How to deal with those launcher crabs

Hello,

I am roughly 20%ish in (based on mist spread…) so far. I feel I had a very solid crew of guys… mostly lvl 6. Decent gear. Shotguns, some faction weapons, etc. Things felt mostly great. Pleasantly expanding, getting more bases, etc.

Then these launcher crabs show up. What… the…

They literally spell death for my soldiers. I can’t even get in range in time. It’s like they know where to shoot even without seeing me. So they fire a volley of missles across the map and wreck faces. How is one supposed to counter that? Seemingly unlimited range, no build-up to fire it, knows exactly where to fire on the map with no vision, etc. I’ve tried multiple angles, from doing different loadouts, mad dashing up to it, etc. It’s too armored and with piles of life and I just can’t do anything.

Anyone have any thoughts? Makes me want to just kind of stop playing to be honest, with mechanics like that going on…

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They can certainly be a pain at times, however, knowing how their mechanics works provides some protection from their devastating grenade launchers.

Always be aware, they need a smooth trajectory path to your soldiers before they will use their grenade launchers, so being in the open when they are around is a no no. Unlike players who will use grenade launchers with no clear trajectory to a target but instead, will use the spash damage effect instead, the crab aliens will (from my observations) only fire when they can directly hit it’s target, even from afar.

Therefore soldiers who are between structures, or inside them will stop such attacks.

Snipers are great for targeting their launcher weapons from quite a distance, thereby disabling their main weapon sysytem, allowing your soldiers time to chisel their health down without fear of being killed by a couple of grenades from these guys.

Just stay in cover, (use structures as cover) use snipers to disable their main weapon system (which is not very armoured) then chisel their HP down.

Hope this helps.

Not sure if we are playing the same Game… in my game their “Abdomen” which houses the Weapon has 400 Health and 30 Armor. And is by far the most Durable part followed by the Torso with 200 Health and 30 Armor.

I mean going into cover is great an all…

The real issue is on a pandora nest. They sit all the way in the back of the map. I have no clear shot to them as there is piles of weird structures in the way. No enemy even has line of sight on me. They just “know” where to obliterate you, and there’s zero I can do to protect myself from it. Nowhere to hide. No “building”.

Nor can I climb up high enough to shoot over. The mission is literally resulting in a constant game-over as all my soldiers eventually get wiped with two of these crabs just one-shotting troops after roughly the second round.

I guess I have this hope that they fix this unlimited range stuff, as well as the whole shooting you with no line of sight mechanic.

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Actually never got to the point where it ran out of ammo, muccus or what ever it is throwing at you. It was either i got to kill it before that happend or it and its companions finished my squad first. So i dont even know if that tactic would work.