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Top Ten Monsters (Gamespot)

Gamespot's Top Ten Videogame Monsters includes Chrysallids, naturally. In alphabetic order. Chrysallids made #4 in a subsequent reader poll. = JFG

Not sure why they left the SS2 hybrid off the list... - Bomb Bloke 01:25, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Those suckers can scare the hell out of me. Particularly when they sneak up behind you and scream in your ear right before smacking you with a pipe. Arrow Quivershaft 11:00, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Does anyone have a concise list of all the awards or ranks this guy has managed to achieve at these various game magazines? It might be worth chronicling this chap's achievements in the actual article. -NKF 06:54, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

Dead Man Grenades

(moved from Known Bugs)

...a "dead man's switch" tactic that can be used against Chryssalids/Tentaculats:

Soldier carries one or more primed explosives.
Soldier is turned into a Zombie.
Equipment is dropped to the ground.
First explosive goes off, killing the Zombie (and damaging or perhaps killing the offending Chryssalid/Tentaculat, if it's still nearby).
Possibly the second explosive goes off, hopefully killing the newly hatched Chryssalid.

(For the 2nd explosive to go off, you need to be playing TFTD or using a patch in XCOM:EU. In unpatched XCOM:EU, an explosion destroys other nearby explosives that are on the ground, and so there is no way to cause secondary explosions / chain reactions.)

So when you enter an area with high risk of Chryssalid/Tentaculat attacks (terror site or Terror ship/Battleship crash site), have every soldier arm an explosive which serves as a dead man's switch to damage Chryssalids/Tentaculats. You lose a soldier or two, but hopefully the aliens don't gain anything and there's one less candidate for zombification (and, if you are lucky, one less Chryssalid if it was around the victim when the grenades exploded).

A standard Grenade is unlikely to kill a Zombie or especially a Chrysallid. So if possible use Alien Grenades or, better, High Explosive. You need an HE Pack to have a decent chance (50/50) to kill a Zombie, and even with an HE Pack you will be lucky to kill a Chrysallid. Two standard Grenades could also kill a Zombie (50/50) but not do too much to a Chrysallid, due to its strong under armour. Tentaculats are easier to kill due to weak under armour, so a Sonic Pulser is a 50/50 kill and a Magna Pack better than evens to kill.

Nonetheless, even if you don't kill them, you can do them some harm and soften them up. Beware of collateral damage if your troops are bunched up. Also keep in mind you will lose some of your own equipment by using this tactic.

Comments

I tried this tactic and it does not seem to work. As I noted above in my edits (re types of explosives and chance to kill), you would need to be carrying an HE pack rather than a primed grenade for this to have much chance of killing the Zombie.

One thing that does help with this tactic - if it's true that zeroing out the under armour on the Zombie will lead to the Chryssalid also having zero under armour, then that does mean you might do some significant damage to the Chryssalid with additional explosions. You would need a patched version of XCOM:EU for this though. And you would still need a further 2 standard Grenades to kill the Chryssalid, even with zero under armour.

More to the point, if the basic tactic of killing the Zombie did' work, all you've done is turned a containable Zombie, that you can kill at the time and place of your choosing, into a highly dangerous Chryssalid that can run all over your squad wreaking havoc. Genius move!

In conclusion, this tactic probably doesn't work, and if it did work, it would be a really bad idea. Thoughts? Spike 17:36, 6 October 2010 (EDT)

Weapon Rankings Vs. Chryssalids

%TUs per kill (average; FA=50):

(NB there are various other considerations apart from firepower when killing Chryssallids).

HvyPlas	 54
Blast Bmb	 58
PlasmaR	 84
HE Pack(XCU)	 89
HvyLas (XCU)	 96
Stun Rod	 98
LaserR	        154
PlasmaP	163
HE Pack	194
HvyLas	        233
RocketLg	253
Alien Grd	264
LaserP	        313
Stun Bmb	345
HC - AP	389
RocketSm	407
Prox Grd	410
AC - AP	538
HC - HE	567
AC - HE	688
Grenade	879
Rifle	       1136
Pistol	       1849

Spike 21:02, 27 February 2009 (CST)

Old Stuff - Remove?

This content below now appears to be superceded by the what's on the article page. Spike 17:41, 6 October 2010 (EDT)

Reaction firing Chryssalids?!

Wow, I've never encountered that situation before.(Admittedly, I abuse Save/Reload quite frequently, so this isn't a surprise I haven't seen it.) Would you possibly be able to provide proof or an example, Abraxas? Or maybe the circumstances under which it happened? I figure it must be easy enough to check if the Chryssie kept the weapons; simply use a Psi-Amp and Mind Control to examine the unit's inventory. Anyone else willing to conduct tests?

In any event, that's SCARY, and is one more reason to add to the list why Chryssalids should be hosed with Heavy Plasma fire before any other aliens and why Zombies should be left alone until there's time to fully deal with them. I may even start packing some AC-I ammo in the trunk of the Skyranger on Terror Mission dispatches. Arrow Quivershaft 14:33, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

I think I witnessed this bug a while back (it was on the PSX version though). One of my soldiers was turned into a Zombie by a Chryssalid, and when it was hit with an auto-shot of Heavy Plasma (all shots connected) it "died" without a sound leaving a X-COM corpse and a Chryssalid carrying the soldier's weapons. I think this may have to deal with stun getting wrongly applied to the Zombie.

Bug or no, any HTH-only aliens which carry a weapon will use it during your turn via reaction fire (assuming they have a loaded weapon and enough time units). This was one of the first tests I ever ran when I joined the StrategyCore forums. But you have to realize that HTH-only aliens have 0 for Firing Accuracy making it very tough for them to hit anything. That's the good news at least. ;) --Zombie 16:13, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

Unless the Chryssie is standing right next to your soldier when it reaction fires into him :) - Hobbes 20:07, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

This is a sequencing bug. The game probably got something done in the wrong order, and the conditions it needed to drop the equipment (as it should) never occured. The same happens when you die from wounds while standing in smoke, where your unit sometimes dies (game creates a new corpse) and then gets stunned (game drops a referenced corpse - and since the game sees it as a stunning, it never actually gets round to killing the unit). Since even melee units need a reaction level to allow them to have initiative during their turn, it's no wonder that they are able to shoot back with reaction fire.

Actually, I think it sometimes happens during zombification, since I've often had occasions where I've ended up with armed zombies. In turn they arm the chryssalid, if I'm not mistaken. Oh well, much fun to be had. - NKF

I was doing a little bit of research today and needed to check what happens when a soldier reaches exactly 0 health (not via fatal wounds). Initial round: nothing happens, the soldier just has 0 health. At the end of your turn though, there is a message saying that Soldier X has just died from a fatal wound. Directly after that there is another message stating that Soldier X is unconscious. When my round returned, I checked on Soldier X. There were 2 bodies on the ground, one from the corpse and one of the unconscious Soldier X. Pumping it full of stimulants did nothing, the soldier remained knocked out. At the end of the second round the soldier died and left a corpse (for a total of 2).

My theory is that units can be hurt so they have exactly 0 health (it must happen during that round though). This basically puts the unit in limbo between life and death (the final check for death happens at the end of the current turn). When the game does the check, it finds the unit has 0 health which forces it to create a corpse. The game probably forgets to set the death flag and immediately finds that the unit is still alive and has 0 health which knocks it unconscious. This probably explains why Chryssalids from X-COM soldiers sometimes have guns. If the Zombie had a gun and you managed to inflict enough damage to lower health to exactly 0, it dies, and immediately changes into a Chryssalid. More testing needs to be done with aliens and soldiers, but the 0 health idea probably plays a role in this somewhere. --Zombie 09:50, 15 September 2007 (PDT)

Melee TU Cost

I set a Chryss's current/max TU to 15, and it still had time to turn after attacking. Percentage maybe? - Bomb Bloke 15:54, 10 February 2008 (PST)

I think I did some more current tests somewhere and found the cost was 14 TU. Can't remember where I put that data though. In any case, it's funny that I ran across this as today I was wondering if the cost is percentage-based. It's certainly possible, but needs more testing. For now, I put an asterisk next to the cost until this is sorted out. --Zombie 22:15, 22 April 2008 (PDT)

Chryssalid speed IRL

Building on the discussion on turn length in Danial's User talk, if a turn length is estimated to be 5 seconds, one square being 1 meter, an 80TU soldier has a "speed [of] 20m/5 sec. This is a speed of 14.4kmh- just shy of 9mph". Given a Chryssalid of 120TU is 50% faster, this makes it dash at nearly 22km/h or 14mi/h. For comparison, imagine trying to outrun someone on a bicycle! --KayDat (talk) 04:35, 2 August 2023 (CEST)

Talk:Chryssalid

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