Talk:Alien Base
Base Camp(er)
After getting my ass handed to me a few times by a blaster bomb during alien base assaults, I decided to experiment with new tactics. I tried having everyone stay in the "green rooms", and sent a scout down every turn who spun around and came back up if he didn't see anything. I also dumped a smoke grenade below for a little extra cover.
If the scout saw any alien, I had everyone go down the lift to take a single autoshot each until the alien(s) were dead. I used a Mind Probe to figure out if the aliens had TUs left, and to use stun ammo if I spotted a Commander.
It worked really well. Those lifts are a regular duck blind. Twice they sent a blaster bomb my way; one circled around in the room below me before exploding, the other blew up in adjacent room. The first one might have missed due to the vertical-movement waypoint bug, although if that was the case, I think it would have just blown up, not gone through several waypoints like that. It may simply be that they were aiming for where they had seen my troops on the lower level, having never spotted the team on the upper level.
Right towards the end the Commander finally came at me. He had panicked so he wasn't carrying his weapon, but I wanted to capture him and none of the soldiers near him had stun weapons. I had my troops turn their back to him so they wouldn't kill him with reaction fire and had the other team make their way across the map. However, it turns out the Commander still had an alien grenade. He came up the lift, tossed it, and killed two of my soldiers as well as himself. Heh.--Ethereal Cereal 01:20, 9 March 2007 (PST)
I tried it a second time, it continued to work well. I should note that it was a Snakeman base on Superhuman. With other races, and maybe other difficulty settings, this technique might not work too well.--Ethereal Cereal 04:07, 9 March 2007 (PST)
- I actually do this all the time. I wait at the entrance, plugging the upper landings with soldiers or a tank to prevent sneak attacks and let the aliens approach the lifts. Ever turn I lower a scout down, look around and when anyone's spotted, I have other soldiers drop down, open fire or perhaps drop or throw a grenade and then flee back upstairs. If I'm daring enough, I attempt an angled blaster bomb attack (with everyone fleeing to the far end of the room - even this doesn't protect them 100% of the time). I keep this up for a while until I feel it's safe to venture out. The CE vertical blaster bomb bug also helps heaps with mass self-inflicted kills. I wouldn't count on it for the dos version.
- However, it's not a foolproof strategy and a spanner can easily be thrown into the works if the aliens get just one lucky break.
- A mini-camper strategy involves having soldiers hide up those small lifts that lead to small isolated areas. In the CE version of the game, this ensures that you're 100% blaster-bomb and chryssalid/reaper proof. Of course, you'll need a grenade or some other explosive to clear the landing if the aliens get smart(or dumb-depending on your viewpoint) and plug the lift so that you cannot descend. - NKF
And it works for all types of lifts. From 1x1 to 3x3, as long as you plug it the aliens can't send a Blaster Bomb up there. Only true for the CE version though. The Playstation version doesn't have BB waypoint problems and thus it forces you to play without exploiting a bug.--Zombie 08:53, 9 March 2007 (PST)
- If you stay out of sight though (using smoke and avoiding "visible" edges of the lift), can they see you up there? Will they attempt to send a bomb up if they've only seen troops on the lower level? (If not, then this is potentially an AI exploit, which is more legit than a bug exploit.)
- Incidentally, do you really want to "plug" the lifts (I assume by putting a soldier/tank on every upper lift square)? I tried it where everyone was adjacent to the lift, staying away from positions that might be visible from lower-level corridors. If any alien made a mad dash for the lift, they'd be so out of TUs that reaction fire would take care of them. But again, so far I've only tried it with snakes/chryssalids, and only on CE.--Ethereal Cereal 15:50, 9 March 2007 (PST)