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Was it worth it?


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So I just started a new game (again) and I had an interesting thought. "Can I get a live alien on my first crashsite?" Now I loaded up on flasbangs and went for it. My first crashsite was a local forces crashsite with sebillians. After clearing the outside of the ship I just spammed flashbangs inside and managed to eventually knock one out. Then the second mission I did was a ceasan ship and I nabbed a live one there as well. My question is, was it really worth it to rush the live aliens like that? I know sebillians give the better medkit but is it really necessary immediately? When all of your units will probably die immediately?

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Since you managed to capture an alien with flashbangs I have a question for you. How do they work? Do you only need to throw a lot of them at the enemy to incapacitate him or you'll have to use that electric stick also? Basically is there any difference between the flashbang and the stun grenade/rocket?

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The flasbang has a certain amount of "Stun Damage" and a fair amount of suppression. The stun grenade is a gas grenade. The key difference is that flashbangs are a one-use item. Their effect does not linger and it is not a valid area denial weapon. Gas grenades do not include a suppression effect and as such don't really have any immediate effect besides a bit of stun damage. The stun baton has a large amount of stun damage but no range so if you are up close and personal zapping them is better than trying to throw a stun grenade.

As for the answer to the question issue Gorlom, I was thinking more along the lines of "Do you think that rushing those perks was a good idea risking all of my units." Given that I had to get up close and personal and had Bugger All equipment and skill. It seems to have worked and I would recommend it for a valid strategy but I wondered what you all thought.

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The flasbang has a certain amount of "Stun Damage" and a fair amount of suppression. The stun grenade is a gas grenade. The key difference is that flashbangs are a one-use item. Their effect does not linger and it is not a valid area denial weapon. Gas grenades do not include a suppression effect and as such don't really have any immediate effect besides a bit of stun damage.

My emphasis.

Thats not entirely true. Due to how the AI works, stun grenades can be used to flush enemies out of cover. In fact, they are much better at this than they are at stunning aliens, which speaks volumes about how useless stun grenades are in the current build.

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I've actually KO'd an alien with stun gas before, (by mistake, trying to just flush him from behind cover, but I'd hit him with a couple rounds before that, so he was weak enough to go under,) so it's certainly possible.

Likewise, I actually KO'd an alien with a flashbang before, as well. (Also by mistake, for the same reasons.)

It's much, MUCH, easier to take down a caesarian non-combatant than anything else like this, obviously. However, I just happened to tag the poor future vivisection experiment with a couple rounds of pistol fire the previous turn, and when I had my grenadier/shielder toss a flashbang so I could swing my shotgunner through the open field to end it, the flashbang put it under. (It helped that I put the grenade directly at its feet - 1 regular damage and 16 stun damage.)

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When starting a new game, I actually load up about half my squad with no weapons - just flashbangs and smoke. Taking out noncombatants with the flashbangs is actually easier and safer by knocking them out than trying to engage in a firefight with them, and you can throw two per soldier per turn and then hop into cover - they can't pursue you to get a shot, they can't take accurate shots if they have an opening, and they can't reaction fire on their next turn. In addition, they can be thrown over walls and obstacles, meaning you don't ever need to be in danger to take out any enemy units AND there's no risk of damaging any valuable alien equipment that may be lying around. It's my optimal opening strategy now for the first several missions, and an important part of my strategy until I get electroshock grenades (which are better all around, though they do suffer from not causing any same-turn suppression).

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I've stunned loads of aliens with stun gas, in fact in my current playthrough (which is slightly modded I should point out, but not in any specific way relating to gas grenades) I have a dedicated team that I send to smaller crash sites with the intent to take the enemy alive (this is loads easier with the EMP/electric stun grenades by the way).

What I do is (on small craft), when I've pushed the enemy back to the ship (capturing aliens in the open with gas is very hard to do) I line up the troops at the door to the ship, gas grenades ready, and then on a new turn one guy opens the door and I bung a grenade in at the nearest enemy. Then I shut the door, in case he gets any ideas of reaction shooting. Grenade goes off, alien moves about, and next turn I do the same thing. Maybe get more grenades in as the aliens will have used AP to get out of the gas. After a couple of turns you can basically turn the ship into a giant gas trap, with nowhere for the aliens to hide. Keep the door shut and listen for the sound of bodies hitting the floor.

That said I wouldn't attempt that early in the game. My 'Night Bus' squad as I called them suffered pretty crazy numbers of casualties as it is. :)

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Well I can certainly recommend it should you get a decent squad. My first squad this time around all had strength over 60 apart from one guy (sniper with pretty decent accuracy). I loaded them up with flashbangs and went for it. If you can get one in a place where you can keep hitting him with flashbangs then do it. Nabbing them early means that you can start to ignore the stun weapons which are useless against androns and drones. This means that you can load up on heavy weapons for those terror missions. Thanks for all your input.

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  • 1 month later...
I believe you have to have alien biology researched before you can capture and research LIVE aliens. If you knock out an alien before you have alien biology it dies anyway and is listed as an alien body.

That's how it's supposed to work, there's a long standing bug where you can capture aliens with flashbangs before that research.

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