Capturing Live Aliens (Apocalypse)

Capturing live aliens.

The key to success in Apocalypse lies in the successfull capture of live aliens. Once you have captured a number of different live aliens, you will be able to research their live cycle and then toxiguns. Toxiguns are amazingly effective weapons, especially once you reach the second and third ammo options.

The trick to capturing aliens is to know how stun damage works. Basically, any alien (or human, for that matter) can take stun damage equal to his or her health points before dropping unconcious. Now, you should realize that this is calculated off of current health points, not maximum. If an alien has taken some stun damage and you drop his health total to below the amount of stun damage it has taken, it falls unconcious. So you can actually stun aliens with any weapon as long as the alien has taken some stun damage (from running through smoke gas for example).

The stun grenade blanket. Equip all your agents with stun grenades, and when you are playing ufo recovery missions in real-time, throw two or three stun grenades at the entrance of the UFO as soon as the door opens. This will cover the outside of the UFO exit as well as a good portion of the inside of the UFO with stun gas, hitting all aliens the cloud with stun damage as well as causing them to try to get outside of the cloud in stead of shooting at you. In some UFO recovery missions, you can fill most of the trench the UFO created with stun gas.

Anthropods If you equip all your agents with stun grapplers in their second hand, you should start capturing some of these aliens early on in the game. Use the stun grenade blanket if you don't want to make sure.

Brainsucker If you equip your agents with stun grapples and keep them relatively close together, you should have no problem catching these.

Multiworm Again, these should be caught easily if your troops carry stun grapples.

Hyperworm These are hard to capture, but essential to research. They move slowly, so if you see one, pepper the area he is in with stun grenades or close in quickly with stun grapples.

Chrysalis and Alien eggs. These aliens are immobile, and count as stunned all the time. You should have no problem capturing them, you'll probably capture them before seeing them on the battlefield.

Skeletoid These can be very hard to capture, they use their flying capabilities to escape from stun gas and once you start encountering them the aliens start coming equipped with heavier weaponry too. While Psionics work on them, they are best caught at the earliest possible opportunity (wich is before psi is a viable tactic in my games). Try to engage these aliens in close quarters with stun grapples, or lay ambushes for them near single-story doors.

Micronoid Aggregate These are best caught from alien battleships. Put one team to take out the aliens from the main exit, bring another team with some stun grapples to the two-door rear exit. They should be amongst the first aliens to exit the ufo there. Once one is stunned, leave two guards with just stun grapples with it, and wipe out the aliens with the rest of the rear-entrance team. Stun gas doesn't work as far as I know, but I've never tested that thouroughly.

Popper These aliens are the main reason you should always have a stun grapple as your secondary weapon. If you do, you should not have much trouble capuring one or two of them. If you don't, you'll need to use the stun gas blanket. Both ways work, but I have better results using stun grapples. Hover at least 4 floors up over poppers with fire turned off and then throw stun grenades at it. pretty easy and fairly safe.

Spitter These are easy to capture. Stun gas is very effective, and they are weak enough to safely approach for stun grapples to work.

Megaspawn These can be a pain to capture. Equip half a dozen troops with stun grapples and get close and personal. Hope your shields survive the missiles he launches as you get closer. There is one minor blessing, though. He doesn't use missiles when you are within stun grapple reach.

Psimorph They fly, so stun gas won't work well, and they take over your troops so approaching them can be tricky. They appear on alien motherships, and they have a tendency of staying inside of the ufo. Lure out all the aliens you can find, run inside with two teams of troops. Take out the megaspawn and any other stragglers left inside and head up to the second floor. You should be under psi-attack by now. On the second floor, have one team run up to the psimorph and hit it with their stun grapples while the other team stands guard. (Make sure that the second team doesn't start shooting at the psimorph, you want a live one, not a dead one.) Once the psimorph is stunned, leave the team that stunned it to guard it, as it will wake up quickly and repeatedly. Use the other team to sweep the ship. Now, the psi-attacks it has are dangerous, but there is a trick to make it harmless. Equip your troops with nothing but toxiguns (harmless to humans) and stun grapples (won't go through energy shields), and the psi-attack goes from lethal to annoying.

Queenspawn This one is rather easy to capture once you know how. Destroy all the teleporters in the room with her so she doesn't get any reinforcements. Then throw two vortex mines into her pen, one to her far left, the other to her far right. This takes out the annoying alien eggs around her. Then start tossing stun gas grenades into the room with her. Throw in the next grenade as the gas from the previous one evaporates. After about ten grenades, take a few pot shots at her, and you should have a captured alien queen!