Skipping laser into magnetic a viable strategy?

[Heau]

Hi,

In my current game, my early game was really scuffed on the "simming" part RNG. I didn't get enough alien alloys for laser for so long I ended up doing psionics and officer autopsy before I could finally do weapon research. But by then, I had hit a mission with enough alloys to jump straight to magnetic research, skipping laser - which I did. I had to skip a mission or two during the research as I was too weak to take them on.

I was wondering if this was actually a viable strategy at all generally. Like if I skipped psionics and had been on a "normal" game where I don't struggle so much for alloys, I could probably have gotten there early enough to not skip any mission and have a very big power spike to rush my first liberation.

Anyone more experienced toyed with this opener at all?

[Traul]

I did it once but not by choice: I had terrible luck finding elerium and ended up unlocking Magnetic before laser. Having a couple of needle grenadiers helped a lot. More emphasis on scientists would have helped mitigate the research time.

[megansweden]

DerAva has done exactly that on his current Youtube campaign (LWOTC) - he did a psi rush and to compensate for the research time lost went straight for mag, skipping laser. Seems to be working fine for him but he is actually really really good at the game.

[Heau]

Oh thanks for that mega. I vaguely know the name his content was recommended to me a few times already. So it does add some credence to it being via more than extremely situationally.

I'll try to test it without psi detour at all next game to see.

[Mrvecz]

By skipping laser weapons, your rebels wont upgrade their weapons, even with mag weapons, they will be stuck with balistic weapons which can make retals harder.

[Heau]

Yeah I had sort of noticed that. I eventually do lasers for that. It's more about skipping several hundreds of supplies and mats worth of laser weapons but my last game hit a wall shortly after doing the laser research so I had not gotten around to resistance missions to see if it solved the weapons issue.

[nephilimnexus]

I tend to do Psionics ASAP and skipping lasers helps me catch up faster.

[TheSuit]

It matters if you are planning on doing a bum rush strategy it will work.

[Sabaithal]

I generally do it the other way around: Rush lasers and skip magnetics straight to coilguns when I get there.

The main reason being that laser weapons have an innate aim bonus, which is useful early game when everyone's aim is ♥♥♥♥.

Lasers also hold their usefullness for quite a while.

[Traul]

What do you with your technicals then? Do they get stuck at Tier 1 gauntlet forever? Tier 2 sawed-off is also nice to have but maybe easier to skip.

[Heau]

Originally posted by Traul:

What do you with your technicals then? Do they get stuck at Tier 1 gauntlet forever? Tier 2 sawed-off is also nice to have but maybe easier to skip.

He's not skipping the research, it's a prereq for coil. He's merely skipping the mass upgrade mats costs.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Heau:

Originally posted by Traul:

What do you with your technicals then? Do they get stuck at Tier 1 gauntlet forever? Tier 2 sawed-off is also nice to have but maybe easier to skip.

He's not skipping the research, it's a prereq for coil. He's merely skipping the mass upgrade mats costs.

This pretty much. I don't see a reason to invest in magnetic weapon when I can skip straight to coilguns, which unlike magnetic weapons still hold their weight at late game.

[Heau]

Typically I run top tier "standard" weapons on rangers, gunners and sharpshooter and everyone else just lands the previous tier of rangers like the older child passing down his clothes to his younger siblings.

I used to skip sawed-off shotgun upgrades until T3 but then I randomly upgraded one on a haven defense vs warlock a few games back and took an overwatch shot to deal 27 dmg which felt so absurdly good and helped me save every single resistance personel and more scorch injuries across units.

There's only SMG tiers that my playstyle varies from one game to the next. Like I stretch basic SMG till plasma for shinobis but for some other classes like grenadiers and technicals, I often regret not investing in better SMGs. Particularly on Lost maps if I had to bring them along.

But yeah, in my current game I skipped laser deliberately without the detour for psi (I blew my high intel rookies by mistake by running them on 1 mission and getting a promo). The power spike felt really good. I did my starting zone liberation on advent strength 9 or 10 for the last 2 missions Last mission was showing 46-48 and had an extra 5 turrets. It got me like 52 bodies on salvage. With only laser, I could probably have done the last mission albeit with more injuries, but I think I would've failed the lib4 against 19-21. Or I would've had to wait another month just to let the advent strength drop back to reasonable levels and then lib5 would've been on like 34-36 instead.

Anyway, overall rather satisfactory strat so far. One thing that feels particularly satisfactory is the early power spike on technicals. Early gauntlet 2 is so strong on missions without salvage. Devalues early grenadiers a lot since I find they compete for the same role until sting grenades / larger crews become the norm.