How are you supposed to beat sectopods?

[Arcanum Elite]

I havent had any issues thruout the entire game.. ive been playing on easy though but once i hit sectopods.. my soldiers just got fking raped... sectopods do like 11 damage a hit and can fire twice in a single turn.... whoever they target just instantly dies and with their height advantage there is nothing i can do about it... they always hit and instantly kill whoeever they target...

i lost a full squad of my best soldiers on a mission where i ran ito 2 sectopods at once inside a small bulding... my soldiers got torn apart like they were nothing... even full cover didnt matter cus sectopods always have height advantage and hit anyways... how the ♥♥♥♥ do you beat these things.. they have like 30 hp and 4 armor...

[ha]

O yesss....Those buggers are HARD. My advice - on a mission you know you will get those,bring at least 2 grenadiers to shred armor and 2 snipers for high damage. High hacking specialist can be a blessing but i so far failed at hacking those.
Still, 2 of those at once .... Well maybe a squad with top tier weapons and armor can pull it off.

[Krholam]

IEM, I always have 1 or 2 IEM Grenade so whenever i'm facing a secto, he's getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Arcanum Elite]

yeah 2 sectopods at once is a nightmare... basically i opened the door to a mission objective with no visual on any enemies... the second i opened the door 2 sectopods and 4 advent soldiers came at me from on the other side of the door.. everyone on the mission died that day..

the sectopods ended up killing their own soldiers with their railgun aoe weapon thingy.. but i still couldnt take both of them down and they killed my entire team.

it was the scariest randomized mission ive been on so far... i knew the second i saw 2 sectopods at once (after fighting them one at a time and having trouble) i knew i was a goner.

with just one of them i can at least attempt to shut it down with hacking and take it down while its shutdown.. but you cant do that with 2 of them...

[Boot]

The following piece of advice applies to all tough enemies: bring mimic beacons with you!

In my experience, every enemy with LoS on a deployed mimic beacon will always go to attack the beacon, ignoring all other potential targets.

It's best to throw the beacon into a location with high cover so that it is able to survive multiple attacks (while it lasts for only one turn of enemy combat, it has limited health and aliens will ignore it if it gets destroyed during their turn).

Each beacon, if deployed correctly, effectively acts as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for one enemy turn. In addition, enemies seem not to use any special attacks when going after a beacon.

I bring two beacons with me on every mission and I cannot count the number of times they've saved my butt.

Now with regards to sectopods in particular, I recommend also bringing along at least two grenadiers with shredder. The grenadiers will remove sectopods' armor like a hot knife through butter, freeing up your other soldiers to put in the necessary damage (especially if you give one of them the lovely bluescreen rounds that give a nice bonus damage boost against robotic enemies). If you're unable to kill the sectopod(s) on the first turn of combat, throw one of the aforementioned mimic beacons out as your final action so that you don't get attacked during the enemy turn. You should be able to destroy the enemies the following turn. If not, throw the second beacon. If you still can't beat all visible enemies after three turns of uninterrupted combat during which you should have gone unattacked, then you almost certainly have neglected to upgrade your weapons.

Hope this helps!

[Rin]

The easiest way by far is to stun it with a skilled hacker.

Failing that, it's really just armor shredding and then a lot of firepower. Unlike the Gatecrasher, it's fairly easy to hit Sectopod with your eyes closed.

[Damedius]

The key to beating them is shredding their armor. Either through grenades of the greandiers ability.

If you have someone in your squad with AP ammo, that can also help.

As mentioned mimic beacons are great for getting yourself out of a jam. Make sure to get them ASAP and carry 2 or 3 of them.

[I don't understand Dota anymore]

Bluescreen Ammunition and grenades. Nades proc 2 turn stuns and deal crazy damage. Bullets proc hacking debuff and deal crazy damage. Holo target first then unload your bluescreen ammo. If there are two in a pod and you can not manage to kill both make sure you take one down and psi stasis the remaining one at the end of the turn.

[halx]

hack, armor piercing, nade them if you dont have armor piercing... shred... suprress... basically throw everything you got at them.. if you strip the armor they fall fast

[Cpt.ClapBootyCheeks]

Originally posted by GhoX:

The easiest way by far is to stun it with a skilled hacker.

Failing that, it's really just armor shredding and then a lot of firepower. Unlike the Gatecrasher, it's fairly easy to hit Sectopod with your eyes closed.

This is what I did. Late game I always brought a hacker and psi operative to each fight with me. That way if its non organic I can stun it for one round and if its non hackable I can put it in stasis.

There were a few times where I thought there was no way I was getting out of this situation and I ended the turn with moves to spare and no one hit.

[LastDude]

Grenades, shredding and hacking. These guys do not last more than two turns against me.

[kNIGHT]

Late game you can also just use psi attacks (>10 dmg) & specialist's Gremlin MKIII attack (10-11 dmg) & blue screen rounds (whatever dmg your gun does) & EMP nades (10 dmg) as they all bypass the armour.

Early game:
Stun with Hack
Stun with Sword
Mimic
Shred
Acid
Stun with EMP.

[Tenshin51]

My tip get a phantom ranger and a combat specialist that can do a scan. Knowing enemy movement in the late game is useful.

[TOG | Fulgrim]

Best performance against sectopods usually comes in the form of grenadiers with shredder ability, at least one with holo-targeting as well, put the kibosh on missing (hopefully), plasma grenades help with shredding armour, and once the armour is gone, just fire everything you can. The less chance you give that beast to shoot back, the better. Haven't tried hacking or melee, but I prefer to shoot first, then shoot again to make damn sure.

[chaotix14]

I put dealing with sectopods in two catagories: Immediate and low threat.
The low threat way is fairly simple, it requires only two things a phantom ranger(something I'd recommend to everyone to always have) and a sniper. I think most of you can guess what the idea is. Just pelt away at it from long range using squadsight.

Immediate threat, is when the sectopod is to close to disengage. It basically comes down to unload all your bullets and grenades. I suggest always having someone with bluescreen rounds, unless you have the option to go with AP rounds(usually more usefull than bluescreen, as it can negate up to 5 points of armor, instead of just 5 extra damage to mechanical enemies). Having a specialist with haywire protocol to stun(or if you can do it reliably take control of) is very useful. A grenadier with shredding can also make things a lot easier, bonus points if you have one with holo targeting and rupture(perhaps even salvo, so you can nade and rupture).
But the be all end all of dealing with sectopods would be the psi ops stasis, as it allows you to deal with the adds and then unleash all remaining firepower on the sectopod before putting the damn thing in stasis so you can unload a second round of fire on it without it retaliating.

[Mosey]

I'm sure it's been said, but anything that shreds armor needs to be your opening move then focus fire them down. There are plenty of alternatives, and ways to delay them, but ultimately shredding their armor seems to drop them the fastest.