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[E. Albright]

Shadowbat has the best layout of the T2 ships IMO. There's a relatively short distance to exits, there are popup exits to avoid reaction fire, there are shadowy nooks and protrusions to hide behind under and on top of it. Going from that to the Fortuna as Grey felt like a downgrade.

[Robsoie]

Shadowbat is cool. Intersting for night missions, since it lights up a huge area around the landing zone, letting you easily spot and pick off nearby enemies.
Of course, that becomes a bit of a liability when you need to cross the light yourself to get to farther away enemies.

Sounds like my experience with the Snake, without the "easily spot and pick off nearby enemies", because there was never a single one around the ship in any mission i used it, so taking a Snake into a night mission was in fact giving yourself a disadvantage with its giant lights nullifying my Gals night ops armor bonuses.

In day missions where you don't send night ops Gals, it was a better ship as it was like a mini base of operation (though you had to be cautious with the windows) and taking the elevators to the top of the ship was a very good place for placing a mortar to murder the whole map (not at night as the top was also illuminated)

Sold it after a few months to get back my beloved Scorpion

[Iduno]

Shadowbat has the best layout of the T2 ships IMO. There's a relatively short distance to exits, there are popup exits to avoid reaction fire, there are shadowy nooks and protrusions to hide behind under and on top of it. Going from that to the Fortuna as Grey felt like a downgrade.

Ok, now imagine the brainers invent a button that turns off the damn lights when they're inconvenient for us.

[Darkening Kaos]

    Ugh, Reticulan bases are a slog.
    The first one I abandoned due to only having pistols and captured harpoon guns.
    The second, I went in with all the hardware I had … 46 turns over 2.5 hours irl to clean up all the enemies.  27 kills and 6 captures.  All 6 gals injured, 2 of them under 10% hp and fainting every other turn.  Not looking forward to the next one.

[Rince Wind]

It's not like you have to do them. I think you can just buy the Reticulan Elder, and everyone else is available for capture elsewhere.

[Iduno]

    Ugh, Reticulan bases are a slog.
    The first one I abandoned due to only having pistols and captured harpoon guns.
    The second, I went in with all the hardware I had … 46 turns over 2.5 hours irl to clean up all the enemies.  27 kills and 6 captures.  All 6 gals injured, 2 of them under 10% hp and fainting every other turn.  Not looking forward to the next one.

Is there a weapon type limit? Because I've taken sectogres and sirens out easily with self-charging lasers, lassos, and stun batons. Technicians go down to a black powder bomb or so. For that many, use a whip or lasso to make sure enemies stay stunned. One extra HIT! works well enough. You don't want to kill them with overstun too often. The game is based around hostage taking, after all.

Mechoids are an issue, though. I don't even know what you'd use on them, unless you have plasma. Maybe the bio shells in the Magnum to lower armor? 60 armor and amazing resistances, and they accompany soft targets.

[E. Albright]

It's not like you have to do them. I think you can just buy the Reticulan Elder, and everyone else is available for capture elsewhere.

You can buy elders, yes, and you also can get a single elder every time you do a Reticulan Vats bounty for the mutants.

[Rolan7]

Mechoids are an issue, though. I don't even know what you'd use on them, unless you have plasma. Maybe the bio shells in the Magnum to lower armor? 60 armor and amazing resistances, and they accompany soft targets.

Oof.  They didn't seem so tough on easiest, I'll know to be ready for them here on normal-stats.

Sounds like a potential use for Killer Bees?  48 plasma, averaging two damrolls and pretty fast and easy to hit with.  With 7.5% predmg that's eh... like 3-4 armor stripped per shot, oof.  Might set them on fire I guess, but they take 10% burn and can't bleed.  Poison dagger for ~45 damage against half armor?  That's about 15 damage on average, should only take a couple hits, if I understand how this works at all (they have 20 hp apparently, hooray for the HTML 'pedia).

Somewhat related, shortly after easily wiping another Dark Ones base assault with dogs, got an academy base assault.  Easy prey... except the one drone they brought.  On easy difficulty dogs worked fine, seemingly not on normal diff.  Couldn't get through the stupid armor to scratch those few HP, lost 15 dogs while my barely-trained peasants ran around screaming in panic.  Finally got it with a musket.

[Rince Wind]

Molotovs do 5 damage that ignores armor. The drones have 5HP.

[Darkening Kaos]

    Ugh, Reticulan bases are a slog.
    The first one I abandoned due to only having pistols and captured harpoon guns.
    The second, I went in with all the hardware I had … 46 turns over 2.5 hours irl to clean up all the enemies.  27 kills and 6 captures.  All 6 gals injured, 2 of them under 10% hp and fainting every other turn.  Not looking forward to the next one.

Is there a weapon type limit? Because I've taken sectogres and sirens out easily with self-charging lasers, lassos, and stun batons. Technicians go down to a black powder bomb or so. For that many, use a whip or lasso to make sure enemies stay stunned. One extra HIT! works well enough. You don't want to kill them with overstun too often. The game is based around hostage taking, after all.

Mechoids are an issue, though. I don't even know what you'd use on them, unless you have plasma. Maybe the bio shells in the Magnum to lower armor? 60 armor and amazing resistances, and they accompany soft targets.

    What you do is have everyone do everything you can to the Mechtoid, even cattle-prod the bastards, then when they are down, steal their plasma gun and vapourize the rest of the crew.  I finished the battle with two Mechtoid captures, so that research is gonna be very interesting …  Willie Pete was the MVP weapon, however, took only one to take out the elite with the blue glow.  My sniper Gal used all the available squad-sight and nailed sirens and sectogres from one side of the map to the other.
     Toughest to kill was definitely the Mechtoid, then the elite.  But you can really fuck yourself up if you take the wrong turn and go around the base the wrong way.  go around the long way, wade through wave one of about ten various reticulans, collect and use their weapons, (Military shotguns, light sniper rifles, DB shotties, and usually a siren with a laser rifle), then you are set for the invading masses.  I would surge forward after knocking down four or six reticulans, only for the bases doors to open and let out the next six to push me right back and heal up - never actually made it to the doors to get in the base.

     Fake Edit: Also have to give props to the Harquebus - a flint-lock with a bayonet captured from sky ninjas - awesome weapon in the hands of someone with high firing and high melee.

[Iduno]

Somewhat related, shortly after easily wiping another Dark Ones base assault with dogs, got an academy base assault.  Easy prey... except the one drone they brought.  On easy difficulty dogs worked fine, seemingly not on normal diff.  Couldn't get through the stupid armor to scratch those few HP, lost 15 dogs while my barely-trained peasants ran around screaming in panic.  Finally got it with a musket.

Electricity damage. Especially if you spawn north of (behind? above?) the hangar; you'll be right behind them. Lassos work great if they're floating higher up.

    What you do is have everyone do everything you can to the Mechtoid, even cattle-prod the bastards

I rarely use two-handed weapons (but the electric lasso is getting em to reconsider), so I never remember the cattle prod.

[Aoi]

I thought the description for the Shadowbat specifically said that the light didn't negatively impact your own units? Or does it mean that the lighting is positioned in such a fashion that it wasn't likely to matter?

I'm hoping the Fortuna I've got under construction will feel enough of an improvement that I can either retire the Jellyfish or maybe shuffle it off to some secondary base where I'll never use it again because it's awkward. The elevator is kind of cool for popping around a corner, but feels awkward. And I want a larger crew.

And: Is there any replacement for middle-click to pull up the detailed info from the research list? Trying to figure out exactly what's still available and what's left to be prioritized has been an interesting experience on my LMB-only travel system.

[E. Albright]

I rarely use two-handed weapons (but the electric lasso is getting em to reconsider), so I never remember the cattle prod.

Unlike most (all?) other 2h melee weapons, cattle prods can be used 1h with reduced accuracy like mid-sized 2h ranged weapons can.

--

Aoi:

Shadowbat has a pool of shadow on/below it, which is what the description refers to. The lights are pointed out, so you can skulk right by it and attack nearby illuminated figures without being illuminated yourself... but to move away from it you have to cross that moat of light.

The Fortuna is mostly good, and in an interceptor role feels like a Jellyfish++... but in ground missions you'll miss the Jellyfish layout, though not the capacity. The main Fortuna door suffers from a 'fatal funnel' design flaw; its wide, always-open design combined with the ship's compact open layout means one well-placed reaction rocket could possibly kill 10+ hands in one shot. It also can't do underwater, so you might wanna keep your Jellyfish for that. I've kept my Jellyfish as a backup/low-priority interceptor as well, as it's still capable of taking out some lingering early and mid-game targets relatively cheaply.

Re: the middle mouse button - the critically important middle mouse button - I feel your pain acutely, as my travel rig has the same problem. After extensive poking and prodding, the best solution I've found is the not-very-good one of 'pack a cheap wireless 3-button mouse'. For research in particular, though, you can get access to the tech tree from the geoscape by pressing 'q'. Not as convenient as doing it from the research screen, but it works.

[Rince Wind]

There is also the new html bootypedia, it lists (and links!) the research requirements and so on as well.

[Aoi]

A non-built in option I've used before was to make new keybinds for RMB/MMB with AHK (or your macro software of choice), but that requires actually being able to download it. *shakes fist at untetherable phone* By extension, I guess that's partially why I had trouble identifying friendlies at first since I couldn't see names. And thought the alerts showed friendlies. (Poor guys...)

Yeah, I mostly resorted to the HTML Bootypedia and a spotty memory. It probably would've been of minor value to be able to readily see interrogations still had anything actually useful left, or if I was wasting my time to beating a guy up until he told me all he knew about monster testicles.