Floater (EU2012)

A twisted ball of airborne agony, the Floater provides close air support for the Alien forces. Unlike their older cousins from the the original, these Floaters fly with powerful jet powered packs integrated into their bodies.

They take advantage of their superior mobility and evasiveness to outflank even the strongest defensive positions. They can also use their launch ability to drop down anywhere they wish on the battlefield. They cannot fire after launching though, leaving them defenseless if they drop into the middle of your squad. Be wary of your snipers though, they can be caught unable to fire if a Floater launches down to them.

Floater groups may be easy to dispatch by themselves but in the middle of a heated firefight they can drop in unexpectedly, catching your soldiers off guard and leaving them flanked. Their flanking maneuvers can sometimes leading to disastrous situations for your operatives.

Defeating Floaters

If there are Floaters you know to be lurking around, consider a few turns of overwatch from your entire squad. Floaters of all kinds are very rash and will fly recklessly into ambushes. They are quite hard to hit because of their evasion ability but of an entire XCOM squad firing at them some shots are bound to hit. (Unless you get terribly unlucky.)

If a Floater or a group of Floaters decide to drop in behind you during a battle with other alien ground troops, move your soldiers to deal with the Floaters first instead as their flanking positions will give them better aim than any other aliens you may be fighting.

Floater Soldier

These standard flying soldiers are the mainstay of the Floater forces. They are usually the forth or fifth aliens you will encounter. (After Thin Men or Outsiders.) They have pretty weak armour but they are very fast and agile. They're mobility makes them ideal for flanking. Accuracy is average but they gain bonuses because of their height advantage. As mentioned above keep your snipers safe and watch out for their surprise flank attacks.

Floater Armaments

Weapon	Damage	Critical Chance	Terrain Damage	Range	Reaction Angle	Reaction Range	Size	Abilities
Floater Plasma Light Rifle	6	10	125	27	200	NA	Large	Suppression 20%

Abilities:

• Launch: The Floater can launch to any point on the map (ends its turn).
• Floaters are always considered to have at least Light cover even in the open or when flying, unless in proper cover and Flanked. This bonus does not stack with existing cover bonuses - they only recieve the best cover.

Heavy Floater

Tough. Accurate. Mobile. Deadly. Heavy Floaters are hulking monsters, with a ton of health and a powerful degree of firepower to match. Flank attacks from these hovering horrors usually end in a tough fight and a lot of corpses. If these corpses turn out to belong to the Aliens or X-COM Operatives is up to the X-COM Commander and a little bit of luck.

Their skill and effeciency is at a margin far higher than that of their little brothers. They have a large amount of health and carry much better weaponry than Floater Soldiers, doing double the damage to us and recieving half the damage when compared to regular Floaters.

Thankfully they appear very late game, and by then we should have deadly plasma weaponry of our own. Apply the tactics you would use against regular Floaters, but expect a tougher battle.

Heavy Floater armaments.

Weapon	Damage	Critical Chance	Terrain Damage	Range	Reaction Angle	Reaction Range	Size	Abilities
Floater Heavy Plasma	10	10	125	27	200	27	Large	Suppression 35%
Alien Grenade	5	0	Any	250	17	240	Small

Abilities:

• Evasion: Enemies targeting this unit when it is airborn suffer a -20 Aim penalty.
• Launch: Move anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn. Launch cannot be used indoors.
• Bombard: Throw or launch grenades over exceptionally long distances.

Notes

• These Floaters use jet packs to travel around, unlike the gravball units used by the Floaters of the original.
• Floaters may be back, but the same cannot be said of their siganture terror units from the original, the Reapers. Mabye the Mutons got a bit too hungry on their way to Earth...