Uhmn... How do you deal with alien bases now?

[Voidian]

I used to think heavy plasmas were the most overpowered thing the world of gaming has ever seen melting any armor like butter but now that I'm using the experimental build....

*Opens the door*

*Grenades the 2 sebilian guys in front of me, smoke, charge, end turn*

*1 sebilian uses a grenade, 90 damage, instant kill my shield dude, another one comes from the side and shoots with a plasma cannon which used to do no damage at all, 200+(!) damage, half the squad is bleeding*...

I'm fairly sure this is a lost playthrough now.

[StellarRat]

Use lots of rockets and explosives.

[Commissar Pancakes]

Who needs doors when every one of your troopers is carrying at least 6 blocks of C4?

[Voidian]

So it doesn't really matter if they are colonels or rookies? just throw bombs everywhere? What if the aliens are too far and there's a buttload of obstacles in the way?

[Commissar Pancakes]

My good man, that's what the rockets are for!

Use C4 to blast open the nearest door to the xenos scum and have your (pre-positioned) troopers use rockets to blast apart any cover they're behind.

Then just mop up with your riflemen and assault troopers. Rinse and repeat for each room (if applicable).

[Msvknight]

use c4 to blownup all the thingQ!!@

[Solver]

In the current build the aliens seem to charge into the first room. I clear it, then aliens keep streaming in, so that by the end, pretty much every alien except those in the command room is dead in the first room.

But yeah, the best approach to dealing with bases is a highly explosive one. A rocket on any clump of aliens. C4 vs. all doors. Then a rocket through the door. Reach the command room and grenade the hell out of it before storming in. Really the crazy plasma cannons are the biggest threat now, but those will surely be reduced to reasonable damage values.

[Chris]

Hmm. It shouldn't really be necessary to spam explosives, but Aaron is making new maps for them at the moment and we'll try and rebalance them at the same time. It may be that there's too many aliens with Aggressive settings in the missions.

[Voidian]

I see, ty, managed it spamming C4, got only 50k from it tho lol

[Solver]

I do not think it's necessary to spam explosives per se, but it's by far the easiest approach. Tight hallways, high concentrations of aliens, it all means your soldiers are more at risk and explosives simply work very well. Except the command room, there explosives are essentially a must to avoid a very serious risk of fatalities. There should perhaps be a higher payoff for not blowing everything up. How about more fluff items being captured from bases that you can sell for money? I really liked this in the original, and in the Firaxis remake, that taking out an alien base provided a very sweet sum of money.

[Mooton]

Hmm. It shouldn't really be necessary to spam explosives, but Aaron is making new maps for them at the moment and we'll try and rebalance them at the same time. It may be that there's too many aliens with Aggressive settings in the missions.

Explosives destroy all the money you get. I find it much more worth it to abuse the AI being too scared of doors. Except androns in small bases rushing the starting door. That's a little scary, but they never have the TU to do anything after they rush it.

[StellarRat]

The main reason to take out an alien base is to get nation relations back. They kill your relations with the "host" country. They also probably the most dangerous mission for your troops, so finesse to me anyway, seems out of the question. If you raiding them for loot I think your need to change your mind set. The relations improvement far out weighs the cash you'll get from the salvage.

Edited December 23, 2013 by StellarRat

[Hairyscreech]

Indeed the Macross missile massacre is the best plan for bases early in the game, after that a little more finesse can be used, it may not be the nicest way to do it but it is effective and FUN.

[lemm]

I think the problem is that the aliens tend to aggregate in the first room, so you end up fighting 20 of them at once, and once you get past that, the rest of the base is virtually uninhabited.

But yeah, C4 helps.

[Max_Caine]

It would be better with Alien base maps to make "guard rooms" where the baddies are all aggressive types, and have the other rooms populated with defensive types, so when the Xenonauts burst on the scene the guard rooms empty of aggressive aliens while the defensive aliens stay in their own rooms. But, I don't think that's possible with the way the maps are made.

[Brano]

I was able to clear my first base with 6 soldiers and 1 armored vehicle equipped with rockets.As many of you stated before,I practicly razed first room to the ground with rocket fire and then it was quite a standard combat.I also kept one soldier as rocketeer,with few supplementary rockets with other soldiers in their backpacks.C4 is quite usefull but IMO not so practical as rocket launcher.My only problem was with command room,where I tried to stun Andron commander First time I met these cans and I thought those are greyheads in some fancy alien armor.After like 12 stun granades and 0 result I killed that monster.And only after mission, from autopsy (if we can call it like that) I realised....oh my,was I stupid

[mrsisk]

I agree w/StellarRat on this one. An alien base anywhere on Earth must be razed to the ground. Point of honor, like. No mercy, no quarter. Blow 'em up good! ...have yet to find a base myself, though. There's probably one 3 clicks from my main base and I'm just too dumb to notice it.

[StellarRat]

I agree w/StellarRat on this one. An alien base anywhere on Earth must be razed to the ground. Point of honor, like. No mercy, no quarter. Blow 'em up good! ...have yet to find a base myself, though. There's probably one 3 clicks from my main base and I'm just too dumb to notice it.

Eventually your spies will inform of the location if there is one somewhere. You can also search with aircraft. The best way to get a rough idea is to look at your nation funding predictions. If some are really bad, but you've been providing good air cover odds are there is a base in that country somewhere. You can then begin your air search during a lull in the UFO waves.

[mrsisk]

I always hated doing air patrols because just when I thought there was a lull in UFO detections, suddenly 3+ detections would pop up and my patrol ship(s) would be out of fuel. Too bad we don't have cheap aerial reconn drones!