Matrix Games Forums

Friends,

I need help. I am well into the second year of the war and I seem not to be able to interrogate commanders anymore. I am catching them by the dozens, but when I get back to base I cannot initiate research on them. I have researched all of the different varieities of commanders (I think), and I can't go any further on the advanced ship until I get more research done.

I've been using BMan's mod and it has made a good game into a classic. I just want Matrix to give me my sleep back! Playing UFO takes me back to '94 - '96, when I played X-Com and it's two follow-ups for hours on end. The replayability will be endless with all of the options available with the mods.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Dave

  You only need to do 12, once that is done, you don't need them anymore so kill them all. What you need now is to wait for Battleship to appear, once you shot down one of those, the rest of the research project will show up.

Wiz33,

Thanks! Now I don't have to load up on stun grenades and put my soldiers at so much risk.

Right now I am assaulting a ship that has landed -- the four-cornered, two-story craft. It may be a battlecruiser (I forgot to check it's classification when identified). Are the battleships larger? If so, I haven't had one show up yet, or if it did it got away.

Thanks again for your advice,

Dave

yea, you on the battle cruiser, the BB is a large UFO (I got some pics of one in the AAR area)
 
 

Does every alien cruiser have a commander on it? I just got my first cruiser last night (it took over my base in Peloponesia). I loaded up on stun grenades and stun rockets and off I went. I tried to stun every Vipon but one or two were killed in reactionary fire but they all looked alike so I wasn't sure if there was a commander amongst the group. Tried this assault twice but both times I was told the usual story and "they were executed" post haste. When I returned to base there was no visible indication that I had bagged a commander and that it was being held in the detention center. The plasma options were not available to my scientists so do I assume that 1) there was no commander on this first cruiser, or 2) if there was one it was accidentally killed by some secondary explosion? And "no" I am playing a vanilla game without any mods. Thanks!

Commanders are green and do look a bit different from the regular Vipon, and in the last BattleCruiser I tackled, the commander was outside in the woods, so they may not always be inside the ship.....

Thanks JP but this was in a mission to recapture the Peloponesian Base that the cruiser had just defeated so if there was a Vipon commander there I must not have seen it and it got killed in the firefight within the facility. Darn, and it was my first cruiser battle too.

Commanders only appear as 3 alien races, Vipons, Phantoms, and Preachers. So not all cruisers and above will have a commander.

Thank you dbt1949. I just wasn't sure if every cruiser had a commander and when the cruiser defeated my base and my rescue mission found their foe to be a bunch of Vipons I thought I was in heaven. I found in another forum that once stunned a commander doesn't suffer any further injury which is good (if true) because a grenade and a laser bolt did set off a couple of collaterial damaging explosions in the depths of my base complex. Oh well, guess I will have to replenish my supply of stun grenades and getready for the next cruiser attack.

I'd strongly suggest installing Bman's mod for UFO. It allows all sorts of tweaks and enhancements that make for much better (to me, anyway) play. The aliens can be murderously cunning, but you get more experience points and money for successful missions. Also, commanders have their corner indicator boxes highlighted, which makes for easier identification. It can be pretty hard to tell a green Vipon from the others in a darkened base.

As for capturing the commanders: use stun grenades as soon as you can get them. Two or three stun grenades (or rockets) will usually knock out a commander. I don't know whether or not I ran into any of them on the cruisers, but saw quite a few on battlecruisers and almost always in the alien bases.

Good luck!

When an alien cruiser captures one of your bases (like they did here in Peloponesia) and the clock starts ticking down giving me 10 days to recapture it, doesn't it now count as a alien base until it is recaptured? So shouldn't there be a Vipon commander amongst the alien defenders? I don't remember getting any money for recapturing the base. Earlier in the game I came across an alien base and took it out (wasn't looking for Vipon commanders at the time) and got a chunk of cash for doing so.
 
Install a mod? Cunning aliens? Hmmmmmmm! If I install it now (I'm in late June 2108) will it corrupt my saved games and force me to start all over again? I'm a former Marine and I hate to retake ground I already gained. I've tackled 86 UFOs so far and to go back to UFO-1? That's asking a lot. I will have to give it some thought, thanks!

sometimes, you just don't run into commanders (or in the heat of battle, killed them off before you see them)
 
my game, It was middle of 2109 before I got my 3rd one, then got like 7 in one month
 
(some of the big ships will have at least 2 of them)
 
 

When I come to a commander I only use a single stun rocket or grenade on them 1st then I hit them with single shots until they collapse. This way I capture them without using alot of stun ordinance. Seems to work ok so far. Haven't killed any this way as long as the first hit is a stun attack you should be ok. I just don't like to waste ammo because it is too expensive in the early game to manufacture and is also manpower intensive with such limited production facilities early in the game.

from what I have seen/read on other forum, as long as you got the stun hit in, you can blow them away, they come out as stunned
 
so toss in a stun nade and then start hammering

Thanks all! I just got a mission where a fighter has landed. My troops arrived and I find myself in a complex of sorts. A Vipon just stuck it's ugly head around the corner (and it is orange, not green) so I must be in some sort of alien base and not on board the alien fighter. Maybe I can get a commander now. [:D]
 
I usually turn my computer speakers off to avoid bothering my wife in the next room as she watches TV. Are there any audio cues when a terror mission shows up? I haven't seen anything on these missions (except for what I have read in the forum) but they are also a possible situation involving alien commanders as well, right?

you should get a pop up telling you it is happening, plus it will be a yellow box on the map, easy to tell when one happens

Thanks! Whoops, just nailed my second snake in this complex. God bless Chesty Puller!

I THINK the mods will not harm a saved game. Please do not take my word for it, though -- I started from scratch when I modded my game. I turned on the enhanced alien A/I and they were cleaning my clock! They use the grenades for starters, run, crouch and act like their human counterparts.

Quite a few of the larger-ship assaults take place in the mining sites (with the locker rooms and tunnels). Watch your back! I've been dinged in the back of the head a few times by aliens who managed to hang back or evade me in the mines. But that's true for the terror missions, too. My biggest complaint with them is that very few of the aliens are found inside the buildings -- most will hang out in the open.

I want a disruptor launcher like the one in TFTD. Anyone remember them? Taking out a dozen hexes at once was COOL. The only thing better was drilling the lobstermen with the automatic corkscrews.

Thank you MrBoats. I too was getting hit by aliens that would sneak around my flank and then come up behind my advancing troops and shoot them in the back. I now adopt a "tail end Charley" approach like we used in Vietnam. As the wave of troopers advances one guy or gal will always trail the group and turn around 180 degrees and face in the opposite direction of the general advance to prevent those rear attacks. It has worked wonders in keeping losses light.
 
From your description I am in some sort of mine. I have tried to avoid reading spoilers about the aliens and their mining exploits so I will blissfully go forward and clear this complex of Hallucinoids and Vipons and hope to score a commander somewhere here.

I'm having the opisit problem. I'm ransaking lots of ships and terror sites, but I cant find a single Vipon or Preacher.