Reaper Zombies

[Amaror]

I think it's kinda stupid that if i kill a Reaper Zombie it still spawns an Reaper that is ready to fight the very first chance it gets.

I mean i just killed it's host, before it managed to be bred succesfully. It shouldn't be able to just jump out there nevertheless.

I think the Reaper should either

Not spawn

or

Spawn heavily, heavily damaged.

or

Spawn without any TU for the next turn.

or at least spawn suppressed.

I mean otherwise it's just stupid, i am being punished for killing an enemy with an way stronger enemy. It was fine in the original Xcom, because Chrysalids were pretty damn slow, but here they have just a rediculous range.

[Akrakorn]

I have no problem with that. In fact, I have yet to see one of my troopers die because of a Reaper and I already have Predators and Marauders.

Also, even the Xenopedia page warns you about killing Reaper hosts, so it's kinda fair. You just need a different tactic to tackle them.

[thothkins]

I'm fine with them always spawning, personally.

[Ishantil]

Xenopedia article doesn't help with first contact, though. The Cryssalids in X-COM spawned ready to kill you as soon as they shed their zombie husk. Basically, you have to kill the zombie and the Reaper, or else. It's supposed to be hard to manage.

[GizmoGomez]

IIRC, in the original, if the zombie died in fire (or something like that) then the cryssalid wouldn't spawn. Is that correct, or am I just remembering things?

Also, can reapers have a weakness to fire? And can we have incendiary grenades/rockets? Area denial stuff is super super useful.

[thothkins]

Is it fire? I thought it was explosives, while the furry Reapers of EU1994 were vulnerable to fire?

Perhaps I just throw explosives at them out of sheer terror though, so you could be right.

[Ishantil]

Indeed, quoth the UFOPedia: "The only known way to prevent a Chryssalid hatching is to land killing blows on zombies with Incendiary rounds."

[EchoFourDelta]

Yeah, the only way to prevent a Chryssalid from emerging was to having the killing damage be incendiary in nature. You could whittle them down with whatever else you liked, because there was a bug that hardlocked a maximum of 10 damage inflicted on targets of incendiary weapons from any one shot. That said, due to some of the same weirdness, anything that was on fire took the damage any time an incendiary round hit anywhere on the map. So you could get by with a bunch of guys with incendiary-loaded autocannons hitting a zombie once and then just magdumping all over the place; anytime a round was fired, the zombie would take damage from every subsequent round no matter where it his as long as it got hit once and set on fire.

Edited September 12, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[Nickboom]

I feel like the bigger problem is that Reapers just go *boop* and suddenly zombie no matter the health stat or armor.

[SalsaDoom]

Is it fire? I thought it was explosives, while the furry Reapers of EU1994 were vulnerable to fire?

Perhaps I just throw explosives at them out of sheer terror though, so you could be right.

Tell me about it. First time I ran into reapers in one of my games, the thing burst out of a carrier door and zombied a*gunner in predator armour in one swift action.

Since then I go nuclear every time I see one.

[GizmoGomez]

I like the idea of incendiary weapons (grenades and rockets) that would work as area denial and anti-reaper munitions.