JA2 Animals & Monsters

These are a a few general tips about how to deal with Jagged Alliance 2 animals (bloodcats, cows, crows) and crepitus monsters. Some are of course more dangerous than others, but there are uses for each type, discovered in time by players. If you're new to JA2 you might find these tips a life-saver.

Jagged Alliance 2 Animals and Monsters

Bloodcats
Crepitus
Cows
Crows

Bloodcats

Bloodcats run faster and see farther than you, you won’t be able to outrun them. Wounded bloodcats don’t hesitate or retreat, they always run as fast as they can toward you, your only option is to kill them.
On the positive side bloodcats don’t have ranged weapons, can’t swim, climb on roofs, jump over sand bags or walls, and won’t enter areas with damaging effects like for example tear gas or napalm.
In 1.13 bloodcats have a view arc and sometimes stand motionless waiting to hear a sound. If this happens it is possible to sneak up from behind and punch them to death. Bloodcats do have a breath counter, and while they don’t fall to the ground like soldiers do, they won’t be able to move if out of breath.
Hollow Point (HP) ammunition (blue color) will do more damage to bloodcats as they don’t have armor. If your game has Glaser ammunition (green color), then it will do even more damage. Advanced Energy Transfer (AET) ammunition (purple color) works as hollow point ammunition against unarmored targets.
Assault rifles work well against bloodcats as they allow aimed single shots at medium range and have fast burst and auto fire for short range engagement. Keep fast submachine guns in your inventory as a bunch of bloodcats might end their turn very close to your soldiers

Crepitus

Crepitus, the bug type monsters encountered in and around mines on Sci-Fi mode, work very similar to bloodcats with a few exceptions.
Crepitus’ night vision range cannot be overcome by your soldiers. This means that crepitus can engage in ranged combat in large open caves and your soldiers won’t be able to see them. Fortunately crepitus move about as fast as your soldiers, so disengaging from combat is possible.
Crepitus won’t enter areas with damaging effects like tear gas or napalm. They also can’t swim, climb on roofs, jump over sand bags or walls, but these features are usually absent underground.
Gabby’s elixir can be used like a camouflage kit to make a soldier invisible to crepitus until they are in a tile directly adjacent to the bug. According to elmoo this can be used to punch the bugs to death.
Most people prefer to use hollow point (HP) ammunition (blue color) over Glaser ammunition (green color) when fighting crepitus, although for me Glaser performed just as well. Advanced Energy Transfer (AET) ammunition (purple color) works well too, although most mods limit availability to pistols and submachine guns, which do a little less damage.
Use assault rifles which fire lots of bullets and have a low ready time and bring lots of ammunition. You will need the extra damage assault rifles do compared to submachine guns because crepitus tend to be a little tougher compared to bloodcats.
The lower levels will have stationary bug eggs, for these you can use pistols and submachine guns with cheap ammunition as these targets are less dangerous.
On the lowest mine level you will find the crepitus queen inside a cave chamber. As Gunny and Lord Ibn suggested, you can use explosive grenades or mustard gas to safely terminate her without putting your soldiers in danger. Jeremy S. Tatelman reports that killing the bug queen will kill all other bugs and successfully complete the quest.
Gunz discovered a little bit of a cheat where crepitus don’t attack the robot in Vanilla (this may not work with other mods). The bugs will surround the robot but not harm it, so bring lots of ammunition.

Cows

Some maps have cows as farm animals positioned on them. Because cows will never fight back, occasionally players exploit them for training purposes as attacking cows increases your soldier’s stats just like regular combat does.
However map designers will often position a cow as a work around to keep killed civilians from re-spawning, so be careful not to kill ever last cow on the map as this may cause problems.

Crows

Crows will appear around decaying corpses over time. Because crows will never fight back, occasionally players exploit them for training purposes as attacking crows increases your soldier’s stats just like regular combat does.
Corpses will decay and eventually vanish whether or not crows are around. Their noise can be quite annoying but walking toward them or making loud noises will make them fly away. Some mods like 1.13 allow you to turn off crows.