XCOM 2 Alien Analysis: Sectopod

HP: 30/28/32/40
Armor: 4/4/5/6
Defense: 0
Dodge: 0
Aim: 70
Mobility: 16/14/16/16 (9/18/27 on Regular, 10/21/31 otherwise)
Damage: 10-11 (+4)
Shred: 2
Crit Chance: 0/10%/10%/10%
Will: 50
Tech: 125/125/150/150

Yes, the Sectopod's Mobility and HP are higher on Rookie than Regular.

Oops!

Mechanical Chassis
This unit is a robot, rendering it immune to Poison, Fire, and Chryssalid Poison as well as most psionic or mental effects (Including that it will never Panic or be rendered Unconscious), but susceptible to anti-robot effects and impossible to heal with Medikits.

Bizarrely, the Sectopod doesn't actually have this listed as an actual ability, instead having the generic 'immunities' ability informing you that it's immune to Poison and Fire as well as mental effects. It absolutely, 100% is a robot, though, up to and including being hackable, taking bonus damage from Combat Protocol, and so on.

Bluescreen Rounds really comes into its own once Sectopods are running about, giving you a massively durable target where eg Fan Firing for 30~ damage isn't massive overkill. They're already great even before Sectopods show up, mind, but Sectopods make the difference between having Bluescreen Rounds vs not having them particularly stark.

Unlike all prior robots, the Sectopod is, as far as I'm aware, actually fearless, refusing to flee no matter how many of its buddies you kill. I'm... not 100% confident of this, as I endeavor to not let Sectopods get turns in the first place and they're an uncommon late-game-exclusive enemy, so it is possible I've simply not given them enough opportunities for deciding to flee, but I'd be quite surprised if they are willing to flee in the face of serious losses, as they're the first of two 'boss' enemies in the regular list, and the game has a lot of special rules for these two.

Massive
Is a 2x2 tile unit.

Another example of something not explicitly listed in-game, which I'm borrowing an icon from the previous game and assigning a name for convenience purposes.

Curiously, I've seen other parts of the internet claim Sectopods are a 3x3 unit, but while they certainly look large enough for that, you can easily affirm that they're not by using melee targeting: you'll end up with a ring around 4 tiles, said ringed tiles being of course the Sectopod.

It's also worth noting that Sectopods cannot rise in Z-levels, with the only exception being they'll pop up short ledges. Heights your own soldiers need to climb or Grapple to reach are utterly beyond a Sectopod's grasp, especially as XCOM 2 is loathe to use ramps; there's occasionally stairs inside buildings, but that's about it, with most significant height differences being traversed via climb points/hopping straight down. Humorously, mission generation is still perfectly happy to place them in locations they can't naturally reach, such as on Avatar Project Facility roofs, or on top of UFOs. It's not like the game is willing to airdrop in Sectopods...

Anyway: hooray! The return of 2x2 massiveness of classic X-COM!

On the topic of that comparison, it should be explicitly stated that XCOM 2 does not recreate the janky mechanics of the classic X-COM games when it comes to extra-large units where they're actually four separate units stapled together and pretending they're a cohesive whole. You won't hit a Sectopod 4 times with a single well-tossed Plasma Grenade, or aim a hacking attempt at a specific corner to share control with your enemies, or otherwise see anything weird in that particular vein happen. The game also makes a point of ensuring that 2x2 units can't stop on anything other than a 2x2 square of flat ground: they can move across uneven terrain, but you won't see eg a Sectopod stop with half its tiles on a cliff edge and the other half hanging in the air.

At least, it's good enough about this that I have never seen it happen.

It's also worth pointing out that, outside the final mission, 2x2 units are always the pod leader and never come in groups. So if you're careful about pulling pods, you'll never face more than one Sectopod at a time outside of the final mission, where at most you'll deal with two Sectopods at once.

Sectopods also are one of two enemies from the base-base game that use 'boss' spawn routines by default, with the other example also being a 2x2 enemy. By this I mean if a mission generates with a Sectopod, the game will prefer to place the Sectopod's pod near the objective zone; in most mission types this means the Sectopod pod will be found nearby the objective (Usually a little behind it, specifically), or the evac point if the mission starts with one pre-placed. This means initially you're extremely unlikely to have a Sectopod pod be your first encounter in any given mission, and indeed they'll often be the last pod you encounter.

I specify 'initially' because the game is eventually willing to have multiple Sectopods in individual missions. (I've personally never seen more than 2 in a single mission outside of Avenger assaults; this is probably an actual hard cap, but I haven't dug around in the code to confirm it) When there's two or more pods using the boss spawn routine, only one of them will get priority; thus, if a mission has two Sectopods, one of them will be back by the objective, but the other will take a random spawn slot like any regular pod, and this may well be the very first pod you encounter. (Chosen Avenger Assaults are an exception to this exception; when they have multiple boss pods, generally all those pods are clustered toward the very back of the map, rather than just one of them)

Also worth mentioning is that one plot mission has a special Sectopod encounter. The first, most obvious way this encounter is special is that the Sectopod will appear even if you hit the mission well before Sectopods are supposed to be in rotation. The second, still fairly obvious, point is that this Sectopod is a loner, with no podmates, as the game is attempting to ease you into the idea of fighting Sectopods. Third and more subtle, and why I'm mentioning it here at all, is that this Sectopod is always placed toward the front of the mission's map (Usually on your side of the canyon, but sometimes it's on the other side), instead of back by the objective; it's not unusual for it to be the first pod you spot in this mission.

Anyway, returning to the 'boss' spawn routine point, DLC complicates it a bit, because the Alien Rulers from Alien Hunters get priority for the slot, as do the Chosen in War of the Chosen. The Alien Ruler point is unlikely to matter in the base game -even the last Alien Ruler enters rotation noticeably before Sectopods are first allowed to do so- but in War of the Chosen the Chosen deciding to spawn into a mission can lead to a lone Sectopod spawning well away from the objective zone, and Integrated DLC makes it far more plausible for an Alien Ruler to end up doing the same. So don't just assume your first Sectopod will be sitting in back of the map...

... especially if it shows up in a Retaliation mission, as these are really bad about defining the 'objective zone' as an area near the center of the map, and so often the 'boss' routine will place them quite close to your starting position.

Also, I mentioned it when covering the Frost Bomb, but it bears repeating: massive units are semi-immune to Freeze, in that they break out of it on their turn and, though the game announces them losing an action point, in actuality they suffer no ill effect whatsoever. Freeze is thus only useful against them if for some reason you want the +10 Aim it will provide for one whole turn. Feel free to catch them incidentally when lobbing at real targets, but don't expect it to buy you even a single turn of safety from a Sectopod.

That's what Stasis is for.

Wall Smash
Can freely walk through destructible terrain, destroying it.

The Sectopod doesn't actually have this listed in-game, and certainly doesn't use the Andromedon's icon for it. I'm not sure why it has no icon for it. Sectopods are one of the most consistent enemies in the game about smashing through stuff, even when not currently visible to your forces.

In any event, unlike the Andromedon, the Sectopod needs Wall Smash, since it can't exactly walk through doors with its 2x2 area. For that matter, it's so tall it smashes through walls above ground level! I've labeled the 2x2 quality 'Massive' for a reason: all such units in XCOM 2 aren't merely ground-consuming, they're tall.

So the Sectopod needs Wall Smash to be able to navigate maps even minimally competently, honestly, in addition to it making intuitive sense for something so massive to be able to crash through terrain your soldiers consider impassable barriers.

Even with it, there are maps where it's possible to move soldiers completely out of reach of a Sectopod: an adequately 'deep' clifftop area, for example.

Fortunately, the game is careful to minimize the problems therein. Most high ground on most maps is destructible and isn't large enough to get serious distance from a Sectopod anyway, and indestructible high ground tends to be fairly abbreviated, such as a relatively thin stretch of clifftop skirting some of the map edge. The tendency to put some kind of time pressure on you in most missions also contributes: you can't just spot a Sectopod with a Reaper and then have Sharpshooters snipe it at your leisure, because that's too slow for a lot of missions, even if the terrain makes it feasible. Only a handful of map/mission type intersections are liable to make this moderately exploitable behavior actually feasible.

Also, an issue that can crop up with a Sectopod and not an Andromedon is that being a 2x2 unit sometimes creates bizarre pathing outcomes where eg a Sectopod circles around a vehicle and the vehicle explodes, even though the Sectopod isn't able to walk through cars and so on. I'm not entirely sure what the engine is doing to produce this bizarre outcome, but my best guess is that it has to do with the game considering the Sectopod's center to be, in fact, its center, even though that's at the intersection of four tiles when it's not moving: maybe a moving Sectopod is pathing as if its center is going through proper tiles, and then collision detection is extending out a half-tile beyond that in every direction? Whatever the case, this can be convenient when fighting Sectopods, but is also something to be careful of when controlling one.

Anyway, unsurprisingly...

Hardened
Does not use Cover, but is never considered to be in the open.

... a walking tank the size of a house and clad in the second-thickest Armor in the game has no ability to cower behind conventional Cover and no need for it either. In conjunction with their 0 Defense, missing should not generally be a concern.

Though the converse to this is that the Sectopod is particularly fearless about advancing, making it dangerously prone to getting flanking shots, especially thanks to...

Overclocked
Has three action points.

... this.

I'm re-using the Overdrive ability icon from the Enemy Within Mec here, as the game itself has no UI elements for this aspect. No name, no icon. The only indication you get of it is their behavior and the fact that if you're controlling one it will have the 3+ action point icon at the start of its turn instead of the usual 2 action points icon.

If this was on its own, it wouldn't be too big a deal (Mostly you'd have to worry about their disturbingly excellent flanking potential), but of course it's combined with...

Bullet Swarm
Using any offensive ability other than Wrath Cannon does not end the Sectopod's turn, and they cost only one action point.

... this.

As with Overclocked, there is in-game icon or name for this quality, and in fact the icon and name I'm using is literally just me borrowing the Heavy's Bullet Swarm ability from the prior game.

Curiously, reloading ends the Sectopod's turn where normally that's not a turn-ending action. (They have 4 ammo by default, for reference) Also curiously, the Sectopod can't Headshot Lost, making them unexpectedly effective at distracting Sectopods. Not something to rely on -you should still just kill Sectopods before they get a chance to act whenever possible- but if you're in a desperate situation it may save you.

Conversely, Sectopods are uniquely threatening in Retaliation missions, as the game only allowing one pod leader to attack per turn doesn't include any special clauses if the selected pod leader happens to be a Sectopod; it's absolutely possible for a Sectopod to shoot a civilian, wander elsewhere, and kill another civilian, all while still inactive. I wouldn't be surprised if they can kill three civilians in one turn, though I've personally never seen it happen. Regardless, this means you should endeavor to find and kill the Sectopod pod early if a Retaliation mission includes one; if you're scouting with a Reaper, it may be worth considering skirting around other pods, even.

Also a mechanics point I'm uncertain of is Overwatch: my own experience is you can't order a Sectopod to enter Overwatch, but the AI can do so, even if it's a rare thing to actually see. I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. Thankfully, it's not terribly important outside Challenges: it's not like you can have a hacked Sectopod participate in an Overwatch ambush.

Anyway, this shot-spam ability, of course, a returning quality of the prior game's Sectopods. Thankfully, XCOM 2's Sectopods do not have the exploding shots that wreck Cover and catch multiple soldiers that the prior game's Sectopods wielded to devastating effect. Indeed, the visuals and audio of a Sectopod firing its primary weapon are exceedingly similar to a Turret firing, and so are the mechanics: it's just a regular shot.

Mind, if you're playing on Legendary or manually disable the game cheating for you by preventing your Cover from being destroyed, you have to worry about the possibility of them firing on someone, missing but vaporizing their Cover, and then shooting twice and killing the soldier. They're not likely to do this, but I've had it happen.

Note that the Sectopod has an extremely strong preference for attack->move->attack again, with the third action often being Wrath Cannon if you leave some units close to it. Occasionally I've had a Sectopod go move->attack->move again, but this is uncommon. Regardless, even though in player-controlled hands it can fire three times in a turn, the AI is coded to be reluctant to do so; it can happen, but it happens very rarely. They're also generally reluctant to simply fire twice in a row, and indeed one of the AI config files references this behavior as being stopped because it looks silly.

The Sectopod's attack animations pops out a turret from the top, fires it, and then puts it back in storage. Immediately pulling the turret back out for the next shot would, indeed, look odd. I don't feel that's an adequately good reason to cripple the Sectopod's AI, but my point is I've got dev-level confirmation this limitation exists, in addition to the observed strong tendency to avoid chaining shots. Indeed, I've wondered if they were given 3 action points because of this AI limitation, so they can have the limitation while still shooting twice most turns.

Also worth pointing out is that the AI's preferred Sectopod behavior makes them an unusually decent target for Suppression, as they're liable to take their first shot while Suppressed. You shouldn't rely on this as a defensive tool, but if things have gone badly wrong where you can't kill or disable the Sectopod, while happening to have a Suppression-capable Grenadier still able to act, it may save the day: if all your soldiers are in High Cover, Suppression will ensure that first shot misses. Even if there are people in Low Cover, they'll still have only a 20% chance to be hit.

Conversely, Tactical Analysis is both more and less useful against Sectopods than against most enemies. More, because it's usually directly cutting into their per-turn firepower due to their reluctance to shoot twice in a row. Less, because it doesn't prevent them from re-positioning and eg taking a flanking shot the way standard shooter enemies are barred from doing by Tactical Analysis. Also less by virtue of making Suppression unreliable against Sectopods: a Sectopod hit by Tactical Analysis is fairly prone to behaving like any other 2-action-point enemy, which is to say moving and then firing, thus preventing Suppression from lowering the accuracy of their attack. Not always, but quite often.

High Stance
Can switch freely (At no action point cost and with no cooldown) between Low Stance and High Stance: Low Stance is normal behavior. High Stance raises the Sectopod's firing position 3 Z-levels for purposes of calculating whether it gets height advantage or not and also causes Wall Smash to extend upward appropriately. (Your own troops still use the location of its feet to calculate height advantage, even though their firing animations target its 'head')

The Sectopod will pretty much always start its first turn by entering High Stance, and then proceed to never leave it. This makes sense, as outside a handful of edge cases that the AI clearly isn't coded to account for this is 100% advantageous to it; in maps with fairly flat terrain, it's basically boosting its Aim to 90, which is one of the highest values enemies can get in XCOM 2, with no meaningful disadvantage. The only time AI-controlled Sectopods will elect to exit High Stance of their own volition is when they spot a good Wrath Cannon opportunity that requires Low Stance to line up the shot correctly.

No, High Stance does not make the Sectopod good at climbing Z-levels or anything like that, in spite of its long legs looking like they could theoretically allow it to climb fairly high. Indeed, the long legs aren't really accounted for in the animations at all: when going up or down small ledges, the Sectopod won't adjust its gait or anything, pretty blatantly jerking the entire model up or down as it hits higher/lower ground. It's one of the uglier bits of animation in XCOM 2.

Anyway, Sectopods are already huge, but with High Stance they'll casually be smashing through roofs, can fire on soldiers hiding on rooftops in spite of not being able to climb, etc. The game itself treats their location for targeting purposes as basically a cylinder or something filling the entire space: even if an attack or firing angle seems like it should be going right between its legs, the game will still declare that valid for doing damage to it; you can illustrate this very easily with a Plasma Blaster, for example, but it can also be pretty noticeable with standard weapons fire.

Indeed, one subtle and general mechanic of XCOM 2 is that the game is willing to work with partially obscured firing lines when destructible terrain is doing the obscuring. In such cases, the resulting shot will destroy whatever object it has to visually pass through, regardless of how strong the shot was and how durable the chunk of terrain was. This is pretty noticeable, since normally successful shots don't damage terrain, and can get very blatant when fighting Sectopods in particular due to your soldiers firing at the head even if they only have a clear line of fire on the feet: you can easily end up with a soldier firing directly through a rooftop, if there's a High Stance Sectopod standing just outside the building the soldier is hiding in.

It's somewhat fortunate Sectopods are a late-game enemy, as this bit of bending the rules is reasonably natural-feeling with magnetic and beam weapons; it's a lot more jarring to see it happen with conventional-tier weaponry, since they're so bad at damaging terrain, but in normal play you'll have long since moved on from those by the time you've encountered your first Sectopod.

Also, while you might expect a High Stance Sectopod to be able to step over other units, alas, they cannot. Thanks to Wall Smash and the AI's preference for spreading out this isn't generally an actual problem, but it's one of many examples of High Stance being a bit of a kludge in implementation.

High Stance as a game design element feels a bit pointless, unfortunately. The stance mechanic mostly serves to minimize the destruction unseen Sectopods cause while patrolling, and they still tend to punch holes in walls and trample Cover elements before you find them. It might've been better for Sectopods to have been designed exclusively with the standing-tall state, honestly.

Lightning Field
7-9 damage, ignoring up to 3 points of Armor, to all units within 2.5 tiles of the outer edge of its feet. 1 turn cooldown.

Surprisingly, this ignores the Templar's Parry. Just one more reason why Templar are really, really bad against Sectopods. And to be clear, this doesn't end the Sectopod's turn: it can fry people in reach and then go on to shoot people.

Amusingly, Sectopods are completely careless about friendly fire with the Lightning Field, perfectly happy to fry their podmates if it means catching one of your soldiers. This isn't particularly exploitable since it does ignore Parry, but it can be useful to keep in mind in a particularly bad situation.

Overall, though, Lightning Field is less relevant than you might expect. Even when you leave soldiers in Lightning Field's radius, Sectopods are quite prone to ignoring the option in favor of movement or their other attacks, so much so that I spent quite a while first unaware they had it at all, and then even once I knew they had it I spent a long time wondering if their AI was incapable of actually using it, because I actually first learned of it via controlling a Sectopod in a Challenge. If you just pretend they don't have it, you can easily go several runs without this creating problems for you. You shouldn't, just in case a Sectopod abruptly remembers its taser field at the worst possible moment, but my point is that they really are weirdly reluctant to use it.

Also, to be clear, I'm referring to its feet when describing the blast radius because it's exclusively down at the ground level. A High Stance Sectopod that rubs its 'face' up against some poor rooftop soldier can't actually zap them with Lightning Field. This contributes to Lightning Field rarely mattering, because if you're taking high ground the Sectopod won't be able to get your people with it at all.

The animation itself is mildly interesting in that the electrical effects bear a distinct resemblance, both in visuals and audio, to the Stun Lancer's melee weapon's effects when used. Fortunately, Lightning Field doesn't get the devastating side effects Stun Lancers going for melee strikes roll for, but it's suggestive that in-universe they're supposed to be related technology. That's kind of nifty.

Anyway, probably the biggest reason Lightning Field sees so little use is that quite often a situation suited to Lightning Field is also a tempting target for...

Wrath Cannon
Ends the turn to no immediate effect having visibly targeted an area. If the Sectopod is still alive on the following turn, it immediately and unavoidably hits everything currently in the previously targeted area for 9-12 damage, as well as destroying all destructible terrain elements in the area. It then gets its full turn of 3 action points: the Wrath Cannon firing costs it nothing. Initiating Wrath Cannon has a 2 turn cooldown.

... Wrath Cannon.

Wrath Cannon is, of course, clearly a return to the Cluster Bomb idea of the prior game's Sectopod, but made shorter-range and less janky on a code level. Though on an ergonomic level it's a bit of a downgrade, as it's less clear exactly what area is being targeted. It's thus easier to stop someone where you think they're a tile or three out of the blast zone, only for it to turn out they're inside it and now they're dead.

Anyway, as far as actual gameplay goes, Sectopods love to go for Wrath Cannon if a soldier is in reach when they get down to their final action point. They don't even need multiple targets to decide they want to do it, never mind that the delay means it's usually trivially avoided. Among other points, the rather short range on Wrath Cannon means it's fairly unlikely you've got a Sharpshooter being threatened by it and resenting losing out on a Sniper Rifle shot.

In practice, Wrath Cannon is generally a relief to see a Sectopod initiate. An action point spent on Wrath Cannon is an action point not spent trying to kill someone this turn, its blast radius is small enough it's easily escaped the vast majority of the time, and often you'll be able to kill the Sectopod before it even gets its next turn, making Wrath Cannon a wasted action point outright. As a bonus, the AI does not understand that it should be avoiding the target zone, and will happily walk soldiers inside to be grievously injured without any effort on your part.

That said, Stun Lancers and Priests are both complications to keep in mind, as they're both allowed to escort Sectopods and are both able to cut into a soldier's ability to escape the Wrath Cannon zone. A Stasised soldier in particular cuts you down to exactly one option: dealing with the Sectopod before it can actually fire the Wrath Cannon. And since a Sectopod is normally the leader of its pod, the AI being coded to ignore Stasised soldiers won't help if they're all the same pod: the Sectopod will go first, aim its Wrath Cannon, and then the Priest Stasising the soldier Wrath Cannon was aimed at can happen.

So be particularly careful of pods that include a Sectopod plus one or both of Priests and Stun Lancers.

Anyway, note that Wrath Cannon is considered an explosion for Lost purposes, drawing in more waves. Also note that Parry doesn't block Wrath Cannon. Not that Parry would be much protection if you leave a Sectopod alive and that close anyway, but still.

Also note that Wrath Cannon has a three-dimensional strike zone, which can occasionally lead to a Sectopod dropping out of High Stance so it can aim its Wrath Cannon at someone, and in general makes it a bit of a pain to properly parse where is safe to stand vs extremely lethal.

Visually, Wrath Cannon is... a thing?

For starters, the Sectopod popping out its main turret in the process is pretty inexplicable. The lasers playing over everything is reasonably decent as a signal to the player that something is happening you should avoid, but pretty confusing from an in-universe standpoint, and unfortunately the lasers don't actually cleanly match to Wrath Cannon's strike zone, making them unhelpful for figuring out where to stand to be safe beyond 'that area in front of the Sectopod': I actually spent a bit under the impression Wrath Cannon extended past line of sight, due to how generous the laser visualization is! I'm honestly surprised the devs didn't just have one of your support staff verbally forewarn you of Wrath Cannon; it would've been clearer on the danger, and honestly not particularly worse at communicating where you shouldn't be standing. The Sectopod gets treated as a known thing, too, not a heretofore unseen threat your team is unaware of the capabilities of.

It's not the worst thing, but it's pretty weird, overall.

Explosive
The Sectopod explodes on death, doing 5 damage and 2 Shred to all units within two tiles and vaporizing destructible terrain in that same radius.

The game doesn't explicitly list anywhere that Sectopods explode on death, and just like with Purifiers this icon certainly isn't used by the game itself.

Nonetheless, they do explode on death. In conjunction with Lightning Field, it's a really bad idea to pile melee onto a Sectopod: if it lives, it can fry your bunched-up soldiers. If it dies, it will do an alarming amount of damage to them in its death throes. Templar can Momentum away from a live Sectopod, at least, but Rangers should just not risk it unless you're going to gift them an extra turn, or I suppose you could use Stasis Shield to protect them but that's a bit wasteful.

Also note that this explosion is a fairly 3-dimensionsal effect whose exact shape is affected by whether the Sectopod is in High Stance or not, unlike Lightning Field. A soldier standing atop a roof a Sectopod is nuzzling is going to get blown up. A soldier on a really high roof might be safe from the explosion of a Sectopod that hasn't entered High Stance yet, but is going to get blown up if the Sectopod is standing tall and close to the soldier's position. Treating high ground as inherently protective from the death explosion is going to get people grievously injured, very possibly killed. Maybe not immediately from the explosion and fall damage, but the fall is liable to leave them vulnerable to a follow-up shot from other enemies and low enough on HP basically any hit will kill them.

If you're reliable about killing Sectopods without them getting a turn, the explosion is often actually advantageous. While the AI endeavors to spread out, for whatever reason Sectopods often end up close enough to one, sometimes both, of their podmates for their death explosion to catch them, after the initial pod activation scramble. And on turns past that scramble, it's really obvious that Sectopods don't really care about keeping their distance from their buddies, though since they're usually going first this is less prone to mattering than one might expect; their buddies will go after them and still usually try to keep away from the Sectopod. Stun Lancers are technically an exception, but their obsession with melee attacks in practice tends to put them in very different positions from Sectopods; in spite of having Lightning Field and no need for Cover, Sectopods don't usually get close to your squad.

But it still sometimes happens even past the initial scramble, such as if the Sectopod wanders next to a Priest and the Priest decides to use Holy Warrior followed by shooting or Mind Control: the AI's preference for spreading out only influences where they decide to move to when moving. It doesn't impel them to move if they're currently clumped up.

I've talked before about how many enemies in XCOM 2 are designed so that they make complicated or tricky situations even harder to cope with, but are generally not so dangerous on their own. The Sectopod is the biggest exception to this rule: it doesn't really do anything tricky to synergize with other units. Mostly, it's a slab of metal that refuses to die and does alarming amounts of damage. If a Sectopod elects to target one of your soldiers twice in a single turn, and lands both shots... they're dead, if there's no complicating factors like Sustain. (Even if you take extreme measures to boost durability, their crits are incredibly powerful, so a soldier able to comfortably survive two non-crits can easily end up dead anyway) This makes it essentially unique among regular enemies, where it's basically always unacceptable to leave it alive and not some form of disabled or controlled for even a single turn. Most enemies have conditions under which you can shrug and focus on other targets first. Not Sectopods.

In turn, this makes it very important to be very ready for any mission that does or might contain a Sectopod. One angle is to consistently bring a Hack-boosted Specialist: with a high enough Hack rating, it's possible to get a fairly reliable chance to grab it, and it's certainly possible to get to a 100% chance of Stunning it. Either way, it makes it not your problem for a bit, allowing you to focus on other threats or take the Sectopod itself apart at a more leisurely pace.

This tends to rely on consistently bringing a specific soldier into every mission, which isn't too problematic in the base game but in War of the Chosen is risky thanks to the Fatigue mechanic, even though you can more reliably grind up the Hack stat via Covert Ops. A more reliable, resistant plan is to make sure to bring plenty of Shred. Ideally you luck into Acid Grenades and upgrade your explosives so they're Acid Bombs, but just building some heavy armor so you can bring Rockets in is decent, and of course SPARKs, Grenadiers with Shredder, and anyone else who rolls Shredder as a bonus skill can consistently contribute Shred without even having to worry about conserving it.

Also useful is having a Fan Fire Sharpshooter with Bluescreen Rounds. As Bluescreen Rounds are not locked behind RNG, this is a very reliable way to provide massive damage against Sectopods. Just make sure to apply Shred beforehand for best results. Less impressive but still relevant is Bluescreen Rounds Rangers (Rapid Fire), Grenadiers (Chain Fire), or a Reaper. (Banish. Potentially more effective than Fan Fire, but can only be used once per mission, and multiple Sectopods can show up within a single mission) Stasis from a Psi Operative is also worth considering taking advantage of: remember that you can do a bunch of damage and then Stasis.

The Sectopod is the single most significant example of an enemy you do not want to be accidentally activating when half your squad has used up its turn...

... and I think this works very well! I didn't like how the previous game tended to primarily make enemies more threatening by making them directly better at killing your troops while taking longer to die themselves, but the Sectopod works very well in context. Having it be so quick to kill people makes it a number one priority, and in turn gives other enemies the opportunity to do their complicate-battles thing instead of you just straight-up killing them. It's an interesting, fun dynamic, and does a lot to make the Sectopod a memorable, distinctive enemy: nothing else in the game puts you under the form of pressure the Sectopod does.

It's one of the best-designed enemies of the game, in fact, making the late game a treat. My main complaint with the Sectopod's design is actually how rarely you'll fight them: they take a long time to show up, and are prone to being completely displaced by Gatekeepers after just a few missions.

War of the Chosen helps less than you might think with this, as Chosen Strongholds are actually completely forbidden from ever containing Sectopods. This is true of both parts, even. In conjunction with the potential for Sitreps to block Sectopod spawn opportunities (Savage, Psionic Storm, and The Horde will all prevent Sectopods from spawning), it's actually possible to have a War of the Chosen run encounter Sectopods exactly three times: one at the Forge, two in the final mission, and one from a non-fixed encounter.

The game has a routine where the game will force every enemy to spawn at least once in the campaign: it's not possible for multiple Sitreps to block Sectopods from spawning and then Gatekeepers take over with no Sectopod spawn occurring. The game will keep shoving Sectopods into (valid) mission generation until you actually do a mission containing a Sectopod. So you'd have to basically rush to the endgame fast enough Sectopods don't have the chance to enter rotation at all to avoid encountering them outside fixed generation cases...

... but still. I always end up wishing I had more missions with Sectopods in a given run. They're fun and interesting to fight!


The Sectopod Autopsy is fairly important if you like to have your Specialists use their Gremlins offensively, as it unlocks Mark III Gremlins. If you tend to use your Specialists primarily as medics who shoot at things (eg taking Covering Fire over Threat Assessment), you can get away with ignoring it, or at least putting it off a while, as you're just missing out on 1 HP per heal and +10 Defense on Aid Protocol. Or if you tend to not actually use Specialists, though this would be a pretty strange thing to do in the base game. More understandable in War of the Chosen, but still a little strange.

Note that Sectopod wrecks have no further use once you've performed the Autopsy, and thus can be freely sold once you've completed it. Or beforehand, if you don't care about upgrading your Gremlins fully.

On a different topic, the Sectopod Autopsy is probably the biggest strain on suspension of disbelief out of all Autopsies. For starters, how did your crew even haul this massive thing back to the Avenger, given it wouldn't even fit in the Skyranger? For another, as wacky as it is, Sectopods explode into itty-bitty fragments when killed, and then the Autopsy has a barely-damaged hulk to work with! It makes me wonder if at some point Sectopods were supposed to leave behind an environmental object that could be used as Cover and so on, simply falling over instead of exploding into shards, or something in that vein, and the explosion completely vaporizing them was a kludge to excuse the lack of a body left behind when that proved unviable.

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It's pretty obvious the Sectopod underwent a radical concept shift fairly late in development, and that said shift didn't fully penetrate the team's minds.

Visually, its design is an ADVENT design. It has the ADVENT logo on its legs. It has a 'head' that looks very similar to the front of ADVENT aerial transports. It uses the default ADVENT color scheme of black with red highlights. Its primary weapon is a magnetic weapon, with very similar visuals and sound effects to ADVENT Turrets. And mechanically, it's treated as the ultimate ADVENT pod leader; it will normally be escorted by ADVENT soldiers, not Aliens.

Yet when you encounter a Sectopod for the first time, Shen informs you that Sectopods are what the Aliens used to run roughshod over human militaries back in the original invasion. Also, its target icon is an Alien head, where eg ADVENT Mecs use the ADVENT head icon; it's not that robots get Alien head icons.

This contradiction then gets contradicted by Shen's Last Gift, where it's heavily implied Sectopods were developed after the invasion. This, notably, is consistent with cut content of a prototype Sectopod you would've fought at the Forge, where in the actual game you fight a regular Sectopod at the Forge, its only unusual characteristic being that it has no podmates.

So the game is pretty confused, in the final product, when it comes to the Sectopod backstory...

This all means I'm unsure how to take the Sectopod, visually and secondarily narratively. If I accept the 'ADVENT developed it after the invasion' backstory, it's a solid enough design, with my only complaint being the ongoing trend of dark colors... and even that doesn't necessarily bug me, given the game's handling of Sectopods allows for the possibility that they're not known to the general public. (Well, actually, it does bug me, but primarily because the Prototype's color scheme is so much cooler than the grey version. I'm amazed I can't find a mod for switching all Sectopods to this color scheme) You have to ignore Shen knowing them on sight, but you have to ignore that anyway if you take the interpretation they were developed later, since she's explicitly saying the aliens used them during the invasion.

If you do ignore that, the only mandated encounters are in top-secret facilities whose existence is a tightly-guarded secret, requiring hacking into alien psionic computer systems to get leads on, while non-fixed encounters will only occur very late in the game. It's easy to buy that Sectopods aren't PR-friendly because there was zero intention for the general public to ever know they existed, with their deployment in regular missions late in the game being, in this interpretation, evidence of the Ethereals getting really sick of X-COM, to the point that they're willing to throw blatant war machines into city limits to 'hunt terrorists' without worrying how the public will feel about rampaging death-robots stomping their cars and ramming through homes and businesses.

In that scenario, I don't have any complaints with the design at all. I personally think it ends up looking a little silly in High Stance, but not overbearingly so, especially given it's presumably made from Alien Alloys and so any concerns about load-bearing capacity can be largely waved off.

Conversely, if, as Shen indicates, it's supposed to be a retcon of the prior game's Sectopod where this exact design went around blowing up tanks and whatnot and the prior Sectopod design never existed... well, for one thing, the ADVENT marking and the visual similarities to eg ADVENT aircraft are pretty bizarre in that scenario, and indeed potentially setting-breakingly-so. (eg if the ADVENT symbol is just an alien symbol, one they had slapped on one of their most prominent weapons, why would anyone believe that ADVENT is earthly governments willingly partnering with the aliens? The world government would be blatantly using an alien icon as its symbol!)

For another, what's the goal in retconning the design?

This is a recurring issue with returning aliens, compounded by how XCOM 2 can't seem to quite make up its mind about whether the new designs are, in-universe, how things always were, or if they're supposed to be a change in-universe, up to and including one cinema showing renditions of many of the prior game's designs. Is it a retcon? Is it not? If it is, why did they want to retcon these designs? If it isn't, why did they make it sound like some of these new designs are retcons?

I do overall think the design looks decent enough, regardless, but the uncertainty of what the devs were thinking when designing the Sectopod makes it difficult to be sure how well its design fits to its intended function.

Anyway, the Sectopod is a decent opportunity to talk about something handled a bit poorly by XCOM 2: enemy names.

When you Autopsy a Sectopod, the Report explains that the troops call Sectopods Sectopods because they thought they had a Sectoid pilot. That's okay as an explanation in isolation -and doubles as an allusion to The Bureau, where Sectopods were piloted by Sectoids- but in context it's pretty eyebrow-raising: while XCOM 2 seems to be confused as to whether the Sectopod is an alien war machine used in the initial invasion or a more recently designed ADVENT unit, at no point is the Sectopod treated as clearly a secret. You'd think there'd be an official ADVENT or Ethereal name that would be known to X-COM one way or another.

Enemy names in the base game pretty consistently have issues like this: returning aliens are still identified by the familiar names that the prior game told us were terms your soldiers or scientists made up, up to and including that eg the Hunter will explicitly name Mutons as Mutons in one bit of dialogue, even though we ought to know whatever it is the aliens call them after twenty years of open occupation. Andromedons get an unexplained name that seems likely to be the 'real' species name even though your support staff all react like they've never seen or heard of this particular species. Vipers get a name that has to be an Earth-derived name, not whatever the aliens call them, even though again we should know their internal name by now given nobody acts like it's weird to see them on the streets. Codices get explicitly named as such by Tygan, with no explanation as to why he uses that term, even though they're a super-secret anti-intrusion tool. ADVENT troops generally make more or less sense on a consistent basis... but honestly, about half of that is that their names tend to be straightforward descriptors and your support staff rarely use the in-game name: Bradford doesn't actually call Shieldbearers by name, instead talking about having heard rumors of a 'heavy infantry armor' system and guessing this is it. Troopers get introduced as 'these guys are the bulk of the ADVENT troops we've dealt with'. Etc. It's difficult to make a name nonsensical when you're just telling the player that's a turret of ADVENT's, rather than giving it a proper name.

Amusingly, Officers are a notable exception, but one where clearly something changed in development, as your support staff are 100% consistent about referring to ADVENT Officers as ADVENT Captains. I suspect this has to do with the tier system, like maybe Officers originally had their tiers progress through ranks in name (eg Basic/Advanced/Elite might've been Captain/Major/Colonel, like your own rank terms) and that got cut to avoid confusing players. ("Skulljack an ADVENT Captain!" "But those have stopped appearing??" "Well actually we just mean a Captain or any of its elite forms, but there's only one dialogue prompt to avoid spoilers so you're just gonna have to figure that out on your own")

To be fair, Archons seem to basically make sense: while nobody explicitly says that ADVENT/the aliens call them Archons, bits like Tygan's reaction to the Archon King treat the Archon name pretty matter-of-factly, and they're explicitly positioned as a kind of public face, so it certainly seems intended that Archon is their official in-universe name for in-universe sensible reasons. The next couple of aliens also more or less work, though we'll get to them when we get to them, and notably War of the Chosen is a lot more coherent in this regard: Spectres are the only new enemy whose name might or might not make sense, and that's only in the sense that if they come back in a later game where we ought to know their species name but we're still calling them Spectres it won't make sense. For the moment, they work fine.

But for a lot of base-game enemies, the name is frequently positioned as an in-universe thing where it doesn't make much sense in-universe, Sectopod included.

The fact that War of the Chosen is more coherent does give me hope XCOM 3 will be similarly improved in coherency, at least.

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Next time, we cover the final regular enemy of the game: the Gatekeeper.

See you then.