Editing XCOM (section)

====X-COM Enemy Unknown / Enemy Within====
'''Sectoid''': Tiny little grey men in the first game, these are the first Psionic enemy you'll meet, with the ability to boost each other in combat. This can be rather nasty giving them an extra hit point and a +10 to hit and dodge, although if you kill the booster, you'll kill whatever Sectoid they're boosting as well thanks to Psychic feedback.

'''Sectoid Commander''': Only in the first game, these guys are Sectoids on psychic steroids. You'll see one on the tutorial mission and get a taste of what they can do, even if you don't fight it. They're stronger, tougher, and more psionically powerful than the basic sectoid, and are the first unit that can possess your guys mid-firefight.

'''Thin Man''': Apparently an "Infiltrator Unit" nobody would mistake these guys for human at close distance as they have snake scales running up their necks, and are skinny enough to make a supermodel jealous. They make no appearance in the sequel, having been scrapped for far more convincing Faceless (though its heavily implied that the ADVENT spokesman is a Thin Man, and Thin Men are seen in the prologue acting as diplomats, so they may have simply been reassigned to non-military duties). Apparently they were made from genetically modifying Snake-women as they can spit clouds of poison at great distance, and will explode into one when they're killed. Otherwise they're real flimsy. Do not underestimate them, however, as their choice of weaponry and habit of frequently spawning on high ground means that they will often one-shot soldiers through full cover if not dealt with quickly.

'''Muton''': How you know the aliens are stepping up their game. Everything up till now has been child's play (for a particularly psychotic child), then these guys come along. Big, tough, cunning, brutal, and dangerous, these guys will mulch a squad equipped with regular weapons and armour without breaking a sweat, and capturing one of these guys alive brings one of the better upgrades. Have fun.

'''Muton Berserker''': Ha, ha, ha. These girls are melee monsters, capable of soaking up bullets by the magazine, and slowly getting angrier and angrier as they do. If they can get in close they'll unleash the melee hurt, but thankfully they're not amazingly fast. Thankfully, their instinctive charge of the last person who shot them means you can set them up to run a gauntlet of Overwatch fire, with a bit of luck.

'''Muton Elite''': As much health as the Berserkers, plus armor, and lacking the berserk charges. Instead, they carry heavy plasma cannons.

'''Floater''': Apparently reject Mutons, stripped down to an upper torso and fitted up with cybernetic implants, mainly a jetpack. They're your first hint that the aliens may not be one big happy family, as they have an idle animation consisting of them ripping at their flesh and bionics until blood spurts. They're basically the fastest unit in the game, great Overwatchers, and pack about as much punch as a standard Muton. They have a special ability that sacrifices all their actions for the turn to instead fly to any single spot on the map, which they love to use to get the drop on your team and/or commit suicide via reaction fire.

'''Heavy Floater''': A tougher, armored version of the standard Floater, with a bigger gun. Basically just replace floaters in the late game to keep them competitive, but they've got no new tricks up their sleeves.

'''Outsider''': Strange "energy" lifeforms that serve as the technicians of the UFOs. You need to capture one of these in order to advance the game. They're wimpy, but their light plasma rifles are deadly accurate, so they can gun down whole teams if you're careless. For some unexplained reason, they just up and completely vanish from the game as soon as sectoid commanders turn up, never even being mentioned again. The most popular fan explanation is that they are actually not so much ''crew'' of the UFOs as ''hardware''.

'''Sectopod''': The aliens' equivalent of a tank; an enormous, heavily armored killer robot that walks around the battlefield in a perpetual squat, it has insanely high health, high armor, a 50% damage reduction ability with the Enemy Within expansion, and the ability to blaze away with both a fuck-off huge fire-laser-beam-thing and to launch showers of cluster bombs. They also blow up when you kill them. Your most hated enemy.

'''Cyberdisk''': A ridiculously fast flying robot that can shapeshift between a flying saucer-like flight-mode (in which it's harder to hit) and its unfurled combat mode. Not quite as killy as the sectopod, but still really adept at ruining your day.

'''Drone''': Small flying robots that basically zip around like laser-spitting wasps. They don't do much damage, but they can repair mechanical aliens and they explode like a grenade when killed. And they're extra-hard to hit, for added nuisance factor.

'''Chryssalid''': An absolute fucking nightmare, just like the original series. These bugs are lightning fast, vicious, and if they kill anyone they'll automatically plant an egg in the corpse, which will turn into a zombie before hatching a new chryssalid three turns later. And these zombies are tough enough to weather several turns of shooting. One of the standout points of Enemy Within is a pre-baked mission where you get to investigate a whaling ship that crashed ashore in Newfoundland after being infested by Chryssalids who turned the catch into their personal hive. Your job is to first investigate the area, and then light the place up for your bombers so they can carpet bomb the place into fire and rubble, running your squad away the whole time.

'''Ethereal''': The leaders of the alien forces, physically frail but masters of [[psionics]], which they can use to ''really'' fuck up your day.

'''Seeker''': A relatively weak squid-like robot that uses camouflage to sneak up on its prey and then tries to crush it to death with its tendrils. They like to go after isolated members of your squad, which can be used to bait them into going after Assault troopers with Close Combat Tactics for hilarious effects.

'''Mechtoid''': An armored exoskeleton piloted by a sectoid, carrying twin plasma mini-cannons. Sectoids can use their mind merge ability to give a layer of shielding to mechtoids; killing the sectoid removes the shield and causes some damage to the mechtoid.

'''EXALT''':  Not really aliens but modified humans who use [[Emperor's Children|genetic tempering to lengths that even Dr. Vahlen isn't willing to go]]. Their skin tones are inhuman & sickly because of this.
They wish to use alien tech to seize power and take over the planet using alien technology.  They also get their own weapons and equivalents to XCOM's agents but not Plasma weapons, Psionic agents, SHIVs or MECs. So they're basically what everyone who frequents [[/pol/]] wants to do, only without the alien tech. I.e. White Supremacists using crack science per usual, but too stupid to understand the more advanced shit. Despite most of Enemy Within being the canon route until the base attack. They are absent from XCOM 2.