Alien Base Assault

Briefing

XCom operatives have gained entrance to an alien base. The control centre must be destroyed to render the base inoperative. The Mission will terminate when all enemies are eliminated.

Locating an Alien Base

Alien bases do not show up on the Geoscape by default. They are hidden until you find them. To locate one, an X-Com craft must patrol in its vicinity for a short time. Also, X-Com agents may report a base location to you at the beginning of the month, but that shouldn't be relied upon.

There are several clues that indicate the presence of an alien base:

• A large UFO performing an "Alien Base" mission may indicate the creation of a base, or a preliminary scouting mission. Several UFOS running alien base missions simultaneously indicate the construction of a base, and the base may be built even if you interdict all of those UFOs. See: Alien Missions
• An "Alien Supply" mission will always land directly on top of a base; patrol the location until you find it.
• For each nation that the aliens enter a pact with, they will also build a base somewhere on that nation's continent-- but not necessarily within that nation's borders.
• Check your graphs for UFO activity by region. A spike of UFO activity in a given region probably indicates the construction of a base there.
• Alien bases are numbered by generation, not by detection. If you already have destroyed 3 alien bases before discovering "alien base 5" you should continue your search to find number 4.

Goal

Destroying the contents of the room on the second floor of the Command Center renders the base destroyed for all intents of a base assault. Specifically, you must destroy all 16 sections of the 4 purple octagonal tables (normally these are UFO Navigations). A single Blaster Bomb to the upper level will usually set off a chain reaction: if you hear 16 explosions in a row, you're all set.

If you abort the mission after destroying the Command Center, the base will be destroyed. However, the mission will not end until you abort it or kill every alien in the base -- the latter is of course to be preferred.

If you do abort the mission, be sure to move all your troops onto the green tiles in the "exit areas" on the upper level. Any troops not on a green tile (including those on the red lift tiles in the exit rooms) will be counted as MIA.

It is often much easier to infiltrate the Command Center by shooting through its walls (and ceiling) than by entering it via its doors and access lift. See Destroying Terrain#UFO Walls for more details.

Recoverable Components

The components that can be recovered from an alien base varies, dependent on what modules are used in its layout (see Alien Base Terrain). Most of the recovery value from an alien base assault will come from recovered alien armaments. See UFO Recovery Values#Alien Base Assaults for more details.

Alien Deployment

Rank	Beg./Exp.	Vet./Gen.	Super.
Soldiers	5-9	6-10	7-11
Navigators	1	1	2
Medics	1	1	1
Engineers	1	1	2
Leaders	2	3	4
Commanders	1	1	1
Terrorists	1-3	3-5	5-7
Totals	12-18	16-22	22-28

Smash And Grab

Alien bases can be a very quick and dirty (dangerous) way to get Elerium, using what we call the "smash and grab" mission. Raid them by seeking out the storage room with power units. Destroy the power units without using explosives, and pick up the purple elerium canisters that were underneath. Boogie back to the entry lift, and abort the mission. You get the elerium and the base is not destroyed. This means you can raid as often as you dare. Consider grabbing a few alien equipment on your retreat to replenish any spent equipment during the raid, and perhaps if you are lucky enough to knock out a high ranking alien, drag it back to the entrance to have it abducted.

If you want to do repeated Smash And Grabs on the same base, you must not destroy the base Control Center, and you must leave some aliens alive in the base.

One tip is to knock out an alien, bring it somewhere safe where you can watch over it (such as the small storage rooms with the small grav-lift), and then revive it with a med-kit. Proceed to wipe out the rest of the aliens, but do not damage the command consoles in the command centre. As soon as the base is neutralized, initiate a recovery mission and gather as much equipment (and corpses, if you're really stretched for cash) in the green entrance pads before aborting the mission. Though this may seem time consuming, it does allow you to reap the rewards of a normal successful mission.

The mission will be counted as a technical failure, but that's nothing to worry about, as the activity points, loot and experience will tell you otherwise.

Many (or most?) alien bases will not have power units, or any Elerium. Recent research has shown that attacking a base's Supply Ships is likely to be more profitable (and less dangerous) than attacking the base itself, and a more reliable source of Elerium. See UFO Recovery Values#Alien Base Assaults for more details.

A save way to perform "Smash & Grab farming" by tequilachef: Before attacking the base, make sure your transport carries as many soldiers and hwp's as possible. In total they should be able to use up 14 Battlescape tiles or more. This ensures that both landing spots can be covered completely. Your first turn has to be used to retreat all units in the starting area (flashy green tiles) and fill up the top floor of the elevator with either one hwp or four soldiers. As long as your troops stay that way, you are literally invincible. Aliens cannot fire through elevator tiles in any way (of course, you still have to worry about psionics. Since, Sectoid or Ethereal bases should not be used for farming). If an alien stands on the ground floor of the elevator the soldier right on top of it can easily perfom the kill. If you cannot see an alien, send one soldier down do scout. If nothing is there, go back up. Else shoot every enemy on sight. After 20-30 turns, most aliens will be killed or disarmed by paniking and you can dispatch a few soldiers to collect the elerium. Note that there can be 0-2 rooms that contain power sources with each AT LEAST one piece of elerium (thus giving you 0-200 units of elerium per raid, and 150 units are more common than it seems). As soon as the stuff and everyone is on the green tiles, abort the mission and go home. This is much easier as soon as you can use psionics. If you MC the enemies, get them in the exit area and kill them there the raid will get you their weapons, ammunition, grenades and corpses, too. To ensure that you can return for a fuel raid at any time plus getting nice boosts from supply ships the base has to stay intact. This means that one alien has to survive. Picking up unconscious aliens from the lift and reviving them upstairs will do the trick. With the use of psionics, they can get upstairs on their own. The command center has to stay intact, too. This means that Muton bases are ideal for farming since no leaders with blaster launchers will be present to blow up their own base. Other advantages are that you dont have to worry about psionic attacks while the enemy himself is quite vulnerable to them.

Notes

• Somebody turned the lights out. Alien bases start dim and remain dim, so bring electroflares.
• Remember those Proximity Grenades; you can't guard every intersection.
• The alien base will be staffed by the same variety of aliens that ran the "alien base" UFO mission that set the base up, and the aliens that run the "alien supply" missions to that base. See Alien Missions for more detail. They will have their associated terror units there.
• Alien bases populated with Snakemen deserve special caution. The high mobility of the Chryssalid makes it especially dangerous here-- it can run around three corners and still have enough time to infect your troops.
• The Alien Base Commander and a couple leaders will usually- but not always- be hanging around the Control Center. Expect at least some of them to have blaster bombs.
• Alien Engineers hang out around the Storage Loft sections. many of them will be armed with blasters as well.
• Don't linger long in the rooms beneath the access lifts, and stay spread out at all times. There WILL be aliens with blaster bombs here, and they will be happy to use them on any clusters of your troops.
• If you are trying to capture a Commander, be aware that before entering the inner door of the command center, if the commander is not killed or incapacitated before the end of the turn where the door is opened, he may fire his blaster launcher and kill himself and most of the aliens in the command center accidentally.
• Also be aware that bases staffed by Mutons will never have a Commander; Mutons can only be Soldiers, Engineers, or Navigators.
• Feel free to throw explosives around to open up the terrain, especially in those garden areas. It's your enemy's base, after all.

See Also

Alien Base Terrain