Crawlers too difficult to detect

[noobrzor]

Howdy

Now, I apologize if it is indeed not a bug, but it seems so broken that to me it has to be.

Easy difficulty
Level 15.
3 Perception.
No Paranoia feat.
Wearing Night-Vision goggles with 95.5% Detection bonus.
With Stuffed Bat buff (+15% detection).
Night-Vision active/flares underneath
Standing, thus Fully Focused buff active.
Unstealthed.

I do not detect regular Crawlers at all. No instant-detect, no nothing. If one spots me, then despite all these buffs I just wait for it to approach me with absolute impunity.
Sometimes I do detect them, but it's way too unreliable. Like <10% of encounters with them I win by detecting them first.

So far, best way for me not to have an aneurysm fighting them is just spamming molotovs everywhere and reloading like crazy, and once in a while miraculously dodge the initial sting or just have their AI go haywire and not use it on the first turn.

Please do not tell me this is intended mechanic, because my fun meter is reaching depths yet unreached.

Edit:
So it does indeed seem lucky hits with molotovs, flares, psi abilities, outlasting the crawler's alpha strike/s or managing to bump into them before/after are the intended ways of handling them. Doable but tiresome, eh.
I'm trying to remove the topic but for the life of me I don't know where is the "Remove Topic" link advertised.

[Bruno]

Base Perception is based on your level, and unfortunately, your perception score that you set to minimum. Thus you have really poor detection for your level.
The food and goggles only modify that score, so it does not help that much.

If you are quite blind, you must expect to be ambushed, and take appropriate measures. If you, for example, also have your constitution score set to minimum value, then you pretty much ask for instant death from ambushers unless you have really good armor.

[mephisto]

3 PER is really low, so no wonder you get ambushed pretty often even by Crawlers.
even in my case which i have 8 PER still get ambushed pretty often by Death Stalkers unless i kaboom them first with a grenade.
i always have 3 CON btw, no problem at all on NORMAL, some fair problems on HARD and DOMINATING but i already crafted a badass Emitter with 1700 HP to mitigate the damage 90% of the time, without it, 2 hits is the most i can take before i ded xD.

[harperfan7]

You'd have to have insane high perception to auto-detect deathstalkers, which is the only way to detect them when unstealthed before they start combat on you.  You have to be in stealth before you can detect them, basically, but their auto-detect is fairly high so your stealth needs to be decent.

[TheAverageGortsby]

So it does indeed seem lucky hits with molotovs, flares, psi abilities, outlasting the crawler's alpha strike/s or managing to bump into them before/after are the intended ways of handling them. Doable but tiresome, eh.
I'm trying to remove the topic but for the life of me I don't know where is the "Remove Topic" link advertised.

Luck not required. If you're psi, then you should have Locus of Control, so you can ignore the stun.  If you pay close attention to your environment, then most times you can see signs that Crawlers are about, and so you can make some noise, manually start turn-based mode, and hide behind a Force Field while they bunch up at the edge of your force field. When the field drops, you'll go first, and should probably at least see the faint shadows of where they're at so you'll know what you hit.  If you deprive them of their first strike ability, they're really easy.  If you're not playing a psi character with enough Will to get LoC, then you can make Bullhead to ignore the stun, or perhaps you'd have enough Con to get Thick Skull so you can't be stunned.  If you've got Quick Tinkering you may be able to lay a small bear trap perimeter with a gap in it, then go out into the map you're exploring and try to pull via noise. Run back to your perimeter and fill it in with a QT drop then just wait outside melee reach for the Crawlers to entrap themselves.  If none of that is an option, then throw on some Antithermic gear of some sort and just drop molotovs at your own feet.  Crawlers won't willingly walk into fire while they're stealthed, so the bright illumination of the lake of flame you're standing in should make it easy to see them as they wait right at the edge of the fire.

Remove Topic should be at the very bottom left of the page.