you dont need to throw weapons on roofs, only their ammo
That'd require throwing 3 things and unloading the gun though, it'd take way too long for one possession.
You not only failed to keep up with the tech race, you also aren't using the tech tree and thus researching blindly, which resulted in the enemy escalation going wonky, I bet.
To be fair, even with the tech tree I'd have been trying to research plasma cannons before flaming arrows anyways, so it'd probably have the same result if escalation is linked to positions on the tech tree. I'd assumed it was based on time and rank though. Perhaps I should have stuck to lower ranks for even longer? That feels wrong. Whatever, we're still managing and I'm enjoying the difficulty level so far. If we had 12 gals like Lenneth running around right now most missions would simply be tedious.
I thought (with no evidence), that TU damage can't carry over at all to later turns.
I think that's exactly it. The advantage of the bioplasma gun is that I could give it to someone on overwatch and stop an enemy in his tracks before he even turns to see us or gets a chance to fire. Using it to disable reactions on certain enemies so we can safely run up and stun them or something would be great too. Honestly I should bust out the ninja sickles again for this exact reason; they're only range 5 but they are very abusable in the same sort of way with sufficient stats. Though vibro spears have kind of made them obsolete.
38x10 dmg might be decent for stripping shields, or armor rending if it has any
That's true, but if I'm getting within ~5 tiles to do that, I may as well just use a melee weapon. Kind of a problem with short range weapons like that once you've got people that can cover 10 tiles and stab you 5 times for the same cost as firing a gun twice.
Lets rob some mages!
But before I forget, lets check out this counterfeit thing! It seems it works by converting 1 large chip into multiple smaller chips. I've been hoarding a bunch, so we'll have supplies for this to some extent. Seems like the profit here is 4:1.
Here it's 15 to 1... but it's still only ~14k in profit and takes just as long. Guess the chip type doesn't matter a whole lot.
Well, this is a decent profit (not that we could sustain this for long)
But chemicals produce even greater profits ex nihilo. WTF. Either chips serve some other purpose (like gambling, but that demand is so easily met...) or there's an improvement to this tech waiting in the wings. Or the game isn't balanced well.
Whatever, onward to the fun bit!
And I just remembered it said 'don't take more stuff than you can carry.' Fuck. This was followed by me making another discovery: hitting escape is the shortcut to confirm loadouts. So I guess everyone is bringing their standard gear, rather than zombie slaying shit.
Well, that's certainly a fucking zombie.
There's a bunch of troopers too. No crazy laser weapons, but pretty decent mundane ones, like this minigun and some cannons.
Overall castle layout is pretty cool. I dig the aesthetics. The corners are basically sniper nests, protected by pillars that can be shot through from the right angles.
I think our ratmage might be fucked. I can try to hide behind this fence, but if I go up against it or behind the more solid pillar, she'll be in range of the two mega zombies in the front here.
I'm not even sure the fence will block shots reliably, so I have the catgirl and Lightbane hug the wall of the castle over here where they can't get a bead on them.
This plan did not take into account zombies falling from the sky to shoot us with a shotgun however. Mission is off to a bad start. RIP one catgirl.
Lightbane flies up above to get out of that enemy's LoS and look for other targets. Well, target acquired. We found the vampire. It sucked that the team's entire arsenal ended up over here with Lightbane instead of near the entrance with the stronger teammates, but maybe it's a blessing in disguise. The vampire isn't muc of a threat to him, and the grenade we brought from the pile should easily annihilate her.
We probe the zombie while waiting for the vampire to approach. Damn, thats some bulk. I hope the game has more miniboss enemies like this, it's more interesting than everything being a humanoid you can kill with one shot from the right weapon. Tanks are kind of interesting too but even those are more of an armour check than something like this.
Luckily, our 4 best fighters are all at the front where these zombies are, and while their gear isn't ideal (I'd kill for those vibro spears) it's more than up to the task when we've got these handy shacks to hide in nearby.
Since they're so bulky I don't even have to really try to take them allive. We can inflict hundreds of points of stun and then finish them off with massive damage. Hopefully they don't get back up easily.
Megazombie 1. Rat 0.
Found out first live target with Lightbane's psi senses. She's rocking a gothic raygun. Stylish AND dangerous.
Alpparently these things deal 1100% of their listed damage. So they don't deal 600 damage to a chryssalid, but rather about 6600. Man, this would have utterly gibbed the megazombies.
Troops start coming out. Seems there's only one entry chokepoint.
Hey, hold onto this for me, will you?
Seems there's an important room accessible back here?
Aha! Nice.
Luckily Lightbane has a dart pistol on him. We can easily take this guy alive.
Another human shows up. Taking these alive would be nice, but is not practical.
Things are moving pretty quickly. Luka, Lenneth and Risin Angel all have to share a single fucking autogun because 2 of them are armed with nina stars and melee weapons by default, trying to train up throwing. Still, they've got so many TUs to spare it works and they whittle the zombies down from afar.
Trying to attack this zombie that jumped from the roof... but the hedge is only accessible from there!
Well, we can run right past him all the way to our gear stash in a single turn. We can also simply stop along the way and gut the fucker with the force blade.
Another dangerous enemy. Good thing we've been hiding in those shacks this whole time. Also good that we've got some decent shielded units that can handle her attacks easily now.
Also, unlike the other 3, Modron came in loaded with a ton of weapons, because he's got both room and strength to spare. He might not have had the bioplasma rifle, but the shredder does incredible work too.
Luka makes it to the stash but lacks the inventory space to bring back a proper arsenal. Still, we take the time to throw an assault laser up onto the roof for lightbane. Should be more than enough to handle the strix.
This is going better than I expected. Glad we came during the day; we've got decent nightvision but it's still just pure benefit to fight zombies duing the day.
Decided to bring back the bioplasma gun; It's got infinite ammo and will be good for avoiding zombie ambushes later. It's not nearly as strong in the hands of a gal, but it's still not too shabby.
Strix went down, and without exploding at that since she fell on her turn from the DOT! Nice.
We put the mage to sleep next. Seems like a lot of nice loot in here.
Area layout. There's a lot of floors and no elevators, only various stairways. So even though the castle itself isn't massive, it's quite a lot of work to explore it all.
Weird Thingie? Is this the padlock?
Next stage took quite a while. Luka's energy is mostly spent, and the zombies are playing coy.
We do find some other interesting stuff though.
Luka ends up reaching this room through the stairs. The sleep darts seemed to keep wearing off too quickly, hopefully the lasso does a better job.
Modron is hanging around outside sniping troopers with the plasma gun. There's another buegeye in cybermage armour off to the right who has been hiding this entire time behind the fence.
I fought Modron would be fine out in the open here since the trooper had a shotgun, but apparently he also had a grenade.
Thankfully, Modron can shrug that off, and it didn't even get through Lenneth's shields. That mesh armour is legit!
There's apparently a path up to this part of the roof as well, but it's a very long way around.
We spy the basement too, with the sense powers spotting a noblewoman down here.
Luka has massive stun buildup now, so I tried to bring lightbane over to administer stims. But apparently it's not just drinks you can't use on a Syn, but any sort of medkit at all. Gah. Maybe I should start carrying crack around or something. Unlike normal units, Syns apparenty build up stun when their energy is low. So if I sprint around and spent 70% of my energy, I'll get a bunch of stun buildup each turn.
Another room full of loot with a zombie guarding it. We've got it's exists covered though, it's either going to eat forceblade or bioplasma, and neither is going to let it take a shot.
We find the noblewoman after taking it out as well.I managed to get a canteen of to Luka to recover the stun. We've still at like half energy, but we can bide our time some more now.
Basement is interesting too, lots of cells, some with captives inside. There was also a rear entrance I failed to notice.
The other strix has shown herself. Rather than fire on her, I leave Modron in overwatch to pre-empt her attack.
The strix leaves LoS though and he instead shoots this trooper that was still wandering around. Nice! I really like this thing. A shame it's so hard to make it this effective. Even another ogre couldn't use it this well without the masterblaster outfit giving 50 extra health.
I spot a trooper up on the roof. Lightbane can't do dick to it so we'll leave it to Modron again.
Man, this could have saved me a lot of trouble. Oh well.
Basement seems to be zombie themed while upstairs has the fancy books and shit. There's coffins and stuff down here too.
Modron got lit up by that trooper with his minigun. I think something else was involved too, because his energy got wiped as well.
He'd actually fired the reaction shot but it clipped the parapet.
Fortunately Lenneth was close enough to save his bacon.
We also had some people nearby with medkits to patch him up.
Mission ended right after that. Not a bad result, all things considered.
Lots of loot. Not a ton of it is new, but plenty of value in here. Strongboxes, lots of books and such, a 'Black Mask' and some good prisoners, including both megazombies.
Found this while making room. Is there a mission type that restricts you to this category of gear? Would make for quite the challenge I'd expect. Those sprayguns are probably shit. Makes me all the more curious about that mask too.
Farewell kitty. She wasn't quite an elite, but she was well on her way. Keeping them alive is really, really hard without meta knowledge.
Had some spy attempts going on for a while, seems to have mostly paid off. We got other things to manufacture right now though.
Like so!
We can't knock him out this time, but the wand deals a ton of morale and TU damage. He's probably out of the fight.
