Dealing with Reapers

I apologize if this thread has been made before. As the title suggested, I'm having a very hard time dealing with reapers, as their movement is so difficult to predict, and they're smart enough to move out of your LOS whenever possible while closing in. Reaction fire so far doesn't seem to be even half reliable. I'm not too familiar with the Chryssalids from the original game, but man these things are the stuff of true terror. I just outright fear them to the point that if I see a reaper in an alien base assault mission (oftentimes alpha reapers), it's pretty much insta-abort.

What's your general tactics for dealing with these creatures of nightmare?

Buzzard/Sentinel armor are really great for versus reapers because they let you spot them from further away and either kill them or maintain your distances. Good vision discipline means that unless they start on top of you at the LZ they never really get a chance to close and cause trouble. Reapers are also a big part of why I generally skip industrial maps.

Yeah I do realize using flight armor to scout around frequently is a sensible tactic. But I was more referring to situations where you're unable to fly, like when you're only 2-3 months in and still haven't managed to unlock Buzzard yet, or when you're in an alien base assault mission.

Yeah I do realize using flight armor to scout around frequently is a sensible tactic. But I was more referring to situations where you're unable to fly, like when you're only 2-3 months in and still haven't managed to unlock Buzzard yet, or when you're in an alien base assault mission.

-Get Alenium Grenades and abuse the crap out of them

-Keep your soldiers within 10 tiles of eachother at all times

-Stick to wide open areas

-Focus on reaching the UFO as Reapers tend to stay farther away from it

-Reapers prefer to attack from the side of a soldier equipped with a shield, something which can potentially save lives

-If you see a Sebillian or Green Walls, there's likely a Reaper or Two on that Map/Base

-Civilians are like fleshy shields, position your Soldier near one and the Reaper will take the Civilian before it goes for your Soldier

-Zombies are painful.

-Reapers can't target/attack Tanks, so you can use a Tank to block off a doorway and kill a few Reapers

If a Reaper gets your soldier and you have other soldiers nearby;

Gun down the Reaper but do not--I repeat DO NOT kill the Zombified Soldier until your team has enough TUs to deal with yet another Reaper so close to them.

Late Game Notes:

-Singularity Cannons, Fusion Grenades and Magstorm Guns are your best friends.

Also, don't be shy about shooting civilians to prevent them being zombified. There are no penalties in an unmodded game for civilian deaths, and they're a lot easier to kill than a zombie + reaper.

Always make sure you have enough in reserve for reaction fire, and try and move your soldiers around in reasonable size squads. I split mine into fours, that means that they can cover more angles and you get more chances at knocking the Reaper over before it makes contact.

Well, simply take your time on every map. The slower you advance the higher your chance to survive. May be a bit boring from time to time, but as soon as one Reaper takes out 2 of your soldiers in the same turn because of you rushed somewhere -> lesson learned.

Very useful tips right there. Thanks guys!

I've been wondering if I could possibly deny a possible route for Reapers by using stun smoke grenades. I haven't tested it yet myself. But do reapers avoid stun smokes or they just go through them? if they do go through them, would the smoke be enough to knock them out?

Well, simply take your time on every map. The slower you advance the higher your chance to survive. May be a bit boring from time to time, but as soon as one Reaper takes out 2 of your soldiers in the same turn because of you rushed somewhere -> lesson learned.

Reapers only show up on maps with Sebillians.

Very useful tips right there. Thanks guys!

I've been wondering if I could possibly deny a possible route for Reapers by using stun smoke grenades. I haven't tested it yet myself. But do reapers avoid stun smokes or they just go through them? if they do go through them, would the smoke be enough to knock them out?

Reapers will run straight through the gas in an attempt to get a quick kill.

-Alpha Reapers will be in Large-to-Massive UFOs.

-Three stun gas grenades should be enough to knock a Reaper out.

-If it's an Alpha Reaper it's better to focus on killing it than risking lives to try to capture it.

If you're interested in looking at the AI directly you can open up the Xenonauts' "Assets" folder and find a file labeled "aiprops.xml".

I'm not trying to capture, I'm just wondering if stun smokes can be any effective as area denial against Reapers.

During base assault you can just take good position, reapers will run into your reaction fire and die (stupid lizards with suicidal AI will eventually die too ). Also once I saved my soldier who had not enough TU to shoot down almost dead reaper standing next to him using melee attack (M). Deals about 10 HP and 10 stun damage, consider it as option if nothing left. Or if reaper approached soldier with at least 14 TU, drop gun, take C4 and activate. Never tried in vanilla, but in XNT effect was truly epic. Cool heroic death

... wait, Civilian deaths aren't penalised?

Huh. I've been avoiding them on general principle, so that's... interesting.

Shotguns are a reaper's nightmare.

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Stun batons are very effective against them as well actually.

Shotguns are a reaper's nightmare.

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Stun batons are very effective against them as well actually.

heh.. batons.. at my first play, i attack to a preator with 4 man with batons.. it was like police fight in a backstreet...

But attacking with batons to a bug looking huge creatures should be more funny.. that soldiers mental damage never get healed

Stun rockets are also pretty effective (as I found out when I bagged a Reaper while trying to capture a Sebillian officer).

Electroshock grenades can be useful against zombies occasionally. While it takes a couple to take them down, the reaper inside will explode and die rather than spawn from the zombie. If the original reaper is standing next to a zombie it just made, you can take both of them down at the same time by piling the shocks on them.

I don't know if it's the stun or the "explosive" part of the shock grenade that is keeping the reaper from spawning though, so maybe other grenades or stun weapons will have the same effect. Or it could be a unique property of the shock grenade.

I'm playing the game on Normal, so my experience may be different, but in general, I find that playing conservatively really helps. Reaction fire usually will work if you have enough space for it to be effective. Saving enough TUs for a normal, or even aimed shot (depending on the weapon) can help, too. Other than that, it's generally a matter of sight lines and overlapping fields of fire. Reapers are still dangerous, of course, but if you can save enough time to react to them, they're not as bad.

The map might also matter. Carbines/shotguns might be more appropriate to carry on a terror mission in an industrial area. Rifles have middling reaction speed (like everything else), but shotguns/carbines and pistols have good reaction modifiers. Sniper rifles and MGs, I think, have lower reaction speeds, but that's where having enough space and enough reserved TUs comes into play.

Reapers also fall pretty quickly under the withering gunfire of a Hunter Scout Car or other ground vehicles.

Reapers in the normal and CE Games are the strongest and most dangerous Enemys. It dosen´t matter what Armor you have, they will transform your Soldier or a Civilian/Guard/Policeman etc in an other Reaper. In Mods this are not the only dangerous Enemy.

If I see a Reaper, this is my first Target. Kill it and the other Reapers (if there are more) at all costs. You need only one alive to research him. All others you can kill. I try to kill him with Standard Weapons (Rifle, Pistol, MG, Shotgun) because you mostly need your Grenades for other Enemys or Enemys you cant see.

So far, ive found reaction fire quite useful, most notably on a very open desert map where three got plasma-blasts from reaction fire, plus one i only spotted when i turned a soldier to face towards the map boundary and found one had darted down the one-tile corridor between my x-naut's vision and the boundary and was three tiles or so from wreaking havoc.

Currently i find snipers more challenging in combat. Now i know how ET feels when he is killed from across the map when only a grunt with a shield can see him

Reapers also fall pretty quickly under the withering gunfire of a Hunter Scout Car or other ground vehicles.

Yesterday I met a reaper that actually behaved semi-intelligently. I assumed there were no more reapers, after the first 20 turns of fighting. Went in a carrier, fully not expecting one to come through a teleport! a six-man strike force quickly became a two-man strike force, after some zombification and bad decision making involving plasma grenades. Did not expect that! Felt cheated and amused at the same time.