How to clean-up a UFO without entering it...

[Tifi]

How to clean-up a UFO without entering it...

 

Wander up to UFO, and knock on the door.

 

*knock*

*knock*

*knock*

*door opens*

 

Oh, hai there Mr. Red Riding Hood. I don't mean to be a nuisance or anything but would you mind awfully tossing that cute little purple sphere out of the door?

You know, the one over there sitting on your glowy engine thing?

*points*

Why you ask?

Just as an aside its kinda rude to poke into people heads uninvited, but I digress.

I just want it mmm-kay? Its my precious and I wants it.

Besides, once you've thrown it out here I can fill you full of holes and drag your ship and your many charred corpses back home and then put my feet up for a bit - its not a huge demand now is it?

 

*door shuts*

 

Guys.... You said it would work!

[Bomb Bloke]

Just realised this one wasn't mentioned here yet.

 

Essentially, you send rockets or other explosives at the northern and/or western sides of a UFO... and they kill stuff inside.

[Zombie]

I guess this has some other important implications. Say you blast a hole in a wall of a UFO. If there isn't a couple nodes there allowing movement through the hole, the aliens will ignore it and head to the normal exits. I have never seen aliens exit their ship in this manner so I guess the theory holds. Also, I don't think there is a way to link two levels of the battlescape together (exception: steps). So aliens which can float will probably get marooned there if they float up to get around an impassible barrier on the ground.

 

A good test to run sometime is to remove the through-waypoints of a single-exit UFO and then watch what happens. Aliens should never exit.

Just tried this today. First I plugged the door of the Medium Scout with a wall segment and created a hole in the opposite end. When I got into the mission, I rounded up all the Sectoids outside the craft with psi and walked them inside the ship through that hole. Then I set 3 soldiers on the roof of the ship to act as lookouts. Ended turn. Nothing. Sped forward 100+ turns. Still nothing. The aliens never exited. So this proves the theory 100%.

 

So creating holes in a UFO with Blasters is a great way to catch aliens completely off-guard. They will not expect the hole and your soldiers can pick them off without entering the ship itself. Nice.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Yesterday I was playing EU for a few hours and went to a landed Large Scout mission on desert terrain during the day. Cleared all the aliens off the map within the first 3 rounds, then waited by the door of the UFO for a few turns. Door sounds, so I entered. My trooper shoots, and naturally, misses badly. What the heck are you shooting at soldier? Alien shoots back, and naturally, hits. Sectoid prick!

 

After finishing the alien off, I look at my soldier's stats. 2 fatal wounds and low health. Great. No Medi-Kits either. Superb. It's only round 6 and it'll be at least 14 turns before the last alien exits. Obviously, I couldn't wait that long as the soldier would die, and trying to storm the UFO would have taken a while too. Somehow I had to expedite the process. I decided on shooting a hole into the East wall to the engine room with a Heavy Plasma. Hole created. Then I had another soldier shoot at the West wall of the engine room. First shot destroys the wall, the second shot kills the Sectoid behind it while the third flies off and hits the far wall destroying a navigation panel. I'll take it. End mission and soldier spends the next 23 days in the infirmary. Could be worse I suppose.

 

- Zombie