Ethereals...

[Snikers]

I just played an Ethereal terror mission...

 

For like the sixth time.

 

All the other times the aliens use their psychic powers to cut me into bite-sized pieces. The best is when the person

you trust most turns around and shoots your Commander from 150 feet away inside smoke in the back of the

head with his eyes closed.

 

Well, in the time that it worked, it did becuase I was LUCKY enough to be dropping in hot LZ. While my thoughts

were "You gotta be f*cking kidding me" when I kill a sectopod and another is right behind it, and there's an ethereal

that no one can hit, and while it may have been risky to have ten guy tripping over each other to shoot the alien

right outside the Skyranger, it worked because there were approximately nine aliens and like six of them were

within spitting distance of the skyranger. Also lucky was that the alien's b*tch, a dude named Masanori somethingm

was panicked before being taken over, and thus alerted my team to dive to the side.

 

But still. I lost troops in that, my captain was shot point-blank in the back of the head with a laser pistol and took

28 days in the hospital, one man was MIA (he was the one that shot the Captain. I could have waited another turn

but the captain was unconscious and I didn't know how long she had.), four other soldiers dead - and that's the

absolute best I could hope for.

 

BLAST YOU ETHEREALS! BLAAAST YOOOOUUU!!!

[NKF]

Welcome to our world( I mean, for those of us who've faced Ethereals)... nasty buggers aren't they? I try to avoid them until I can get my psi-evaluations.

 

One of the best ways of fighting an ethereal crew is to kill as many of them as you can before their psionics make mincemeat out of you. But this is easier said than done.

 

Tanks do wonders if you can deploy them safely. Psi can't harm them.

 

If you already have power armour, you might want to consider specifically arming your problem soldiers with standard rifles or pistols. These guns cannot puncture power armour, but they can hurt ethereals (albeit slowly). Laser pistols are great, but they can still go through power armour.

 

If you have flying suits, consider arming the problem soldier with an autocannon with HE shells. Not a heavy cannon -- it's too strong and will puncture a flying suit. The AC-HE shells are very mild in comparison. Your soldiers won't be 100% invulnerable, but it won't kill them instantly.

 

And now some tips for those pesky sectopods:

 

- They're weak against lasers. This goes without saying, I suppose.

 

- Alien grenades or high explosives do wonders if tossed into one of the tiles that the sectopod occupies.

 

- They're a heck of a lot weaker to stun bombs. When shot with one, they have a small chance of surviving it, but when it works, they drop instantly. Once they're down, they'll never get back up again.

 

What's more, you can disable multiple sectopods with one bomb if they're all standing in a tight formation.

 

What a way to kill several mechs with one grape eh?

 

- NKF

[Orgone Accumulator]

Thanks for those tips on Sectopods NKF, i'm in the middle of my first Ethereal/Sectopod terror mission right now, and it's giving me a ton of grief. It's funny that you say they're vulnerable to lasers, because right before went on this terror mission i changed my standard issue from the Laser Rifle to the Heavy Plasma. Oi. :hmmm:

[NKF]

I...

 

Call me a loon, but I just killed a sectopod with a stun rod. Good grief!

 

It doesn't work as instantly as a stun bomb, but the very fact that it actually works... good grief.

 

- NKF

[JellyfishGreen]

It makes sense... once you get the access panel open, 20,000 volts of electrical discharge onto the PCI bus will mess up the Sectopod's CPU pretty bad.

 

Luckily the standard Swiss Army Knife works on alien access panel fasteners as well (use the small tweezers + fish descaler).

 

Did you save the game first, or was this an experimental suicide mission?

[NKF]

Purely experimental. I was thinking, if stun bombs work, why not your shock sticks? Well, I'd never actually tried it before, so I decided to give it a whirl and see what would happen. And I did.

 

I realise not too many people would like to or even get the chance to walk up to a sectopod and start poking it with stun rods. The very thought of doing such a thing comes off as sounding rather ridiculous. Like trying to impale a knight with a sponge.

 

Think I'll have a go at a cyberdisc some time. Want to see how often it explodes after being 'killed' by a stun rod.

 

- NKF

[Cazbol]

An extra advice on Ethereals:

 

Save enough TUs to disarm your soldiers at the end of every round (2 TUs to drop the gun). You'll need to use TUs to pick them up the next round, but then again you won't need to save TUs for reaction fire. The reduced risk of being killed by mind controlled soldiers outweighs the benefit of reaction fire in my opinion. Make a note of which soldiers are being targettet by psi (should range from about 1 to 5). Continue to disarm these guys at the end of each round but let the rest keep their weapons in their hands. The aliens always target the same psi weaklings.

 

Kill the ethereals first if faced with a choice. Be much more agressive than on normal mission. Bring 2-4 rocket launchers and as many large rockets as your crew can comfortably carry. Leaving extra stock in the Skyranger is also a viable option. A rocket tank goes without saying. If you think an ethereal is hiding in a building, blow a hole in the building. If no scream is heard, send them another rocket. Throw grenades and high explosives all around. Scr*w the civilians. They're dead anyway. The idea here is not to use your rockets efficiently but QUICKLY. A good rule of thumb is that if you haven't used all your rockets at the end of the mission, then you haven't been agressive enough.

 

Cazbol

[The Veteran]

I've just restarted a superhuman game of UFO with absolutely no reloading obviously... I'm on my second terror mission already and I was only on the game for about half an hour real time...

 

Anyway the terror missions I'm doing are still sectoid and floaters and I'm already having difficulty. I've researched alien guns and grenades already and they're helpful but in the last mission I did there were reapers everywhere. It was just damn scary as I was shooting them with rifles!

[Xcom-Warblade]

Sectoids and Floaters? you're lucky. Reapers....they are tough buggers. Okay......Reapers are weak to the most unlikely of things......incendiary weapons!!. So, the best thing would be to load up a rocket launcher or two, with some incendiary rockets and bombard them with the rockets. The rockets create 90 damage (on impact I believe) but only a small explosion area, so if they do survive the initial explosion, hopefully the fire should get them. Just to make sure, you may want hit them again or increase the area with more fire. Risky in a terror mission, but that's the way it goes in war.

 

Hope that helps.

[Cazbol]

Warblade is quite right, reaper skin is is highly flammable. Unfortunately rocktes are heavy and bulky, so I suggest the auto-cannon with incendiary ammo. Stun bombs also seem very effective indeed. I've never understood why these things are considered dangerous. In all my X-COM missions I have NEVER been harmed by them. They haven't even come close to threatening my troops. The same goes for celatids and silicoids; never scored against me.

 

Cazbol

[NKF]

If you're careful, the reapers aren't hard. Heck, even a well placed standard grenade is usually all you need. But if they get close to you, even power armour isn't going to save you. I know, I had a soldier in a flying suit get mauled quite a number of times while taking my solo-pistol-grenade-raid-on-a-floater-base-in-one-sitting challenge. Those things have a real vicious bite.

 

I've only just come back from a game where, just for fun, I swapped the clips in a heavy plasma cannon into incendiary rockets with the help of XComutil. That's right, 32 Incendiary-rockets, autofire blah blah blah. Fun stuff.

 

First off, incendiary rockets don't do a full 90 damage. Its main effect is to determine how wide the flames will spread. A few lucky hits can kill an alien, although in the short run, one heavy rocket is usually far more effective .

 

As for Chryssalids (from another thread), I tried using incendiary ammunition against them, and it took me ages to kill one, even with incendiary rockets. But that was trying to use them like an ordinary rocket. Needed at least three or six rockets to kill one on the same turn.

 

Roasting it slowly with the flames over several turns is easy enough, but rather risky if you don't have some place safe to hide while waiting for the flames to do their work.

 

Funny thing happened. I had two high ranking soldiers and one very low ranking one, and I left the low ranking one out as 'bait', and do you know what the chryssalid did? It wouldn't even go for the soldier. It just walked about in circles like a complete idiot. The moment I tell my high ranking soldier to step out into view, the chryssalid went straight for him. But I digress.

 

If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that if you manage to kill a zombie with incendiary ammunition, you'll hear a human scream(zombies don't scream) and the chryssalid will be dead when it hatches.

 

So, you can burn a chryssalid alive before it even hatches. Hmm, It seems to me, yes, it seems to me that I don't bring enough incendiary shells for my autocannon....

 

- NKF

[Cazbol]

One of the very few features that I think UFO is missing is the agony of units on fire. Units on fire should be in a constant state of panic, and hence pose no threat.

 

Cazbol

[V-Runner]

I've only been up against the Ethereals once, and they never did use their psionic powers on my troops, because I never gave them a chance to use them. One laser shot: that's it, bye bye Ethereal! But it was their friends, the Sectopods that defeated me, so with only one trooper remaining, I had to abort than lose my entire squad and my Skyranger.

[The Veteran]

While the reapers are the toughest thing I've been up against so far they pose much less of a threat to me than anything else I've fought because they are not ranged. I've come up against cyberdisks once and that was on my first terror mission. Again it was quite a job taking them out with rifles but thanks to that mission six of my men were able to face the reapers in my second terror attack armed with heavy plasmas!

I took out two reapers with rifles anyway and that was way easier than the cyberdisks...

[Psy Guy]

The AI for a reaper is (in a word) dumb. Reapers like to run around in random directions and never seem to kill anything. Everytime a reaper charges at my guys it eather is gunned down, runs away, and (if not shot at) run up to my guy and never attacks. If the reaper's AI was a little bit tougher it would be something to reckon with. (well for the first floater terror mission anyway)

 

-PSY GUY-

[The Veteran]

I must admit that I have had many reaper encounters in past games in which they walk half way up to my soldier and then they turn around and walk right back again. On superhuman though they do seem to have a little more intelligence... At least they head for your people rather that those little bushes... You know the ones with blue flowers...

I even had one of them walk around a fence to get to my soldiers last time I fought them!

[NCC-1701-F]

Never underestimate the power of just a sectoid/cyberdisc terror site. I've had some of those worse than anything, i haven't done an ethereal terror site though, but this was a hot LZ. I got set down on the bottom of the map, bugs in the building to one side, bugs on the street to the other, and in the park/thing in the middle, cyberdiscs galore. Mind you, this was the first terror site, and i had no HW, thank god for HE

[JellyfishGreen]

Ethereals. They're just bad news.

 

I made no progress in two hours of play on a crashed Ethereal terror ship last night, kept aborting, restarting, even the forbidden save-tactical-game (but only once per turn), but couldn't figure out how to keep my crack shot power suited troopers from being mindf**ked and making hot plasma dog food of assorted promising squaddies.

 

This was 14 troopers, one of them cranking the psi-amp with p-strength 90, vs 4 ethereals and 2 sectopods outside the UFO, on a farm in daylight. I was trying not to lose more than four people before making it to the UFO doors. At one point, there was a firefight *inside* the Lightning and psi-guy went down.

 

I'm going to have to retrench - either shoot down the UFO over desert, or just not launch the Lightning without giving certain guys laser pistols or their walking orders.

 

I shal rid the planet of you alien scum! I swear it!

[Crazy Photon]

Never underestimate the power of just a sectoid/cyberdisc terror site. I've had some of those worse than anything, i haven't done an ethereal terror site though, but this was a hot LZ. I got set down on the bottom of the map, bugs in the building to one side, bugs on the street to the other, and in the park/thing in the middle, cyberdiscs galore. Mind you, this was the first terror site, and i had no HW, thank god for HE

The only thing that pi** me off more than ethereals is when in febraury the first terror site is a sectoid/cyberdisk and the skyranger is circled by 3-5 ciberdisks, all facing my unarmored soldiers and it happens to me a lot :hmmm:

[Psy Guy]

Yes but by that time you should have laser rifles. I'ed rather have a terror mission like that rather than a terror mission without laser rifles. At least one burst can bring down one of the disk (leading to the death of other aliens :devil: ). (about the surrounded skyranger situation) HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THE PILOT LAND THERE? HE/SHE MUST BE ON THE ALIEN'S SIDE.

 

-PSY GUY-

[NKF]

If you're really worried about early sectoid terror sites, and you don't plan to use lasers, invest in more high explosives and heavy rockets. Beef up your soldiers to at least 40 strength to take advantage of the heavier weapons.

 

If you're playing on superhuman, don't even bother using pistols and rifles against cyberdiscs until they've been damaged. Heavy and Auto cannons are recommended alternatives.

 

I've found that cyberdiscs need on average 3 HWP tank rockets to kill, whereas, with a handheld launcher, one well placed heavy rocket is normally sufficient.

 

Ever since taking Carlos's challenge, the cyberdiscs have been a real pain in the posterior. Now I'm going up against Chryssalids, and have learnt that the cannon HE shells are ineffective against them. Thank goodness for the cannon AP shells (gasp!) .

 

- NKF

[The Demi-Godly One]

What I usually do is take over a etherial, the aliens will try to take it over and if they do

you get to keep it for the whole battle. I think that's because psy works by just telling

the computer to(at the end of the turn) give the unit to the side that it was taken from.(As in-George was taken from human side-next turn put George on human side) That's why you can keep a cryssalid when you take over the zombie and kill the zombie.

Anyways to kill a sectopod take over one corner of it, you can make it shoot, or try to

make it move, when you try to make it move the other corners will shoot at you in reaction

fire, but if you do manage the corner will just float off from the rest.

[Crazy Photon]

I usually have laser rifles by that time... I play on superhuman though, so most of the time they have to eat 4 or 5 shots before they go down.... the problem is that they have awesome reactions, like 80 or so.... which means that as soon as I kill one the others react

 

Anyway, back on topic... I usually find ethereals not that hard, as I encounter them near the end of the game, and my soldiers are all psi-strong... Sectopods are quite hard though, as their armor is too heavy... I usually psi them (so they shoot themselves) or put a couple of blaster bombs....

[NCC-1701-F]

Oooooook, i just had my first ethereal/sectopod terror site, i reloaded twice (i had to, but by god it worked), and i finally found the solution, i took my 5 crack troops (yea, only 5, it's tough to get more when ur clearing terror sites with 4 men) who all had high psi ratings (75 or higher, though 70 is ok) and armed them with the usual laser rigles & psi amps. And then i took my 2 other crack troops (low psi though) and GAVE THEM NOTHING excpet a medkit and motion scanner for one, and a mind probe for the other. Give them NOTHING else, not even in inventory, the inventory of any troops without a psi rating of 65 or higher should have NOTHING but non-weapons in them or carrying. If it's below 75, no heavy weapons, pistols and/or conventionals only. It works, lost one man, killed 14 bugs..... when the mind control your low psi guys, they can't do anything, and they can't get the high ones....

[NKF]

I'd just like to reiterate something I said in a different thread:

 

Large terror units, when stunned, are counted as dead. They'll never get up again.

 

Now, stun bombs have a 50% chance of working every time you fire them. Sometimes the alien will shrug it off, but when it does work, it works. Even moreso with the large terror units, since they receive extra paralysis. At least 4 times more than ordinary aliens.

 

So, technically, all you need is one stun bomb per sectopod right? Wrong, you can kill multiple sectopods with one stun bomb if they're nearby each other.

 

Give it a try. If it doesn't work the first time, give the stun bomb a few more shots. Try and kneel and use aimed shots so you don't waste any rounds.

 

Heck, even more effective than a blaster bomb, but leaves buildings standing.

 

- NKF