Weapons
Weapon Information
Standard Weapons
You have to start somewhere. New X-COM commanders are given access to a small but diverse range of small to heavy firearms. While many are flawed, every weapon will have a strengths that can be capitalized on.
Standard firearms are sold on the market and are limited only by how much a commander is willing to spend and how much storage space is remaining. While not the best of the bunch and some weapons may become obsolete, most conventional weapons can prove to be extremely effective when used properly.
Laser Technology
Laser weapons improve over conventional non-explosive firearms by being more powerful and faster at the cost of some accuracy. They are lighter, faster and considerably more powerful. Their biggest advantage is that they do not need ammunition.
Laser weapons can only be manufactured.
Alien Weapons
Alien weapons are far more powerful than our own and wield terrible destructive capabilities, but we can harness this against the aliens and use their weapons against them.
The majority of all alien weaponry will be captured, but, when necessary, the weapons and ammunition can also be reproduced in the workshops once they have been researched. Be warned that manufacturing ammunition for alien weapons can be costly on Elerium.
- Plasma Pistol
- Plasma Rifle
- Heavy Plasma
- Alien Grenade
- Small Launcher (launcher for Stun Bombs)
- Blaster Launcher
Ammunition Types
Every weapon will have a damage type associated with it that determines its effects and its effectiveness against the target the weapon is being used against.
Armour-Piercing
Armour-Piercing (AP) ammunition are solid round projectiles that are used in your standard projectile weapons. Or more commonly known as "Bullets". Despite the name, they do not in fact pierce armour that well, and work best on soft targets. This is mainly an effect of the low to moderate damage levels.
Incendiary
Incendiary (IN) ammunition creates an area-effect fire. Due to the strange damage model of incendiary rounds, all IN rounds do ~6.4 damage rather than their UFOpaedia listed amounts. A bonus of this form of ammunition is its secondary effect, the lingering flames that remain on terrain or stick to enemy targets. The flames it will continue to cause damage per turn until the fire dies out.
High Explosive
High Explosive (HE) - the damage type - is another type of ammunition that hits a wide area, allowing multiple targets to be hit at once. Any unit or object within the blast radius will receive some amount of damage. Explosives are also capable of striking a unit's weaker under-armour at its point of impact.
- Heavy Cannon
- Auto-Cannon
- Rocket Launcher
- Grenade
- Proximity Grenade
- High Explosive
- Alien Grenade
- Blaster Launcher
Laser
Laser ammunition uses an intense beam of light to burn holes in targets. Lasers work off internal batteries that last the duration of the battle, and therefore have no clip requirements, leaving more room on the transport for other items.
Plasma
Plasma ammunition was created by the Aliens, though through research, our human scientists have been able to replicate it for our own use. The plasma beams are non-explosive, but very destructive. They use elerium in their manufacturing process.
Stun
Unlike the other forms of ammunition, Stun ammunition doesn't actually inflict damage to its target. Instead, it will cause them to fall unconscious until the stun effect has "worn off". Stun damage comes in several different forms. Melee, area effect and smoke inhalation.
Other
There are two other damage types in the game, but they belong to the integrated terrorist weapons.
- Acid Spit, the corrosive poisonous globules the Celatid spits. Extremely powerful against humans, including some humanoid alien races.
- Melee, the hand-to-hand attack which is utilized by the Reaper, Silacoid, Chryssalid and the Zombie.
See Also
- Damage
- Explosions
- Alien Artefacts
- Research
- Soldiers
- Mission Types
- Field Manual: Weapons
- UFO Weapon Summaries
- Understanding Grenades
