When it was released, the alien leaders had free action whenever you did something: move, monitor, shoot, reload. Aside from a few actions like axe throwing, they might get closer and closer to you without any chance of escaping them. There were a few tactics to beat them, like using a load of poison and fire damage, but most of them were a bit silly as you had to pray for lucky anesthesia or stay on a building with xcom on the way to the ladders leading to the roof. They could also appear in each mission, which meant meeting one in a “simple mission, let`s send a B team” was a lost mission most of the time, sometimes a lost Ironman race. The DLC allows the creation of 4 unique weapons designed to fight alien leaders. After defeating the rulers, the autopsy gives access to unique and powerful armor sets. If one of these armors is equipped by a soldier who dies and the body is not recovered, they are permanently lost. The player cannot encounter multiple rules in the same mission. The first to appear is King Viper, then Queen Berserker, and the last is King Archon. The next leader usually does not appear until the previous one has been killed or successfully escaped. As the squad passes through the facility, they hear images of Vahlen about their research into the original and unchanged genetic structure of alien races.
You will also come across screens depicting their creation of three “Ruler” aliens called Alpha, Beta and Gamma subjects. Other images depict frighteningly intelligent behavior on their part, especially the Gamma subject. Alien leaders are terrifying, worthy of being called bosses. In addition to incredible amounts of HP and decent firepower, they have changed and improved their abilities to suit their original alien. For example, the viper king spits ice cream instead of poison, and his bandage has a 50% chance of causing his victim to lose consciousness. Alien leaders have the unique rule reaction ability, where they perform an action for every action your soldiers take your turn. This complicates many strategies that would work against other aliens – for example, it is very difficult to flank them as they can move or attack the soldier flanking between positioning and shooting. The balance between offense and defense is crucial and difficult. Alien leaders have been made much easier to manipulate in WotC.
You can choose when to confront them (i.e. when you want to meet the facility they have guarded) and leave prepared (gel grenades, bolts, etc.) If you want mods – or if you hate the 2K launcher – there is a much better unofficial launcher ;github.com/X2CommunityCore/xcom2-launcher/releases In my WOTC race on Commander difficulty, I actually RAN all three rules with repeating rifles. One of them at the first meeting, before he had a chance to do anything but move – BAM, dead! From 100 hp to zero. I highly recommend equipping as many weapons as possible with repeaters. They make your life a lot easier and, frankly, could easily be overwhelmed. You can literally execute any enemy, I think, even the chosen ones, with a chance of up to 20%! Do you play WotC? IIRC leadership is no longer responding to EVERY action you take. Alien Hunters is a DLC for XCOM 2. It adds a storyline mission after which the commander meets elite alien leaders in the missions.
Defeating alien leaders grants special weapons and items. Sure, they`re somehow stronger than most regular aliens, but since they basically get 2-3 actions, most of which aren`t even particularly harmful (i.e. without the fact that Reapers and Squadsight snipers can shoot with impunity without triggering the right reactions, I`ve never had a leader who stayed on the field for more than one turn. I mean, I certainly would have lost the first fight if Queen Beserker hadn`t suddenly run away after getting a few scratches. Humph. I am currently playing WoTC and have a distinctly different appearance behavior from the rules. On the one hand, I had both a rule and a pop chosen on the same mission. I don`t know if the dark event “Wild Hunt” has anything to do with it.
Second, after escaping, leaders do not appear on random missions, but only on subsequent popping devices. A copy of the AML list can only support one game at a time. You must download and open a new copy. You will be asked which game to handle. Select Chimera Squad and keep this copy for CS while using the other copy of AML for XCOM2. For more information, see the AML wiki: github.com/X2CommunityCore/xcom2-launcher/wiki Oh, how afraid I was to approach one of the alien installations with the notification “guarded by powerful aliens”. In Vanilla XCOM2, you do not have this option. Once you launch “the nest”, they are active and you don`t know in which missions they will appear. A timed mission from the Extraction Council (rescue VIP, kidnapping informant, etc.) was always quite difficult, but having an alien leader show up was often the end of the game – dealing with a leader, hitting the target, and reaching the extraction point in time – all of which was very, very difficult at any level of difficulty. Thank you for all your detailed analysis. In Vanilla XCOM 2, I made the Archon King appear on an Avenger defense mission.