This is my second time playing the fort level and much to my surprise I won with two soldiers remaining.
I didn’t kill a single shield crab directly, When they got within close range I scooted a unit a square or two to the side and on average took out their pincer arm in a single attack. After losing their only attack the shield crabs just ran around the level until they bled to death.
Now for the ever wonderful sniper crabs. During most of the mission they did a single tick of damage or two. This may have something to do with me hugging cover and watching where I was entering lines of fire. However, once I ran my sniper out to where a crate was (it contained sniper ammo my last game) he got dinged by a crab for a single point of damage and his rifle was destroyed. Not being able to target anything with his pistol I ran him to cover and ended turn. On the following alien activation he got shot to Swiss cheese. On the following activation I moved another unit forward attempting to disable the crab’s gun arm and he got blown from full health to confetti in one activation. I had another unit grenade the roof where it was standing to open up a line of fire and the crab quickly fell thereafter. These guys were more frustrating than anything else. Still haven’t seen them use a grenade yet though.
Lastly onto the queen bug. She smacked my heavy once for a few points of damage and gave him bleed. That was it for the entire match. When she appeared I took a few shots at her legs with with grenades and missiles until I got lucky and disabled a pincer. After I remembered that I could just break her arms I focused on the remaining claw. Once that went down she just stood on top of my remaining troops as they shot her in the butt until she died.
In closing:
The shield crabs were nothing more than a momentary distraction to eat up a bullet or two. Maybe give them a shield bash or headbutt once their arm is disabled?
The snipers were just jerks plain and simple.
I did more damage to my own heavy with a grenade that wasn’t supposed to hit him (once again he was outside the radius and somehow got hit) than the queen bug did.
The screen shooting to the side and bugging out was still annoying but entering manual fire mode seems to correct it.
This game is definitely the successor to Xcom. There was a sniper crab shooting me from within a room. I moved my heavy to the other side of the window where the crab was standing. He was close enough to flick a booger at the crab. I entered manual aim, zoomed in to the max and fired. I missed. The crab did this little jerk animation and every shot in the volley whizzed past it’s head. The only words I could say were “fuckin’ Xcom”.
Overall I think the only reason I was able to win the round was because i found a sniper rifle, pistol, and two grenades among the various stuff in the crates. There seems to be a uncomfortably high reliance on lucky pickups in my opinion.