XCOM Enemy Guide: Floater

XCOM Enemy Unknown was released in 2012.  It is a remake of the popular 1994 game.  XCOM is a turn based strategy game in which you try to halt an alien invasion.  You choose what you want to research and what you want your engineers to build, as well as managing your troops and relations with all of the countries in the XCOM project until a mission comes up.  Once you accept the mission you get a taste of the real gameplay.

You will drop 4-6 soldiers into an area where they will have one of several objectives, though you will always have to fight aliens, which will develop and you will end up fighting stronger enemies the farther into the game you progress.  Each turn your soldiers get two actions.  One is to move, and then you can move again or fire your weapon, reload, etc.  You will need to move your troops into cover, hopefully flanking the enemy’s position in order to get bonuses to aim and  critical hit chance.

The Floater is not one of the toughest enemies you will face in this game.  That being said, like everything you go up against in XCOM though, it is still incredibly dangerous.  Floaters move very quickly.  They zip around the map and can fly as well.  While flying, the floater usually will have an increased chance to hit your soldiers, as well as an extra 20% defense.  Floaters attack using light plasma rifles.

Floaters have good accuracy, with up to an extra 20% bonus from flying and their light plasma rifles.  They can do a lot of damage very quickly.  Fortunately, they have low health (only four) and throw themselves into the air, which usually gives everyone a line of sight.  As long as you are cautious and encounter floaters at the beginning of your turn, you should be able to kill all of them before they get a chance to shoot at you.

Now things almost never go that smoothly.  Floaters can easily rush into sight while you’re already in combat with other aliens.  If this happens, it is usually a good thing to attack the floaters, since there’s a good chance they won’t be in cover or that you will kill them because of their low health and initial defense ratings.  They also do just as much damage as mutons (before they are upgraded to plasma rifles) making them a better target.  Take into consideration that floaters do not have grenades though.

The other thing that floaters can do is fly up into the air and come down anywhere on the map.  The floater will always choose a position behind your troops that flanks as many of them as possible.  It consumes the floater’s entire turn though, allowing you to counter it on the following turn.  The floater is usually easily killed by running a soldier to flank it  and taking it out the very next turn.

Lastly, it is a good idea to capture and interrogate floaters as early as possible since they give you an armor research credit, which you will put to goo use very quickly.

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