Inquiry about XCOM alien capture.

[Rose and Thorn]

So I am playing XCOM, and I am on about my 4th playthrough. I have failed all the times before me, because I am playing on Classic Ironman and am still learning.

*Minor early game spoilers*

My question is about capturing my first alien. Now usually you would capture a Sectoid, Thin man or Floater as your first alien and from there you would learn that you need to capture an Outside alien along with any research that the certain alien you capture would give you. That is how I have played most of my playthroughs so far.

Although on my current playthrough I have been having a bit of trouble capturing an alien, and as I speak my men have just killed almost all the aliens at a large UFO landing site. All except the Outsider that I KNOW is lurking inside of the craft.

Now my question is, can the Outsider be the first alien you capture? Normally I would have just went for it, but I have tried to capture an outsider before as my first alien in another playthrough and failed. Now maybe I just happened to fail because I lost the roll of the dice, regardless of why it happened, my poor soldier who was tasked with the job was brutally fucked up. Afterwards it occured to me that maybe you CAN'T capture an Outsider as your first alien. So before I send in my awesome squad I have grown attached too, I would like to know if it will even work. I tried looking it up, but can't seem to find the answer. Anyone know anything about this?

 

[Rose and Thorn]

snip

Yes you CAN capture an outsider as you a first alien, you just cant research him first.

You can capture ALL aliens if you can stun them.

However, since outsiders are your first capture, you WILL be behind in research and possibly be screwed late game. Especially in classic / impossible.

Stuns CAN fail if the alien is at full health. The alien needs to be weakened if its not sectoid, floater, or thinman. Outsiders are also small time aliens and can be stunned right off the bat.

Thank you! I'll go ahead and try to get him then, and it shouldn't be to hard to get a sectoid in the next mission or two.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I also forgot to mention that ONLY sentient aliens can be stunned.

No mindless killing machines like chrysallids can be caught, or alien machines.

It's a good thing you told me, I actually assumed Chrysallids could be caught mainly because I could do an autopsy on them. Now I don't have to worry about trying to get close to one of those violent things. Thanks for all the help!