Thermal Disrupters


Recommended Posts

Would someone please explain how Thermal Disrupters work?

 

From my understanding, they have cooldown time and armor piercing like any regular disrupter.  However, on top of that, they have a -2 power for each armor level of the person zapped.

 

I guess, I am confused as to how these aren't an immediate downgrade from both the neural and volt.  I think I am reading something incorrectly somewhere.  Help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Off the top of my head, the level 3 Disrupters are as follows;

 

ND3: AP2, 4turn CD, 3KO, no PWR cost

 

VD3: AP2, No CD, 3KO, 5 AP per use

 

TD3 AP3, 3turn CD, 2KO(?), 2PWR per AP bypassed

 

I'm not a massive fan of TD's, though you can see its PWR cost compared to the VD would be much smaller in many situations. If you KO'd 3 guards with 0,1 and 2AP respectively the VD3 would use 15 PWR to the TD3's 6 PWR. I suppose its best used when most guards are armor-less, with one or two 1/2AP guards now and then. The extra AP per level can be crucial; a big part of the game is knowing how much AP you need to be equipped to bypass. For a while the only melee weapon I had capable of going through AP4 armor was the TD4!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have never been a fan of the volt disruptor and I'm not a fan of the new thermal disruptor either. The volt disruptor is at least useful, I just prefer other options myself, but the thermal disruptor just seems useless. There are far better options for armor piercing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have never been a fan of the volt disruptor and I'm not a fan of the new thermal disruptor either. The volt disruptor is at least useful, I just prefer other options myself, but the thermal disruptor just seems useless. There are far better options for armor piercing.

 

Yeah I never use Volt Disruptors on anybody but Nika, she's really the only agent who has any business knocking out guards frequently enough to justify having a no-cooldown disruptor. Frankly I would find Thermal disruptors less pointless if they used power all the time AND had a cooldown and simply had either a superior knockout time or superior armor piercing to equivalent level disruptors, or perhaps both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

tldr: Thermals have highest ArPen among disruptors so the further you go into endless the more love you give to thermals :-).

It's all situational:
-voltaic has no cooldown so you can KO multiple guards in a single round or round after round as long as you have enough power

-neural is your everyday disruptor for general use - good KO, no power cost but has cooldown and weak ArPen
-thermal - melts through the armor using amount of power based on armor level [which is good if target happens to be unarmored so it works like neural in that case], has low KO. Then again - in late game enemies have KO resist [up to minimum 1KO] so other disruptors lose its KO advantage anyway. [has same KO as other, it was just my guy with 5strength and +1KO]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is everyone dealing with these high armored people and drones?

 

I am at a point (Endless/Day 11) where I think I will get rid of all guns and disrupters and use only shock traps and holocircuit overloader augments as defense.  Everything else just doesn't seem viable anymore.  I ditched Olivia for Sharp (with the idea of filling up most of his augments with Penetration Scanners) so he could be the teams heavy.  However, I'm not sure that will even cut it anymore.  

 

Thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am at a point (Endless/Day 11) where I think I will get rid of all guns and disrupters and use only shock traps and holocircuit overloader augments as defense.  Everything else just doesn't seem viable anymore.  I ditched Olivia for Sharp (with the idea of filling up most of his augments with Penetration Scanners) so he could be the teams heavy.  However, I'm not sure that will even cut it anymore.  

 

Thoughts?

I don't see why it shouldn't. Only up to around that day myself though, slow and steady in my free time I decide to devote to it. I'm planning on doing the same thing with my Sharp, 3 piercing scanners to make Flurry and Biogenic able to take out even 5 armour K&O Elite Heavy Security guards after the alarm lvl 2 Chitin boost (blowfish2.0 will insta proc it, otherwise I wouldn't care, because ideally guards will be sleeping or dead and almost teleporting out by 10 turns anyway).

 

So should work unless if I'm completely missing some mechanic that occurs later on in endless towards day 20.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see why it shouldn't. Only up to around that day myself though, slow and steady in my free time I decide to devote to it. I'm planning on doing the same thing with my Sharp, 3 piercing scanners to make Flurry and Biogenic able to take out even 5 armour K&O Elite Heavy Security guards after the alarm lvl 2 Chitin boost (blowfish2.0 will insta proc it, otherwise I wouldn't care, because ideally guards will be sleeping or dead and almost teleporting out by 10 turns anyway).

 

So should work unless if I'm completely missing some mechanic that occurs later on in endless towards day 20.

 

My hesitation with outfitting Sharp that way is because of Blowfish 2.0 and I don't always get to escape by turn 10.  Find my levels either going perfectly or being a complete mess, where I have always been able to escape but find myself running around chaotically with alarm 5-6.  This may be due to my need to try and do everything at each mission site though.  Possibly, just not that great at the game either...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It gets worse trust me. The KO resistance renders Shock Traps near useless. I'm not ashamed to admit I have to fallback on a kill everything strategy every so often. Maybe I'm just too poor at stealth play, unless I stack cloak 3's (which I hate) I nearly always break cover. For me stacking Piercing/Penetration scanners is vital. Even then my main death machine (Decker with 3 Piercing Scanners, Anatomy Analysis + Flurry Gun) needs a Ventricular Lance to take out most guards and all Sankaku drones except camera drones.

 

Blowfish 2.0 is so evil, especially on K&O.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been spreading my talents around amongst my group but am starting to think that one well outfitted member could do a majority of the heavy lifting for the team.  Might try fully outfitting Xu or Derek with multiple Cloaking Rig III, Stim, and Buster Chip/EMP Pack.  Send him out to clean up and draw the attention away from the others.  It's just getting really hard to hack everything quickly.  The days of unlocking and hacking everything on the level are over for me.  Rarely do I have the resources to do it all (now that firewalls are so high.

 

What gadgets/programs are everyone using? 

For gadgets, I have a couple EMP III, Xu's Subdermal, and Buster Chip III.

My programs are Seed, Datablast, Lockpick 2, Parasite, Wrench 3, and Dagger 2.

 

Suggestions on changing up anything?  

I'd like to have Oracle but haven't found it offered yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My programs are Seed, Dagger V2, Lockpick V2, Wrench 5, Rapier and Hunter. Would swap in Hammer for Hunter given a chance.

 

I got Decker on Guns (Hand Cannon, Flurry Gun and Molecular Rail), Nika on Melee and Xu/Prism on support. The support guys have 4 distributed processing augments between them.

Everyone has a Cloak3 and a Stim3, all full stats. Support guys have EMP3's, Paralyzer3's and a ShockTrap3 each, no other weapon. 

 

My team's mobile enough to scout most of a level and down all guards in a single alarm cycle. Nika and Prism have an AcceleratorChip3 each, alongside Prisms Torque Injectors allowing me to farm 11-14 PWR per console. I'd only use a console without the chip bonus in a total emergency. Rapier is excellent for its 1:1 cracking ability during the first alarm level, between Rapier and LockpickV2 its possible to get any 8+ firewall within range of the Wrench5 fairly painlessly. Nika has a handcannon I use for cameras with ridiculously high firewalls.

 

Generally cracking isn't a problem, I'm on day 18 of endless+. Usually I'm in and out by level 3/4 relatively easily. However Portcullis, Modulate2, multiple (like 5) FTM security routers and the 'mother of all spanners-in-the-works' BlowfishV2, combined with unfortunate exit card placement can turn a run borderline fatal in a couple of turns.

 

I'd try giving someone an accelerator chip, especially if they have torque injectors. Anyone with Anarchy 5 will find them regularly on Akuma drones. Don't worry about unlocking everything, money's useless late game anyway, I'm out as soon as I've got that exit card!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That helps me see a lot of my issues.  The biggest being my need to fully explore the levels.  

Also, need to switch out Parasite for either Hammer, Oracle, or Wisp.  

In an ideal world, I think I may need to switch out my Archived Prism (no augment capabilities) with Nika (so I can have a Tag Pistol and multiple of Distributed Processing.  

Haven't been able to find the Hand Cannon in any Nanofabs since deciding I needed one.  

I think the biggest difficulties of the game seems to be my inability to find the programs, augments, and gear I want.  

 

Realistically, I should just start over with a new group but don't want to deal with the day 4-7 hump.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In an ideal world, I think I may need to switch out my Archived Prism (no augment capabilities) with Nika (so I can have a Tag Pistol and multiple of Distributed Processing.  

 

I think the biggest difficulties of the game seems to be my inability to find the programs, augments, and gear I want. 

Archive Prism can still get 4 augments, she just starts with 0 slots. Go add slots at a cybernetics lab.

 

Can't do much about the RNG of getting equipment, but if you don't already I'd recommend doing Executive Terminals (radar icon mission). Hopefully if given the option, pick to get another executive terminal, otherwise you risk getting stuck without any which will stall you. Do this until you have ~15 missions to choose from on the map, I believe it caps out somewhere around 17. From there you can chain complete a particular mission of your choosing (e.g. server farm if gunning for a particular program) and every new day it will add 2-3 of that same mission if it has the lowest availability, which it will because you've been completing them and leaving the others. Even if you have no desire to only complete 1 mission type, maxing out on available missions means you can chain complete missions that only take 5 hours of travel time.

 

I'll talk about my old endless+ setup first because it's very similar to my current setup (if RNG permits) and I believe they are both extremely effective: Pre-update 11 I was using Oracle, Hunter, Lockpickv2, Parasitev2, Datablast. On-file Prism was mostly a mule to babysit and move 4 Server 3's. Had 5 EMP's total, 2 of them on archive Nika. Also had on-file Xu and Sharp. Each mission was fully cleared and over by a rough average of 11 turns, and this has set the standard for myself. I could expect around 12 EMP blasts in the duration of a mission and all I needed from programs was the flexibility of instantly knocking down firewalls to 1 or 2, to both avoid daemons and bypass magnetic reinforcements.

 

The few differences compared to my current run: Prism is archive and less emphasis on melee from Sharp, dropping a melee pierce and other movement augments in favour of +3 ranged piercing. I'm also trying out a cooldown program build: Overdrive, Seed, Hunter, Daggerv2, Hammer, Daggerv1. It's working well enough for now, haven't found a Flurry yet but Hunter spam still lets me take care of plastech cyberguards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archive Prism can still get 4 augments, she just starts with 0 slots. Go add slots at a cybernetics lab.

 

I don't no why but I just assumed she couldn't add any.  I'm an idiot.  Haha

Guess those Cybernetic Lab missions can come back into play again.  

 

I went ahead and started a new Endless and seem to be lucky with my starting group of Derek and Archive Sharp.  By my second day, have already found Xu (my favorite agent), Lockpick 2.0, Buster Chip III, 2 Torque Injectors and Net Downlink.  

 

Have kept my original save as well, so knowing that augment slots can be added to Archive Prism may go back and play that again.  Although, I swear the RNG gods have cursed that save file.  

 

Either way, the details of your play style are appreciated.  I used to be a a Server III junkie but felt I relied to heavily on it and have been trying to play with all agents in motion now.  Might be time to go back to that though since firewalls are getting ridiculous.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are still looking for suggestions i can give you one - specialize your agents.

 

Later every run starts with enemies having chiton4 [2 at start +2 from insta blowfish] or every device is infected with deamon. If you dont have guy who can deal with it you are done.

 

I started with Arc Sharp, gave him 2 scanners for total 4ArP, +2 from disrupter. Im at day20 and still cant find any lance :razz: [despite im running only nanofab missions]. But 6ArP does quite well for most of the enemies. Exceptions are KnO tanks for whom i carry extra lvl4 disrupter. He carries emp3, buster3, stim4, disrupters
My other agents are:
-scout -> no weapon, 2stims3, cloak3, shockTrap2 [2! for knocking out single target without alarming whole area], 2busterChip3. And augments for cloaking [+AP, flash] and lower cooldowns. He scouts ahead, hacks cameras, knocks out impassable guards.
-heavy gunner -> 3 scanners, , flurry gun, elephant gun [4ArP 5KO] / hand cannon, stim4, emp4, paralyzer4, hologram, battery. He is the guy i keep around and i hope to never use. He goes in when poo hits the fan, otherwise he is either sitting on some unlucky KOed guard or just crouching in shadow. Still serves helping hand with emp and hologram. Hologram lets you drop it in the middle of the room and use as a cover to fire at the guards without being noticed/killed. Stim4 lets you wipe whole floor in one round using flurry gun [+2ArP].

-hacker -> augments to create PWR, 4 servers3, accelerator3, buster3

 

As you can see i have 2 guys who dont carry weapon, have 4 buster chips in total, 4 servers, 4 cloaks. I leave servers in some remote corners and pick them up after objective is secured.

 

For soft i use hunter and data blast, everything else depends on initial setup. Overdrive is good for hunter - you can use it every turn if you dont have Xu to deal with deamons.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are still looking for suggestions i can give you one - specialize your agents.

 

Of course, I'm always curious to see how others play.  I agree, on a lot of what you have suggested there.  I started a new Endless Run with Archive Sharp and Derek.  Have since found Xu and am looking to specialize their roles before finally picking up Nika.  Only on day 4 currently, but eventually I hope to set them up in this way.

 

Each person would be outfitted with Cloaking III, Stim III, Shock Trap III

(because they're always nice to have just in case something goes wrong)

 

Otherwise, the ideal layout is listed below (the quantity of each item may vary)

 

Xu (scout/safe cracker)- Stim IV, EMP III, Buster Chip III  

Derek (scout/power/safe cracker)- Hand Cannon (cameras/drones), EMP III, Accelerator III

Nika - Tag Pistol 

Archive Sharp (heavy)- Disrupter III, Flash Grenade 

 

Trying to leave my backup agents (Sharp and Nika) with more inventory space so they can carry the loot and keep the others from getting encumbered.  They should spend most time behind the main action anyway only popping forward to take out someone heavy and to tag guards.  

 

Have been learning to love those random items I used to never try.  So, will probably implement them with various people.  The Hologram Projector comes in handy.  Have yet to use Cry Baby or the Camera Canister but would like to try them out eventually.  I know there are others but can't remember what they are at this moment.  

Haven't seen the Prototype Chip in awhile.  Hopefully, it's still in the game.

 

I always play non-lethal but maybe I'll add that element to my game play if needed.

You mentioned "elephant gun" but I've yet to run into that.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I meant 'mono molecular rail gun' - i couldnt recall its name then. It is from DLC.

 

 

Great!

I just picked it up for Nika to test out.  Have so much money that if I don't love it, I won't mind selling it off for a loss and picking up the Flurry Gun instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I quite like the Thermal Disruptors because of the high armor penetration. And it only cost PWR when it actually needs the penetration. Best to put it on your anarchy agent that also carries a Paralyzer. Then the lower KO time doesn't matter that much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm on day 14 in Endless Plus and here's my general loadout. It's working pretty well so far.

 

Chars:

- Central (started)

- Nika (started)

- Prism (rescued)

- Derek (rescued)

 

Programs:

- Bless

- Ping

- Parasite v2.0

- Fool

- Lockpick v2.0

- Oracle

 

I started with Faust and Brimstone since I started with Central but those have since been replaced. I have no general power generation programs but this late in the game Central is more than enough, especially with Fool. I often start with 20 power on a level just due to the initial daemons which lets me spam Oracle to start levels off. Bless pairs nicely with Fool (and, more generally, late levels in Endless). Lockpick is my rotating slot. I change it every few missions but it's always an offensive program. Ping is useful at all stages of the game so that's the program I've had the longest at this point. I've passed on Whisp a few times since I was lucky and grabbed a Tag Gun for Nika in my very first mission (a big win for making the early missions cake-walk).

 

I didn't like the new Thermal stunners at first, but I have to say they come in handy with the expansion in Endless. The armor bonuses can be tricky to overcome without them. I really like the new sniper rifle though...definitely a favorite even with the reduced AP it gives!

 

Even with the higher armor in Endless with the expansion I still use lethal force a lot. Nika has Anatomy Analysis, a Percing Scanner, and a Ventricular Lance along with a Flurry Gun and a Hand Canon. I can get armor piercing 2 on the hand canon so I often use that early on levels to get rid of low-armor guys like the 180 degree vision spec ops or the hackers that reboot devices that are super annoying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm on day 14 in Endless Plus and here's my general loadout. It's working pretty well so far.

 

Chars:

- Central (started)

- Nika (started)

- Prism (rescued)

- Derek (rescued)

 

Programs:

- Bless

- Ping

- Parasite v2.0

- Fool

- Lockpick v2.0

- Oracle

 

I started with Faust and Brimstone since I started with Central but those have since been replaced. I have no general power generation programs but this late in the game Central is more than enough, especially with Fool. I often start with 20 power on a level just due to the initial daemons which lets me spam Oracle to start levels off. Bless pairs nicely with Fool (and, more generally, late levels in Endless). Lockpick is my rotating slot. I change it every few missions but it's always an offensive program. Ping is useful at all stages of the game so that's the program I've had the longest at this point. I've passed on Whisp a few times since I was lucky and grabbed a Tag Gun for Nika in my very first mission (a big win for making the early missions cake-walk).

 

I didn't like the new Thermal stunners at first, but I have to say they come in handy with the expansion in Endless. The armor bonuses can be tricky to overcome without them. I really like the new sniper rifle though...definitely a favorite even with the reduced AP it gives!

 

Even with the higher armor in Endless with the expansion I still use lethal force a lot. Nika has Anatomy Analysis, a Percing Scanner, and a Ventricular Lance along with a Flurry Gun and a Hand Canon. I can get armor piercing 2 on the hand canon so I often use that early on levels to get rid of low-armor guys like the 180 degree vision spec ops or the hackers that reboot devices that are super annoying.

 

I've outfitted Nika with Anatomy Analysis as well as the Molecular Rail, Flurry, and Tag Pistol.  So, having the options for taking down agents is convenient.  

 

For armor penetration I have Archived Sharp with 3 penetration scanners and a Neural Disrupter II (which makes his armor piercing capabilities up to level 6 at the moment).

 

Looking at your Incognita programs, I'm assuming you have lots of other ways to knock down firewalls?  Or does Central's augment just happen to generate that much power throughout the level?

 

Thanks for the info on your techniques.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've outfitted Nika with Anatomy Analysis as well as the Molecular Rail, Flurry, and Tag Pistol.  So, having the options for taking down agents is convenient.  

 

For armor penetration I have Archived Sharp with 3 penetration scanners and a Neural Disrupter II (which makes his armor piercing capabilities up to level 6 at the moment).

 

Looking at your Incognita programs, I'm assuming you have lots of other ways to knock down firewalls?  Or does Central's augment just happen to generate that much power throughout the level?

 

Thanks for the info on your techniques.  

 

Central provides pretty much all of the power I need throughout a level. Remember that you can use Fool every turn if you need to, which provides 5 power (from Central) along with a single-target EMP blast. I also pay attention to which devices have daemons since they will give me power back (via Central) when I unlock them and trigger the daemon.

 

I do use hacking on terminals to get extra power if I need it, but usually that just expedites things and isn't really necessary. Similarly I do carry around a couple buster chips but mostly to save a turn here or there or in case of the daemon that prevents you from using programs for a few turns.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.