Can't progress, only Outposts are spawning.

[BDoubleDs]

Whats the go to method to capture effectively?  I just got the stun rod but lost literally half my agents trying to capture 1 sectoid engineer with them.  it took about 3 rounds of 2-3 agents around the guy to finally knock him down.  As he mowed down agents each turn. 

Just brutal.

[Juku121]

I see we have found the descendants of Heinrich von Paxicon, and they are not happy about it either.

In theory, CQC should let you 1v1 a Sectoid without too much brutality. The go-to method with shielded enemies is to unload some high-damage weapon like a shotgun into the shield first, and then start hitting them in earnest.

There's a variety of stun weapons that become online as time goes on, but stunning is never entirely easy and risk-free.

[BDoubleDs]

I see we have found the descendants of Heinrich von Paxicon, and they are not happy about it either.

In theory, CQC should let you 1v1 a Sectoid without too much brutality. The go-to method with shielded enemies is to unload some high-damage weapon like a shotgun into the shield first, and then start hitting them in earnest.

There's a variety of stun weapons that become online as time goes on, but stunning is never entirely easy and risk-free.

OK so the shield does in fact stop stun?  I wasn't totally sure but failed to capture aliens before by shooting the shield first, then stunning (as it caused them bleed).  I felt the safer way might be to just plow through the shield instead.

What is CQC?

[Juku121]

The shields stop almost everything, but run out and have resistances like armour depending on what colour they are.

Zektoid shields are good against direct stun weapons like fists but not particularly hot vs the electric damage stun rods do. In my experience, a regular Grey goes down in 1-2 successful proddings, i.e. stun sticks work fine against them. Do remember to use agents with good melee skill and zap the little bastards from the back so they can't dodge.

The theory behind shotgunning shields is that shotguns do a lot of raw damage (and shields only reduce damage by a percentage, and otherwise take it until they run out), but are heavily countered by any armour. Sectoids are too frail and naked for it to work consistently, but sometimes you get lucky.

CQC is hugging the enemy to make their shots go awry:

[termidor]

Also regarding Stun , if you want to do it from range you can use the grenade launchers with blunt ammo. A bit of a heavy handed approach but against aliens they provide the most reliable range capture option. Althogh regarding landed Ufos, you can normally just kill everyone outside and employ melee on the enemies inside the UFO.