Kaos dlc vehicle rank

[zo_blade]

I beat the game with the DLC just the other day and I have opinions about the vehicles, along with how I'd rank them. (I ended up relying on all assault teams with frenzy mutoid and assault/heavy for melee, with the amt of missions you need to clear, clearing them in a turn or 2 with the melee makes the length bearable).

#1 Aspida - If only for the jump jet ability which allows it to jump past areas where a vehicle cannot normally pass through because of obstacles. Double dash is also great. Hull parts is add an extra passanger or mindControl shield aura.

Weapon 1 melee paralyze(40pts) or 200 heal
-awesome for paralyzing any foe you need to capture
Weapon 2 paralyzing gun 20x4
-is actually 20x2 for small enemies, as the Aspida has 2 turrets that aim in the same direction. Meaning the other 20x2 misses and whiffs. Unless you aim to the left of that charon or scylla. Then its 80 paralyze yay!
Weapon 3 lazer 120x2
-is actually 120x1... the other half whiffs like above. Kinda useless its basically a single sniper shot, that only shoots 4 times.

#2 Kaos buggy - Is actually #1 if it werent for all the obstacles. Spike armor means as a tank melee enemies kill themselves, other hull part is blast resistance armor. Option parts are faster and fasterer. But its real saving grace is the minigun, 50x8(10shred) + the cannon option.

Weapon 1 basic Cannon 80blast, shred 10- hard to aim because its not done in first person, ok I guess but 3 AP cost so not so good.
Weapon 2 sonic Cannon 80blast, sonic 20- hard to aim, but now 2 ap cost but no shred, better than #1
Weapon 3 goo gun - single shot... and doesnt work on pandorans so useless.

#3 Phoenix Scarab- actually number 2, its tougher than the Aspida and its missiles are powerful. Hull parts are acid armor or more inventory space. Option parts are speed or run over worms, mindfraggers, mymidons.

Weapon 1 missile launcher 80blast, 20shred x2- great weapon, needs more damage
Weapon 2 heavy turret 350, 30shred, 250shock - never tried it, seemed underwhelming. If its first person aim i guess its ok. If not then sucks because hard to aim.
Weapon 3 better missile launcher 120blast, 20shred x2- same as number 1 but more damage

#4 Jericho Armadillo- lastplace, high armor and lots of passanger space is its only good points. Hull parts are, piercing resist or more inventory with -10 armor. Options are faster and fasterer.

Weapon 1 minigun - 40x8 shred 5 - yea its weaker than the kaos one bleh
Weapon 2 flamethrower - 80, fire 40 - short range, dont really like it, i guess its ok?
Weapon 3 flame grenade launcher 20blast, 5 shred, 40 fire - its best weapon and its still not that great at 4 shots.

All vehicles weapons are 4 shot and out, except for miniguns you get more shots of those. Aspida is great for getting mutagens and stunning enemies. Otherwise the Buggy is better if vehicles werent blocked. How do you guys rank the vehicles? I hope patches make vehicles more viable (not blocked maps, reload/ammo, passangers heal??? or at least stop taking tic damage)

[snuggleform]

Good analysis.

One thing you perhaps forgot to mention is cost/accessibility, and the kaos buggy wins hands down. You can do the 4 missions for the Maker pretty easily (I like to make 1 scarab early and use it to snowball these missions) and then the kaos buggy shows up regularly at his shop for about 450 or less materials, whereas with the other vehicles you have to get a certain amount of tech or luck which makes them less reliable until the late game.

The kaos buggy is a monster until scyllas show up. Like you said it has insane shred, decent amounts of ammunition, and plenty of damage as long as you shoot up close.

The pathing issue of some maps is maddening but you can usually sneak out a win by luring the enemies to you or when you can't, use a few well trained soldiers to blitz the enemy where your vehicle can't reach them.

[zo_blade]

Good point about cost/accessibility.
In the game I just beat, I got the NJ and Syd vehicles from scavenging missions and only built the scarab way later, once I built up a sizable resource amt.

Did you also know the shop resets its inventory every save reload you do? There is no need to wait for a full day. Bug or feature, dunno. But Veh parts cost more mats and only mats in the shop whereas if you build it you need the time and the scarce tech resource for it + mats. Ancients DLC gives you so much 1k mats for each site, so that allowed me to buy all the veh research techs from the shop. Advanced and Experimental research for each vehicle, 2x4=8 so about 8k in mats, too expensive. But I guess you aren't supposed to get everything so easily, especially techs you don't really need and are fine skipping.

[snuggleform]

Whoah didn't know that you could savescum his inventory, great info.

[Artek [General]]

I disagree with Armadildo ranking.
Armadildo has the highest speed of all 4 vehicles and has the access to the best upgrade in that department - which is +14 speed engine.

The thing can cross from one side of the map to the other in a single turn in most cases.
It's THE best vehicle for scavenging missions as it allows you to loot the whole map in like 3-4 turns and then GTFO.
Flamethrower is fine but very niche - the napalm GL is pretty much superior in every way that matters except for the part where it can't operate on maps with low ceiling like pandoran nests.

What Armadildo truly shines at is close range drive-by.

Rest of the vehicles work as support to your ground troops - with Scarab and Buggy providing firepower, while Aspida is a walking medical facility.
Aspida can only fit 1-2 people, buggy can't fit any at all from what i understand and scarab has inferior speed and armor, which makes approaching enemies both harder and more dangerous.

With armadildo your drive up straight to hostiles and have your soldiers take turns leaving the vehicle, doing whatever they want to the unfortunate individual and then getting back inside to safety before driving away.
1 tech to keep the thing alive / give it free shots, 1 sniper to mark priority targets and shoot off problematic limbs and 2 assaults to take point blank shotguns shots.

Weapon talents help a lot here, especially Self Defense Specialist on assaults as they can farm weaker / almost dead targets for extra APs. CQC / Trooper snipers can take 2 shots per drive-by routine by spamming quickshot. A strongman one can take close range cannon shots.

Another pleasant side effect of this strategy: since your soldiers never leave the vehicle - they don't need to care about survival, so you can just stack highest +accuracy armor on them because it's the only thing that's going to matter.

I won WAY too many operations playing like this. It's exceptionally effective.
Scarab can fulfill this role too but again - it's both slower and less tanky, which makes approaching enemies is both harder and more dangerous. Armadildo can eat gunfire like nobody's business.

[snuggleform]

Well, due to either a bug or a mislabel, it's actually not true that armadillo is the fastest. The kaos buggy's spike hull gives +21 movespeed despite it saying it gives +0. In addition you can equip +11 engine, so it's much faster than armadillo's +14. The kaos buggy as I said is an absolute monster until scyllas show up. The armadillo doesn't stand a chance. The damage reflect on kaos buggy is also quite relevant.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Well, due to either a bug or a mislabel, it's actually not true that armadillo is the fastest. The kaos buggy's spike hull gives +21 movespeed despite it saying it gives +0. In addition you can equip +11 engine, so it's much faster than armadillo's +14. The kaos buggy as I said is an absolute monster until scyllas show up. The armadillo doesn't stand a chance. The damage reflect on kaos buggy is also quite relevant.

But can it take in people to commit drive-bys?

[Sheesh]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

The kaos buggy's spike hull gives +21 movespeed despite it saying it gives +0.

Whoah, really? Nice find.
How does the spiky hull work exactly? Is it 1:1 damage reflect, a portion or a fixed value?

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Sheesh:

Originally posted by snuggleform:

The kaos buggy's spike hull gives +21 movespeed despite it saying it gives +0.

Whoah, really? Nice find.
How does the spiky hull work exactly? Is it 1:1 damage reflect, a portion or a fixed value?

It's 1:1. It's pretty absurd those hoplites kill themselves if they attack 4 times using all their AP. So you can literally run up to them and let them impale themselves on your might.

[zo_blade]

The drive by strategy intrigues me, but your story doesn't add up with what I am seeing ingame. Leaving a vehicle uses 2 AP, I just tested it with a Armadillo. This means snipers only get 1 shot with quick shot, Assaults with quick shot can get 2, but otherwise 1 also, and heavies cannot attack without quick shot. Also the map obstacles can make it impossible to move the vehicle to the enemy.

Regardless, I can see this strategy working with early to midgame but lategame seems risky with the stronger enemies as you lack half the AP worth of firepower for each your soldiers as well as a weaker weapon on the armadillo. Lategame seems to me the strat is to move away from your troops at the start of the turn then infront again at the end. Unless the enemy has grenades or artillery charons who will blow your troops away.

Granted, my regular strategy is to cheese every fight with the Assault cheer skill with a melee assault/heavy in 1 or 2 turns, so I haven't really explored other strats except my regular all assault snipers killing or disabling the enemy down by one from range.

[Saboera]

Originally posted by zo_blade:

The drive by strategy intrigues me, but your story doesn't add up with what I am seeing ingame. Leaving a vehicle uses 2 AP, I just tested it with a Armadillo. This means snipers only get 1 shot with quick shot, Assaults with quick shot can get 2, but otherwise 1 also, and heavies cannot attack without quick shot. Also the map obstacles can make it impossible to move the vehicle to the enemy.

His stuff checks out, he's talking about quickshot combos only.

Originally posted by zo_blade:

Regardless, I can see this strategy working with early to midgame but lategame seems risky with the stronger enemies as you lack half the AP worth of firepower for each your soldiers as well as a weaker weapon on the armadillo. Lategame seems to me the strat is to move away from your troops at the start of the turn then infront again at the end. Unless the enemy has grenades or artillery charons who will blow your troops away.

You can use the Scarab to similar effect if you prefer but the Armadillo is a beast in term of how much punishment it can take. You don't always have to use it in that specific fashion too. Sometime just parking it between your troops and the enemy to cut off the line of sight is incredibly beneficial, especially against Tritons with snipers.

I use the same strategy as him almost all the time. Drive-by is ridiculously strong and it's by far my favourite way to handle things through my entire campaigns on legend. It's a lot safer than leaving your units around for the most part. Most of the time you would shuffle your units a bit to get better angles or get closer anyway, especially with shotguns so the 2 AP restriction doesn't really affect them that much.

You can also use melee this way and it takes care of foes like no business from early game to late game, once you have proper melee builds with vengeance torsos. You just drive right next to what you want to obliterate, hug it, then you click a tile under your vehicle so it moves 1 tile back and position itself so they can pop out straight in melee range. It also is a lot easier to setup early. There's also something funny about little dudes popping out one by one out of the clown car to give some poor pandoran the hammer beatdown.
Alternatively, you can capture pandorans this way too, the tentacle mutation comes in handy in that endeavour.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Saboera:

I use the same strategy as him almost all the time. Drive-by is ridiculously strong and it's by far my favourite way to handle things through my entire campaigns on legend. It's a lot safer than leaving your units around for the most part. Most of the time you would shuffle your units a bit to get better angles or get closer anyway, especially with shotguns so the 2 AP restriction doesn't really affect them that much.

You can also use melee this way and it takes care of foes like no business from early game to late game, once you have proper melee builds with vengeance torsos. You just drive right next to what you want to obliterate, hug it, then you click a tile under your vehicle so it moves 1 tile back and position itself so they can pop out straight in melee range. It also is a lot easier to setup early. There's also something funny about little dudes popping out one by one out of the clown car to give some poor pandoran the hammer beatdown.
Alternatively, you can capture pandorans this way too, the tentacle mutation comes in handy in that endeavour.

This guy gets it.

It might sound weird to effectively play only using 2 APs, but that's what you do in normal combat anyway. Your soldiers constantly shuffle around, take dashes, jetpack jumps and so on. Especially since pandorans are cheating bastards and understand sightlines way better than we do and often hide in such disgusting spots - i sometimes can't help but groan from sheer audacity of those bastards.

Armadildo effectively becomes squad's legs. Yes, snipers can only take 1 quick shot with proper sniper rifles (PP's light SR exists) but then again - that's all you need most of the time anyway. The guy works as a support softing up targets for assaults to finish. Like shooting off arhtron's gun-hand leaving him with way to retaliate using Return Fire, and then assaults takes point blank shotgun shots at now de-armored stump.
With some lack and poor positioning from pandorans assaults can take out multiple targets in a row using Rapid Clearence. Especially if one of them has "Self Defense Specialist" and brought Laser PDW. Worms and mindfraggers just become AP farms.

Oh right, and i forgot to mention - although you probably know this already - vehicles make everything psychic irrelevant. Mindfraggers can do nothing but run around and take cover, sirens can only use frenzy and then they desperately try to sneak on your vehicle and stab it because there's nothing else they can do about it.
Forsaken priests don't know what to do. I had one priest desperately try to scream down armadildo's hatch in hope of instilling fear into my soldiers - but it literally does nothing.

Everything with poison or fire becomes irrelevant as well. Synendrion can't do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ against armadildo - their ARs bounce off, handguns and crossbows leave small scratches and sniper rifles... 80 damage is 80 damage, but snipers don't tend to live long.
Their poisonous grenades become turn wasters.

The only 2 cases when drive-by teams are in trouble are bad maps and scyllas. Especially the goo one.
The screaming scylla though... They are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ free kill, because they think that 4 soldiers sharing same tile (technically) means this is the perfect opportunity to SCREAM and get your squad dazed.
Except, again, it does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Before the DLC even i I had a manticore team with a SCARAB defeat such a scylla because she kept trying to daze them to no effect. The mission took million turns until chirons ran out of worms to throw and there was a lot of akward starring between the team and the scylla, but eventually she left and the team finished off the rest of arthtrons and tritons.
That was a very weird operation.

[zo_blade]

Cool, I stand corrected. I might need to try out that strategy. Heavy's have brawler which also gives melee proficiency (I use them in my melee build), so they could technically pop out and melee the enemy, twice with the cyborg body mod, ~200x2 damage.

There was this one defend synedron stage I played with the armadillo with 2 assault snipers and 1 assault heavy(not main force) near the late game. Sent the armadillo out alone to tank attacks while my snipers picked off other guys and tried to reach the Acheron to take out its head to stop reinforcements, while trimming their numbers. armadillo got taken down to 30% health, which freaked me a little, but that was still like 700 health. It is damn tanky and ran out of minigun rounds too. Was a fun but hard mission.

I always say to myself I will stop using the melee rapid rush strategy so I can enjoy the game the way its meant to played, but late game is such a slog, I never end up doing it.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by zo_blade:

I always say to myself I will stop using the melee rapid rush strategy so I can enjoy the game the way its meant to played, but late game is such a slog, I never end up doing it.

I get you. Vengeance assaults are such a big pile of cheese that you can't just pass it up...
But my current playthrough has an issue with it. I don't have any assaults with CQC and none of them are developed enough to take on a heavy role on top of assault. I had a CQC heavy with reckless but turned him into a berzerker instead.

Maybe for once in my life i will develop a vengeance soldier who only kills trash and can't just kill the whole map all by himself.