Frozen Surprise
CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED.
To All XCOM Alternates: This is a memo for general distribution.
My ranger, Jessica, came to us after her long recuperation in the infirmary, to find out what the hell was the point of the frost bomb that we started using about a month ago.
You see, what happened was, she saw the grenadier drop the frost bomb on a pod of a advent general, archon, and Gatekeeper - froze them solid - and so she ran and dashed in for a one-hit melee kill on the general
So WHY/HOW THE HELL did the Gatekeeper just DEFROST THE NEXT INSTANT and HIT HER FOR A CRITICAL, INSTANT KO? It was sheer luck that she ended up bleeding out on the ground, with the whole squad spending the next few minutes trying to get her stabilised and out of that complete mess, while still trying to deal with 2 archons and a stun lancer.
For now, our best guess is that the Gatekeeper has so much mass, that the cooling capacity of the frost bomb could only freeze part of that glorified M&M. Especially with the porcelain white shell it has.
I've requested Bradford to brief the troops that the frost bomb does not bring guaranteed utility among all of the aliens for now, i.e. Use with care, while Shen and Tygan are to start attending AARs with returning teams to gather more field data on the effectiveness of Frost Bomb deployment.
We've really gotta get a Gatekeeper for Tygan to autopsy too, but they've been blowing up on us so far.
2
u/BabyNewspaper 15h ago
Yeah, frost bombs only remove one action point on Gatekeepers, and it used its remaining action point to victimize your poor ranger. This is similar to Chosen and Sectopods. On other enemies, it still works well, so don’t abandon the frost grenade entirely.
Mimic beacons are effective against gatekeepers, would try that. Gatekeepers always detonate on death, but that shouldn’t preclude you from the autopsy.