Alien Dimension (Apocalypse)
The Alien Dimension consists of a bleak,hostile environment with an organic city. This city undoubtedly constructs Alien craft and nurtures the Alien brood. The structure of the buildings is immensely strong, but there appears to be weak point which will allow our Agents and vehicles to gain access to the building south of the dimension gates. If we can research this building further then we will have the necessary information to send in our squads to destroy it. We should then be able to gain access to the next building via the organic tubing that joins the Alien city together like a giant umbilical cord. From: Apocalypse Ufopaedia
In order to win the Mega-Primus War it will be necessary to fight the aliens at their own home. First X-COM will have to perform the necessary research in order to build craft capable of operating through the Dimensional Gates. Then it will be necessary to engage and survive the fleets of UFOs on the alien dimension in order for ground strike teams to destroy the alien buildings.
The first trip to the Alien Dimension will unlock it as a research topic and after X-COM scientists complete that next step of research it will be possible to research the first building and proceed to the first tactical mission on the dimension.
Orange Pad Re-inforcement Spawns
- Pads are explosive! A small explosive may destroy the whole orange-pad-structure and the overhead.
- The orange pads allow an alien to spawn every (at best) 12seconds to (commonly) 40second intervals. The lifeforms which spawn-in are chosen randomly from the available units found normally within this particular alien structure. Testing: large aliens.
- Some pad devices have mis-matched tiles when viewed from overhead-battlescape-view. They appear normal in isometric view and this corruption does not affect their purpose.
- The spawn-timer is global for the current battlescape. If multiple orange-pad-device-structures are present, the game will choose randomly which orange pad structure the new alien will appear at hence, the timer is not seperate for each pad or pad structure.
Note: the game chooses the top-left (overhead) or northern (isometric) orange pad within the structure for spawning and chooses the same also for the spawn cell. That is: any structure placed randonly will use the same spawn-decision-location.
- Alien corpses, not weapons, may clog the pad if they were killed immediately after appearing (spawn-camping) and will halt further spawns. Avoid killing aliens until they have had a chance to exit the device and move away if 'farming' for equipment.
- Four-piece pad devices only use one pad as an active portal, the others are inactive. If the active pad is destroyed, another pad -may- become active. Typically, the orange-pad-device-structure is disabled once the active pad is destroyed.
- If bulk quantities of alien corpses are present, the newest corpse will be removed from the battlescape and will not be recovered whereas weapons and devices will not be removed if too many are present(eg: over 500 items on the ground). The game engine will become unstable. eg: a unit given a destination to move to may not have the destination-icon apear if the game screen includes the map cell with massive quantities of items. This is an indicator that the game is struggling and may crash soon. Complete the mission with your farmed items to prevent loss.
- Once too many corpses are present on the battlescape and automatic corpse reduction has started, the orange pads will not clog up. Agents can then be placed adjacent the pad and shoot-dead any new spawns immediately.
- Orange pads and the bolbus plant next to it are explosive. If any items are within a two-cell distance of the detonating orange pad, they will all be destroyed and any dropped explosives may affect item piles further via chain-reaction explosions. This will destroy your farmed equipment!
Equipment Farming
Raiding an alien building for agent equipment is possible if escape from the battlescape is chosen instead of completing the mission objective. Agents should fill their inventorys with stolen equipment since offloading items is only possible by returning to Mega-Primus.
- A line-up of troop-transports raiding one-after-another method is suitable to maximise booty and to have all agents gain combat experience and attribute increases.
- Spawning aliens are easily ambushed (caution when dying on the pad) since they appear one at a time and in unlimited quantity.
- Using non-explosive weaponry (eg: Toxigun only) will prevent explosions from destroying dropped equipment. Picking up needed armaments and dropping them somewhere
high up in a man-made tunnelsafe will preserve your loot however, rouge aliens may throw an explosive into your stash if they find it. - The alien building can be raided endlessly!
Overview of Alien Structures & Missions
- Dimension Gates
- Sleeping Chamber (Alien Building 1)
- Food Chamber (Alien Building 2)
- Alien Farm (Alien Building 3)
- Maintenance Factory (Alien Building 4)
- Incubator Chamber (Alien Building 5)
- Control Chamber (Alien Building 6)
- Spawning Chamber (Alien Building 7)
- Organic Factory (Alien Building 8)
- Megapod Chamber (Alien Building 9)
- Dimension Gate Generator (Alien Building 10)
UFO Growth
At the beginning of each week the game will add a certain number of UFOs to the Alien Dimension up to a certain maximum. This process will stop forever once the Control Chamber is destroyed.
| Week |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9 | 9 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | ||||||
| 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | |||||
| 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| 9 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 10 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 11 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| 12 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 13 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 14 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 15 | 1 | |||||||||
| 16+ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Maximum | 15 | 15 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 2 |