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I have a hardtime deciding if the extra damages are more than compensating the loss of accuracy. I don't like when devs mix apples and oranges like that.

I think it depends on the soldier. Soldiers with excellent aim who will be fighting at close range benefit greatly from mag rifles. But if they have poor aim and firing from distance, they probably need all the aim assistance they can get. For this reason, I tend to run both simultaneously.

However, there is some truth in the assertion that mag weapons wren't worth the research time and resources, since you could go straight to coil guns.

Severian wrote:I think it depends on the soldier. Soldiers with excellent aim who will be fighting at close range benefit greatly from mag rifles. But if they have poor aim and firing from distance, they probably need all the aim assistance they can get. For this reason, I tend to run both simultaneously.

However, there is some truth in the assertion that mag weapons wren't worth the research time and resources, since you could go straight to coil guns.

I think the question is not to decide between mag and coil for second tier, but decide between laser or mag in the first step.

If you have a mix... Low rank/aim soldiers, "overwatchers", grenadiers, technics with laser. High aim "damagers" like Gunners, rangers, snipers and close range assaults (if anybode uses) go with mag because they lot of times are even overaimed.

Having +1.5 avg base damage & +1 on crits is vastly superior to +5 aim for any soldier in general. It's quite OK to keep laser SMG's on soldiers who don't shoot too much though. With support calsses you're likely to use their guns just to finish off 1-3 HP enemies or apply an ammo effect, especially if you don't pick any combat perks in the tree. However, as the game goes on and more tougher enemies begin to show up you might actually need to finish off 4-5 HP guys more often than you need +5 accuracy and you might have 100% at point blank regardless at some point so might as well give 'em mag if you've got spare resources. Nevertheless, some of my guys use laser SMG's with redscreen rounds even while I'm on coil tier.

Damage is more important than aim in general if we're talking about small bonuses. Chance to hit < chance to kill and while your accuracy is a big part of chance to kill, bonus damage adds a lot more to it. Therefore any damaging ammo is more efficient on average than tracer rounds because it's relatively small chance that +5 aim will turn miss into a hit while bonus damage applies on pretty much every hit (if you're using the right ammo type ofc).

Also, as far as I know you can't go for coilguns without mag weapons research.

You need to research Mag anyway to get to Coil so the only question is do you build mag weapons or not.
You don't have to build them for everyone but the heavy hitters will benefit from the increased damage. Keep laser for lower ranking soldiers so they can finish of wounded enemies.
A few mag weapons won't break your economy anyway and can help while you're researching coil.
Skipping Laser is totally possible but you might lack the improved damage as getting to mag directly will still take a longer time than laser.

It depends on the enemies you are fighting. If the extra damage knocks an attack off the numerous of attacks it takes to kill enemies, then mags are worth it. If it doesn't, then lasers are better.

Now, enemies get tougher as the game goes on so the calculations will change. I went with lasers initially and then went straight from mags to coils only building a couple mag weapons. (I built one or two later when I was out of elerium and out of coil weapons but that was strictly an emergency measure). In general, though you have to research both, I think most players end up only rolling one out to most of their troops before going to coils.

Nibelung44 wrote:I don't like when devs mix apples and oranges like that.

How dare they pose strategic choices instead of simplifying the game into "point and click to get something strictly better" all the time

That +5 to aim from Lasers is absolutely no comparison to the damage boost from Magnetics. I say Mags are better in 99.9% of the cases than Lasers.

Clibanarius wrote:That +5 to aim from Lasers is absolutely no comparison to the damage boost from Magnetics. I say Mags are better in 99.9% of the cases than Lasers.

Except that Mag weapons are much more expensive that Laser weapons, twice the Alien Alloys and Elerium Crystals and almost twice as many supplies, and you're going to have to equip a number of troops. And in Legendary campaigns, you'd have to pass up Laser weapons when you're desperate to get better weapons and armour.

Mag weapons are probably the weapons I buy the least of, but I buy some nevertheless:

- Mag Rifle: for the rangers, who get the most out of them because of high aim and best scopes.
- Mag Long Rifle: one for the DFA sharpshooter.
- Mag Cannon: my Gunners almost always have Hail of Bullets so... I almost always end up with two.
- Shard Gun: assaults don't give a crap about +5 aim. I don't use a ton of assaults tho.
- Stuttergun: usually one of my Shinobis or Support Grenadiers end up with a good aim stat so I get a couple.

Then I just hold onto my materials until coil guns.

Dwarfling wrote:Mag weapons are probably the weapons I buy the least of, but I buy some nevertheless:

- Mag Rifle: for the rangers, who get the most out of them because of high aim and best scopes.
- Mag Long Rifle: one for the DFA sharpshooter.
- Mag Cannon: my Gunners almost always have Hail of Bullets so... I almost always end up with two.
- Shard Gun: assaults don't give a crap about +5 aim. I don't use a ton of assaults tho.
- Stuttergun: usually one of my Shinobis or Support Grenadiers end up with a good aim stat so I get a couple.

Then I just hold onto my materials until coil guns.

Same for me. I go heavy on lasers, buy a few mags and then go heavy on coils.

As briefly mentioned earlier, you shouldn't skip the techs entirely. Mags are necessary to research Coils, and Lasers (as well as Mags -> Coils) are necessary to research Plasma.

Foul

More damage is overall better than the 5 aim.

However mag weapons are twice the price of lasers at a time when you are short on supplies and lasers offer aim at precisely the time when your soldiers are low level and need it most.

I can't imagine skipping a weapon tier quite honestly. However there is a separate question of how many you build at each tier.

I did a hard rush for mag weapons in my campaign, and hands down they were more valuable to me than lasers. I didn't research advanced mag weapons for a good while; for a month or two I used mag rifle Rangers to carry me. And this was me getting mags as soon as humanely possible, so my soldiers had the worst aim possible.

i dont bother much with Mags tbh. maybe Stut for some Shinobi, so he can faceblast that mutton instead of daring the melee counter.

But the argument that DMG>HIT in this context i find ridiculous. You always prefer a HIT for less dmg than a miss for more DMG lol. And 5 AIM is almost 10% overall for most of your rookies.

If a find myself in a fight where i have to pray for a Max dmg roll ( or +1.5 dmg for this case ) or face dire consecuences, well, something went really wrong in the previous turns xD. Most of the times you face that 70+ % that looks more than a 20% than anything. THEN those 5 AIM shine.

And then, there's the price. You got your base roster sort of equipped on lasers and doing great compared to ballistic, and Mags ding. Its like...whats this? lemme play with muh lazors, im happy lol. Need the supplies for the base now.


I think thats what OP means with the post, and i agree.

Sirens.

Actually OP specifically asked whether "the extra damages are more than compensating the loss of accuracy"
Well, if we could expect a pure statistical distribution in XCom2, the answer would be easy. Let's consider an average rookie (65 aim - 70 with laser) taking enough shots at a flanked target that averages are actually meaningful and no special equipment.

• With Laser you're looking at 3.85 average damage (mean(4-7)*0.7)
• With Mag we are talking about 4.55 average damage (mean (5-9)*0.65)

That would make Mag a clear winner.

However XCom is not a real time large scale battle game where hundreds of shots occur every seconds. It's a turn based tactical game not unlike PnP RPGs. In battle you choose an action and roll the die to see whether you succeed or not, and you won't roll 100s of dices in a mission and dices don't care about statistics so it's not that easy to evaluate their power mathematically.
There is some real benefit to improved aim, and if it pushes your chance to hit to 100%, the 5% bonus from Laser add more than 5% value to your shot because it becomes certain that you will hit (if only the graze band didn't eat 10% of a 100% shot it would be even better).
However, there is also some added value to being able to one-shot an enemy rather than use 2 shots for this, especially if those shots are not 100% (chance to miss at least one of those shots increases by more than 5%).

Thus, i think rather than asking "Are mags better than lasers", the good question is "When are mags better than laser".
As was already said before, in the early game when enemies still have low HP and your aim isn't too great, Lasers are very strong and you certainly don't need mag whose added damage will regularly be wasted.
However at some point in the game, your laser won't deal enough damage anymore and unless you already have coils, some mag weapons can really help you at this point (especially since you have to research the tech anyway). You don't have to build them for everyone because on already wounded enemies, the added damage will also be wasted but some for your heavy hitters will help you.
Of course, this is difficulty dependent as tougher enemies will appear faster at higher difficulties.