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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Magical Infiltration Missions + Bases


Sowelu

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I've got a saved game from a few hours before the aliens swarm Neo-Japan and the Asian Coalition. They send one fleet supply ship and three dreadnoughts. NONE OF THESE SHIPS LAND. I destroy all of them. At the end of the month, Neo-Japan and the Asian Coalition join the Aliens.

 

I've gone through this save over and over, and couldn't figure out when they were completing their missions: At the start of the save the aliens have zero points in those areas, and by the time I can get my ships there, they've got what looks like exactly 150 points in both those countries. I've noticed that even while they don't land, they do eventually head directly to a city, and as soon as their ship 'touches' it, they suddenly speed off into the distance.

 

But here's the bizarre part: They don't get their points when they touch their target city. Fleet Supply Cruiser 1 spawns and wanders around, no effect. Dreadnought 1 spawns and starts wandering, both aren't anywhere near a city yet... no effect. Dreadnought 2 spawns near Australia, and INSTANTLY, the Asian Coalition has 150 alien points. All the USOs wander around, Dreadnought 2 tags Bombay and flies off (or gets shot down before tagging the city).

 

Then an hour later, Dreadnought 3 spawns near Antarctica, and INSTANTLY, Neo-Japan has 150 alien points. I can kill it before it even gets near the landmass, and there are NO other USOs in the area! If I don't kill it, it tags Tokyo then flies off (without ever landing).

 

Now, the first three alien subs had some time to wander around so theoretically they were completing missions, but this seems to prove pretty clearly that it is *impossible to stop an infiltration mission* once the aliens send their big guns, because the aliens get their points when the USO is spawned, not when it tags a city or disappears. The USO doing its fly-by is just a formality, and in the same exact five seconds that my scanners pick up the USO, its target nation has turned.

 

...Wait a sec, just ran a few more tests, and what the HECK?! I've known that two bases appear during this event, but:

 

1) These new bases are apparently NOT connected to the pact-signing nation (one is usually near Japan but sometimes closer to Korea or Free China, but another sometimes appears between Seychelles Islands and Mauritius, which seems certainly not Asian).

 

2) These new bases ARE NOT connected to USOs landing or even passing overhead. It's very difficult to track down when exactly they appear, but I've confirmed that they DO appear during the three or four hour period in question here, and that frequently, absolutely no aliens come within several hundred miles or more of the region in question. No aliens land anywhere either, so...

 

What the heck?

 

I've resigned myself to losing these two nations, and am going to go reload and shoot down all four craft and raid both the bases. (Who knows--if I kill everything on the ground in all of those, maybe somehow I won't lose the funders, but I doubt it.) But I think this is a really interesting look at how bases and infiltration happen.

 

Zip is attached, for testing purposes; this post is mainly about "WTF is happening strategywise" and the save is not needed so I'm not putting it in the saved game forum. GAME_3 is the event itself, and everything happens within a couple hours of that; GAME_2 is two days prior. I would love it if someone could figure out a way to keep those colonies from being made or those nations from turning; maybe with creative hacking of ships (so you can get there instantly) it can be done?

Infiltration.zip

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  • 5 months later...
Whoa... not a very busy section of the forums. Not that I expect this guy to still be here waiting for a reply but this does remind of me of my exerperiences in the first game where in superhuman the ships don't appear to have to land in order to establish bases.
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The traffic's mainly in the UFO forum, and a lot of what happens in UFO applies to TFTD as well.

 

I think the lack of replies for this is because the mechanics of infiltration missions are as yet unknown. It seems that the ships are sometimes only cosmetic in value and that if the game wants a country to turn, it turns, regardless of how well or how badly you dealt with the mass invasion fleet. The base appearing will sometimes appear automatically after a country turns (or just before the country turns).

 

Until we know better, there's no real way of answering these questions.

 

Although I wonder what would happen if we caused the ships in a mass infiltration fleet (or even a construction fleet) to 'vanish' by way of editing the obpos.dat file? Hmm.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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  • 2 weeks later...

I was just coming to post a rant about those :cussing: aliens when I spotted this and its pretty much the same subject to I'll post it here instead.

 

A few days ago, the aliens tried to set up a colony practically on top of one of my bases, which has a transmission resolver. I shot down all of their ships, limped home to repair my baracudas, and thought nothing further of it, except it seems they did manage to establish the colony, despite none of their ships reaching the area without being blown to bits. So now instead of just a few ships full of gillmen (they must be getting desperate) I've got a full blown colony to deal with, arrgh!!

 

I thought things were going too well for me recently :(

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Well, I suppose you can look at it on the bright side. Rejoice! It's a colony that was initiated by gill-men. Apart from the high ranking gill-men having some level of MC ability, they're a piece of cake in comparison to most of the aliens. And as colonies are supplied by the aliens that created the base, you've just netted yourself a semi-endless stream of supply ships with gill-man crews! (Which also translates to points, loot and lots of experience)

 

- NKF

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And as colonies are supplied by the aliens that created the base,

 

They are? Teh Awesome! :D

 

I'm still not happy with the 3 points per day the aliens will get for keeping the colony, nor with how close it is to china and japan, who give a lot of funding, but I think I might keep it around for a while, I could use the zrbite, thanx.

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I think it's 5 points - but forget about that. A single supply ship raid or two should be enough to cover you for the whole month and then some.

 

Just think of the zrbite - and other stuff. ;)

 

- NKF

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Hmm... your right, the OSG does say 5, I was sure I read it as 3 the first time. But, as you said, its nothing to the 4000 odd I've been averaging for the last few months.

 

The only thing I'm slightly worried about is the perception (real or otherwise) that if I give the aliens any slack they'll gather enough strength to start using the nastier types more often. In my earlier games, I wasn't nearly so agressive (or effective) against colonies, and pretty quickly the aliens started using nothing but lobstermen against me (which since I was using all gauss I couldnt kill and eventually abandoned the games). With this game, since I've been really hitting them hard, and killed colonies even when I had no mc and no armour, coming out with just 4 survivors of a 14 man squad, the game does seem easier, with them still using gillmen, aquatoids and tasoths mostly, and relatively few lobstermen.

 

You seem to know the game internals pretty well, is there a corelation between the aliens score and the forces the aliens are able to bring to bear against you?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I'm in the same boat as the original poster, although since the game seems to love to cheat to have nations turn (my main base is right off the coast of Neo-Japan, and yet I still lose the country?), is there any way to edit my savegames to bring Neo-Japan back? Thanks for any help.
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  • 3 years later...

i seem to recall playing a game of xcom 1

 

and it was late in the game, i had everything in place to end the game, but had simply choosen not to... i had a base on both the north & south pole (which is xcom 1 is the ultimate hangar placements, they can intercept anything anywhere)

 

anyway, i had 2 avengers at the north & 2 at the south, fully stocked & ready, but also had 1 avenger at Paris, France (my starting base always in Xcom 1)

 

i also 2 firestorms at north & south pole

 

so just before i was finally getting bored & about to do the Mars mission, all of a sudden the aliens decided to infiltrate china and i thought, here's my chance to prove to myself i've got total control of the globe & they are powerless to do anything.

 

well there were 2 battleships, 2 supply ships, & some random ship, total of 5.

 

i don't think there was 1 UFO in the geoscape for longer than 30 minutes, i actually think it was all 5 shot down over water, or crash/recovered within 15 minutes.

 

the battleships each got 2 firestorm, 1 avenger each

the supply ships & the smaller got 1 avenger each

and i made them strike all at the same time, so that

as soon as the ship was crashed it would be recovered immediately

 

literally...

 

then i saved my game, confident in my triumph & hit the "1 day" button to advance to month end & gloat at my victory, too bad China decided to sign a pact with alien forces... there is no chance to stop an infiltrate mission... really none at all :(

Edited by Tiruas
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