Taking Aliens Alive

[vanQUish]

Hey fellas, new one right here!

What's your approach on capturing aliens alive?

[Lusifur]

Kill them first so that I can handcuff them 

Honestly haven't gotten to that point in 2.4, but in 2.2.1, when I had just gotten the stun rod, I was running teams of 4 or 6 guys, so I would just filled the rest with fodder soldiers. Minimally equipped with combat armor, pistol in one hand, stun rod in the other. I would use the primary squad, which I didn't want dead, since you had to really work to get good soldiers back then, to suppress and possibly kill aliens from fire positions, while the stunners would work in via cover and stun them.

[Nikolas]

As fas as I remember from XCOM (played 10 years ago) you have to stunt them and have an "alien containment facility" to keep them alive for studies. To stunt just used "stunt rod" (don't see one in ufoai) several time or after given them some damage.

[Lusifur]

Stun Rods are in this game, along with taser-laser-beams and, if I remember right, knockout gas grenades. The stun rods have to be researched though, and then the other two follow. Don't remember the exact research.

[Tamanfodder]

Firs you do an autopsy of an alien, then you research "Alien breathing aparatus" and THEN you can research the stunrod if i remember correctly!

[bustead]

i use two ways.
1.a good close combat troop (or strong and fast at least)use stun rod to stun aliens while good snipers cover him/her.But i'll let the snipers shoot the alien for 1-2 times first to make sure the alien is weak enough to be stuned.
2.clear the whole map and kill nearly all aliens(6-7 in crashed harvaster,2 in scout and fighter).Find the last one or two and use eletro laser in close range(the accurcy is very very low).This wastes time but it should be safer since the front half of the battle is just regular fight instead of CQB.

[Nutter]

Alternatively, just ambush a few and then wait for the R&D deparmtement to finally get the not exactly difficult idea of gassing the fucks, get a workshop on mass production and let the hilarity and mustard ensue. Pretty much easiest way one you get the two or three aliens required and you don't even have to build the lasers.

[marc]

Btw, are captured bloodspiders worth anything?  The emails from the Bio Division seem to indicate that the research progress upon capturing live aliens involve the Taman and Ortnok prisoners and not so much the Bloodspiders (and there doesn't seem to be a species-specific research topic except for the autopsies, so no associated research proposal shows up when capturing any given species for the first time).

Also, now that my two containment units are full (one containment in each of my two strike/recovery bases), every new capture ends up dying.  Is there any point to making space for new captures, if I've already got those particular species?  I don't see a way to do this except for building more containment units and transferring, or killing off ALL aliens in a full containment unit (there seems to be no option for selecting individuals for sacrifice).  I understand there are more species of alien than the three, and I'll have to figure out a way to make space once I capture any of them.

[jerm]

You just need 10 aliens in your research area to research Strange Behaviour. After that, you can basically kill off any alien you have already researched. I could be wrong.

[jerikojerk]

yes you're right for odd behavior.

moreover having a containment unit make a base very expensive. what i can tell i that you for yourself it's best to have the 4 races in your laboratory. Alive of course.

Don't use the teaser. it's not as efficient as the stun rod, you will have to manage the munitions (it fact try it once to see the weapon special effect). Stun  and wound, wound and stun, that's the best way.

there will be missions were alien starting points are very near the your stun rod starting point.

And NEVER use canon-foder soldier. Every time you've got a soldier moving or shooting he/she get bonus. There is no point of losing this bonus: only this way you can get soldier having something like 40 TU per turn.make them walk a lot ( and crouched).

[pct]

Aliens can be easily captured after their panicked. They are converting for sitting facepalming morons for a pair of turns + often they drop their mainguns.

[jerm]

I don't know about you guys, I find the taser laser pretty useful. And it has the accuracy of a laser rifle so I would say it's worth while to stick it on a decent soldier (with good assault skill). Just hit the alien a few times with the taser and try to whittle its health down with laser fire (or earth rifles). And the ammo maintenance isn't really such a huge issue. It uses laser ammo which I mass produce anyway.

Oh, and for the lulz, use the stun rod. Freaking hilarious to use the full power charge on an Ortnok and then bonk it on the head for the finishing blow. (but risky) BTW, is it weird to still like earth-based rifles because of the awesome sound it makes? 
The newer weapons just don't have enough "kick" to it.

[marc]

I like the e-laser too.  One of my troopers exclusively carries that along with a flamer in the backpack (don't know how I settled for that combo).  The e-laser is extremely useful for stunning civvies, either to prevent their deaths (particularly to eliminate them as a friendly-fire liability when in the line of fire) or unblock a doorway.  I love stunning three civilians in the same turn (haven't been able to reach four yet...hmm, does this make me evil?).  One weird bug is that stunned civilians seem to block shots as a regular standing civvie would, but the "targeting fire line" when choosing an alien to shoot does not turn red to indicate a blocked shot, and the stunned civvie is never killed by any shots it ends up blocking.  Same thing happens with stunned aliens.

I've never found D-F cartridge supply to be a problem, because after a month or so following your first workshop-produced one, you can buy it instead.  Yes it has a limited supply, but unless you are using a lot of heavy lasers and/or regularly get involved in protracted long-range firefights, it should be more than enough.  The only ammunition that I need to produce on-base is PB grenades (and regular plasma hand grenades, as the aliens don't seem to like those anymore).

[jerikojerk]

what i sometime do is to kill an alien with a simple knife. it take a lot of round but it's alway a chalenge more over if it's an armored ortnok. The most beautiful is to calculate your kill enough to avoid a revenge if the alien is carrying a kerr blade.

to come back to the main matter, to get the gaz grenade you have to recover an alive alien of each species. it's an achievement cause you don't know the sheevar but your researcher have the intuition there must be a fourth specie  and don't have the idea of it.