They carry PDWs that do little damage.
Their VVA Arms does little damage.
Their mini turrets are not durable enough and have limited ammo.
And furthermore, they get to attack only after the alien’s turn - which more likely will get them destroyed before they get their chance at the aliens.
So what are they good for?
IMO: VVA arms should be able to wield PDWs per arm and shoot. And even with this feature, it wont be enough.
their robot arm heal heals disabled limbs
Their remote control ability means you can take control of things like the spider drones and can control them directly
Their robot arm’s mindfragger removal is a 100% success within melee range
A number of other things I’m forgetting
I’d guess primarily exactly what their name implies. You’re listing how they’re weak at frontline combat and asking what are they good for without considering that they aren’t intended to be front line troops.
They’re technicians, you call technicians when you need support work. Medic, ammo loader, vehicle repair, are some of their primary functions off the top of my head.
Edit: I completely forgot that they are the only ones who can restore disabled limbs in combat.
oh right, repairing vehicles. They can do that too in the game
:edit: incidentally if you can get both the tech for the Technician’s PDW and some of Synedrion’s laser tech you can make an awesome PX laser PDW
They can increase the armor of all own units (+20, stackable).
They can rest at 3AP and rally the troops at 1AP.（Oh ,It was fixed）
I like them because they are basically 3 to 4 guns in one person. I hybrid tech with assault for dash, on turn 1 dash out to somewhere central and open and slap down 2 turrets at once. Then hope for the best that he don’t get shot to death on pan turn. After that, pull him back to act as assault with the main force as the PDW in close range along with dash to get line of sight is crazy powerful. In defense missions, meaning missions that I like to hold my ground and take waves of aliens, techs are even better for the extra 3 guns and to serve as worm killing force, killing up to 4 worms a time from chirons so the rest of the team can focus on other things. Also, whether in defense or assault, running with the team serves as medic too, esp for those disabled arms! Basically, if you are into wh40k, technicians are like Apothecary of the Emperor’s Fist Terminator Chapter! LOL!
And PDW do a SHATLOAD of damage because they shoot at just 1 AP! LOL! That’s 4 burst per turn! Its the best close up weapon in the game, esp the armor piercing one.
Yeah they can be played in some way but I think OP is asking “Why would you bother to get them if any other class is more useful”.
Like it’s nice to be able to repair limbs, but if your limbs get broken then something is going horribly wrong already. Perhaps that extra sniper/heavy or assault/sniper, in place of engineer, would prevent that horrible situation from happening. On top of that healing has a limited amount of use.
Ability to repair vehicles is nice but why would you use vehicles in the first place? Besides cheesing mind control.
Turrets are underwhelming in relation to their cost, spending AP on their deployment and fixed position, making them defensive weapon in a game where you hardly ever need to defend. Their damage output is nowhere near comparable to what typical assault/sniper, heavy/sniper can do.
Removing mind fraggers is typically non issue.
PDW is cheap to fire in terms of AP but it’s less damage output than assault rifles - weapons that you ditch as fast as possible as there are rather useless compared to alternatives.
On top of that, at the time when you can get technician, your team can be all equipped with sniper rifles. And I don’t see a good synergy for techs besides assault, which limits him to crappy weapons.
In old builds, I’ve used technicians as support, they carried grenade launchers as main offensive and pistol/pdw to take care of worms and etc. Having two of these as dedicated medics, was a good match with the rest of the team. But things changed radically since then.
oh yeah, I don’t play snipers so tech works very well for my team. I have never found that sniper meta to be fun at all.
If you rely mainly on snipers to complete your mission, the role of technicians will be reduced, but if more aggressive tactics are adopted, technicians will be needed.
Of course, it would be more useful if they had the ability to reload ammunition and turrets.
Lets explore some potential builds for technicians…
Technician Sniper: Perfect for holding down an entire tunnel or area. 1 man super area denial that I cannot see any other single other class combination do.
Technician Assault makes you an Apothecary Terminator running with the assault team while turrets secure the rear end of the assault. This is particularly helpful in underground tunnel missions.
Technician Heavy: This can go 2 ways. 1 as pure fire support, taking the role of a classic fire support heavy by wearing golem armor + fury missiles + grenade launcher along with 2 to 3 turrets for support. Its heavy++. 2. run with assault team with a hellcannon and rage burst.
Technician Berserker: Don’t know whats the value in this…
Technician Priest: This is an interesting one because the technician can change out head and leg armor without affecting technician abilities. So a Tech Priest (LOL! MAGOS!) with a Judgement Head mutation, capable of mind control and panic inducing can heal etc sounds like the ultimate assault support role imo.
What do you mean by “more aggressive” tactics?
heavy/sniper and assault/sniper are not some sitting far away from the enemy role, the only point behind giving them second class as sniper is to carry sniper rifle/cannon as main gun and use quick aim to reduce amount of AP needed for double shot. The point of using sniper rifle is to not care about armor, most of the precision anyway comes from the sniper helmets and leg armor. Other abilities are just icing on a cake to get these guys into good position fast. Any weapon that barely goes above 30 damage per projectile just doesn’t fit into this squad. For a simple reason that the more damage you can output in the fewer amount of turns, the faster you get enemy into a panic cascade. It’s a great crowd control that limits most missions to few turns and you get it in just first few weeks. I have no idea how more aggressive than that you can be.
What exactly makes this combination so special? He won’t have any mobility benefit as has no access to golem armor or Dash. He won’t have access to Rage Burst or War Cry, neither Return Fire. Which of his abilities make him better in covering an area compared to assault/sniper or heavy/sniper?
You are hardly a terminator when all you have is low damage weapons which suck against armor. Yes you can upgrade your PDW/Assault Rifle/Shotgun to a higher damage variants but they are worse in other properties and will still be lower than a basic sniper rifle.
With no access to quick aim, he will have to resort to secondaries (which regular heavy can already carry) or using sniper gear, which still limits all heavy weapons to 1 use per turn. If you want to use him close range, you might have to switch to full heavy armor that will lower his accuracy. So you get ability to deploy limited amount of turrets in exchange of everything else. Hardly a Heavy++ as without quick aim he is still only 50% fire output as heavy/sniper. Yes, he can do a rage burst but as his mobility sucks without dash, the only way to get him into position is to jetpack into a fray, so he has to have heavier armor and as a result loose accuracy.
Maybe for throwing armor shredding grenades, but any other combo with berserker can do the same or do even better by using grenade launcher.
That does sound interesting. Never used priests or their combinations so can’t tell if there is a better combination or not.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that technician is broken and useless, it’s just other combinations are overall more potent as they focus more on what matters in the end of the day - ability to output X amount of damage some distance away from you in the least amount of time. If gameplay would be more akin to a brawler, in a sense of each side would be slowly dismantled bit by bit, then support roles and healers would make sense. But as mid game consist of situations where your troops can die from a single shot, there isn’t much place to run around and heal people. You either hit someone till they are dead or hide such that you can’t be hit at all.
To me, there are situations in which having 1 more gun makes very little difference, when you are overwhelmed by 50 dam machineguns or a bunch of sirens or a bunch of 60hp worms while all that is happening, thats when I really appreciate the help from the turrets.
I have to say the PP laser turret does do excellent damage. It’s the earlier models that are underwhelming. I kill the final boss with a PP laser turret.
Huu? What game are you playing? It’s not rare or enemies never shoot at your soldiers.
One undiscovered bomb chiron can easily equal 4-12 broken limbs in one round.
And how many limbs technician can heal?
One broken limb is not a problem, as someone can still use a pistol. A bunch of people with broken limbs is probably a much larger problem as they are likely lost their weapons too. So what difference does it make to heal their limbs? And why would I carry a less proficient guy just for this rare occasion?
This is the same problem with vehicles where space that they occupy doesn’t justify their edge case usefulness.
Nothing tops Snipers in this game. Long range only squads are the default and pretty much guaranteed way to victory.
However, the technician is great if you actually want replayability out of the game. It adds a valid option.
Yes, like when the game is patched I want to go all the way exclusively with Anu, with just a melee mob and see how that plays out 