Been playing since launch. I still don’t understand vehicles. They cost a small fortune, I finally recruit them, they have no weapons. I can’t research new weapons, I can’t build new weapons. They’re glorified transports.
How do I make vehicles useful? How do I get weapons for them?
Vehicles…load ‘em up with three troopers, make sure ones a heavy with a jump pack, do scavenger missions! Drive around the board, stop near crates, troops deploy, two cover one grabs. If the crate is high up get the contents, bring it to the vehicle, climb in, drop contents and …repeat!
Probably there is a thread with this topic, but I’m on my mobile… So searching is not pleasant. Overall they are great for two types of missions:
evacuation - where you drive fast to target, you take control of target and you evacuate again fast enough. Scavenge mission fall also here. You just need to get used to how to put items in vehicle’s inventory (soldier needs to be in the vehicle and then he need to drop items from his own inventory - they go to vehicles inventory instead of ground). This way these missions become a lot easier.
base defence missions (not haven defence) - you can have any number of defenders there so vehicles don’t count against soldier limits and they can support with defence. Of course this is mostly not necessary as these missions are easy as piece of cake, but sometimes you can’t get there with soldiers, and vehicles still can defend your base.
Overall they are also great at the beginning of game when your soldiers are quite weak and such vehicle is more powerful than any combination of 3 soldiers. They also can fill the aircraft when you don’t have enough spare soldiers to create second team.
And they have weapons. Scarab and Armadillo are great at dealing nice damage and taking enemy shots. Aspida is great for supporting team and some paralysis done to enemies. Mutogs are the least useful, but still they can be good melee fighters when you have lack of soldiers and they can deal with most weaker enemies easily.
Edit. Mechanical vehicles combined with technician class soldier equipped with mechanical arms are considered overpowered things in the game.
They can also be useful when Scyllas first start to appear.
Usually, by that point, you don’t necessarily have a fully skilled up Scylla-killer squad, so the vehicle can act as a much needed damage sponge while you take the Scylla down. With a Tech inside it, who can jump out to Repair and/or Electrically Reinforce the vehicle, it can absorb a lot of damage which would otherwise be directed at your squad.
It will also protect anyone inside it from Sonic Scream and Siren MC.
This has probably been said but I’ll chip in my experience.
Vehicles are good early game for filling out your squads as you branch out exploring. 1-2 agents + a vehicle is good for exploring. If you get ambushed, your agent can hide in the vehicle. Similarly, if you need to rescue independent troops they can hop in.
The scarab only fires 4 bursts, but they are absolutely devastating - and FREE (man-portable ordnance is EXPENSIVE). An early Aspida can capture aliens at a time when you would otherwise need to get in melee range with your troops.
Once you can field a full response team in each region, vehicles are really no longer useful.
I personally consider them overpowered in Legend difficulty (the mode where SP is hard to come by).
they have infinite inventory, so as others have pointed out, they become excellent transports for scavenging/raiding
Scarab/Armadillo have a capacity for 4 soldiers. Each soldier can eject with 2AP. Enough for a lot of different attacks, attacks that can instantly kill most enemies in the game (Quick Aim + Hel 2 Cannon anyone?) or War Cry dropping, Turret dropping, etc. Drive around eject-killing everything and putting the vehicle itself into cover to draw enemies towards you. Your soldiers don’t even need armor or many perks.
Seriously. Find a Sniper with the Strongman perk (or cross into Heavy). Pick Quick aim only, and put the rest of your SP into WP. Now drive around with these soldiers knocking everything out once you get the Hel 2 cannon. Also works well with Melee weapons and the Cybernetic torso, or just shotguns/assault rifles if you want a poor-mans version (but that falls off late game).
Their only real weakness currently is late-game Arthrons with shredder MGs or any Heavy with an MG period. (Weird how explosives are weak against vehicles, but bullets are powerful, no?)
To be true few explosives can really cripple vehicle armor. Thing is that enemies usually don’t use explosives extensively. But I often used it on vehicles just like on Scylla and after 3 or 4 explosions they are prone to any (even weakest rifles) burst attacks.
I use mine for 2 uses: 1) Take a 4 man team around to get SPs to fill out their anemic skills after using the Training Center while waiting for gear. Send them to all the scavenge missions as mentioned above. Try to have 1 heavy for jump capability and 1 technician to keep the vehicle together. 2) Aspidas with a small team as dedicated live capture teams. Once you have all your vivisections done, park them at an Ancient site to keep the resources coming.
Mid-Late game, they can be used to block ground and prevent larger enemies (coughScyllacough) from leaping there. This can be used tactically to keep your whole team secure while they wail away at dangerous enemies.