capture live alien?

[frumius]

I need a live alien. I have the stun rod and researched breathing apparatus. The question is: how does my stun rod man get close enough to stun the alien without getting killed? Every mission I send a soldier with a stun rod and every mission he just gets killed. Aliens don't like to be touched and react violently when you approach. Also I lose a lot of soldiers trying to keep a alien alive while my stun rod soldier is trying to get into position to do his thing. I tried smoke but the alien just moves. I have never seen an alien stunned by gunfire.  We need stun grenades!!!!!  Any suggestions anyone?

[anonymissimus]

I have never seen an alien stunned by gunfire.

I have seen it happening a zillion times. Shoot down a lot of UFOs and you will acquire live aliens quickly, because aliens in crashed UFO missions are often pre-hurt, can be hitpoints and/or stun damage. No need to research the stun rod even, not for capturing aliens alive at least.
That being said, the autopsies->live alien->alien mind etc research tree is way overestimated. It is of very little tactical value in the campaign, aside from the gas grenades, but these alone are insufficient to justify investing so much research time. The memo you get about that it's important to capture live aliens is wrong, as of current development at least.

[frumius]

Thanks. I admit that I have only been on about a couple dozen missions and have never seen a stun, I'm lucky if they are dead before my team is all dead.  That does seem very misleading about the emphasis placed on live aliens for research especially since most of these type games do require live alien research as high priority to better ground combat.  MY soldiers really need help. Better weapons etc. I thought alien research was the solution. My  planes are doing well with the new discoveries but nothing for the grunts on the ground yet. Hopefully something better than bullets will come along soon.

[anonymissimus]

You want to research alien body armor then, which grants you research for nanocomp armor, laser rifle and EM rifle. Later on you want plasma blade and EP ammunition. And later on coilgun. Many of these weapons are in a way better than anything the aliens can field, due to their high precision.

[frumius]

Great! I'm just waiting to research something. It's been 2 months since I got plasma rifle and nothing to research since. I'm just sitting around disassembling Harvesters and watching my soldiers die. I wonder why there is no option to go prone for troops? From experience I can tell you that is the first thing you do when coming under fire and there is no cover nearby. And in this game every mission is an ambush with no cover near. For some reason I just don't like smoke. I never saw it used in combat because it can be as much a liability as an asset. It seems like too much of a cheat and is overpowered. Sorry for rambling. Thanks for the info. Just read some of the posts from 2010 regarding the prone position. I didn't realize it would be so difficult to add to the game.  I guess it would have been easier to have implemented it originally but hindsight is 20/20. I certainly wish I had the abilities to help.

[anonymissimus]

If you consider smoke overpowered...that's your fault then.

Hard missions are ambushes. If I'm lucky there are not so many aliens, several are already visible and/or they are pre-wounded. Then I generally press them hard, with good survival rates of civies and soldiers.

[hwoarangmy]

In my opinion, this game is just not playable without using smoke grenades. First, you sometimes start in such bad position that you are sure to get a reaction fire even if you only move and don't fire. Moreover, your soldiers will be exposed most of the time and you will not have the ability to show only 1 cannon fodder to get shot and see where aliens are.
Last (but not least), you will move so slowly from a not too exposed site to another that you are sure that no civilian survives.

From my experience, I would say that if you don't want to use smoke, there is no way you an win (at least on high difficulty levels - I never tried easy or very easy).

[Rodmar]

I answer late because one point in the first post was overseen as it seems.

Every mission I send a soldier with a stun rod and every mission he just gets killed. Aliens don't like to be touched and react violently when you approach. Also I lose a lot of soldiers trying to keep a alien alive while my stun rod soldier is trying to get into position to do his thing.

Aliens won't react if they have spent most of their TUs. If you stick to the rod, make them react before the melee attack (I precise this point because it's the same if you have to send someone in the open and you now several enemies have a LOS on him).
The few times I used the stunning rod, I tried and wounded the target with small arms (or a grenade for Ortnoks), but only in the last turns, so that all the team could be affected at this task, and attacked it with two soldiers with TUs to be sure to knock it down (after reaction fire phase was over).

That being said, the autopsies->live alien->alien mind etc research tree is way overestimated. It is of very little tactical value in the campaign, aside from the gas grenades, but these alone are insufficient to justify investing so much research time. The memo you get about that it's important to capture live aliens is wrong, as of current development at least.

So true, and I'd say it's clearly a left-aside topic in the current development. I mean, while the Alien Mind research tree is not done. Seeing as the X-Com live aliens management was far more involved, and guessing that this implementation would mean more code and research handling (For example, there are no ranks nor functions among the Aliens, only different mission teams.), I understand this. But wouldn't have a higher required number of prisoners (and a more varied composition between species) been simply feasible, while the research tree is still in WIP? Currently, as you said, neither stun rods nor stun grenades are mandatory to reach this number.
If the number was higher, perhaps, stunning rods would become an option (even with the same research incomes, for the present).
Stun grenades keep being useful (until you reach interesting reaction stats) to help fending ambushes off from unarmored Shevaar, though.
In my opinion, a dedicated base would be needed to thoroughly study live aliens (as back to X-Com).

[madrsihands]

I don't bother with the stun rod at all.  Latter in the game as my weapons get more powerful there is a chance I can stun aliens just by shooting at them, especially since I still use the Sniper Rifle late into the campaign.  The challenge of course is finishing the level before the alien bleeds out.

One time I tried using the electro stun gun on an Ortnok, but the bastard ended up reviving himself and killing two of my guys.  Since then I just find it better to shoot-to-kill then try to stun any.

[hwoarangmy]

I usually equip my cannon fodders with stun rods (and plasma blades) to stun civies to avoid them to get killed too easily. And, if I'm lucky and find a taman alone in a closed space, I try to stun it. In this case, to avoid him to wake up and kill my team from behind, I let a cannon fodder on its tile so that it cannot wake up.

Concerning the research tree, I agree with you all as it doesn't unlock much interesting stuff while requiring many research time. Moreover, the text says that it is very important to find an alien alive while there is no much benefits to do it.
But that's not the only flaw with that. When you do the research, it is said that aliens die in the process while no alien is lost in the containment for example. I guess this part of the game needs some love ^^

[anonymissimus]

The text actually says that Dr. Connors (the bio scientist) finds it important to capture an alien alive, but the engineering scientist Cdr. Navarre finds it unimportant. I'm afraid my Phalanx commander, like Navarrre, will not understand either and ignore Connor's pleas then.
On very hard research is so slow that it was a huge problem if you couldn't delay researching unimportant things (aside from autopsies/live alien, XVI research tree (you don't know how much XVI you have but you can still keep it under control and it's not implemented anyway), unimportant item researches such as plasma pistol and rifle (soon superseded by lasers), kerrblade, heavy laser, heavy needler, alien strategy)

If you lure UFOs into ground defenses firing range at least, there are so many stunned aliens from the crashed UFOs missions that it's never important to try to capture some, it happens numerous times automatically. Maybe 1 stunned living alien per mission on average, just from the chance they have to start damaged. Lately I got 4 Ortnoks from a single mission, all of them fell stunned to the ground when trying to kill them and then they were bleeding a few points per round, just enough to keep them stunned till the end of the mission. Often the aliens die until the mission is over but there are still lots of surviving ones.