Destroying Radar Bases

[adam]

Did Aliens destroy undefended radar bases in the original X-COM/UFO Unknown? I don't remember that, and am curious.

There is some text relating to mind shields that suggests aliens detect bases from mental emanations, so one wonders how they would detect an unmanned base.

[Meridian]

yes they did

[7Saturn]

That reference to the mind waves is only interesting in conjunction with the mind shield, which simply reduces probability of detection, but never reduces it to zero. So in essence, any base is always vulnerable, only to a different degree. An empty base with just a mind shield and radar is a good choice (cheap on building and maintaining, rebuilt within 34 days or so) but still, you can lose it anyways, especially if you don't have any troops there.

Has anybody ever tried defending such a set up? Let's say, a radar, a mind shield, living quarters and storage? If I remember it correctly, when the game runs out of spawn points for the aliens, it starts filling the human spawn points with them as well. As there is only the main elevator, I assume that will be a very likely outcome...

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Has anybody ever tried defending such a set up? Let's say, a radar, a mind shield, living quarters and storage? If I remember it correctly, when the game runs out of spawn points for the aliens, it starts filling the human spawn points with them as well. As there is only the main elevator, I assume that will be a very likely outcome...

It'll put aliens in funny places when you have a large base, but it's very manageable with a tiny base. I've had many bases consisting of just an access lift, hangar, radar, living quarters, and general stores. I usually put ten soldiers in them plus a few tanks. I find they are quite easy to defend if the soldiers are well-equipped.

The aliens normally won't scout out a base if you aren't shooting down UFOs over its airspace; however there is a chance that a retaliation mission spawns in a random region instead of the same region where the shootdown occurred. On higher difficulties, retaliation is more likely to trigger, but on lower difficulties a retaliation mission is more likely to pick a random region. So probably on veteran difficulty is where you are most likely to have fresh bases get attacked. You can prevent it for the first few weeks or so by simply not shooting down UFOs at all, or by patrolling the airspace over the base and shooting anything that looks like a retaliation scout.

[DrakenJ35]

+1 on the small base, I used to do gigantic sprawling bases, until I noticed how hard to defend they were, especially when your defense line is broken and when the aliens are inside of "the wire", wreaking havoc. I now go for minimalistic designs and it's become much better!