What to research?

This may be a little off topic, since I'm not bitching about bugs or framerate issues :), but I was wondering how people spent their research time.

Personally, I think it's a good idea to max lasers out early. The range is 3 times the original, makes short work of basic viruses and centepedes, and makes squads much better against ants and red darwinians (the most difficult enemies in the game IMHO.)

As for seondary weapons I think the grenades are a good choice to focus in because of their general utility. I only use rockets to kill spiders, one or two bars of research is enough for that. Airstrikes look cool but the delay between throwing the marker and the space invader bomb drop makes their utility questionable.

Armour (those silly english with their U) is another thing I like to research, the range impoves a whole lot and lets you kill stuff from very far off when you manually operate the turret. Plus, the battle cannon just looks so freakin cool.

I'm not sure if spending all the time required to give darwinians grenades is a good idea. It lets them kill spiders, but they usually end up killing more of their fellow LGMS than enemes.

Other than that I tend to spread research out pretty equally.
I've never maxed out the officers, is absorb worth it?

Suggestions, thoughts, flames?

ashtar., on Apr 14 2005, 03:15 PM, said:

Suggestions, thoughts, flames?
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Yes. I HATE YOU!!!

Mmmk.

I tend to max out DGs as quickly as possible. Once they can defend themselves, everything else is a bit easier. I also max out engineers, 'nades, and lasers -- the lasers and 'nades help the DGs (DGs with level 0 lasers are just pathetic... funny, but pathetic). For the default scenario, I upgrade airstrikes once or twice, as it makes the spam at the end much easier. More than that is gratuitous. I don't bother with rockets at all -- I never use them (which is funny, because they were all that I used in the beta ). Squads get upgraded once, maybe twice by the end. Have I left anything out? Oh, yes -- officers... meh... why bother? Follow is okay, but I don't use it that much, and absorb was never something that I found to be all that useful.

xander

Rockets are fun once maxed out, but are worthless most of the time even when they are, and are therefore not useful.

Research the DGs up to the lasers but not grenades, so they don't kill themselves.

Research the officer up to follow mode but not absorb, you're just one click away from having one uber-officer but no troops.

Research the squads all the way.

Research engineers two levels. Otherwise they hang around soul patches long enough that the squad defending them'll almost certainly get slaughtered. If there are that many souls, make two engineers.

Research armour two levels. It's useful, but the squads and task manager take precedence.

Research the task manager all the way.

Only upgrade the airstrikes once. Spammed out on airstrike grenades with a six-member squad - 18 space invaders'll make short work of spam and triffids.

Grenades - put em up a couple of levels. Same rules as armour, basically.

Controllers suck. Leave them at 0 if possible.