Alien base-polar region, exterminate or leave it for robbery purposes?

[Tsathoggua]

Righty then....

 

X-com patrol fleet has just detected an enemy base situated at one of the polar ice caps.

 

My primary X-com base is located at the north pole, situated right on the ice cap and recent patrols located an alien facility situated not far from my own base.On the one hand, its close, real close, SO close in fact they are well nigh able to leave bags of flaming dog-muck

on the front door of the X-com base, some chryssalid or other quick species rings the doorbell and legs it afterwards.

 

Could use the extra money at the moment to help support the war effort really, so to speak. Because there are an awful lot of alien flights at the moment, and I'm going to have to, I think, rent an extra skyranger transport in order to cover the sheer number of enemy craft that are falling to my plasma cannon-armed (and one with twin avalanche launchers, one with an avalanche and a plasma cannon At any rate they are taking a pounding and are not pleased about it one bit. Theres some 5 maybe six bases, most of them with two (or more) interceptors, situated at strategic positions so as to maximize and make best use of radar coverage, much of the world covered but not perfect, yet. So anything smaller than a battleship quickly gets followed and shot out of the sky, and the crash sites quickly have strike teams inserted and the place...cleansed....well I say cleansed, made messy as hell and most likely burnt to the ground would be far more accurate.

 

Since there is no CFN presence in the polar regions having this base remain functional shouldn't increase the likelihood of a country falling to infiltration, right? and any flights that take off from the base save the very largest battlecruisers will be shot down by one of the three plasma cannon-armed (and one with twin avalanche air-to-air missile launchers) interceptors.

 

Is it still possible to insert strike teams into an alien base like in TFTD and refrain from wiping out the control center (usual tactic is to use blaster launcher rounds to punch a hole through the double walls of the command center and then pop a third right up into the room

by sending it up the grav lifts, directing the round through the corridors as soon as a corner of the command center has been located, as using the tactic of doing a mouse-over, moving the cursor side to side it then reveals the walls, so its possible to not only fire half-blind

into a visible room but which targets cannot be detected wthin, but an entirely invisible one, and since the rays or whatever they are from the grav lifts in the complete darkness can be seen, then its possible to pop a blaster shell right up there and catch anything in there by total surprise.

 

Does the base remain functional if command center is left in one piece but all aliens are killed or captured?

I want to leave the place crippled and unable to operate, and in constant need of repair, mandating of course, fleet supply ships being sent, so as to take them out and hijack them for their resources, also leaving that base unable to operate, run missions of their own etc.

[NKF]

Since there is no CFN presence in the polar regions having this base remain functional shouldn't increase the likelihood of a country falling to infiltration, right?

 

No, it won't. Infiltration still has to be conducted by the infiltrator UFOs.

 

Once an alien base is established, all it does is generate 5 alien activity points per day in that region and attracts Supply Ships. Each Supply Ship that lands there will also add to the activity points. This is a slow-burn method of generating terror compared to the instantaneous effect of the Terror Sites.

 

The monthly total of activity points the alien base generates isn't much, but if left unchecked will worry all the neighbouring CFN countries. Yes, even if the alien base in a polar region.

 

 

Is it still possible to insert strike teams into an alien base like in TFTD and refrain from wiping out the control center

 

in UFO, destruction of the command centre is not compulsory. If you wipe out all the aliens, you will automatically win the mission. The only reason to destroy the command centre is when you want the base gone ASAP and don't want to deal with all the aliens. Say an Ethereal or Snakeman base.

 

Basically rush in, locate the command room, Fire a couple of Blaster Bombs to destroy all 16 segments of the 4 command tables, dust off, then watch in glee as the base ceases to exist.

 

If you want to keep the base intact, disarm one of the aliens and use a medikit to ensure it is conscious. Then have a couple of soldiers pin it in a corner.

 

Does the base remain functional if command center is left in one piece but all aliens are killed or captured?

 

Unfortunately no. If a second Skyranger were to land right after the last one left, the new team will find the hallways all polished and sparkly and the floor layout will be completely different. The aliens are quite the renovators.

 

- NKF

[magic9mushroom]

In terms of money, it's probably worthwhile to simply assault the base and destroy it. You get quite a pretty penny from selling the loot, enough to equal about 2 Supply Ships, and you get it *now*.

 

The main reason to leave it intact is Elerium. Each Supply Ship you ground-assault will nab you 150 Elerium, whereas a base will typically only give 0 or 50.

 

Don't bother with "non-destructive" Alien Base Assaults; they're more trouble than they're worth. You have to bother about keeping one alien alive (because if you kill all aliens you win), and all you can recover besides equipment/corpses is a possible pod (50 units) of Elerium. And you'll most likely lose troops, even in a Floater base, because of Blaster Launchers. Psi and Chryssalids, of course, make it much worse.

[Tsathoggua]

I was more thinking of robbing the supply shps, to have a neverending source elerium, the power cores that fuel the alien ship's drive systems.are also extremely valuable, even alien allloys fetch quite a bit when one is selling 500-700-1000 units at a time, and there are an awful lot to sell and still retain the few hundred units I try always to keep on hand for building things.

 

My primary concern is this-does the presence of a base in a polar region result in more infiltrator missions being flown?

Oh and if anyone has tried this-what happens if one tries building a new base right on top of an alien base?

 

 

As for terror sites, I've just had one, no.8 in total and I'm pleased to say, didn't lose a single man. Wished by the end I'd taken along my very best trooper, the one who seems to have a thing for using his blaster launcher as a baseball bat and for cracking alien skulls with it Guy is a killing machine and no mistake. Valuable for his raw brute strength if nothing else (which isn't to say he's talentless, he hasn't risen to the rank of captain for nothing. He's an excellent shot, even carrying 2x2handed

weapons at once. Good grenadier as well, but strength wise...he must be giving the tanks some worry, because he can still sprint with the best of them whilst carrying his trademark blaster launcher, and wielding the heavy plasma cannon he packs as his sidearm. Most troops are content with a laser pistol but not this guy. Too close to launch a blaster bomb, and not enough TU to slam some sectoid/snakeman/muton's face into the nearest wall with his golf swing then our comes that heavy plasma. He's gotten accurate enough that the two handed penalty doesn't make a great deal of difference, although he'll still drop his blaster before starting with the heavy plasma. And whilst busy making a big dirty great mess of things, once the blaster launcher is dropped then he's got a whole bunch of grenades to fall back on,

 

His second in command is just about as dangerous to be around, if one happens to be an alien. Hasn't got the raw strength pf the captain, but aside from him he's stayed alive for a lot longer than almost anyone and if ordered to fire an aimed shot, he very very rarely misses, even at extreme range (I.e as long as theres a spotter, dropping targets in a single shot, right across the combat zone from corner to corner, using a heavy plasma, or despite the lesser damage, plasma rifle for its extreme accuracy.

[Tsathoggua]

The last base that my elite forward strike team managed to penetrate and assault from the inside, we did suffer two casualties, both of them to the same chryssalid.

 

Damnable creature shot out from nowhere, moved too fast for the fireteam (plus half of the other fireteam was in view of the attacking chryssalid and within range of their plasma rifles, heavy cannon and rocket launchers.) to draw bead on the thing, never even got a shot off before it had zombified two of the men to use as hosts.

 

No other casualties, and knowing it was snakemen, the squads were a bit, shall we say...heavy-handed.

 

Heavy handed meaning to have taken almost or just over 50 blaster bomb rounds plus five launchers, and before doing anything more than tossing a few smoke grenades in the upper floor entrance chambers in order to check enemy fire coming up the gtav lifts, and even before sending the tank down there to scout and

designate targets for destruction by the blaster launcher troops more of said launcher rounds were dropped down the grav lifts, to sterilize the immediate route of egress, reducing the floor below to ashes, to the tune of rater a lot of very pained choking, gurgling death-screams.

 

Spent two or three turns just doing that, guided by motion scanner sweeps and the tank taking point, scouting the area out to help further guide blaster bomb rounds

By the time a living, breathing soldier actually stepped down the grav lifts there was really not much left alive down there, just piles of corpses, ownerless weapons; from where the heavy artillery bombardment had not only exterminated the previous owners but had vaporized same..

 

Then just as the teams were converging on the primary objective, the control center, this damn chryssalid came screaming and screeching out of buggering well nowhere, blasted thing must have dropped through a hole in the ceiling or something because nobody saw it coming, nothing on the scanners then all of a sudden it it was there, right in the middle of 4-5 troopers. Got two of them and made its way towards a third before tiring and being able to fight no more; the survivors of the attack then cut loose with everything they had, one with just enough wind left in his sails to use it, whipped out a stun rid, and after the support trooper shot off an incendiary round from his heavy cannon straight into the middle of the two zombified agents, centering the blast on one of the two, scoring a direct hit-incendiary shell went off smack-bang in the face of the less fortunate zombie, the less lucky one spent a turn getting 3rd degree burns before being mowed down by a couple of (probably terrified) rookie agents, of coutse the nasty little critter within burst out on its death but the teams were waiting for it, that incendiary round having been fired off almost entirely to let some of the guys recharge their TUs

 

Those were the first and last casualties to get it in the neck; and they were not forgotten by the rest of the team. Vengeance was harsh-every room, passageway and corridor, command center included was wiped clean of life by blaster fire, before sending in the tank to make sure.No fucking about that mission, anything found slithering or scurrying around was met with a hail of alien grenades and plasma rifle fire. Thats one base the bugs DEFINITELY won't be renovating.

 

One things for certain though. It was not in any way shape or form 'non-destructive'

 

In TFTD one thinog does seem to hold between base raids, and thats that there seem to be less aliens there if you land a transport and smash the place to smithereens,leaving the place blasted and burnt to the ground. The higher the body count the fewer the aliens to be found.

[magic9mushroom]

I was more thinking of robbing the supply shps, to have a neverending source elerium, the power cores that fuel the alien ship's drive systems.are also extremely valuable, even alien allloys fetch quite a bit when one is selling 500-700-1000 units at a time, and there are an awful lot to sell and still retain the few hundred units I try always to keep on hand for building things.

 

If you need the Elerium, sure, leave it alone and raid the Supply Ships when they land.

 

My primary concern is this-does the presence of a base in a polar region result in more infiltrator missions being flown?

Oh and if anyone has tried this-what happens if one tries building a new base right on top of an alien base?

 

NKF already answered this. No. All a base does is give the aliens 5 points per day and attract Alien Supply missions (Supply Ship appears at 00:30, flies to base, lands for a couple of hours, takes off, flies away). However, as Alien Infiltration missions do create bases and do repeat, it is likely that more infiltrations will follow in that region (but that's true whether or not you attack the base that's already there).

[Zombie]

Keeping a base around can be beneficial simply for the Supply Ship raids. One successful mission will net you more points than you'll lose from the daily drain. Not to mention all the loot you can recover. I do recommend keeping it if it has a "cooperative" alien species (no psi or tough terror units like Floaters, or just giant meatbags of inflated hp's like Mutons). Everything else, and you'll want to get rid of it (though if all you are going to do is go after the Supply Ships, then Floaters, Snakemen, and Mutons will be ok). Me? I do smash 'n grab raids on the base itself to get even more points/training/loot as the Supply Ships can be in short supply from time to time.

 

The main reason to leave it intact is Elerium. Each Supply Ship you ground-assault will nab you 150 Elerium, whereas a base will typically only give 0 or 50.

 

Don't bother with "non-destructive" Alien Base Assaults; they're more trouble than they're worth. You have to bother about keeping one alien alive (because if you kill all aliens you win), and all you can recover besides equipment/corpses is a possible pod (50 units) of Elerium. And you'll most likely lose troops, even in a Floater base, because of Blaster Launchers. Psi and Chryssalids, of course, make it much worse.

 

Actually, the 20x20 module containing the 2 power sources can be placed multiple times in a base (not just once). One Power Source of one module (I think this will probably be the first one placed on the map) will be unpowered (no Elerium) which will net you only 50 units of Elerium. However, additional PS modules do not have this shortcoming and net you the full 100. I think the max number of times the module can be placed is 3 times (never seen it show up 4 times) so the upper limit on Elerium recovery is 250 units. Over the long run, I'd say the average quantity of Elerium recovered per assault will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 units (possibly a little less like 30-40) due to the module not showing up at all. Yes, this is way less than the guaranteed 150 units you'll recover from a single Supply Ship. But Supply Ships aren't always on the map. The nice thing about assaulting the base is that it'll always be there for you, no matter the time of the day. You can schedule assaults when alien activity is low and train your troops up. Your actions at a base will not elicit retaliation missions either.

 

Casualties on your side from assaulting an alien base over and over should be rather low assuming you screen the base to make sure it doesn't have psi capable aliens or Snakemen+Chryssalids. You can't do anything about the Blasters unfortunately, except to keep your men safe in rooms at the end of your turn, but they aren't that big of a threat if the aliens carrying them are only in the command center. The 2 doors need to be opened in the same round in order to get the bomb to your troops. The issue is when one of the aliens come wandering out and you fail to kill it. If that happens your best bet is to run up to it.

 

Still, assaulting a base over and over is kinda cheesy and requires some rather advanced skills (like stunning and reviving an alien somewhere safe) so I don't recommend this for beginners.

 

- Zombie

[Tsathoggua]

Personally the way I tend to deal with the command center is simply to punch a hole through the outer wall as soon as at least enough of the exterior is visible to know

that it is the outer wall of the command center, then guide another two round the corridor formed by the inner and outer walls, never sending anyone near the place, precisely because theres likely to be some very angry aliens in there packing blaster launchers: and using the technique of moving the mouse cursor side to side

in the unexplored area, using the presence of a window part way up to prove its the right target is when the two blaster bombs get released, guided round, one to each end, as thats where the enemy seem to like to hang out. That done, one through the door to the south, knock, knock, who's at home.......

 

Then the upward rays shown on grav lifts when moused over in unexplored areas. Blaster round towards those, up and into the command center, big bloody mess, everyone goes home (well everyone alive anyway, Which is usually all of the team, with the sometimes exception of ethereals,

 

They can at worst, (from the ethereal's point of view that is) hold their own in a fight. Actually I prefer base assaults fighting ethereals to taking on even a small UFO

because in a base, theres tons of cover to duck behind, pop out next turn and squeeze off as many shots as practical then duck back into cover.

 

One tactic I like using, not only against psi-capable aliens but all kinds, is to have any trooper not with enough TU to reaction-fire, drop what they are carrying

in both hands, unless its a primed grenade of course, that way, troops carrying rocket launchers, blasters, rookies issued heavy weapons like the heavy plasma, autocannon, heavy cannon etc. and pick them up the next turn around, that way they will have many more TU to use next turn, Especially useful for troops bearing

the squad heavy weapons. Although that said, there aren't many carrying anything else, the very lightest being heavy plasma and plasma rifles.Hell, my best soldier

has no problem at all wielding a blaster launcher one handed and carrying a heavy plasma as a sidearm! he's the one that seems to be a bit of a bruiser, the guy with

a nasty habit of using that blaster as a battering ram, aimed at the nearest alien's face. Nice guy......

 

I'll be interested to see how his psionic training has gone come the end of the month. If he's not just a simple thug, and he is that, that much is certain, but weather or not he's MORE than that, remains to be seen. If he isn't, and turns out psi-capable then damn, those bugs better start legging it back to mars.

 

He gets to be the squads pack mule as it is, carrying the spare rocket launcher and a reload, etc. he does have to drop it, if he's carrying THAT much of a heavy load, but he does alright with just the blaster and heavy plasma.

[Tsathoggua]

Checked that base out, turns out it was crawling with chryssalids, lost a tank, after repeated attacks by one, plus a heavy plasma bolt, in the end it was a blaster launcher plus a further plasma weapon (type unknown) discharge that finally felled it, just as it was about to go up into that command center. Fixed that problem quickly enough however, 3-4 blaster bombs up the grav lift, nothing left alive, then the team ran like the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels, tossing grenades behind them and dropping smoke canisters to obscure the way.

 

Psi results are in, and the team is lucky enough to have several psykers who were not made but born to it, high 80s to 90s psi strength.

 

Base was obliterated. Sod hanging around and having things reduced to bug-hunting for that last snakeman or some chryssalid sneaking about in the dark. Blew th place to hell, lots of grenades on the egress, plus incendiary burst fire from the autocannon users (3 maybe 4 of them) aimed largely at the corners of intersections and corridors. Made a hell of a mess and left the place a blazing inferno.

 

Lets see them restore THAT!

 

Patrols just located another base close to canada. Looks like we're going in (again)

[magic9mushroom]

Actually, the 20x20 module containing the 2 power sources can be placed multiple times in a base (not just once). One Power Source of one module (I think this will probably be the first one placed on the map) will be unpowered (no Elerium) which will net you only 50 units of Elerium. However, additional PS modules do not have this shortcoming and net you the full 100. I think the max number of times the module can be placed is 3 times (never seen it show up 4 times) so the upper limit on Elerium recovery is 250 units. Over the long run, I'd say the average quantity of Elerium recovered per assault will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 units (possibly a little less like 30-40) due to the module not showing up at all. Yes, this is way less than the guaranteed 150 units you'll recover from a single Supply Ship. But Supply Ships aren't always on the map. The nice thing about assaulting the base is that it'll always be there for you, no matter the time of the day. You can schedule assaults when alien activity is low and train your troops up. Your actions at a base will not elicit retaliation missions either.

 

Casualties on your side from assaulting an alien base over and over should be rather low assuming you screen the base to make sure it doesn't have psi capable aliens or Snakemen+Chryssalids. You can't do anything about the Blasters unfortunately, except to keep your men safe in rooms at the end of your turn, but they aren't that big of a threat if the aliens carrying them are only in the command center. The 2 doors need to be opened in the same round in order to get the bomb to your troops. The issue is when one of the aliens come wandering out and you fail to kill it. If that happens your best bet is to run up to it.

 

Still, assaulting a base over and over is kinda cheesy and requires some rather advanced skills (like stunning and reviving an alien somewhere safe) so I don't recommend this for beginners.

 

- Zombie

 

- Yeah, I know it can show up twice and get 150 Elerium, but as you say that's very unlikely (there have to be two or more 2x2 modules besides the command centre, which is not always possible - and three is very hard to fit - and then both of them have to be the two-storey storage complex instead of the warehouse-like storage room or the garden, which is 1/9 if there are two or 6/27 of 150 and 1/27 of 250 if there are three).

 

- Sure, you can choose the time of the mission, but bases are always dark no matter the time of day while Supply Ships aren't. And even if it is dark, it's much easier to light up the terrain in a Supply Ship mission than in a base, since bases have low ceilings limiting flare throw range and metal floors that don't support fire beyond the automatic two turns of the incendiary itself.

 

- Bases don't provoke retaliation, but neither do Ground Assaults on Supply Ships.

 

- On Superhuman the Commander spawns outside the command centre, so it's very likely you'll eat a Blaster Bomb at some point.

 

- As you said, cheesy, and as we both said, difficult, so I stand by not recommending it.

[Tsathoggua]

Aliens with blaster launchers aren't restricted to the command center. Just had a muton, soldier caste, show up elsewhere carrying one. Worse luck for the muton though, as the psi corps, who for the most part are now pretty proficient, took him over and marched as close as possible to three other mutons, positioned carefully near a silacoid, which proved too tough to take over ,and then fired that blaster right into the lot, taking himself with them.