Error in Kuo-Sheng's strategy guide

[Crafty]

Here's what the guide said...

 

"3.4 HOW DO I DESIGN SECURE BASE EASY TO DEFEND?

 

The most secure base design that I can think of is this one:

 

XXXXXX

X.XXXX

X.XXXX

A.....

HHHHHH

HHHHHH

 

. . .

 

"Basically, put the access lift off to one side of the map and try

to isolate that and hangars from the rest.

 

"There is one catch: sometimes, there's a bug in the game that

eliminates some doors that leads you to the rest of the base.

Without rockets and blaster bombs to "dig", you can't kill the

aliens in the other section and thus cannot finish the battle at

all."

 

. . .

 

Good advice, of course, but the "catch" is off. It has happened to me a couple of times in base defense where a hangar is cut off from the rest of the base. After a thorough search, I sent the entire team to the nearest room to the hangar. The error in the guide is that you don't need blaster bombs to "dig". You can cut a precise path with heavy plasma. It takes some doing, but it's not all that.

 

I guess I've been wondering if you could do the same thing with alien base incursions. That is, don't bother going down the elevator, instead tunneling across to the control room. Sure, you're spending scads of ammo, but has anyone tried this?

 

BTW, very new to the game, and grateful that this forum exists!

[Zombie]

Don't put much faith in the USG. Half of everything in there is wrong. Can't "dig" with Large Rockets either, yet it claims you can.

 

To breach the metal skin of the X-COM base you need a Heavy Plasma, Blaster Launcher, Hovertank/Plasma or the Tank/Laser Cannon. After the metal is gone, you have to tunnel through the dirt. Dirt is weaker than metal, so you can use Heavy Lasers, Plasma Rifles, Heavy Plasmas, Tank/Laser Cannon, Hovertank/Plasma, Hovertank/Launcher or the Blaster Launcher.

 

At least with the Heavy Plasma, there is a 12% chance to destroy the metal and a 44% chance to destroy dirt.

 

Alien metal and dirt in their base has the same properties as X-COM metal and dirt. Therefore, tunneling from your starting point to the command center can be done in the same manner. I sometimes use this trick, but only if the command center is directly next to one of the starting points. I think the aliens are somewhat surprised to see my troops poking their heads in so early!

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

I have a vague memory that a Hovertank/Plasma won't get very far when it comes to tunnelling through an alien base. Or was that the Hovertank/Launcher? Are you sure the two bases use the same properties?

[Zombie]

Oops, alien dirt is tougher than X-COM dirt. X-COM dirt armor is listed as 60 while alien is 100. That means that only the Blaster Bomb is strong enough to tunnel in the alien base. But the metals are identical. No wonder I only tunneled when the command center was close to the starting point.

 

- Zombie