23 replies to this topic

[Arjuna]

Okay, I got really pissed off with fighting aliens with just lame machine guns, so when I saw the Biological Warfare research option I was very happy...until I noticed I needed a big lab to do it. So, I set to work building a new base (the one I had had an extremely poor layout for building, but it's good for defense). To get it entirely set up, staffed, and armed took about a week. To get the research done took about another week. Then when I saw the damage that Toxin-B could do (I just didn't bother building A because I was capable of researching B immediately after A), I jumped for joy and set about making my weaponry.

Another two days or something (didn't really keep track) for the guns and a lot of time for the ammo. Or maybe the building weapons just felt like a long time because of how many Alien Activity Alerts I got and the UFO incursions. But for the "test run"--I'd never used ToxiGuns before--I built ten guns, one for each agent, and twenty mags, one for the weapon and one spare. Plus all my guys have a coupla grenades of each type, a medi-kit and a motion scanner. I have two hybrids with mind benders (they don't have scanners) and an android who wields my heavy weapon, a minilauncher, but he has a ToxiGun for a sidearm.

This whole time, from building the base to the last mag, I didn't shoot down a single UFO or go to a single Alert thing. And my score has increased the last three weeks. What the heck?

As a side note, ToxiGuns are the single most effective weapon I've ever seen in any X-COM game with the notable exception of the heavy plasmas of 1999, nearly a century ago (game time). :uzzi:

But now that I've got the firepower to take those bugs down, I'm going to every alert thing, but for some reason my score is now dropping! Now if I only had the guns to bring down UFOs...

[Exo2000]

Check the Alien Infiltration Graphs. If it's about stuff being destroyed (like buildings), it's probably just corporate wars.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

The score inceares would probably be from research.

The score loss on the other hand... Are you sure you did nothing and nothing happened in the city?

[Tsereve]

The decrease could be due to:
alien infiltration(alerts take 4ever to be produced)
damage to city (raids? ufo attacks?)
battle casualties
something else

[Arjuna]

There were a lot of corps infiltrated, but as I said I didn't investigate. I know you can go to a building that you think may be infiltrated and investigate even prior to an alert, and I've done that now. I've started a new game because that one I completely screwed up, and now I'm doing pretty well with knowledge I've gained, but this is worth looking into.

Anyway, I did get a lot of research done, maybe that was it. And I think the score is dropping because my hev-wep keeps reaction firing. I've figured out how to prevent that, though, so I'm okay now. Damage to the city is a possibility, because my ships tend to level whole blocks in their attempt to knock down UFOs. I'm running into the big'uns now, like the mothership and that other one (don't know what it's called yet, I'm in the middle of a tac op bringing it in).

Another weird thing. Those Overspawn dealies; what do they do? I've only come across two thus far and the bugs dropped them both off outside the city. One was so far away it couldn't do anything even to the slums.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

You have had TWO overspawns? Dammit, some people play the game over and over again and never get to see one. You sure are lucky in that regard.

I think the Overspawn walks around and destroys buildings it comes into contact with. Unfortunately, I think it can die when buildings fall on it, so it is not very effective in destroying the city.

[G.Wood]

whoa whoa whoa..... overspawn????? walking, destroying city???? what is this???????????????????


play you game, get them on your screen and hit the print screen button on you keyboard, come back to this forum and paste it, I wanna see!!!!

[Tsereve]

Jonaleth, I disagree, the Overspawn is an excellent weapon for destroying the city, it just can't keep it up for too long. Does more damage than Motherships usually do for me. And yes, Overspawn do seem kinda rare sometimes--others, they flock over in hordes. Sort of.

[NKF]

I've said it before:

The Overspud is great for your public relations!

Forget about the damage done to the city. The damage it does is petty at best, and you can easily make it up in a mission or two. And they are only a real threat when they mindlessly walk into an X-Com facility. For all others, just let it roam free in all its glory.

While you may be slightly penalised for the damage to the city, the company who was attacked by the overspawn, and 'attack' isn't even the right word for it as the overspawns really do walk about at random (I know, I used XED to swap its ownership at one time just for kicks - and it kept moving by itself), the company, if it was previously hostile, will start to support your efforts against the aliens in future battles. Had an overspawn stomp flat the Temple of the Apocalypse in the superhuman map, and the cult started to like me afterwards. And the thing was, the overspawn wasn't intentionally attacking the temple!

The fact that buildings deal damage to the overspawn really reduces its effectiveness. It gets damaged with every attack. Otherwise it would've been far more dangerous than it really is.

- NKF

[Tsereve]

The Cult started to like you!!! Is that seriously possible?

[Arjuna]

Yeah, same thing happened to me with Psyke. For some reason they started to hate me a lot, even raided my base once or twice (to no effect). Recently ran up on another overspawn, actually in the city, tearing around downtown. It seemed to want to follow the roads, actually, so it really only took down the people tubes. G.Wood, I'd love to send you a jpeg of the autopsy report, but I'm at a public terminal. I'll bring it in on a floppy sometime. It says they're genetic alterations of the Megaspawn (which I hadn't seen yet, being at the time unable to take down escorts or either of the big'uns I've seen...I know them well now), but they've not any guns, just claws and tough skin. They look really stupid and act the part. You don't even bring it into alien containment to study; once you kill it you can research it at the site, 'cause there's an Explorer and a coupla Megapol hovercars next to it on the report.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I think you can even get the Cult to unfriendly or even neutral if you pay the initial bribe they ask of you. And then if an overspawn were to attack the cult... You could have an alliance of some sort. Although you would have to leave A LOT of the UFOs alone, since attacking them makes the Cult angry.

Let's not forget the legendary "live overspawn" entry, and the mysterious ways you could actually capture one "alive".

[Deathskull]

easy, just shoot its legs off in the middle of the road

[Arjuna]

What do you need to research to get toxin C? I'm gearing up for my assault on the alien farm.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

You must have researched live and dead specimens of all aliens types except one (I'm not gonna say which one you don't have to research, since it may be spoilers in your case).

You are probably gathering live aliens as you go along, but the hardest ones to capture live are Megaspawn, Popper and Skeletoid (in order of descreasing difficulty, IMHO). Psimorphs are easy since they only appear in Motherships (and buildings, but that's like... duh...) and you can easily get them to panic if they are not the ones coming out of the UFO doors first.

Do not expect a huge improvement over type B though. I don't think there's that much of a difference.

[Arjuna]

As soon as you research ToxiGuns and Toxin-A ammo (same research topic), you can see them in the "sell equipment" screen, along with Toxin-B and Toxin-C. C does about 80-90 damage (I think, I can't remember), B does 65, A does 50. I think it's a 15 point increase each time, so probably 80 for C, but again, I'm unsure.

Anyway, should I use grapples to capture skeletoids, or psionics, or stun gas grenades? I guess the gas wouldn't work so well, since skeletoids could just float over it or otherwise avoid it.

And are stun grapples one- or two-handed? They look like big pistols.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

You can use both stun gas and grapples, and it really depends on under what circumstances you'll try to capture one. If you can, the easiest way to capture them is through an Alien Destroyer recovery mission. There are no poppers on that ship, so you can send a horde of agents all equipped with grapples and stun every unit that comes out.

There is also another UFO (don't recall which one exactly) that has a roof exactly one level above the gate so Skeletoids need to move out before flying up. You could try stun gas in that situation. The grenades also work well in certain city buildings.

The easiest would be psionics, if you have capable soldiers. An agent equipped with a mind bender and a stun grapple (to stand guard over the unconscious skeletoid) could do the trick.

[NKF]

Actually, I've never had trouble capturing skeletoids with gas (well, to be more accurate, I've had as much trouble stunning it with a stun grenade as I have with most other aliens). I guess it's just the timing, and maybe I've just been lucky with the surrounding terrain. There are many places, like the apartments complexes (especially in that fancy one with the blue carpet and lots of fancy apartments) that you can use to your advantage to capture them. Heck, I won a mission in a few seconds flat when I sent a soldier into a room only a few steps away from where the squad started and gunned down 5 skeletoids with a toxigun. Mission was over in a flash. If I'd tossed a stun grenade in it would've netted a few live skeletoids, but I already had one any way, but the possibility was there!

Stun grapples are great, and it doesn't matter whether they're one handed or two, as they're short range weapons that can also shoot far enough to get enemies in the air. Two would be my recommendation, unless you're playing turn based, in which case two is just silly unless you want to swap them so that one can recharge while you use the other.

Stun grapples will only work IF the skeletoids are not wearing disrupter shields. If they are, then you'll fail unless you destroy it.

Mind control, I'm going to have to agree, is one of the better methods of capturing a skeletoid (and anthropod - grapples and gas for everything else). Whether through a direct stun attack, or using mind control to temporarily lower its shields (giving it to you) and then pulling out a stun grapple or stun grenade and finishing the job. It's one very good excuse to train up at least one psi trooper (And leaving this soldier uninjured for months on end for uninterrupted training) even if you want to concentrate on brute force.

- NKF

[Arjuna]

I've got this one hybrid I use for psionics, but I don't use her much anynmore; I've put her in combat training with a toxigun and about seven spare magazines (I hate running out of ammo). I'm gonna switch her back to psi to gear up for my next interdimensional assault. I'm replacing all my Retaliators with Annihilators so I really have little to fear from counterattack whilst I prepare.

In X-COM 1, I recently began issuing stun rods to all of my soldiers. Last night I raided a floater terror ship with stun rods, plasma rifles, and two HE-loaded autocannons. I used power suits though...I'm not stupid. Captured 7 aliens, killed 6. In that particular game I'm trying to fill out the UFOPaedia entirely.

Whoops, I meant to add more to that:

Should I do this in Apoc? Give a stun grapple to everyone in conjunction with a ToxiGun or Devastator?

Edited by Arjuna, 08 December 2004 - 07:14 AM.

[NKF]

Well, you only need 1 live alien each species in Apocalypse, as there aren't any ranks, so you wouldn't have to go stunning left and right.

I'd recommend having one or two soldiers carry some grapples and the rest go along with their standard kit (if you're using plasma guns or toxiguns, you can also bring it along as a backup). If you don't mind losing a shield (when you start using them), carry the two grapples in your backpack in addition to your usual weapons.

You needn't bring the grapples along all the time. Just take them along when you know you're going to meet up with an alien that you've not researched before.

- NKF

[Arjuna]

Managed to accidentally stun a megaspawn w/ combined assaults from stun grapples and toxiguns. I think it died of fatal wounds later, though; I couldn't research it back at the base.

I also stunned a skeletoid psionically, without inflicting any other damage to it. But I couldn't research it either. This was a mothership, if that helps. I did get a psimorph and an anthropod from that mission.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Do you have enough alien containment space? Psimorphs and megaspawn each take 60% of a single alien containment facility. You may have accidentally destroyed the live aliens you captured.