How do you safely breach a UFO?

[NoxNoctum]

I tried using smoke grenades, but it seems that even if I throw it right in front of the door (before opening the UFO doors that is) it won't spread inside the UFO, so the guys who opens the door is still vulnerable.

What do you guys do? Shields seem to work decently against the Caesans but not against the Sebilians.

[Assoonasitis]

Throw rookies at the aliens until they run out of TUs.

Alternately, park two assault units right outside the door (alternately leave one out of LOS but facing the path through the door), and the rest of your guys in sight of the door but in cover, then end your turn. On the next turn select one of your guys outside the door and right-click to open it, then either take out the aliens from the doorway or run your other assault out of LOS and face the door, and have the other one drop a smoke grenade inside (then duck around the corner and face the door if necessary). This should trigger the aliens inside to run out, at which point they will be gunned down by reaction fire, or at least stop in a bad spot and get picked off on your next turn.

[Snarks]

Get someone with a shield to open the door. Throw a smoke grenade on top of the aliens, not the guys who will go in. The point of the smoke is to obscure line of sight. Next, toss in a couple of flashbangs. Be sure to toss the smoke first otherwise you may lose some guys to reaction fire. Then send in your breachers with stun rods and shotguns to clear out the interior.

Alternatively, you can do the exploit method which is to have all your troops lined up on the sides of the UFO about 1 tile away from the craft itself. Have one guy stand in front and open the door. Then chuck grenades in silly nilly because the UFO's walls do not actually obscure your grenade. The game seems to treat it as a hedge or wall. There'll be no reaction fire, and as long as you keep the UFO smoked, the guy at the door will be safe. This is obviously an exploit so don't do it unless you really hate breaching UFOs.

[Assoonasitis]

The above technique works for most any room small enough to be nearly filled by the smoke, at the very least.

[StellarRat]

First, make sure you've killed all the alien outside the ship. Next get all your troops arranged so they can cover each other and your entry team is ready to move in quickly. Blow the hatch with C4 (it might take two charges). Fire at any aliens you see with your non-entry troops. Next toss in a smoke grenade to block alien LOF. Now you swarm in with your entry guys, close and kill as many aliens as you can. Make sure to try to get behind cover at the end of every turn. In a larger ship remember that a lot of aliens can come out of the engine room door, so keep that covered. There are no guarantees that it will be completely safe. I'd say you have a 50% chance of one or more getting killed depending on the size of the UFO, your troop quality, weapons, etc... Definitely send the rookies in first. Shields are life savers too.

[Josip Broz Tito]

Absolutely safest way to breach:

1. Clear all the aliens from the map except the UFO.

2. Position your rifles, machine guns, and snipers about 3/4ths to 1 screen from the door. Behind cover preferably.

3. Click each troops weapon to create an aiming reticule. Hover it over the door until it turns green. You will see a %. Since this takes a few turns, use the highest aim cost. Click to fire at the door.

4. You likely will not see dmg done to the door, but fear not! It is indeed taking damage. Keep shooting at the door. 3 turns with ballistics is normal.

5. The door should be destroyed without damaging any alien corpses or splattering living aliens inside (more $ for you!).

6. Keep your distance and kill all visible aliens at range. Move 1 rifleman up closer to the UFO to spot, but keep enough TU's on him to back out of firing range.

7. If there are any aliens you cannot reach, first try waiting a few turns and spotting again. If they won't show themselves you can throw a gas grenade into the UFO with the cloud enveloping where you think an alien is (you don't actually need to see it! This can save you from reaction fire. That should cause them to move. Re-spot and kill it.

If even that won't dislodge an alien= screw it, use C4. Always keep 1-2 blocks on each rifleman.

*When sending riflemen up close to the door, always approach it from the sides, never head on. This prevents aliens from firing at you on their turn easily, and lets your other troops get reaction shots if an alien does come out.

[StellarRat]

Tito likes to save as much alienware as possible. I still think blowing the doors with C4 is the safest as it will kill any aliens near the door inside the ship. You will lose them and their stuff, but the blast isn't big enough to destroy the actual control room equipment.

[Josip Broz Tito]

As always= good point. I'd say that if there isn't cover outside the UFO, your way is safer definitely.

[StellarRat]

The same thing works even better in alien bases where you can just count on several aliens being near EVERY door at first.

[ddopson]

A couple of tricks I've learned for dealing with Alien reaction fire:

* Simply opening the door doesn't seem to trigger reaction fire. Reaction fire triggers when you move in front of an alien, fire at it, or throw a grenade from a spot where they see you.

* Reaction fire doesn't always trigger; apparently, this is partly based on relative reaction points and remaining TUs. Or something. ie, a soldier with 100 reaction points might be able to walk up to an alien and shoot it in the face twice without being shot back. This is more curse than blessing ... Your high reaction points soldier breaches the door, walks in, and straight murders an alien from point blank range (using kneeled cover versus the other aliens). Of the 4 remaining aliens in the room, 3 shoot back and miss. You think reaction fire is done, but no. When your rookie walks in and fires; that 4th alien shoots back and murders your poor low reaction rookie.

* Flashbangs help. Even if you are going to kill a group of aliens in the same turn, using a flashbang keeps those aliens from using reaction fire on you. Careful though, if there are 4 aliens, and your flashbang only gets 3, the 4th can reaction fire on the grenade thrower. The major downside is that the guy throwing a flashbang is 1 less guy shooting and if you aren't eliminating the aliens this turn, you gotta get that guy back to safe cover.

* Deliberately drawing reaction fire is a perfectly valid strategy. Given the right circumstances (cover, kneeling, 5+ tiles distance), aliens aren't very accurate. Risking non-fatal injury to a high HP soldier wearing armor or a dude with a shield is an acceptable trade for risking another soldiers life. Or if a sniper can trigger reaction fire from a distance where the aliens have 5% hit rate, even better. Once an alien has fired, he's safe to shoot from point blank. Just be aware that 1 alien firing DOES NOT mean the other aliens in the room have crossed their reaction thresholds; those nasties are still a lurking threat.

* High TU soldiers are very useful here. They allow you to move in, shoot, and then retreat. The general idea is to END your turns far enough away that the aliens can't run up and shoot in the same turn. In other games, this is called "kiting".

* Shields are nice in that they allow you to take shots for free, but breaching can be done without them. One thing I still haven't

* Stun grenades are crazy overpowered since they seem to take out anything bio over a massive radius in a single turn before it can fire. I consider them cheating.

The Safe Breaching Manual:

0) No one ever ends a turn within 5 tiles of an unopened door. Ever. There is a massive accuracy boost within 5 tiles (15% per tile up to 60%). Aliens aren't very accurate. Staying 5+ tiles away and kneeled means that most aliens will miss more than they hit. Cover is even better. As is being to the side of a door rather than directly in front.

0) DO NOT end a turn with your entire team kneeled in front of a door you have never opened. This seemed like a good idea at first, but led to heavy losses. If an alien bumps the door open (they aren't smart, more like brownian motion), they fire first before your reaction (door open doesn't trigger reaction). If that's a triple-shot, you just lost someone.

0) INSTEAD, assemble a breaching team of ~4+ soldiers that are either 6+ tiles away from the front, ideally with cover, or to the side where I've never seen an alien walk far enough out of the UFO to get a clean shot (plus, you'd have several reaction shots by then).

1) Initial breach-validate-and-prep: approach the door and open it. If there is an alien close to the door, you need to kill him. If your assault weapon is GUARANTEED to do the job in one shot, great. Otherwise, a sniper can draw the reaction shot, or you can flashbang then murder, or use a shield, or whatever. Point is, you should be able to safely take out 1-2 door guards with ease, then slam the door shut again with the confidence that no alien has enough TU's to get to the other side of the door and fire in the same turn. NOW, you can assemble the squad in front of the door, densely packed in rows all facing forward for maximum penetration power.

2) Hit-and-run turns: If you have some high TU soldiers (mainly assault / pistol), you can spend one or more turn in hit and run style. Run in far enough to shoot an alien and make it back outside the door in the same turn (and close the door). The easiest way to do this correctly (ie manage your TU budget) is to walk your guy in to where you want to shoot from, then click on a spot that is back outside the door to check the TU's. If the number of TU's remaining after walking back is > TU-for-shot, then you are safe to fire. Note that if it's within 2 TU's, you have to consider the cost of turning to fire. And don't get shot by reaction fire. Still, if there's a bunch of aliens inside, clipping 1-2 for free is nice. Note that opening / closing a door takes something like 7 TU's, so the hit-and-run squad shouldn't touch the door; that job belongs to a sniper (someone not especially useful for breaching) who is at an angle to the door; gives you 14 more TU's for hit-and-run murder.

3) Penetration: The real fun begins. If you have enough firepower, you can breach all the way to the aliens and murder them at point-blank. If it's a big UFO, make sure you aren't violating door-safety for the next room and that everyone is in a safe spot when the turn ends; alternatively, using an end-of-turn smoke grenade on your TU-less murder squad caught in unsafe spots can give them a bit of protection as well. Or better yet, both safe spots and smoke.

[legit1337]

1. Clear the surrounding area, having a couple of men watching the door of the UFO just in case.

2. Line up machinegunners/snipers behind cover with a good view of the door at least 5 tiles away.

3. Stack rest of troopers on either side of the door at least 5 tiles away.

4. C4 the front door. This kills any aliens lurking just inside the UFO and destroys the cover near the front.

5. Unload with machinegunners and snipers at any visible alien inside the UFO to keep their heads down. Move your breaching team up to right outside the UFO door on either side. End turn.

6. You might take some sporadic return fire, but your machinegunners and snipers should be behind cover.

7. Move your breaching teams in, use flashbangs to suppress and get them into cover inside the UFO. If any aliens are close enough, move your men around the cover they are using and blast them point blank.

8. Use standard suppress-flanking tactics until victory.

I usually keep my machinegunners and snipers out of the fight in the first room of the UFO but in the larger hulls I usually need the manpower to clear the other rooms. After the first room is secure I move them inside from their covered positions from outside and switch to their pistols so that they don't get shot to pieces in CQC. Sometimes I switch back to their primaries if I need to cover a long hallway or something.

Edited July 11, 2014 by legit1337

[Mathalor]

This is good info that I found useful, but it seems odd that you had to necro a thread from last September to find anything on topic.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Mathalor

[Megas Domestikos]

Hit-and-run with two assaults has worked for me. Move the guys to the door, open and fire next turn and run away, wait one turn while the door closes and you put your guys to the starting spot, next turn repeat step 1.

Eventually they all are dead.