman, alien Reactions are usually high enough for them to avoid taking reaction-fire from stepping out of the hatch alone). In addition, you don't lose a huge amount of firepower by going with a tank right at the start since its cannon does twice the damage of Rifles. Once you've got lasers, the tank starts to hurt your firepower significantly, and once you've got decent armour and the aliens start using heavier weapons the defensive qualities of the tracked tanks go down the drain.

HWPs do have something of a renaissance later on when you get Avengers and are running into the 80-item limit, since a hovertank, while not reaching anywhere near the firepower of four Heavy-Plasma-equipped soldiers, does have more firepower than four soldiers without guns. Hovertanks/Launcher also don't count their ammo against said limit.

In TFTD it's a whole different kettle of fish thanks to the existence of Tentaculats and the lower fire rate of Sonic weaponry. Displacers/Sonic are absolutely essential due to their ability to lure Tentaculats - taking Artefact Sites without them is almost impossible thanks to That Goddamned Room. There's also the lower clip sizes making the 80-item limit an even bigger problem.

A pre-loaded Small Launcher does a lot of the same stuff a pre-armed Grenade does, and has the upside of taking the "suicide" out of "suicide bomb". There are a lot of ways to use those things. Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Small Launchers are certainly quite handy beyond just capturing key aliens, and the Thermal Shok Launcher in TFTD is scary indeed. But they have their own share of drawbacks as well. Deciding which to use to get the best result for the task at hand is all part of the fun I guess. NKF (talk) 03:18, 25 August 2014 (EDT)