Talk:Sectoid

One important point on Sectoids. Their small stature gives them a serious advantage when behind certain kinds of cover. For instance, to see them behind standard fences in the rural areas you have to duck and I think they are definitely harder to spot in wheat fields and smoke. I personally think they are much more dangerous than floaters and am usually relieved when aliens "upgrade" to the silly purple guys.

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That's a good point, Pherd. If somebody wanted, they could run numbers on how often higher terrain appears, and how often various aliens appear. We hardcore have looked at terrain data e.g. here. But I don't think anyone's talked about how often particular terrains appear. Also, height of aliens is here. If you or anyone else wants to do an analysis, you can find the height of every object using MapView as mentioned here.

I had not thought about your concept but it suddenly makes perfect sense - more than once, I've had real trouble with sectoids being hard to see. Until I got Flying Armor, anyway. :P

Good to have you aboard, commander. Earth needs good X-COM unit commanders in this time of grave crisis! ---MikeTheRed

P.S. Why not take a look at "Community Portal" at the bottom of the Main Page. ALL newcomers welcomed! But sign your name to comments, and use four dashes (----) to separate them.

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I hate these little critters.Always shooting from cover.Or I am unlucky.Yes,they do annoy in city-fights.The Opposite of Snakemen,I would say.Bug-Eyed motherf***ers.--X-COM:Turcocalypse 08:32, 16 April 2006 (PDT)

By the way,is it my imagination or is it just that they faint very rapidly in smoke?--X-COM:Turcocalypse 10:48, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

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How much stun damage a unit takes while in smoke is variable. It generally depends on the unit's armour, rank, remaining health, and possibly the unit's susceptability to stun damage. (Rank and difficulty level influences the unit's armour - so it's probably just armour)

Beginner difficulty sectoid soldiers are very low ranked and have almost no armour, so it's not surprising to see them drop when over saturated with smoke. Superhuman difficulty sectoid commanders cannot be stunned, just as a X-Com soldier in a power suit cannot be stunned.

We need to create a whole section detailing Stun effects some day.

- NKF

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How is it possible for a sectoid to take three heavy plasma hits before going down? Was I just really unlucky? SirBob42 21:38, 16 October 2007 (PDT)

That was exactly your problem. A weapon does 0-200% of its listed damage, as explained on the Damage page. So after subtracting the Sectoid's armor, you rolled a combined total on your first two shots of less than the 30 damage needed to kill it.

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According to the X-COM: Interceptor booklet, the first official Sectoid sighting was in the Roswell incident, 1947: "Some reports claim that there were two objects and that one actualy housed three alien beings, two dead and one alive." The question whether they were Sectoids or not, is answered by another fact: "A small colony of Sectoid-human hybrids was discovered last week, living in the sewers and catacombs beneath the ruins of the Roswell Urban Complex in New Mexico, NAA... Scientists say that the alien roots of the hybrid race might go back as far as 1947, when a craft of alien origin reportedly crash-landed in the desert near the then small town of Roswell. If found to be true, this find would completely contradict the government document "Roswell - The Absolute Last Report" published in 2047 on the one-hundredth anniversary of the incident."

And another line, this one's from Wikipedia:

"Greys are intelligent, humanoid extraterrestrials that appear in claims of encounters with UFO-related phenomena, especially alien abduction. The study of these phenomena is considered pseudoscientific by mainstream scientists and by virtue of their close relationship with them, Greys are generally dismissed as non-existent. Some have also criticized Greys as being too excessively anthropomorphic to be a likely candidate for real extraterrestrial life forms.

Nevertheless, Greys hold a prominent place in the popular imagination. Reports of close encounters of the third kind and alien abductions involving Grey-type beings continue to be made in many countries and ufologists still search for confirmation of their existence."

Well, that's a bit scary... Given that the so-called Greys are very similar to Sectoids (in fact, Sectoids were modelled after the Greys), is it possible that the events of X-COM will come true?

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Not if you buy a tinfoil hat from me. Only $120,000 or I'll trade for an Avenger or two. :)

Seriously though, I would be more worried about an asteroid hitting the earth than aliens invading us. X-COM's just a story and it was written using the current UFO mythology we have. And besides, conflict is interesting. After all, who would write a game about aliens who are only interested in peaceful co-existence with humans? --Captain Foo 10:46, 31 August 2008 (PDT)

Wouldn't be an impossible idea. And could even work, if the story were right.

-Karp 03:30, 3 September 2008 (PDT)

Wasn't there an X-COM game in the making at some point which told of a squad going MIA during transfer through a dimensional portal and crash-landing in another alien dimension or something?

--Karp 02:09, 9 September 2008 (PDT)

You're thinking of X-COM: Alliance, where the X-COM starship Patton fell through a warp rift and ended up far from Earth and the crew allied with an alien group which was under attack from the aliens from the First Alien War for the purposes of mutual survival. It was a First Person Shooter with squad based elements. X-COM:Alliance was canned when Hasbro, who at the time owned the rights to X-COM through various buyouts, shut down the entire Hasbro Interactive division from 1999 to 2001. It's never been completed, (aside from its half-sibling, X-COM:Enforcer which was hacked together quickly to produce something and it shows). Also, I'd request you don't indent your signature further than your original post; it really makes the page confusing to read. :) Arrow Quivershaft 09:42, 9 September 2008 (PDT)

Will correct in the future. Sorry 'bout that.

If I remember correctly, Enforcer got pretty poor reviews. Shame, as a decent multiplayer UFO would be cool, especially as a squad-based game.

-Karp 02:54, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Weapon Rankings Vs Sectoids

%TUs per kill (average; FA=50)

HvyPlas	13
Stun Rod	15
Blast Bmb	15
PlasmaR	17
HvyLas (XCU)	23
HE Pack(XCU)	23
PlasmaP	25
LaserR	        26
LaserP	        42
HE Pack	43
HvyLas	        49
Alien Grd	52
RocketLg	53
AC - HE	60
Stun Bmb	62
HC - AP	63
AC - AP	66
HC - HE	66
Prox Grd	68
RocketSm	71
Rifle	        77
Pistol	        81
Grenade	96

Spike 20:41, 27 February 2009 (CST)

I was thinking about the Firaxis remake of X-COM and its new images of classic aliens from the series. Do you think it would be a good idea to add these new pictures to their pages? --SuicidalSectoid 11:21, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

Different game, the aliens from the new game should have their own pages. The starting page for the new Enemy Unknown has been already created, if you want to start adding them. Hobbes 14:59, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

Nomenclature

Iin thm working on a personal project of mine and was wondering about the origin of the name 'Sectoid.' The best I could come up with is 'sect,' a "subgroup of a religious, political or philosophical belief system." Of course, that potential definition brings up the issue of what exactly they worship (and why Etherials have Sectopods... that particular word combination doesn't make much sense). Debesh Unnos 21:01, 12 February 2013 (EST)

I think it is likely derived from "Insectoid". Grays are often referenced as having Insectoid features. Sectopods are probably adapted to sound mechanised. NKF 21:58, 12 February 2013 (EST)

Thanks for the header.

While hardly conclusive proof, Wikipedia doesn't mention Grays having insectoid features (and I don't see the resemblance myself). The relation is certainly there, though; I can hardly dismiss the argument. Any other opinions out there?

Debesh Unnos 22:40, 12 February 2013 (EST)

As mentioned in the page, Sectoids first appear on XCOM's predecessor, Laser Squad. There's no official reference to where the name come, with 'insectoid' being adopted by some players due to the Sectoid being a race that lived in caves on LS. If you really want to know the origin you'd have to ask Julian Gollop :) Hobbes 04:41, 13 February 2013 (EST)

I would imagine "Insectoid" as in the classic "bug eyed alien" reference. Also after sleeping on it, I realised I forgot that the pod in Sectopod meant feet. NKF 19:22, 13 February 2013 (EST)