Xenonauts 2 – Weapon Guide

I really enjoy some of the weapons and overall the balancing is way better than Xenonauts 1.

Guide to Weapons

If I had to make a tierlist, it would go as follows:

1. Assault Rifle
2. Machine Gun
3. Shotgun
4. Sniper Rifle
5. Pistols
6. Grenade Launcher

Assault Rifle

Assault Rifles in Xenonauts 1 were pretty bad IMO. Bad damage, dubious accuracy and no other bonuses. It was just a versatile weapon and that’s it. Now on X2, the weapon has great damage and decent accuracy on all distances and you can also quite reliably suppress enemies, which is the closest we have to psionic powers for our soldiers. Great weapon.

Machine Gun

Super strong weapon, if you land hits with 10 shots, you basically kill any enemy and if it doesn’t, it will suppress(which is quite overpowered). The weapon also works on all ranges although it lacks a little bit on long range. You can also destroy covers and walls with it. Not as versatile and consistent as the Assault Rifle, but still extremely good.

Shotgun

IMO, shotguns were the absolute best weapons on X1 hands down. I know a lot of people that ignored the fact that shotguns gave 150% reaction to the soldier and they also had incredible damage. Turned a really tough game into a “cakewalk”. Now they removed the reaction bonus(and maluses) from weapons, and I feel like the shotgun don’t have the same damage. Even though the shotgun have a bonus to hit on close distances, the damage is not that great and it may be my luck but it often misses 2 projectiles and hit 1. Still the best weapon for breaching though.

Shotguns are not really reliant on Accuracy in the same way as the other weapons, so they allow you to use an otherwise quite useless soldier in an assault role (provided they have enough TU to get close to the enemy).

Sniper Rifles

Sniper rifles sucked on X1. Bad damage and useless on close combat and high TU usage made the weapon IMO, the worst weapon(I still used though) in the game. Now, the sniper rifle packs quite a punch and it has great accuracy, although still lacking on close quarters encounters, the weapon is great. Props to the devs for the sweet spot they found with the sniper rifle.

Pistols

The shotgun and pistol both had a bonus to reflex shots, while sniper rifles and machine guns had a 50% penalty to reflex shots. Back then, the pistol was okay to use because you could shoot multiple times per turn (about 3 or 4 shots), but it did very low damage. Now, pistols do much better damage – they can hit for 40 damage per shot. This improvement also makes the riot shield more useful, since its main weakness was low damage output.

Grenade Launcher

The rocket launcher died for this… This weapon sucks. That’s it, thanks for reading!

Just kidding. The weapon is extremely inaccurate, and the damage is subpar. Feels extremely bad(to compensate the joy of rolling big damage with the pistol) when you hit a Psyon for single digit damage. And it feels bad when you shoot a Caesan(or whatever it’s called the sectoid) and it takes the grenade like a champ. Even though you can shoot 4 projectiles before reloading, only being able to shoot it once per turn feels really bad. Whenever I hit something with this weapon, I feel like I made a poor decision on using a grenadier instead of any other class.

Overall this is my perspective about the game, not saying it is 100% correct, but this is my experience.