Arclight

I take at least 2 plasma tanks on every mission when they become available. I use them to scout ahead of the soilders and when they find an alien posistion my troops so they can fire upon them. If the tank is destoryed, no big deal just build another, no significant lose of experience as they dont gain it. I would rather lose a tank to an alien attack than any man (usless they have v.low Psi strength). I have on a regular basis only used tanks to wipe out a crash site, there is no point risking men to kill a couple of aliens when all I want is the goodies. There are occassions when I have to use men such as assulting a base or large UFO (Single doors) but I keep the tanks close 1. for protection, 2. To take reaction shots from aliens. Using this tactic i can assult any size ship and only lose a few men around 5 at the worst guess. If i have Psi this figure is next to nothing as I take over the aliens, disarm them and then use men to gun them down.

lol, nothing worse than taking over an alien making him drop his gun, and then getting all your men wipped out my a grenade, on the next turn

Ive been trying this tactic out, and no luck. Ive attacked several ships and alien bases, with no lose of men (thanks to psi) after destroying several power supplies and storage devices in the bases i cant find any elierium. The power supply when destroyed leaves the wreckage but no goods, and the storage devices in the base explode no matter what weapon i use to destroy it. Its possible the version of the game im running doesnt have this option. Im running gold edition with an XP patch.

The explaination was great, after all this time of playing it ive never even tried to pick up the Elerium, I never knew you could. Cheers people. Im off to pick up the spoils of war.

Ive been playing XCOM- Enemy Unknown as it is here in merry old England. And have got quite good at it. After years of playing it I manged to find a PC copy as my playstation one was annoying me with its continuing lengthening of loading screens. Ive been reading this forum for months now and today ive noticed a topic on a "smash and grap" technique used on alien Bases. After reading the thread I still couldnt figure out how this was possible. From what I could understand in a nutshell, you stun an alien and revive him and kill off his buddies, then pick up the elerium and abort the mission. Question - how do you pick up the elerium? Ive never managed to be able to do this. maybe im getting the wrong end of the stick could someone explain. (Edit by BB: Changed thread title. Sorry, it bugged me. )