How to deal with enemy grenade launchers in early game?

[OwenQ]

I'm in the first December of my first serious run. The first grenade launcher I encountered was on an EXALT Enforcer in a night mission a month or so ago. I lost one of my best soldiers to a surprise incendiary grenade launched at a reasonable distance to have been spotted and wrote it off.

I then had an entire grouped-up squad wiped in a similar mission by not one, but *three* launchers all firing out of the inky blackness on another EXALT cult outpost investigation. Stunned, I savescummed because I at least wanted to understand how I was seen from across the map, in the dark, mostly behind a hill instead of losing a full helicopter of my best soldiers every time I assaulted an EXALT compound.

As near as I can tell:
- Certain enemy types act as Spotters for others. (in the case of EXALT, this seems to be all of them!)
- Hitting an enemy reveals your location, making you Spotted for a turn if you hit a Spotter.
- ... this includes your own units Reaction Fire.

After a half hour or so of fiddling and looking stuff up, I couldn't see much way to avoid being barraged with grenades. Taking snap shots at full TUs then darting away didn't help; cover was blown away or bypassed by being fired on from three angles; the only way I could see getting out of this is managing to snipe them before they sniped me or getting better technology (I just upgraded to Armored Vests and am still using Helicopters which are woefully inadequate defensively).

I'm just curious if there's some tactical insight I'm missing? Or should I just avoid EXALT investigations 'til I've got a sturdier transport or armor? I can only assume going during the day will only leave me even more at the mercy of bombardment as any unit will spot me.

[Juku121]

Smoke, as always. Reduces grenade accuracy by half. Not as good as against direct fire weapons, but still your first line of defence.

Shock and awe. Blast them before they blast you. Mortars are ideal for this, but your own grenade launchers and hand grenades work as well.

Disposable scouts to find the bastards and take the first hit.

Scout-sniper tactics and retreating snipers into hard cover, if possible.

Armour, to soak up the inevitable hits.

But grenades and other explosives are IMO the most common cause of mission failure or squad wipe, and personally I limit thrown explosive range to disable their abuse both for myself and the enemy. Otherwise, spread out and prioritise enemies with heavy weapons. Vanilla AI (as opposed to Brutal AI) usually grenades troop concentrations and isn't very consistent about doing it at all.

Incendiaries at least don't usually outright kill you, but panicking and being on fire is no fun. Though you can return the favour and make their grenadiers drop their guns and run around like flaming chickens.

[Solarius Scorch]

Also: stand under trees.

[Stone Lake]

Yeah, EXALT grenadiers are the early rite of passage.

As Juku outlined, scout grenadiers from smoke and target them first.
And use grenades yourself. Stuffing your squad full of pre-primed grenades is high-risk medium-reward tactic. It's also somewhat messes up spotting due to indirect damage.

[OwenQ]

Thanks for the advice, folks - this does sort of highlight what I feared, that my tech progression is behind as I'm really only just getting my explosives license, so counter-grenades are in precious short supply and I'm probably a ways away from mortars too.

I figured using trees as shields would be helpful, but in this particular incident there were three grenadiers on each corner of the map that wasn't my own, so somewhat often at least one of them would have a relatively direct line of fire - but that's just the way luck does you sometimes. Anyway, lessons learned - EXALT can get pretty hardcore.

[Juku121]

I think Promotion II in December-January is relatively okay. You used to get incendiary grenades during Promotion I, so there have been some wrenches thrown into the plan somewhat recently.

So the lesson is to loot those grenades and launchers used against you, and have some heavy weapons troopers with those to give your enemies a taste of their own medicine. But when you do get the explosives and machine guns licences, a lot of options open up.

Mortars are awesome, but they're indeed quite not available for quite a while.

Trees and buildings are excellent cover, but you rarely have the luxury of getting those when you need them.

In my experience, EXALT is not the worst in this regard - Dagonites can have dynamite and Milkors instead, Red Dawn have their sniper specialisation and just shoot you a lot, and trying to find the last ninja on the map is its own meme at this point.