Talk:Battleship
Ground assault on a battleship
I've had good luck attacking a battle ship by the "reaction wall" technique. This is where a large number of soldiers line up in sight/fire range of the exit door, but do NOT enter.
This is all about reaction fire. As soon as the door opens, your units will open fire on any alien.
This works fine as long as the doors close every turn. As soon as something blocks the door, abort.
If a door panel is destroyed, or if something large blocks the door open, then a blaster bomb can come out and clobber your team. Suddenly, your setup is no longer secure.
This does rely on your team not being mind controlled. That works as long as no one can be seen by the enemy -- make sure you have "swept" any outside aliens before you go for the seige -- or that you are not facing sectoids/etherials. --Keybounce 16:02, 6 January 2007 (PST)
- I do this a lot. I use up to six soldiers, splitting them into three for each entry point. Each soldier crouches against one of the battleship struts and the third soldier crouches between the pair. The middle soldier is sometimes replaced with a laser HWP. There isn't much room, so all three units should be spaced far apart but within visibile range of the door. This reduces area effect weapon mishaps. Other soldiers spend the rest of the mission sweeping the battlefield for stragglers.
- Sometimes I have a soldier or two stand right up against the entryway's blind sides. This allows them to rescue anything useful, to burst into the lift and gun down any blaster launcher toting aliens that were spotted but did not leave the lift, or to shoot at or capture any alien that has ended its turn outside the lift (but facing the nearest fireteam).
- It's a valid strategy, but as usual, alien grenades and blaster launchers can mess up even the best laid plans. -NKF
- Combining the Reaction Wall with cyberdisks is one of theose things i KNOW cannot be healthy. -(name here)
- Depends how far away you set up the ambush. Setting it up far enough away allows you to fry them from a distance(though Cyberdiscs still have really good reactions, so it would still be dangerous.) Since Cyberdiscs are so large, though, they should be fairly easy to detect with a Motion Scanner, which would allow easy finding and hunting and killing. A soldier on the roof of the UFO with a Motion Scanner is a great way to gather field intelligence(and Cyberdiscs can automatically be assumed to be on floor 2 of the Battleship, since there's no room for them to get around on floor 3. I've never seen them spawn up there...even if they did, they can't get down to hurt you.) Arrow Quivershaft 21:05, 2 July 2008 (PDT)
Playing CE, you can just fill up the elevator and kill all aliens. Or, heck, put agents INSIDE the elevator instead of an ambush outside. Reaction fire them when they go down the lift. Jasonred 06:44, 16 March 2009 (EDT)
- Not always. It's not uncommon for the command staff of the Battleship to remain on the top floor even after turn 20; often the same for the engineers in the engine rooms. (This actually happens on many UFOs; the command staff seem to dislike leaving the comfort of bridge unless they've spawned elsewhere.) You'll need to go in and kill them manually; this is ESPECIALLY true with Psionic aliens. And an exit ambush for a Battleship can be a rather risky proposition, since once the door is open, even if you kill the first alien who comes down, there's nothing that stops the next one who comes down from firing a Blaster Bomb into your fire team.
- That all being said, I myself frequently use a team of 9(or 5 troops and a tank) to barricade the elevator and then use remaining soldiers to sweep the ship, advancing up one floor at a time. Remember to also barricade the extra elevator on floor 2 that leads to floor 3! Arrow Quivershaft 16:50, 16 March 2009 (EDT)
- The top staff do do linger on the upper levels, but the solution is to just wait longer. I have beaten several battleships without ever having to enter them, so they will all move out eventually. About the only time I'd force a charge into the battleship through the legs or from the top would be if they were waging psionic attacks against a team of unknowns or semi-resistant psi troopers - or if one of the legs was already busted and there's already a hole to walk through. Got to at least plug the lift and then make use of it if at all possible.
- The problem with using the battleship lift for assaulting the upper levels is the fact that it's a wide lift. Small lifts like in the Supply Ship can be plugged indefinitely, but the wide lifts do allow the aliens to fire their blasters down at an angle - thus avoiding the CE vertical waypoint bug. Just saying that from experience. -NKF 00:34, 17 March 2009 (EDT)
- You don't understand... I plug the central elevator with EIGHT troops, leaving the center square empty. Everyone faces inwards. When an alien comes down, he gets reaction fired to death. And, the aliens CAN fire their blasters down at an angle... but they will TRY to shoot it down vertically... it only ever goes an angle due to drift... Jasonred 03:08, 17 March 2009 (EDT)
Commanders on battleships
Aren't alien commanders on every type of battleship? As well as X-COM base defence missions? In fact, I feel like I often see two commanders on ships/base assaults/invasions.--Ethereal Cereal 15:18, 10 March 2007 (PST)
- Well obviously Mutons don't have commanders (or leaders) on their Battleships, but I think there is usually 1 for the other races --Pi Masta 15:50, 10 March 2007 (PST)
[Alitorious: I've heard both that it works and doesn't work, so I'm not sure if you can interrogate these commanders or not. Maybe it depends on the version of the game?]
[ NKF: Oh yes they will. A commander's a commander's a commander. The game doesn't distinguish. The problem only arises if you don't have the right prerequisites for the tech you want the commender to unlock.]
At any rate, it is much easier to find the commander on the bridge of a Battleship than inside the maze of an Alien Base. If a Battleship lands in a rural area as part of a large force, then it is likely to be on an Alien Base mission. If all ships of an Alien Base construction force are shot down or assaulted, then the Alien Base has no chance to be built.
[Alitorious: I might be wrong about that, actually.] [ NKF: Well, it's only the battleship that matters. You should be able to stop base construction if the battleship is shot down before it lands.]
[ Papa Legba: Shooting down a battleship en route for base construction does not prevent the base from being constructed. However, other ships may be sent out to scout the area prior to construction, and shooting these down will delay or prevent the construction ship being sent out. The battleship can be sent out on either, or both, missions, so it's difficult or impossible to distinguish a scouting battleship from a constructing battleship. ]
Chat in main article
Recent updates brought to my attention that there's quite a lot of in-article chat in the Battleship article. That was fine when we were first starting out and the wiki was new, but since we've decided to remove this from the main articles, they have to go. I'll attempt a rewrite.
I'm going to paste a section that I'm I didn't want to remove entirely but did want to move out of the battleship article because its contents are really better suited for a much broader interception strategy article. -NKF 02:54, 1 April 2009 (EDT)
Addendum: The Alien-Terran Hybrid craft class Avenger is capable of one-on-one engagement with a Battleship. However, very heavy damage will be inflicted on the Avenger, which must be repaired prior to further flights. Considering the severity of the damage, however, repair times are extensive and border on the time taken to manufacture a new Avenger. Multiple Avengers, with Firestorms or Lightnings as support if available, are still recommended in order to assault a Battleship. This has two major advantages. First, by using multiple crafts your firepower raises and the time the battleship has to inflict damage to your craft lowers, therefore also lowering the overall damage that has to be repaired. Second, repairing Avengers takes quite a time. However, if the damage is distributed to 4 Avengers they will be repaired all at a time. The overall damage will therefore be dealt with much faster. Only negative aspect, as mentioned below is the temporary loss of up to 4 Avengers.
Alternate opinion: There is a lot to be said for the "gang up on the Battleship" theory, but I prefer single-Avenger assaults. If there are multiple Avengers available, I use only one to intercept, and suck up the long repair time. Rotate the damaged Avenger out of the high-activity regions, and rotate a fresh Avenger in. I find this preferable to having multiple avengers knocked out for a shorter period of time, since if another Battleship comes along quickly, you'll have two or three Avengers out of commission, instead of just one. --Papa Legba 13:19, 22 Nov 2005 (PST)
Plus one more I didn't want to throw away, but think its message may be better suited to another article (base construction and bugs perhaps?). -NKF 03:12, 1 April 2009 (EDT)
Jasonred : If, for some reason, you coincidentally decided to dismantle the base (possibly to relocate?), and there is a battleship actually enroute to attack your base, the battle ship will head for that base's ex-location anyhow. It will then realise it's been duped, BUT, after consulting it's alien masters, will simply head to the next closest base. In a straight line, top speed. HOWEVER, once it arrives there, it will realise that they only have the lift access codes to your old base, and will then simply hang there hovering over your base for ages and ages. In fact, this is due to the nature of the code which sends out the scouts. If successful, it sets the "aliens know where base is" flag, and applies it to the next battleship launched on a retaliation mission. This flag is only removed after a battleship actually manages to land and send troops inside your base. This flag is not removed by base defence blowing up battleships, craft blowing up battleships (I think), or, as I just mentioned, by removing that base entirely. Nor is this flag restricted to that base in particular.
Alien Harvest and Alien Abduction missions
I believe it was confirmed via code dig that Battleships always show up on Harvest missions and never show up on Abduction missions. Mind if I change the description in here? -- Magic9Mushroom
- What has been confirmed (from reference data table located by Seb76) is that there are no Battleships scheduled there. I haven't seen any Battleships empirically either, so I think this is a safe edit. -- Zaimoni, 10:56 CDT June 12 2010
Regarding weapon damage and Battleship health
It's stated on this site that Battleships have 3,200 health in the DOS version, and that their weapon's power is 148. I have the DOS version in front of me, and the in-game UFOpaedia says they have 3,000 health and a weapon power of 140. There's no note about the in-game UFOpaedia being wrong about these, so I'm now rather confused (and nobody seems to have made any note of these changes when they were added, either).
Could someone confirm, with a source, what's right and what's wrong here? Magic9mushroom (talk) 11:03, 15 July 2018 (CEST)
- Just looked in the .EXE file. The in-game UFOpaedia is correct; somebody screwed up when putting the 3200 and 148 in. Magic9mushroom (talk) 11:50, 15 July 2018 (CEST)