Floaters. Why?

[the_dead]

What is the actual purpose of floaters in the game?

These are the only things I've seen floaters do:

 

1 - Float around, get shot, die.

2 - Walk into the open, get shot, die.

3 - Fire at X-Com soldiers, miss, annoy X-Com soldiers, die.

4 - Stand there and die

5 - Wait in their ufo, until they get shot and die.

 

I don't think I've actually ever lost a man to a floater. Oh yeah, I did once, a floater shot at me on a terror mission, hit a petrol pump the explosion of which killed an X-Com soldier, can anyone guess what happened to the floater?.... yep, it died.

[Pete]

On Superhuman difficulty, they can cause quite a lot of damage. They're still really easy to kill, but on average take more bullets and hit more of your men.

 

On the easier settings, I generally laugh at everything bar Chrysalids and Mutons.

[the_dead]

Chrysallids, I hate those buggers. I've never really had any problems with Mutons though, except their annoying habit of staying in large squads inside UFOs, meaning the first poor X-Com soldier to go in is gonna get a face full of reaction fire.

[Neorapsta]

lol, Floaters are probably just the Universes little joke, like those dodos off Ice Age.

 

Mutons can also be buggers when you first see them...

 

Whoah a new alien!

*Reaction*

*BANG!*

What the ?!

*KABOOM!*

 

As it seems when I play generally your first muton squad is the same one that introduces you to blaster bombs

[Terawatt_99]

i agree with neorapsta, they're just there for entertainment...

 

but as for most feared aliens, that would have to be etherials, hands down, just one of those suckers can take down my whole squad if i'm not really really careful, and i NEVER go to a ship bigger than a medium scout when it's etherials, they'll just mop the floor with me...

[NKF]

Just sieve your soldier for high psi strength. 70+ should make you immune to mind control. If you don't know your psi-strength, well, avoiding the ethereals (unless you need to abduct one) is perhaps the wisest action you can take.

 

Otherwise, with a good group of psi-strength soldiers, the ethereals will be nothing more than mutons that can walk in the air. (They're actually better than mutons - stat-wise and armour-wise, but I think they don't share the special damage resistance modifiers that mutons get. I'll have to find this out some day)

 

As for the floaters -- never understimate them. They look silly, and their stats are rather awkward, but they are still deadly.

 

When you don't take into account their terror units companions, the snakemen, floaters and sectoids (sans psionics) are all fairly 'gimpy' fodder aliens.

 

- NKF

[NotDefault]

When you don't take into account their terror units companions, the snakemen, floaters and sectoids (sans psionics) are all fairly 'gimpy' fodder aliens.

Floaters and Snakemen, yes, but Sectoids are a bit nastier because they show up at the very beginning before I have any decent technology. Any alien is dangerous when my soldiers are t-shirted rifle-wielding rookies. The psionics are also annoying because it's very difficult to nab the Leader using start technology, so there isn't much of a reward for the slaughter or slog (depending on the tactics used).

[the_dead]

And when you do take into account their terror unit friends, Floaters are STILL just targets waiting to happen. Do reapers actually attack or just wander around aimlessly, getting frustrated because they can't fit through any gaps and just get shot a lot?

[Slythe1]

I just got done with a floater mission that was among the toughest I've had with them. I downed a terror ship and went to recover it, threw out a smoke grenade around the landing area and exited. Well as it turned out almost the entire floater crew were surrounding my skyranger but just out of visual range from the smoke. For the next several turns I struggled to fend off an onslaught. One of my soldiers was shot and killed, and at one point a floater tossed a grenade wounding two soldiers, one of them having just 1 hit point remaining. The reapers though, have never been a threat.

 

On a side note, of the two soldiers I had wounded from the grenade, neither had any fatal wounds, one had about half his health removed and the other had all but 1 hp removed. Their recovery times were almost identical however, 16 days and 17 days.

[Bomb Bloke]

The one bonus the floater has is it's flight, as sometimes you will miss seeing them. Every now and then you'll get shot at by a floater who went right past you over a builing or something. In terror missions is where they are best; they are at their worst in their own bases, as they can't fly (often).

 

I consider Chysallids to be fodder aliens now.

 

The last Chysallid who even came close to getting one of my troopers...

 

I unloaded from the craft and shot this one on the way, stunning it. A while later, I noticed the corpse had dissapeared. I got one of my troopers near the skyranger (of which there were several) to look around, and saw the thing two squares behind one of my soldiers.

 

It had hardly moved since getting up. Terrible for superhuman mode, but there you go. They have a habit of turning around and running back the way they came, then back again, and so on...

[NKF]

The floater's levitation give it one other added advantage over the other fodder-class aliens. If you're as fond of your high explosives as I am, you'll understand why.

 

Explosives are only partially 3d. They only cause damage to the tile that they are on plus the floor tile of the level immediately above it (i.e. the ceiling). With floaters, if they're not standing on the ground, I cannot get them with the explosives.

 

Oh, there are ways I can get about it. If there's a conveniently placed floor nearby (the roof of a building... or I make a hole in the wall of a nearby building), I can get the floater with the edge of the explosion, no problem.

 

Get a floater levitating over a wheat field and your grenades are useless.

 

So, why not just shoot them, you ask? That is indeed the only option left. Alas, most of the time the sole reason I'm using the grenades is to train the pathetic firing accuracies of soldiers who cannot shoot a target if they were standing next to it. You can see my dilemma here.

 

- NKF

[the_dead]

I've had embarrasing moments when a pathetic soldier has fired auto shots and missed all 3 times at almost point blank range. If that happens I usually leave them to die, they deserve it, as for my elite special forces base I have set up, they rarely miss even from miles away, all high psi strength, armoured up to hell, and lots of nice high stats, nothing can stop them ..... expcept for those bastard blaster bombs!!! GRRRRR!

[Neorapsta]

Reminds me of my favorite rookie : Lucky-13

 

He had probably the worst accuracy ever, so he generally would shoot and miss or shoot and hit, do no damage and then get reaction fire. He's called Lucky-13 cos he managed to clock up 13 fatal hits before his untimely demise...at the hands of a floater he missed while standing right behind.

[Pumpkinhead]

I think Floaters look cool... That's the only reason I like them

 

https://members.dodo.com.au/~shoobs/pics/floater.jpg

[the_dead]

The scary thing about floaters is what they resemble slightly ... I'm not going to lower this thread into the gutter so I'll shut up now.

[Pumpkinhead]

The scary thing about floaters is what they resemble slightly ... I'm not going to lower this thread into the gutter

I think you just did

[Bomb Bloke]

Speaking of accuracy, the_dead, I had a guy who when told to autofire, actually had to turn around to fire off one of the shots, they went so wild... you wouldn't think that would be able to happen, would you?

[EclipseDog]

Floaters are basically the workhorse of Darwin I've found. Basically the only ones that die to them are people who never remember to look up or people with soldiers on the battlefield that should still be biting the heads off of chickens at freak shows.

 

First time I ever played X-Com I decided just to play the game without looking at any manuals. Did well enough but since all aliens prior to those floaters were either on the ground or in buildings or on building roofs I never bothered to look up unless there was a building close by.

 

Not so bad a mistake at first since the first five stupid floaters all stood on the ground floor like idiots. I'd already killed off all the reapers and couldn't figure out why the game wasn't saying that the terror mission was over yet since I'd already explored the entire map and never saw an alien.

 

Then my squaddies started to drop. That lil bugger just had to shoot my officer first, which naturally enough made it even worse cause all the chicken eaters proved the adage about being what you eat. When I was down to just 2 ops left one of them finally got a spot of the darn thing when it stupidly hovered down a level. Luckily both of the remaining were sergents with multiple kills on their tally sheets and although they were panicking a bit I managed to get a shot off that nailed the stinker before he finished either off was kinda funny watching that stinker chasing my running guys and firing random shots that missed by miles. Although... the fact that he never missed once when shooting my guys prior to spotting him but then very rarely hit after spotting still confuses me.

 

Moral of the story being that it might just be a good idea to actually look at a manual or barring that if something had a name like floaters expect them to be floating anywhere besides just at buildings and street level.

 

Anyway once I learned from that expensive mistake they never really gave me much of a hardship ever after, although the truly pathetic recruits sometimes miss more than they do and eventually die due to law of averges... which is just as good of an example of Darwin's law (about stupidity eventually killing itself off) as my stupid messup with the not looking up like the idiot that I sometimes find myself to be in hindsight.

 

As for them not being fear causing... to a veteran of course they would be seen as a laughing stock since they are all roar and no bite. But to a green from recruiting unit I'd dare imagine the initial sighting of a floater could be pretty terrifying for all of the few seconds before said floater died from a single pistol shot, heh.

[Neorapsta]

when you get flying suits and are on level(battlescape level of course) with them, it basically gives a new meaning to the term 'Turkey Shoot'

[the_dead]

I think the only way a floater could kill an experienced X-Com veteran is if the said veteran fell to the floor laughing at the sight of a flying pen .. AHEM .. floater with a plasma pistol.

[Pumpkinhead]

Why's everyone picking on the poor Floaters? Read this quote from the UFOpaedia:

 

The lower half of the body and most internal organs are surgically removed, and a life support system is installed. This implant contains an anti-grav unit which enables the creature to float, albeit unsteadily, through the air.

 

I mean, those poor fellas... How would you like to be "drastically altered by surgery" against your will... They've been sliced and diced by the Ethereals and Sectoids who didn't even install a quality product... If they had, the poor floaters wouldn't float "unsteadily" now would they... Dodgy superior aliens!... I think we should all be more sympathetic to the Floaters' plight

[JellyfishGreen]

I would be sympathetic if I hadn't lost two experienced, powersuited troopers to two floaters hiding in the same barn last night. Superhuman setting... The same team had "harvested" three intact floater supply ships with scarcely any losses, and then to be brought down during a crashed scout recovery that was supposed to be just training for the rookies... (sniff) It's painful.

 

Remember to look left AND right when checking those corners, people.

 

At superhuman level, standard grenades and HC-HE rounds do not always bring down floaters. When mutons show up, I'll have to stop even bothering to bring those along.

[EclipseDog]

Eh... personally I just drag along 1 laser weap and 1 plasma weap per trooper and totally forget about wasting space with those silly toys anyhow since the weight can quickly add up with them.

 

Nothing is immune to both of those two (except maybe the zombies... don't know since I tend to react overzealously when those body snatchers are around and tend to overkill if anything) which means that you can take down pretty much anything if you have a bunch of troopers shooting at a target in tandem. Laser pistol in one hand and plasma pistol in the other... not as much damage when hit but takes less TUs to shoot and don't lose accuracy from having both hands full which means not having to move weaps in and out of inventory in order to keep only one in hand at a time.

[JellyfishGreen]

No, for me this game-month it's one two-handed weapon per trooper, one alien grenade, one prox grenade. This gives you accuracy when firing, but if you need to nuke something out of sight, you can use your own grenade or use the relay. The HC-HE trooper carries a backup laser pistol but I keep the HC around for knocking down walls to clear shots for the other troopers. And putting Sectoids in their place, even on Superhuman.

 

I even have a pretty good record with the rocket launcher team - one guy has the loaded launcher, small reload rocket, and sidearm. His overwatch partner has heavy plasma and another heavy rocket reload or two in the backpack. The rocket launcher usually moves last - if none of the scouts have provided him with a target, he does a full move and doesn't bother saving TU for a snapshot. This allows him to keep up with the front line despite the considerable weight.

 

Floater Supply Ships - after staking out a Floater base and getting a recovery craft into position, I was hijacking a supply ship every week for a month, and be darned if I wasn't starting to follow a pattern. I had a modified Firestorm stalking them, with 6 soldiers and a HWP; after clearing the outside and sniping a few at the exit, I'd breach with a team of 3 at each door; clear the one or two aliens usually at the grav lifts, quickly peek into the engine room in passing (150 units of intact eleurim waiting, sweet); send one guy straight to the top floor to hide by the door, while the other two on his team go halfway up and bust open the shaft with plasma rounds; five guys sweep the middle deck. Usually the floaters are starting to panic by now. Then all six troops re-converge on the lift, head for the upper deck, and advance on the control room. First guy out of the lift turns right; the second turns left, checks the corner, then turns to stand next to the closed door; third advances past second guy to snipe towards control room; fourth (if time) enters closed door. Then it's just a matter of leapfrogging most of the team up the north corridor towards the control room with overwatch while one or two do a quick sweep of the narrow south corridor, perhaps opening a shortcut across the waist of the ship with heavy plasma along the way.

 

Occasionally I'd vary this routine by hitting the floor of the control room from below with HE-HC or stun rounds, but that could be considered cheating. But not as exploitative as the time I shoved a brick of HE up through the floor of the control room. A quick way to end the mission. Also fun is tossing HE or alien grenades into the diagonal walls at the back of the ship, near the lifts, from outside, with a long delay; if timed right, this kills anyone near the lifts inside just before the breaching team gets there. In mountain terrain, this might even destroy the outer wall at the waist of the ship! Easy lift access if I had stuck around!

 

And all that procedure comes from harsh experience, like the time I forgot to check the corner after coming out of the top level lift and was shot in the back.

 

And it got me a sectoid leader, too, once I had identified my weakest link and given him a standard pistol and smoke grenades. He was being alternately panicked and controlled somewhere out in the forest right up until the powersuits kicked in the control room door and hit the leader with stun rounds at point blank range. Up until that time every attempted supply ship hijacking or sectoid base raid had been a psi-attacked disaster.

[M. Hoz]

<<No more you know what references please>>

 

It's no wonder the floaters are so inaccurate-they float unsteadily!

They're not dumb at all either-see the "Alien Surgery" (I think that's the name)

in the UFOpedia.