Smoke stunning

[sluissi]

When a unit gets smoke stunned, alien or human, does the unconscious corpse have to be out of the smoke for it to start to recover, or can it recover while it's still in the smoke, thinking about it, either way could be realistic, one in real world realistic, the other, taking game physics into consideration. I've just always wondered, and I don't have much chance to test this out. It would be nice to just set up a little guarded "cell" building on a landing or crash, or terror site, and just throw all the unconcious aliens in there to keep them stunned with smoke. Also, if you find out an alien is fatally wounded, can you use a medikit on them to keep them alive?

[NKF]

Well, if fire damage can hurt an unconcious unit, then there's a possibility that smoke may affect a stunned unit as well. But if recovery does start in smoke (while unconcious), and the smoke causes stun damage to an unconcious unit, then they might be cancelling off each other. Must remember to set aside some time to find out.

 

Oh yeah, just something of interest: Improved armour seems to affect smoke intake. It was almost impossible to stun a superhuman sectoid commander at one time, which I think might have been influenced by its armour level. It was in a very peculiar situation. The commander (the first psi alien I found too, and it was a really high ranked alien too!) had panicked and was unarmed, and as it was the last alien on the map, I decided to stun it. Sadly, I only had smoke grenades and nothing else due to bad planning -- couldn't even use the plasma guns. Eventually I had to kill it, because it just wouldn't get stunned for some reason, even after saturating the area with smoke for quite a lot of turns.

 

For the last question: Yes, you can heal an alien. In fact, you can use any of the medicines on an alien. Though I've got the feeling that aliens cannot get fatal wounds in the normal course of the game (i.e. without the help of an editor).

 

- NKF

[sluissi]

I distinctly remember an alien having a fatal wound once...unless you can come up with another reason I shot it and 2 turns later it fell dead without being shot again.

[The Demi-Godly One]

They can get fatal wounds, I remeber from my psi-control days, I would check their stats and occasionally see fatal wound(s) (Once I saw a muton with 16 fatal wounds!). As for waking up in smoke, the smoke does not stun an unconscious unit any further after they are already unconscious. I once had it where one of my units fell unconscious from smoke, the very next turn she woke up and I let her stand there. Then the following turn she fell unconscious, then she woke up, then she fell unconscious etc. (So the smoke would stun her right when she woke up, and it wouldn't when she was knocked out).

[NKF]

Oh, I'm not disputing the fact that aliens can die mysteriously. I too have had stunned aliens die on me. Now that I think about it, the aliens do get critical wounds while they're under your mind control. But for non-mind controlled aliens that have just been wounded (badly or otherwise), I've never been able to register any wounds via the mind probe (not counting the wounds inflicted on it while it was under MC).

 

Bad luck I guess, or perhaps the non-controlled units have a much smaller chance of getting critical wound than the units controlled by the player.

 

As for the stun recovery in smoke -- I just had a look myself. DG1's right, no stun damage is received while the unit is unconcious. But once the unit wakes up, if it doesn't move out of the smoke by the end of the turn, it'll receive enough stun damage to get knocked unconcious for an extra turn or so.

 

So, you could just toss the aliens in the back of your Skyranger and then park a HWP in their way (have its turret look the other way to avoid reaction fire). Then have someone detonate a smoke bomb behind it every so often to keep the aliens suffocated.

 

Personally, I feel a stun rod would be better. It can knock an already groggy alien out for a few more turns than smoke inhalation.

 

- NKF

[Snikers]

Screw getting out of the smoke by the end of the turn; it should be the first priority if you want them awake. It's bizarre, I have repeatedly had recently awoken units fall asleep again when an AC-HE round hits an alien two screens away. No damage, they just collapse.

[Rosstoid]

I'm pretty certain that aliens can get fatal wounds. Psi Squad 2, composed of rookies with excellent psi abilities was armed with rifles because I didn't think they needed to fire them. I mind controlled the mutons on a recovery mission, got them all to pose for a photo with the X-Com soldiers and tanks and then got my men to turn around and shoot the mutons with mere rifles. It took 12 shots each to kill the mutons, and each time the mutons went unconsious and died the next turn.

[The Demi-Godly One]

I think how likely an alien is to get a critical wound is also dependant on difficulty, because when I played novice I would always find aliens with critical wounds. But on Superhuman it is a different story, I have never seen an alien with a critical wound on Superhuman. (This might explain why some people never see aliens with critical wounds)

[Mouse Nightshirt]

Nah, I've never seen critical wounds on any alien unless they get hurt when under my control (which is quite a lot! hee hee!)