If you don't need to capture anyone, how will you know about Cydonia?

Sharp: Ah, thanks. Obviously, I'm not that far into the game yet.

Also, if you research Plasma Cannons then as soon as you research 'new fighter craft' (The one after UFO Construction) you actually get Plasma Hovertanks, which are great.

But if you get Blaster Launchers too then you can get Fusion Hovertanks, which are just awesome.

Btw, please don't close this topic. It's like a friend to me. A friend with about 1500 posts. Don't kill him, or many of us will mourn for days.

There is a heck of a lot of duplication and some off-topic discussion in there too. If an admin was feeling mean it'd be quite funny to clear all that out just before the thread reaches 100 pages :evil: This is precisely why I suggested the FAQ thing, with this game in particular being the main offender - people have a problem, don't do a search and don't want to look through 1500 pposts for the answer, so they post it anew, which exacerbates the problem.

Your UFOs will be useless unless you have lots of expensive radars, or better yet, you captured/interrogated a navigator (this may also work with engineers? in any case, start the game by immediately building Alien Containment, among other critical structures) to get Hyperwave Decoder. After the initial rush to get laser rifles, Hyperwave should be your top priority, followed by getting plasma beam, then Firestorms. Then get Ethereals or Sectoid Leaders/Commanders for psi labs, and heavy plasma, in whichever order you want.

The reason why you want the navigator first is because it takes forever to build a Hyperwave Decoder, and mere Interceptors armed with just one plasma beam apiece can down any UFO without any possible danger to itself--except Battleships, which have weapons that outrange the plasma beam.

Hi

I read the first 80 or so pages, but wouldn't find a solution to this:

I am experiencing a weird bug: In base attacks and apparently at least once on a battleship, the aliens don't leave a corpse, if killed on base floor or ufo floor, ie. over those white alien metal floors. Also I was trying to capture a commander in the battleship, and he was the last guy since if I killed him the mission ended (got a save there), but every time I stunned him, everyone kept seing a red one even though he was stunned, and I couldn't walk to the square where he was lying, even though the graphics showed that he was stunned. I think both of these bugs might be the same problem. I'm playing the version downloaded from here.

Is there anything that can be done? I can't get a freaking commander captured because of this!

Btw imho there's no point to close this thread, but instead have someone read it through and write down the most common questions asked, then make a faq out of that. And a moderator could clean up all offtopic posts.

Twice, but only twice, I've encountered a similar bug (in version 1.2): I couldn't walk on a certain square, but I saw nothing there, even if my soldiers were standing next to it, facing that particular square.
However those weren't aliens I had to stun, so I shot in the direction of that square, killing the "invisible" alien.

an odd bug indeed. How did you stun him? by stun rod or by grenades?
well anothe option if you really, really can't get him would be to discover molecular control and to take him over and lead him to your ship. then you kill one alien and stun the commander.

That´s easy. When you interrogate (and/or make an autopsy, I don´t remember if a dead one servest too) you can research Alien Origins. Then you need a live Leader; after interrogating him youu are able to research The Martian Solution. The last step is invading a base and getting a live commander (apparently, commanders present in battleships are not enough, it must be a commander from a base) After smoe questioning, you canr esearch Cydonia or Bust..

Then the only thing you need is an Avenger and some good, psi-resistant troops armed with blaster launchers to invade Mars.

It has to be a live alien. For extra brownie points, advance to Power Armour ASAP and attack an anemy base in the first 3 months, giving everyone Plasma Pistols and Stun Rods and stunning everything in the base (you have to have high TUs to keep running around, though) or alternatively take about 30 Smoke Grenades and give everyone Heavy Plasmas/Laser Rifles.

Then just Smoke Grenade the whole base, so that no-one gets back up again. If they do, they will get smacked down by your reaction fire.

Worked for me and I got to Cydonia within 6 months. I didn't actually both with Blaster Launchers, I IC-Rocketed the Brain and it burned to death. On another note, is it possible to stun the brain?