r/Xcom • u/DiggityDanksta • 2d ago

Long War [EWLW] Engineers: How much cover destruction power is enough?

Sapper: "Increases grenade and proximity mine damage by +1. Also triples damage to the environment."

Mayhem: "Confers +2 damage for... explosive grenades[.]"

What can Sapper/Mayhem destroy that mere Sapper can't? UFO walls? Landforms? I don't care about damage to enemies, just to environment. If it's possible to remove an inconveniently-located terrain feature, I'd like to know about it.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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6

u/Malu1997 2d ago

Sapper + alien grenade is enough in my opinion it can pretty much explode everything destructible as long as it's not very far from the center of the blast . Earlier on you don't have access to Mayhem anyway, so Sapper + HE must be enough because you don't have a choice (and it's still pretty good, only thing it struggles with is alien structures).

3

u/harassercat 1d ago

Sapper is fine most of the time. Alien grenade + sapper may be required for some stuff like alien walls, or at least I wouldn't fully trust basic HE grenades on that.

On the topic of engineer builds, I eventually came around to building every engineer for utility (smoke & mirrors, battle scanners, packmaster, etc) but still taking sapper over smoke grenade. Once I did I never looked back, I think it's the best build. I usually don't use the grenades to kill stuff, I just want the cover destruction followed by mop-up by my hit & run team.

2

u/AardvarkFearless5747 2d ago

I’m on my first campaign , but Sapper is enough to destroy most cover.

Early on, HE grenades weren’t strong enough to destroy thick pieces of UFO wreckage. After Sapper almost everything is destructible.

I haven’t been able to destroy some sections of UFO walls (around doorways and corners) or alien abduction pods.

2

u/Playful-Parsnip-3104 1d ago

Mayhem doesn't boost environmental damage. There's only one ability in the game that is guaranteed to destroy any destructible object, and that's Collateral Damage.

2

u/CollaredLynx 1d ago

There's also the psi ability, I think the name's telekinetic strike

1

u/noearthshaker 1d ago

Even if it did, I still wouldn't take it over battle scanners.

2

u/elfonzi37 1d ago

Sapper is enough to blow up any cover you need when you get alien grenades. You want to prioritize capturing a muton then doing the research.