Brainsucker Launcher

Brainsucker Launcher, image from the UFOpaedia

The brainsucker launcher is the first alien weapon X-Com agents usually encounter on the battlefield. As its name implies, this weapon is used to fire Brainsucker Pods (which hatch into brainsuckers) in a manner similar to a grenade launcher. Of all the alien weapons, it is perhaps the weakest, but a measure of caution should still be used when facing them - a well-placed brainsucker pod can result in an unwary agent being taken over. Also, an alien armed with this weapon will drop any spare pods when killed, which may hatch if agents approach the corpse (Note that a pod loaded into a launcher will not hatch). Counter-measures include:

• Grenade any corpses to destroy the pods.
• If you reach the body without any hatching, pick up the pods. Pods carried by agents do not hatch (Be careful if the agent gets killed and drops them again).

• During the mission, during any idle moment where there isn't any intense fighting happening, consider manually hatching the pods and killing the brainsucker by throwing them out one at a time.

• If all else fails, simply do not approach a dead alien which was armed with a brainsucker launcher, or approach it only with android units.
• If there are too many pods to pick up, don't forget that you can use the battlescape ammo stacking "feature" to combine all the brainsucker pods around you into a single composite pod. The empty pods will not hatch and will even vanish if loaded into a launcher.

The Brainsucker Launcher is unusable to X-com, and wouldn't be very useful even if it was. It also makes little to no money when sold.

Official Entry: "This weapon is an organic launcher for Brainsucker Pods. If the pod lands within the vicinity of a human target it will burst open and the Brainsucker will attack the victim. It is not a useful weapon for us to replicate, even if it were possible."

• Pictures courtesy of XCommand

See Also

• Alien Artifacts
• Biochemistry