Argon alien race is overpowered. Can't win.

[Boss of this gym]

The argon are those super-armored robot things. They are overpowered. I'm trying an iron-man veteran game. Everything goes smooth with a few casualties here and there until I meet the Argons, which appear while I still have damn ballistic weapons. SImply put, their armor should be lowered. They are so OP right now, you literally stand no chance with ballistic weapons.

Now I wouldn't be complaining about this if I saw them in crash missions and such. The problem is that they also appear in ALIEN BASES. So I send my team to a small alien base fully operated by Argons only (maybe channge this, mix the aliens in alien bases for god's sake) and I go in with my best men, EVERYONE with shotguns, since alien bases are so close combat and so full of cover that it's simply stupid to bring snipers or rocket launchers (you would do more damage to yourself than the enemy) and the M16 can fire less times than the shotgun so there really is no choice but to pick shotguns.

I also give them a pistol and a shield.

When I open a new door, the massacre begins. Argons CAN'T BE STUNNED WITH FLASHBANGS. You have no other option but to force your way through to the neares cover absorbing enemy fire. Shields become your lifesavers everytime you open a new door. You equip the shields with two people, and move those two first, absorb the enemy fire (hopefully) and get to cover, then you go in with the rest.

If you have managed to survive with both the men carrying the shields and the rest of the team (you have to be very lucky to survive absorving the plasma shots, even with shields) you may think you have won this battle already, since now you are going to burst your shotguns in their faces...WRONG. You need AT LEAST, 3 men firing 2 TIMES their shotguns and not missing to bring down 1 ARGON. 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And in each area of the alien base there are at least 4 Argons, sometimes even more...

I have losses in each room I try to clear. Sometimes I dont kill one argon that's right in my face, behind the cover I'm using, and he one-shots two of my men.

By the time I get to the third door I have 3 men left. It's impossible.

Argons:

-Can't be stunned.

-Best armored infantry unit I have seen. They take the bullets as if they were gum bubbles.

-Need 3 men to get one down.

-In alien bases the numbers go like this: you have 8 men, they have 20. Stronger than you, better armored, better equiped.

This NEEDS to be changed. I would like to see someone saying they have beaten an alien base operated by argons, I bet nobody has. At least not with ballistic weapons. The game shouldn't spawn them so soon...

Sorry for the long post.

[Boss of this gym]

Oh and keep in mind I never abuse the save and load feature. I'm playing on iron man. Wonder how many times people reloads and saves each damn turn to defeat one base with argons in it...

[Tericc]

Shotguns are horible vs armor. try rifles and MG's. Also if these are your best troops try to have them carry at least 2 c4 charges with them. I hate them robots to so I will take a little bit of income loss by poping a smoke at the door i just opened and chuck in 1 or 2 c4.
Blow it to crap and then have a shield tooper poke his nose past the smoke screen and finnish them off with the rifles & MG's ( why MG's? they have good armor penatrations as do rifles where shotguns have the worst next to pistols)

[Llamedos]

how about rocket launchers

[Tericc]

Originally posted by Commander Methos:

how about rocket launchers

Workes well but pound for pound you can carry a lot more c4 vs rockests & its launcher. just smoke the entrance and keep chucking c4 till everything is dead.

Dont have much problems with the robots anymore but thanx to homemade plasma weapons armor isnt much of an issue. The issue then is makeing sure you have enough ammo. to kill the 30+ enemies that run and hide behind cover when resisting the scourched earth tactic

[Dranak]

Androns are the nastiest of the three main alien races due to their immunity versus supression, but it sounds like your tactics are terrible. Short range combat with shotguns (which have terrible, terrible armor penetration) is a bad idea. Rocket launchers are very useful in bases/terror missions, as are LMGs.

[Boss of this gym]

are you people serious? I thought shotguns were made for close combat...man, what are they good for if you can't even use them in close combat? This sucks...some changes need to be made man...

I'll try again with lmgs this time then, as you guys suggested...lets just hope I don't run into alien bases operated by Androns...

Thanks for the tips, I didn't expect shotguns to be so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad, there really is no point in carrying them now if they are bad in close range as soon as someone is wearing armor :/

[Mr. Kinney]

Yup, shotguns really are kind of useless. Rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers and grenades will do the job.
Also a tactical tipp: Remember that you can shoot doors open. It takes some ammo, but when you cant open a door with a soldier standing left or right from it, it can be a vital choice. This is especially true in alien bases for that first corridor between your starting room and the on on the other side. Open the first one, shoot the second one open and you can see whats in there. Then fire your rockets or whatever

[Gorlom[Swe]]

Argon.. isn't that the lizzard race in skyrim? Fun fact. "Sebillian" the lizzard race in Xenonauts appears to be named after the language (not the race but the language) of lizzard folk in everquest (or was it ultima online?)

I thought shotguns were supposed to be good in close combat. just not agains something as draped in armour as Androns. Need something with a bit more armourpenetration to punch a hole in those guys.

[Betuor]

Originally posted by GorlomSwe:

Argon.. isn't that the lizzard race in skyrim? Fun fact. "Sebillian" the lizzard race in Xenonauts appears to be named after the language (not the race but the language) of lizzard folk in everquest (or was it ultima online?)

I thought shotguns were supposed to be good in close combat. just not agains something as draped in armour as Androns. Need something with a bit more armourpenetration to punch a hole in those guys.

I thought the same thing as well. Shotguns are great against organics, but at close range. Androns are better shot at far range. Do not engage them at close range. That's what makes their crashsites so hard.

[Boss of this gym]

The thing is I have no choice but to engage in close combat because the alien base I found is operated by those Androns, there are like 20 of them, and you people know how close combat alien bases are...I wouldn't complain if you could only find them in crash sites, but bases full of them? thats a damn nightmare...I lost my iron-man game after loosing my entire team there.

[Dranak]

I personally never use shotguns, but that's largely a function of my playstyle prioritizing keeping my soldiers (and preferably out of line of sight) whenever possible. Close combat in bases tends to require exposing yourself to lots of reaction fire, which is a bit too risky for my tastes generally. There's nothing wrong with clearing rooms by sniping from out of alien range, or even abusing the AI by opening a door, shooting through it, then closing it. Admittedly you can't abuse door cheese everywhere but it's extremely safe when you can.

[Gorlom[Swe]]

Originally posted by Ketzal:

The thing is I have no choice but to engage in close combat because the alien base I found is operated by those Androns, there are like 20 of them, and you people know how close combat alien bases are...I wouldn't complain if you could only find them in crash sites, but bases full of them? thats a damn nightmare...I lost my iron-man game after loosing my entire team there.

other weapons are still better even if it is in closecombat since they have more armour pen than the shotguns.

[Pingu_the_Great]

DEALING WITH ANDRONS
----------------------------------------

The Andron is difficult for the initate to first defeat. However, the Andron is not invincible, and there are certain aspects to the Andron that can be exploited. In this rundown, I'll mostly be looking at Soldier-class and Officer-class Androns, as the small base is populated with Solider-class Androns lead by an Officer-class Andron.

Let's look at the HP and armour of an Andron. In v19, the Andron's HP is normalised with other alien races. So the Soldier Andron (light blue) has a HP of 120. It has an armour rating of 18, which means the 20pts of damage (before random) per "pellet" a shotgun does will be reduced to 2. The pistol equally pointless, as it does the same damage. Sniper rifles, LMGs, and rifles all have better armour penetration. Verses rifles and LMGs, the soldier will have 8pts of armour, verses sniper rifles none at all. So before random modifers, the rifle will do 22pts per hit, the LMG 27 and the sniper rifle 42. You therfore need to hit a Soldier a minimum of 6 times with a rifle, 5 times with a LMG and 3 times with a sniper rifle. A trio of frag grenades will also do it.

A tall order! To make things worse, the basic weapon of the Soldier is the heavy plasma. A short-ranged weapon, it only (only!) does 35pts of damage per hit, but it has a massive armour penetration of *50*. There is a burst fire mode, but it costs so much it's more likely the Andron will snap off a few shots. The Andron is encouraged to close with you as quickly as possible and blaze away.

In a base, you have to manage how Androns can see you, and how they get to you. If you have ballistics, you have to defeat Androns in detail, cutting them up and that can be quite difficult to do.

But we have a secret weapon: Smoke!

Smoke is super useful verses Androns. They don't know how to deal with smoke. Sebillians will charge into smoke, screaming. Caesans will camp around smoke waiting for you to rush out, screaming. Androns just stand around the smoke, screaming at each other where ♥♥♥♥ are you? By laying down clouds of smoke, you level the playing field. they can't reaction fire what they can't see, and tend to hunker down. Now, you can blunder through the smoke, looking for Androns and possibly triggering reaction fire.

Or you can scream, "frag out!" and lay down a barrage of grenade goodness. Grenades in alien bases are generally pretty awesome. Even the dumbest rook stands a good chance of lobbing a grenade on target, they ignore cover, and they do lots of damage to big, tough Androns. I means, let's face facts here. The goal is to survive, right? Well, there's no shame in spamming the grenade button until your finger drops off.

But you can do one better than that! Steal the weapons of the enemy! See, while it's planned sometime in v20 for alien weapons to horribly innaccurate and pretty crappy when used by a human, right now, alien weapons are everything that human weapons wishes they could be. Alien weapons are the alpha dogs, so why not get the best pets? A heavy plasma will make short work of a solider - one accurate burst is enough to turn an Soldier Andron into mincemeat. The long first room in the small base is the easiest room to fight Androns, and the best place to stock up on alien weaponry. Once you're on the alien weapon gravy train, there's no stopping ya.

[Boss of this gym]

How the ♥♥♥♥ did I not think of stealing their plasma weapons...thanks for the awesome tip penguin, going to retry another iron man game.

[Sevrun]

Get faster on your research, with only one full lab I had laser weaponry easily, could have had a lot better armor and explosives if I'd handled my other research better. They're not so tough vs laser tech. Think the laser carbine has better armor mitigation than the base rifle, but don't quote me, I've only used em once ;)