UFO Ground Assault

Briefing

Explore landing site and, if possible, gain entry to the UFO. Mission will be successful when all enemy units have been eliminated or neutralised. Recovery of UFO, artefacts and alien corpses can then be initiated.

Assaulting Supply Ships with JFG

After staking out a Floater base and getting a recovery craft set up, I was hijacking a Supply Ship every week for a month, and be darned if I wasn't starting to follow a pattern. I had a modified Firestorm stalking them, with 6 soldiers and a HWP; after clearing the outside and sniping a few at the exit, I'd breach with a team of 3 at each door; clear the one or two aliens usually at the grav lifts, quickly peek into the engine room in passing (150 units of intact Elerium-115 waiting, sweet); send one guy straight to the top floor to hide by the door, while the other two on his team go halfway up and bust open the shaft with plasma rounds; five guys sweep the middle deck. Usually the floaters are starting to panic by now. Then all six troops re-converge on the lift, head for the upper deck, and advance on the control room. First guy out of the lift turns right; the second turns left, checks the corner, then turns to stand next to the closed door to the south; third advances past second guy to snipe towards control room; fourth (if time) enters closed door to the south. Then it's just a matter of leapfrogging most of the team up the north corridor towards the control room with overwatch while one or two do a quick sweep of the narrow south corridor, perhaps opening a shortcut across the waist of the ship with heavy plasma along the way.

Occasionally I'd vary this routine by hitting the floor of the control room from below with HE-HC or stun rounds, but that could be considered cheating. But not as exploitative as the time I shoved a brick of HE up through the floor of the control room. A quick way to end the mission. Also fun is tossing HE or alien grenades into the diagonal walls at the back of the ship, near the lifts, from outside, with a long delay; if timed right, this kills anyone near the lifts inside just before the breaching team gets there. In mountain terrain, this might even destroy the outer wall at the waist of the ship! Easy lift access if I had stuck around!

And all that procedure comes from harsh experience, like the time I forgot to check the corner after coming out of the top level lift and was shot in the back.

And it got me a sectoid leader for Psionics, too, once I had identified my weakest link and given him a standard pistol and smoke grenades. He was being alternately panicked and controlled somewhere out in the forest right up until the powersuits kicked in the control room door and hit the leader with stun rounds at point blank range. Up until that time every attempted supply ship hijacking or sectoid base raid had been a psi-attacked disaster.

--JellyfishGreen 14:26, 23 May 2005 (BST)

Note: This was on Normal difficulty. At Superhuman difficulty, there's a few more aliens around, and it becomes wiser to stand in the lift (since aliens don't shoot down well) than to hide by the door. --JellyfishGreen 01:35, 26 Sep 2005 (PDT)

Notes

• In THE ABOVE EXAMPLE "I had a modified Firestorm stalking them, with 6 soldiers and a HWP" indicates a modified game using XcomUtil. In an unmodified game this is just an interception craft.
• If you want Elerium, don't use explosives near the power cores.
• If you have stunned a 'soldier' class and don't want it, relocate it and grenade it, or use medikits to awaken then shoot.
• If you assault craft that are landed you get more things to sell, but there may be more aliens to shoot your head off.

For medium-sized and larger UFO's in the later game, your best friends are some flying suits and a blaster bomb. Use the blaster to make a hole in the topmost level of the craft--only blasters can pierce the outer walls of UFOs. Then send in your flying units. This will let you take out the alien leader sooner-- which I believe adversely effects the morales of the enemy-- and lets you attack from an unexpected angle.

In general, it's best to make new doors inside a UFO than use the existing ones, since the aliens have a tougher time setting up ambushes that way. Use heavy plasma to shoot open internal walls (see Destroying Terrain), just be sure not to blast UFO power sources, or else you might lose the elerium. --Papa Legba 13:09, 22 Nov 2005 (PST)

See Also

UFO Crash Recovery