Okay, this was weird, and I don't remember it happening before. I was at a terror site today, and all my guys were armed with heavy plasmas, so I was fairly confident despite the presence of ethereals, which give me the heebie jeebies. Anyway, the first alien I saw was a sectopod. Now, I know those things are tough, but I don't think I've ever seen one like this. I know he took at least thirty hits from heavy plasmas, and probably more. Actually took hits, I mean...not just near misses and such. Then a couple of turns later, I had an ethereal take at least three hits from a heavy plasma, and I think it was more like four or five. That just never happens. They're formidable psi-attackers, but they're physical wimps. What's up with all this?

I have seen ethereals take 5+ hits from a heavy plasma(happened today).
As for the sectopods; they are less vulnerable to plasma, but I've never shot one more than 15 times(usually 4-5).

Yeah, come to think of it, I guess I have seen ethereals take a few hits like that, but if that Sectopod didn't take at least thirty hits, I'm not sitting here. I must confess that the mission was going so badly that I quit and plan to reload. We all have our weaknesses.

Stun bombs and lasers kill them relatively easy.

Edit: I also had a terror mission a few days ago. There was one sectopod that I had pinned down behind one of those wooden fences. Threw about 8 grenades on it, ran out of grenades, then it took 5 or 6 shots from a laser rifle to finish him off. Lost 5 guys to that one alien including my commander.

Well, I tried one stun bomb which had about as much effect as sneezing on him. Then he was out of range before I could hit him with another in the next turn.

If there's one problem with the stun bombs, they don't always work against heavily armoured aliens (and the sectopod has the heaviest armour in the game too (for the aliens), so it often shrugs off the stun bombs and receives no paralysis).

What difficulty level was this on? They get some mighty impressive armour stats on superhuman, rendering the heavy plasmas not as effective as they normally are. Also, what section of the sectopod were you shooting at? If I remember correctly, superhuman sectopods have something like 142 front armour -- that's a bit more than a heavy plasma can dish out.

- NKF

I had a Sectoid take like 9 heavy plasmas, 6th one knocked him out then he got back up and 3 shots later he finnaly died. There is suppose to be this little glitch that someone here was explaining to me in which the bullet hits the alien but some reason the damage is directed to the ground or something to that effect, so basically the alien didn't get hit. Who ever was telling me that will pop and and explain it better.


Recently had a cyberdisk take 10 heavy plasmas and 2 alien gernades before it died.

I once had a cyberdisk take heavy plasma from all my people that were holding them (4) until I ran out of ammo, I tried picking up ammo from the dead aliens but it still wasn't enough! Eventually I had to run because there was no ammo left on the battlefield.

That sounds like where I was headed with this thing. Yes, NKF, it was hitting the front, but you'd think cumulative damage would eventually take it down. I'm not playing superhuman because it's been too long since I last played. I'm only on like level two or three difficulty.

That cyberdisk thing definitely sounds like a glitch even if mine wasn't, which I'm still inclined to think it was.

Even though you clicked level 3, the game resets it to beginner after the first mission unless you use xcom utilities to set it. May have been a beginner sectopod that just wouldn't die.

Rattler: I've seen this too. I've been next to an alien and had the round going into the alien square, but it was hitting the ground. Also had a muton standing by a wall and hit the wall beside him 6 times. It looked like he was being hit in the shoulder but he took no damage. This also happened to some of my guys too. He had no armour, but the heavy plasma didn't kill him. Also had a rookie (also no armour) take 3 'hits' and only have half of his health lost and one fatal wound. One shot should have been deadly even with personal armour.

The CE doesn't have the difficulty level problem, does it? But thanks for reminding me that I haven't downloaded Xcomutil to my new 'puter. I will do so now.

Try setting experimental difficulty to 100. Don't count on recovering many corpses (they disappear).

UFO CE doesn't have the difficulty problem, thankfully.

Still, it does sound odd. Level 2 - 3 sectopods should not have 100+ front armour, so the cumulative damage should eventually kill them.

It couldn't have been a run of unsuccessful hits could it? Sometimes you can shrug off an attack even though it hits you dead on even if the bullet causes 10x more damage than the armour you're wearing can absorb. But it does seem highly unlikely that it didn't get killed by those 30 shots.

But I suppose the game does throw these odd things at you from time to time. I once tried to stun one of my own soldiers for an experiment, and no matter what I did, he just wouldn't get knocked out. Even the person firing the stun bombs was almost knocked out on account of firing at point blank range, even though he was wearing power armour and the test subject was only at 1 health with no armour (seriously!). It worked after I aborted and restarted the mission.

- NKF

Yeah, Tammy...thankfully it was prolly a bug, and you'll never see it again.

I've seen it happen with a sectoid once too.

Gack.

What does "Gack" mean exactly?

The same thing as "Gah", and "Ack". Possibly a combination of the two.

Yeah, especially the Etherals can take a major punishment from any plasma gun...
Strangely, using laserrifles usually kills them (even OHE HIT KILLS) O_O

The Chrysalis were one of my most hated alien enemies hehe =)
(I'm not sure if I worte the right name)
The alien that purge your agents with a hatchling, making him become a zombie - until you kill him and a new Chrysalis comes out to wreck more havoc >_<

Champ