XCOM EU Remove Grenades from Aliens

[greyhunter4]

I've been really enjoying long war lately but somethings been bugging me about it. There is very little counter play to aliens grenading you. Depending on their turn cycle they can blow up your cover then the next guy just shoot you - or alternatively if you're in indestructible cover, all of them can just grenade you and kill you.

 

Scenario - I have all banshee armor, all my units are in full cover - I'm vs a pack of 5 or 6 heavy floaters. I can't kill them all in one turn - I take cover, even indestructible cover for the most likely grenade target - their hit %'s are too low so they just all move forward and grenade the front guy. 3+ grenades until he's dead. Nothing I can really do there. The counter play is to manipulate the AI to not do that - I move a guy or two into half cover, overwatch one or two, the floaters now think they can attack + the overwatch breaks their AI (not exactly sure how it works) now they stay put on overwatch and let me kill them.

 

When you can't take cover and have a respectable fire fight I feel like I'm not really playing the game the way its meant to be played. Aliens with grenades kind of take that away and make the strategy kind of lame and turn it into AI manipulation. Alternatively it forces players to have to use possibly mechs or shivs to tank damage, at least possibly until they get titan armor and more damage reduction maybe. The mechs and tanks unit would probably work - but I don't feel like forcing players to get them or die to grenades is a good game mechanic as it limits play options.

 

Take Exalt cover op. missions for instance - you hit the relay - you disable their guns - you now have to position your covert op next to enemy units so they won't grenade you since they would hit their own units as well. It's not that they couldn't but its just AI manipulation. If they wanted to - they could just move away and toss the grenades. Same thing with the heavy floaters - given their move speed and throwing range - at any point a pack of them could kill a guy or two by focusing all their grenades on him - or destroying your cover then shooting - No counter play.

 

Cyberdisk is another example - you can disable it but instead of shooting it can still move very far and throw a grenade giving it a 100% hit with that grenade.

 

I've never seen aliens throw a grenade at me and thought, "hey that's a cool mechanic" I really feel it doesn't add to the game and it takes away from otherwise viable strategies like disable shot / exalt relays / cover. When you can't even take cover on XCOM what the hell are you doing? That's why I think Aliens and Exalt should have their grenades removed. I'd love to focus less on AI manipulation and more on playing the game.