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)

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. ]