on capturing live aliens

[kurja]

With the advent of stun gas grenades, stun rods and electrolasers have become wholly unneeded; I believe capturing live aliens should be a particular challenge in the game, and with gas grenades it just isn't. I'm all for having gas nades in the game but I think they should be tweaked to up the difficulty of getting prisoners and also to make electrolasers needed.

afaik the current gas nade only has stun damage, is this correct? If it also delivered normal, hp-reducing damage with the stun damage, stunned actors left in a cloud of gas would eventually die (which would make sense anyway). Is this possible to do?

[GPS51]

An excellent idea, also with lasers/sniper rifles now "stunning" aliens I don't even bother to try and capture them, I just pick up the 1 or 2 captured aliens per mission, I could have a full base of captured aliens by now (and 1 super hive mind )

[Anarch Cassius]

Gas is a fairly late game tech in 2.5. I got if after completing all capture research. I think more need for capture in late game and some gas resistant aliens are all that's needed.

[TheOnlySkyfire]

Gas is a fairly late game tech in 2.5. I got if after completing all capture research. I think more need for capture in late game and some gas resistant aliens are all that's needed.

Well, maybe there should be several types of stun damage, electro lasers might work best on mostly cybernetic/robotic aliens, while the gas on more "organic" ones. Maybe a general gas for all biological aliens, that also does normal damage, and a very effective gas on every kind of alien, that does only but heavy stunning damage - or for special (gas immune) aliens only. And the electrostick should have (maybe with a upgraded version - which contacts drill themself with some sonic/laser drilling mechanism through the armor) the strongest stun effect regardless of the alien type, but stays a clumsy melee weapon. And in case of the toughest armored aliens with the resistances against everything, psy ops are the only way to stun those.

[Eegxeta]

I wish you could do a little more with captured aliens. It feels like you could do a lot more with them. Like figure out how to make captured aliens help you or figure out more about their physiology and psychology. Psionics (did I spell that right?) is a psychological weapon and learning the aliens psychology could give soldiers, who are specialized in psionics, a bonus to overcome the aliens psionics resistance.

[TheOnlySkyfire]

I wish you could do a little more with captured aliens. It feels like you could do a lot more with them. Like figure out how to make captured aliens help you or figure out more about their physiology and psychology. Psionics (did I spell that right?) is a psychological weapon and learning the aliens psychology could give soldiers, who are specialized in psionics, a bonus to overcome the aliens psionics resistance.

Yeah, there could be a vast "search tree" beyond the "important" techs also, to give you small bonuses, things that scientists look into, when they get bored with the alien guys in the lab...
- 2% more criticals,
- little more effective gas
- specialized weapons of questionable tactical advantage
- scout techniques and predictions on the alien mind, to figure out what aliens will be on the target site, to use the specialized weapons more effectively
- get more aliens stored alive in a storage facility
- "reprogram" aliens with an artificial hive mind to transforming one of the ufos you gathered as additional fighter
- one-time psi-noise-wave generator stopping alien activation for 2 month (till they adapt to ignore it, and you can't figure out to do it again), to take pressure from you.
- reprogram the robotic aliens by a virus, implanted with a melee weapon until the aliens have updated their software (3-4 month?)
- breaking in the hive mind, getting a heat map of the aliens expectation of your bases, and primary area of activity and gives sometimes warnings on a base attack.
- infiltrate alien bases/ufos by manipulated aliens/civilians that have a programmed subconscious mind, or very clever lowtech detection strategies to get information of moving patterns and base locations
- "simulate" fights with reprogrammed aliens to train the soldiers
- generate alien slave worker or additional security with artificial hive mind generators (which might become a problem when the attacking aliens staying to long to close
- using alien "terrorists" infiltrating the alien and ships, that sabotaging it, and so bringing the concept of mistrust into the hive mind slowing alien activity down

Things like that?

[TheOnlySkyfire]

Well - what I would like most would be this one: "Infection of madness"

We use the caught aliens to spread fear into the hive mind... we take the aliens to a remote area far away from our base and then use special drugs to activate their pre-hive-mind instincts and fears. And then:
- torture them with exact the same methods they use to examine humans,
- hunt them down in an setting that looks similar to our base,
- use more effective weapons (that though not usable in the field, looks like our gear) to kill them
- let actors that look like children perform the stuff

That will decrease the alien moral a little on next month' operations or all operations during the setting. Also it increases alien activity near or at the place of the set up, but reduces the chance of terror and base attack UFO missions...

Hmm... I'm quite in a dark mood this evening.

[TheOnlySkyfire]

Anyway, I think there should be at least one useable mechanism besides science, that make it worthy to think about capturing aliens at every state of the game, and make it a hard decision to throw out the the alien quarantine building, even after no things from living aliens can be learned.

This will give some additional tactical decisions to the game, make a whole tier of weapons (non lethal ones) useful, and

Two suggestions that don't exclude each other:
(A) They can be used as transmitters to hack the hive mind, which gives information sometimes of ufo positions, alien bases, or otherwise covered alien activity. This is especially useful for players who like the psi stuff :-)
(B) They can be real training material for recruits. 

[ShipIt]

...
(A) They can be used as transmitters to hack the hive mind, which gives information sometimes of ufo positions, alien bases, or otherwise covered alien activity. This is especially useful for players who like the psi stuff :-)
...

Somehow I really like this idea.

[aa_]

 ...or take separate organs out of aliens, to see how long can they last without them, in order to develop better weapons. Or remove all limbs, and make aliens part of computers, that can predict alien behaviour / hack into the overmind. Ore humanify (aka stroggify) them. Or whatever else the Strogg did to humans.

 Also, in Xcom:EU you could question the aliens to find out stuff about them. What was the point in researching alien communictions and the universal serium, if you dont use it with aaliens?

[TallTroll]

>> - "reprogram" aliens with an artificial hive mind to transforming one of the ufos you gathered as additional fighter

When implants get implemented, I could see the potential for a 2 part system, where a captured alien and a human "handler" have complementary implants, allowing the human to "drive" the implanted alien. Want to know whats round that corner? Send the Taman. Want to breach that building you know has at least 2 aliens in? Send the Ortnok. Also, Remote Control Bloodspiders. I want one

[Eegxeta]

...or take separate organs out of aliens, to see how long can they last without them, in order to develop better weapons. Or remove all limbs, and make aliens part of computers, that can predict alien behaviour / hack into the overmind. Ore humanify (aka stroggify) them. Or whatever else the Strogg did to humans.

So you want to torture the aliens in rather pointless experiments?

Also, in Xcom:EU you could question the aliens to find out stuff about them. What was the point in researching alien communictions and the universal serium, if you dont use it with aaliens?

You learn about the hive mind and the rest is yet to come. This game still could be considered in beta given how much stuff that is still on the planning board and how many things are incomplete, but then it isn't at the same time because it is a fully playable game.

[aa_]

 Sorry, i was being sadistic.
 Still, the serium is not used for it dirrect purpose. It can be used to find out about alien base locations.

 Bloodspider autopsy should lead to development of a human spider drone, which, for example can be used to stun aliens safely. Or/and it could allow you to repaire the bloodspiders in the workshop to use on the battlefield.

[Eegxeta]

Well when they finish adding UGV in the bloodspider autopsy would likely open a upgrade or better version for it. You should take a look at the road map tech tree in the contribute tab.

[Griever]

Organ transplantation!
Ofc they wont be alive after that... But it's another use for them.
Ortnok muscles for a bit of extra strength.
(Limited) Sheevar vision - kinda like instant IR goggles or something.
Harvest them, like they harvest humans!

But maybe with some sort of risk.
The operation could fail and leave the soldier injured/handicapped/dead (This is were scientist skill could come in).
It could be unstable: like HP drops to 50% (if not lower) after every mission, so they need to recover more often.