Talk:Sectopod

Spike, re the effectiveness list you added and the stun bombs.

Don't forget that stun bombs (including HE) work against under-armour on direct hits, and this also counts for all adjacent tiles that it affects. Directional armour only comes into play beyond ground zero + 1 tiles, so direct hits on the Sectopod are obviously the most effective.

The higher the difficulty level though, the less effective the stun bombs become as the armour increases. On easier difficulty levels you can often knock them out with just one bomb with a fair amount of regularity, even with non GZ+1 attacks. On superhuman, you have to make direct hits, even then you might need several tries. Still, I suppose it's a lot better than whittling them away slowly with the other weapons.

- NKF 22:31, 3 September 2008 (PDT)

Armour and Explosions

Thanks NKF! I had forgotten the mechanics of directional armour and explosions. I will definitely review in the light of that. Are you sure about armour level and difficulty though? The Ufopaedia article Alien Stats that I checked for this note says the armour is halved at Beginner but otherwise constant at all difficulty levels. Obviously Health (damage capacity) does increase with difficulty so this will affect the numer of hits required to kill, but not whether the weapon is effective/totally ineffective. Spike 01:53, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

A combination of higher health and armour is the most likely result. I don't remember ever comparing mid-level aliens to see if their armour levels matched their beginner/superhuman counterparts. -NKF 02:50, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

OK right you are! With armour mechanics working that way, impacting Bottom armour for all squares of the Terrorist with a direct hit... you'd get about 50 total penetrating damage from a typical Stun direct hit, around 200 total from a Blaster Bomb direct hit. The Large Rocket enters the equation, albeit with a negligible 5 points for an average hit. I can't compute the actual averages because I haven't modelled the step function of HE damage reduction in my averaging function. This compares to 30 points per turn of fire from a (standard) Heavy Laser (74/turn from an XCU Heavy Laser) - assuming hte 130 point side armour is the 'typical' target of the Heavy Laser. I'll tweak the rankings - thanks for the input! Spike 14:14, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

Checking the Explosions page, I see the Under Armour rule applies to thrown Explosive weapons as well as fired/launched Explosive weapons. So I've added in the HE Pack as well (average 10 points/explosion, plus a small splash effect I haven't calculated). Spike 13:00, 5 September 2008 (PDT)

Laser Vulnerability Explanations

[Jasonred] : The game explains that its "Sensing circuitry is particularly vulnerable to laser fire".

[--X-COM:Turcocalypse 14:26, 15 April 2006 (PDT)] : Bad sci-fi idea,I laughed when I saw it first.Laser is after all,radiation stimulated super-dense light.If it's vulnerable to this,how can PLASMA,matter with 15000 Grad Celsius shrugged off?

I guess that it's armor is thick enough that neither plasma's nor laser's heat would effect it. But spark from laser make it's sensor circuit mess-up and since it's quite powerful, Ethereal program it to shutdown the system once sensor damaged to prevent friendly-fire.

Actually, lasers were planned for use in anti-ICBM space weapons platforms not because of the heat damage from a laser blowing up the missile, but because of the effect it has on sensing equipment. That makes this based in reality, though it should have also applied to all other sensing apparati as well. We have less of a clue how the alien weapons work since they are most certainly not a literal 'plasma' gun, so it's very possible the sensing circuts are shielded to common alien weapons but not to relatively rare lasers. Only other sectopods use lasers, afterall. Covenant 19:13, 11 December 2008 (CST)

Good comments there Covenant. Here's a related possibility: since the Ethereals suppress the intelligence of the Sectopods, maybe they fear a "Revolt of the Machines". In which case, since Sectopods are very hard even for Ethereals to stop, it would make sense to make them vulnerable to their own weapons (only). In this way, "loyal" Sectopods could take care of any "rogue" Sectopods. As for the physics of it, we must conclude that the material properties of Sectopod armour are highly resistant to heat (plasma) but much more permeable to light (lasers) or the damage efffects of lasers - in addition to being sensitive to laser damage once it penetrates the armour. Not so impossible.Spike 02:54, 12 December 2008 (CST)

It seems that if they feared a revolt among the secopods, they should have made their control center a muton brain with brain implants, which means they can be controlled by the leader and commander types in the area. That'd give the secopods a decent psi defense because you have to kick the ethereal leader/commander out of the system.--(name here) 09:40, 13 December 2008 (CST)