How to play aliens tutorial

This tutorial is from old forum from NeFuRii

A step by step quide on how to play as aliens with explanations on how stuff works: 1) Setting up the base. Its identical to how humans do it. You should however set up bases in locations that are harder to locate, like on the coasts of continents, or on remote islands. As aliens you do not want to get your UFOs intercepted too often. Humans on the other hand usually should set up bases in central areas of land masses as to cover more ground with their radars.

2) Base management. Aliens use only the following materials: Concerete, Elerium-115, Alien Alloys, Alien food and Alien organs. Concrete is solely used for buildings. You build new ones with this, and you maintain already functioning ones with this. Its quite important to know that each building has its maitenance cost. So don't get yourself cornered with spending more than producing. To check how much you get a day go to base information screen and look at "Maintenance: 15 (balance : 5)". This means that you spend 15 concrete a day to keep your base operational. If you look at "Concrete in stock 100 (+20)/100" you will see that you currently have 100, you produce 20 a day, and you can stock up to 100 total. Now, since you produce 20, and spend 15 a day, your daily income is 5 concrete. This is shown in "balance : 5". A tip for alien players is to set up another Automated Construction Rig facility - it produces more concrete, allowing your base to grow quicker. Two other important buildings are: construction dock and breeding facility. You should always have many of those. Breeding facility makes you able to breed one alien more per day. Construction dock uses Alien Alloys to make ships quicker. This is the way your aliens will overwhelm the humans. With numbers. When you increase your UFO production speed you will have to follow it with an increas in Alien Alloys production. That's what Automated Workshop is for. It produces Alien Alloys on daily bases. Final building that deserves some description is the Alien Quarters. It gives you living space for aliens waiting to be loaded on an UFO. Know however that base defenders are NOT calculated into this. They are not shown (in the current version at least) in any place either. But once your base gets assaulted, you will have a standard squad of defenders ready for action. Number of defenders is always fixed and is not connected with how many aliens are there in alien quarters.

3) Technology Accomodation (mistaken as research) Aliens do not research. They start with all technologies already researched. They cannot however produce them on earth. To be able to produce them you will have to accomodate them first. This is done by performing abduction missions (NOT research missions).

4) Breeding aliens In breeding screen you have a list of all alien races you can breed in the base. Only the main alien base on earth can breed all types of aliens (provided that you accomodate their technology first). You have a percentage value on the screen (unsorted:100 %). You then order how much of breeding output will be dedicated to each type of alien. At start you only have sectoid available, so give him 100 %. Note that sometimes its good to cease breeding for a while by lowering the %. This is useful for equipping larger ships, since sometimes you require some alien organs in storage to do so, and breeding could potentially consume those.

5) Equipping ships Once you build a ship you can go to 'load ship' screen. From there you chose one of 3 predefined templates for your ship and pick a race. You cannot define your own templates or chose individual armament for each ship separately. The stronger you equip your ship the tougher it will be. It can affect both aerial combat, ground combat and even mission efficeincy of that ship. However each item you load onto ship will consume an ammount of elerium and alloys. So, dont think of equipping all your ships with the best possible things unless your economy can afford it. Know also that each higher rank requires some more alien organs. What you have bred in breeding facility is a regular alien soldier. But if you want to make a higher ranked officer from that soldier, you will pay some additional alien organs.

6) Missions. Missions are nicely described in tooltips - be sure to read those. Sending a ship out always requires alien food. Number of food consumed per mission is equal to the number of crew on the ship. If you have no food in storage, you cant send any missions. Most important mission at first is the research mission. You start with 0 knowledge of the Earth. With research mission carried out in regions of the globe, you will gain knowledge on that region. You can check this knowledge in 'graphs' section in geoscape main view. Scouts are best in performing those missions. However small scout can get this value only up to 50%. Medium scout up to 80%. Large scout up to 100%. Once you get a decent value you should start sending out other missions. Its usually a mix of harvest missions for gathering supplies and abduction missions for accomodating your technology. I would not do any other types of missions during the first days/weeks.

7) The geoscape There are two numbers under your UFO (second one visible only after landing). The percent value shows you what is the light intensity there. When battle starts, it will start with this much light shining on the tactical scape. Aliens preffer to fight in the dark. This is purely informative, since as aliens you have little control over when you get attacked. Second number is time in hours left untill mission finishes. When it does, your UFO will fly home (note that if interceptor is flying over your ship air battle will initialize when you take off, even if your ships are much faster than interceptors). Its good to know what happens when your UFO gets shot down. First and obvious thing is that it can be attacked on the ground by x-com. Second thing is that it might disappear in about 7 days. Third thing is that it can get repaired and return home. The third thing happens only if you have enginees on board the ufo. Also, when you get shot down, your crew will get some random damage. Your engineers may die on crash. If at least one of them survives your ufo will not disappear but start repairing instead. The more live engineers you have the quicker repairs will be. Larger ships require more repair time however. If your ufo returns safely home (doesnt matter if it was shot down or whatever else happened) its crew will be renewed automatically and for free. The same goes for all damage dealt to it.

8 ) Gathering resources Twice a month (with exception of the starting month) aliens get a shipment of goods from cydonia. Ammount of goods is directly related to your aggressivness. The more missions you perform on earth the more respect you will gain from the brain on cydonia. He will send you more goodies. All resources aliens need to operate will be send by with this shipment. In addiotion: Concrete - can be produced in base by a building Alien Alloys - can be produced in base by a building Alien food - can be gathered with harvest missions Alien organs - can be gathered with harvest missions (yes, harvest missions gather both food and organs) Elerium-115 - CAN NOT be produced or gathered on earth. The only way to obtain more of it is to be as aggressive as possible and get it as a reward from the cydonia