Demolition vs Curtain.

[josna238]

I usually see on forum people that talk about demolition as a perk incredible powerful. I admit that in some situation it could be good, but don't see it so critical as seems accordingly to people comments. In fact to high aim gunners I prefer Curtain because is a very powerful opener in early game. More keeping in mind that demolition highly depends on othersoldier (sniper, ranger, gunner...) to kill a single alien.

A early buiild easy to get could be a high aim gunner with center mass/shreder/curtain, scope/stock and tracer. I did and it is an awesome opener. It can do critical damage and the mobility penalty plus red fog damage let the entire pod almost inmobile for next turn. And if combine with a "get some" officer or any +%critical AWC perk it can almost swap an entire pod.

I am curious why most of the people seem to have demolition as an "autopick" perk. Surely I am missing something.

[Dlareh]

Curtain does very little of use in the early and mid game. There are many better ways to open (including just overwatching from stealth).

Curtain is decent in the late game paired with Shredder, which works out fine on some SSgt gunners you pick up late (since your main teams' gunners probably aren't shredders)

I still mostly just go for Demolition though, and have 1 or 2 curtain gunners in the entire campaign.

The main reason Demolition is an auto pick isn't because Curtain is weak (though that's part of the reason) -- it's because Demolition is needed since there are few other reliable ways to destroy cover. Sapper is improved in 1.3 so maybe that'll make Demolition slightly less of an auto-pick, but in 1.2 it basically is.

(I think Flush might be improving in 1.3 as well, since right now it's completely ignored.)

[chrisb]

The other thing I would add is that Shredder is largely useless in the early game. The enemies that have armor can often either be killed outright with other abilities or will be overkilled anyway so the shredder doesn't add much. Even in mid-game there's not a ton of enemies with armor. You mostly start seeing armor + high HP once the M3 schedules start to kick in.

My preference here is actually to go Grazing Fire with Shredder/IC. Grazing helps shredder out a lot. It also combos well with Chain Shot and Rapid Fire. I also like to pickup Danger Zone on these guys to give a bit better Area Suppression for when shredder is not as necessary. And top them off with Combat Fitness making them even a bit more mobile and better at hitting those shreds.

Basically going straight down the middle except to pick up Grazing at LCPL.

[josna238]

Curtain does very little of use in the early and mid game. There are many better ways to open (including just overwatching from stealth).
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I dissagree with this. In early game we don't have good overwatchers (both aim and perks) and the OW openings in my opinion are high risk options. To me in early game there are few openings as strong as a high aim/high crit Curtain. The rocket is awesome but destroys loots, the flamethrower can burn but you need to be too close, and of course the grenade (but every grenade saved worths its weight in gold if RNG has a funny day and need to terminate somebody with a 100% action).

The other thing I would add is that Shredder is largely useless in the early game. The enemies that have armor can often either be killed outright with other abilities or will be overkilled anyway so the shredder doesn't add much. Even in mid-game there's not a ton of enemies with armor. You mostly start seeing armor + high HP once the M3 schedules start to kick in.

My preference here is actually to go Grazing Fire with Shredder/IC. Grazing helps shredder out a lot.
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This is interesting, but I thought that grazes don't shreder and to do strong openings center mass grants +1 damage to every enemy on the pod, that with early game enemies usually is the difference between kill or not. I chose grazing either in my suppresor because OW shots are more likely to fail than normal shots

[Dwarfling]

- Flamethrower
- Trench Gun
- Sting Grenade
- Shredder Gun
- Gas Grenade

Those are much better early-mid game openers than Iron Curtain IMO and don't require you to drop Demolition. Granted, first two require you to predict the path of a pod, but at least they got more uses rather than just opening with it against the first pod.

[josna238]

- Flamethrower
- Trench Gun
- Sting Grenade
- Shredder Gun
- Gas Grenade
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I like I lot your idea of sting grenade, I usually tend to chose opens in favour of dealing damage (RedFog) and never have used them as openers, but I will give them a try. For the others I think shredder and gas are not very early things and need research, facilities and resources while the perks (curtain,strench, flames) are "free" and come on the 2nd step. To me flamethrower and strench have a high risk because we need to be very close and worse of it, if the pod decide to move in other direction than expected we will lose a turn or even worse get stacked on red squares forced to break concealment with the pod out of range of flamethrower.