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Aliens:250 Blog, Reports, And Discussion


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Don't you just hate Mondays?

 

It's about 2200 Monday. I'm cleaning up the mess of four downed UFOs: two destroyers and two FAS. It's not been pretty.

 

Have a look at the photo. There's just a whole legion of dead arthropods and skeletoids messing up the planet. And those are just the ones I caught at the door, and whose corpses I can see. As you can see from the placement of their bodies, even catching them at the chokepoint of the door doesn't prevent them from hard rushes to point-blank range with the agents. This being a destroyer map, it's not the greatest for cover or layout.

 

I won't deny that I used every explosive device without restraint: prox mines, stacked grenades, heavy rockets, you name it. Taking down another FAS, I was deployed the opposite map end from the doors. Luckily, there's really decent cover there, and I'm going to just come out and say it: there's no way I could have completed the mission without extensive, tenacious, and clever use of that cover. Even so, my sister Charlotte, an awesome heavy weapons trooper, was killed.

 

By ARTHROPODS sniping - in a cluster - from the ROOF of the UFO!

 

I mean, I didn't even realize at first how she'd been killed. I had mined both axes of approach from the door extensively, including stacked and spread-out grenades, so that a detonated prox mine in one place would set out a minefield of explosions. Everyone had cover, too, including Charlotte. Poor girl caught devastator fire (after recovering from TWO entropy missiles that hit her, not including the ones she escaped by lying prone behind cover) in the face from the arthropod snipers.

 

After beating back three strong attacks, in which I literally used auto-cannon gunners with explosive rounds on auto-fire to just area-effect-blast the area from which the devastator fire originated, once again I was facing volleys of devastator fire from beyond visual range. Three and four beams were coming at once, as I had the team, all a little injured by this point, dive down into prone for cover, popping up for return-fire. The craziest thing was that some alien was literally FIRING ENTROPY AROUND THE CORNER at the team. It was standing by the UFO door, safely around the corner from LOS (line-of-sight). It fired the entropy missiles to the side, which then turned and tracked down the agents at the other end of the map. It was just freaky.

 

How do WE do that???

 

Can you imagine if you could have a heavy-missile team, who could provide that kind of indirect fire at spotted enemies? Sheesh. This AI is really gettin' out of control: snipers on the roof, indirect missile fire, monstrous co-ordinated rushes. Not to mention the cloaks, vortex mines, entropy and devastators. I'm just NOWHERE near deploying shields.

 

Well, anyway, by the end of the mission, I checked the alien containment, and my team had collected 15 arthropod corpses, and I'm absolutely sure I must have incinerated several more in the explosive area-effect reaction fire.

 

Lessons learned?

 

1. Cover, and lots of it. Ducking prone behind low cover is a good defense against entropy missiles, until the cover is destroyed. Staying standing right beside walls and trees is also a great way to duck away from entropy.

2. Mining. Sure, against the normal numbers, you can get away with not doing it. Against the kinds of hard rushes I'm encountering, extensive mining is a must. Even when you control the door. Heck - ESPECIALLY when you control the door.

3. Being careful, not ambitious: racing the aliens to the door when you're not suitably deployed is a great way to walk into a point-blank brawl against a much larger horde. Sure, with end-game super-troopers and all their best gear, you could have a power-sword fest. That is, if I ever make it that far. It would be quite easy for a fire team to walk around a corner, smack into 8-12 arthropods armed to the teeth, at close range. And that could go very, very, VERY wrong. For now, I grab the nearest cover in the best possible defensive position.

4. Keep an exit nearby. Believe me.

 

Anyway, more blogs to come as I close in on dangerously low levels of ammo while the week is still young.

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They just kept coming and coming...

 

I was taking down the last downed destroyer tonight. Still Monday. And XCOM had its a$$ handed to them.

 

Once again, it was too far to get to the doors in time to set up a door-choke ambush. So, at the chokepoint to the west of the door, I laid mines, and set up extensive covering fire on the narrow passage leading west of the door. On the right, there was only time to set up a staggered defensive position west of the trench the UFO carved into the earth when it landed. Motion sensing showed aliens racing south along the east side of the UFO. Still, I managed to lay mines stacked with grenades and stun grenades. I had snipers, rockets, auto-cannons, the whole thing armored up and ready to go. 12 agents.

 

Well, where do I begin? The aliens probed my mines but sacrificed one at a time, and as I relaid the mines, they kept coming through this way. Skeletoids in numbers got onto the roof of the UFO and started sniping the team covering the west door exit with entropy and devastator fire. A few brainsuckers jumped off the bleedin' roof amongst the agents. Lost an agent's equipment and had to evac her, but everything was still ok. Then, they just CAME.

 

They came through the mines west of the door, shrugged off explosive auto-cannon ammo, grenades and stun grenades, and worst of all, badly injured my heavy-rocket trooper early on, so he had to fall back to heal and help set up a fall-back position. Entropy came in volleys, and affected agents did well dropping their gear, letting the enzyme wear off, and then ducking in to re-equip. But the aliens were laying down devastator fire and more entropy, both from their breakout and the roof, and I had to fall back the entire axis. A couple divested agents got hurt and had to evac. I was bringing in all the help I could afford from the trench position, although I saw movement down there, and I couldn't afford to abandon the position.

 

Even as I set up a strong fall-back position (anyone ever played StarCraft?), aliens kept rushing the position. At one point, brainsuckers were chasing agents falling back, agents who'd already used their grenades trying to hold the earlier choke-point. They evaded the brainsuckers long enough for the fall-back position to take them out, but entropy and devastator fire kept coming from unspotted aliens. I threw EVERYTHING at this charge: area-effect autocannon fire, missiles from the injured missile-trooper, grenades, stun gas, and prox mines. I heard arthropods dying, and saw a couple dead skels drop to the ground, but the enemy fire kept coming. There was enough that the entropy fire itself was taking out all the tree cover the agents were hiding behind.

 

Of course, by this time, arthropods and skels had breached the mines on the east side of the trench and were laying down entropy and devastator fire, even as that team's auto-cannon gunner was laying down explosive auto-cannon fire. The arths were ducking into the nooks of the corner of the ship, making them very hard to hit. They killed my real-life friend Petra, an XCOM sniper and gorgeous woman, too. Things across the trench were going pear-shaped very quickly.

 

By this point, the west axis had been driven back all the way to the south-west corner. Agents were getting hit by entropy and were dropping gear and trying to stay safe to pick it up. A couple of agents had had to leave their gear so far north that there was no chance of getting back up there to get it, and so I evac'd them. The autocannon gunner protecting the south trench was hit with entropy and was doing the armor-drop routine, while the motion sensor agent from that team was hit with entropy, losing his motion sensor and medi-kit, and then after getting his gear on, a devastator bolt.

 

OK.

 

How many more can there be? All-around defence, use all available cover, blast ammo back where the enemy fire is coming from, and take them out with concentrated firepower. Of course, by this time, the rocket trooper had lost his gear to entropy and been evac'd, one auto-cannon gunner was evac'd (he was out of HE ammo anyway), and one more gunner was still there but out of explosive ammo. So the 6 remaining agents, in various states of health, lobbed what was left of their grenades and stun gas along the strong axis of enemy attack, then laid down suppressing fire in the hopes of catching unspotted aliens.

 

Then, EVEN MORE aliens attacked from the east side of the trench again. There were at least two entropy shooters who quickly dismantled the strength of the 3 remaining trench-team agents, and things were going haywire fast on the west side of the UFO. Dev and entropy fire was still coming, trees were scarce, and the agents were now so cornered, they were at risk of having no exit points available. That's when I ordered a full and total evac for, now, the final four agents.

 

Three were hit with entropy before making it to the exit points, and one was hit with another entropy, without armor, injured, succumbing to smoke/stun, AND has a brainsucker flying THROUGH THE AIR above her head as she landed on the exit point.

 

Team 2 was totally pounded within an inch of its life. I lost one agents, some 8 suits of armor, several weapons, a number of magazines, and several medi-kits. The only replacements for the dead and injured are total rookies who can barely carry basic equipment.

 

So let's see: it's Monday night, and the downed UFOs are all cleaned up. The overwhelming majority of all agents with any combat experience are in hospital, I don't even have enough rooks to fill out more than one team, and we're lacking serious armor and equipment. The aliens come in hordes, shoot entropy like artillery, tend to get spawned on the roof of their UFO, have crazy AI from my last game, probe minefields, are able to fire from beyond visual range, and then rush in large numbers.

 

This is by far the hardest XCOM game I've ever played. No previous superhuman game even plots on the radar screen with this Aliens:250 game. I need tons of shields and huge amounts of ammo & equipment, and I won't make it to Sunday night!

 

Anyway, check the photos of XCOM making their final stand here:

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Edited by Aiki-Knight
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A no-armour compaign would be suicide in real-time, but it wouldn't be impossible in turn-based. That would make it more like the old UFO/TFTD days where the best armour wouldn't guarantee 100% survival against an attack.

 

But does the no-armour restriction extend to disrupter shields? Would be quite difficult in later stages if that too is restricted in a no-armour game.

 

A few times in the past I had a brief moment of madness where I sent my brand-new-off-the-street-hybrids into battle with no armour but a pair of shields. Armed to the teeth with everything else, of course. Strangely enough, it works very well and they can move about extremely fast. Everything goes kaput the moment the shields fizzle out, of course. Also learned a very useful tidbit at this time while falling out of a hole of a UFO's engine room - which I'd coincidentally caused moments earlier. Disrupter shields absorb fall damage.

 

As for aliens:500 or 1000 - the game engine cannot handle it. There's only a limited amount of space as it is, and that's why the Megaspawn aren't showing up with 250%. Not that it woudn't be an interesting notion!

 

- NKF

 

Nkf, just so you know I never play in turn based ^^'..

Pausable real time is so much easier. :D

 

Edit: Shields are allowed also. =O

Basically it makes you match with the dissadvantages the alien troops have inventory wise.

 

Edit2: Also Aiki, I noticed that in one of your pictures, the man named Lance Holden who is injured, is on no shots mode. Why?.. ._.

If memory serves, medikits work while still on firing mode, as you cant shoot while healing. and Crouching speeds it up also.

Edited by NRN_R_Sumo1
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Mondays.

 

Well, it's Monday of week 6, I'm about to research personal shields, and the aliens came through the gates with 6 ships: a mothership, 3 escorts, and 2 bombers.

 

And now I have to mop them up.... Oh dear...

 

I mean, not only do I have to clean up the mess on the ground, the aliens managed 3 separate drops: 1 in luxury apartments, 1 in a rescue station and - UGH! - one in the big mall.

 

You know, the craziest mission I ever fought in the past was a double-drop on the big mall. I call it "THE mall mission", in which my 16 agents (in a non-Aliens:250 game, I might add), were just besieged by aliens. I mean, YEEESH. It's gonna be a heck of a Monday. I'm considering sending both of my best 12-man teams to the mall mission. Anyone want to comment?

 

Anyway, here's a couple of pics: one of the fleet arriving, and the other of a successful door choke I carried out against 15 arthropods, 6 skeletoids, and 5 spitters. I used so many explosives that it was just ridiculous.

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Clean-up is a mess!

 

After the recent onslaught of alien ships and the three successful drops, I sent a team to Lifetree Apartments to get control right after a drop. Well. See for yourself. Two very cohesive fighting forces: 1. 6 arthropods, and 2. 6 arthropods and 4 skeletoids. Not to mention random attackers - that's a lot of humanoid aliens, plus various worms and several brainsuckers, who at one point rushed in a group of SIX. Anyway, In both cases, I caught both squads in a vortex of death using extreme mining, and liberal, even desperate, use of explosive auto-cannon fire. Once I identified the axis of approach and attack, I fired auto-cannon fire into the chokepoint (once sound and motion sensors suggested a rush), and just kept the button down until I felt safe enough to let up. In both cases, the combination of mines and auto-fire revealed a whole pack of tightly assembled aliens. Both sets were shielded and cloaked, and once I started firing, they unleashed their volleys. Only one agent injured. Whew!

 

Whew!

 

Anyway, a couple good screens from that mission to prove that the aliens are working in groups WAY too much. :-D

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ah, how sweet it is to have shields and Toxin-A.

 

Managed to scrape together single shields and toxi-guns for a 12-agent team. Caught an alien assault ship on the ground, and caught the crew in a door-choke. They did storm - oh yes they did - and some got almost to sword-range. But the shields allowed my team to shrug off entropy and withstand some devastator fire. In all, the team killed 14 arthropods, 5 skels, 5 spitters, and 5 brainsuckers. Harvested a whack o' shields. All was good. Got 1,034 points for the mission. Yeah. Over a thousand!

 

I can now officially breathe. A little, anyway. Veteran agents are getting really decent stats, and so my prime team is pretty-well at stormtrooper status, which is good. Super-commandos, here we come! Look out, Aliens!

 

:-D

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Ah, how sweet it is to have shields and Toxin-A.

 

Managed to scrape together single shields and toxi-guns for a 12-agent team.

Heh...

The moment when Aliens get shields and entropy missiles is a nightmare and researching shields and toxigun is a real relief :D .

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hmm.. only 5 brain suckers? O:

that seems odd to me, as I normally kill about 8 per 100% mission.. o.O

 

Yes, "only" 5 brainsuckers that mission. In my most recent mission against a downed assault ship, I killed 28 brainsuckers, 15 arthropods, 5 skeletoids, 6 spitters and 5 chrysalises for a total of 59 enemies for 12 agents. Using only Toxin A and the classic door-choke, I recovered a lot of gear, for a mission score of 1440, which seems, well, ridiculously high. What's the highest score anyone's had on a mission?

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hmm.. only 5 brain suckers? O:

that seems odd to me, as I normally kill about 8 per 100% mission.. o.O

 

Yes, "only" 5 brainsuckers that mission. In my most recent mission against a downed assault ship, I killed 28 brainsuckers, 15 arthropods, 5 skeletoids, 6 spitters and 5 chrysalises for a total of 59 enemies for 12 agents. Using only Toxin A and the classic door-choke, I recovered a lot of gear, for a mission score of 1440, which seems, well, ridiculously high. What's the highest score anyone's had on a mission?

Heh, you're lucky that you hadn't the "skeletoid/anthropod with primed vortex mine" catastrophe that often destroys all loot ;) .

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hmm.. only 5 brain suckers? O:

that seems odd to me, as I normally kill about 8 per 100% mission.. o.O

 

Yes, "only" 5 brainsuckers that mission. In my most recent mission against a downed assault ship, I killed 28 brainsuckers, 15 arthropods, 5 skeletoids, 6 spitters and 5 chrysalises for a total of 59 enemies for 12 agents. Using only Toxin A and the classic door-choke, I recovered a lot of gear, for a mission score of 1440, which seems, well, ridiculously high. What's the highest score anyone's had on a mission?

Heh, you're lucky that you hadn't the "skeletoid/anthropod with primed vortex mine" catastrophe that often destroys all loot ;) .

 

That's an excellent point. With enemy bodies hip-deep around the door, I decided to risk sending two triple-shielded agents at a distance in line with the door, to suppress any walkers who might blow the weapons cache sky-high, which it would have done, as there were about 10 vortex mines and about 15 boomeroids lying at the door. I can't even imagine what the explosion would have been like. I suspect it would have blown the doorway right apart.

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Ah! Do this: Save in a separate slot and keep playing. Later on, load up your save and throw an AP grenade and see what it does. :D

 

- NKF

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That's an excellent point. With enemy bodies hip-deep around the door, I decided to risk sending two triple-shielded agents at a distance in line with the door, to suppress any walkers who might blow the weapons cache sky-high, which it would have done, as there were about 10 vortex mines and about 15 boomeroids lying at the door. I can't even imagine what the explosion would have been like. I suspect it would have blown the doorway right apart.

Hehehehe :D ...

I often get trouble with vortex mines and boomeroids - sometimes I kill half of aliens and then one of them drops a primed Vortex Mine which results in series of catastrophic explosions which often destroy most of the loot and kill/wound a lot of my agents.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
Im a little dissapointed at this still.. Sure theres more aliens, but that doesnt mean Ive even had a single injury yet.. ]:

 

Gufu, if you would like to find me a recorder which would put it into a small enough file to upload, I will Gladly post it on Youtube. [:

Maybe this?

Or if you are using DosBox, it has recording ability.

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  • 1 year later...

Any increase will prevent some aliens from appearing, as the later alien buildings (& UFOs?) already have the maximum # of aliens present. You can use apoc'd to manually edit the alien loadouts in UFOs & buildings. http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?sh...st&p=180228

The maximum number of aliens is 36 AFAIK.

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Thanks for the reply.

It's a shame though, I was really hoping it's possible to play with 2x or 3x more aliens and still have a fully functional game.

 

I'm in a middle of a 250 game and it is quite functional (and becoming quite a challenge to play). I don't think (but I'm not sure) that Apocutil removes any aliens, it simply adds more units to the set loadups for each UFO/Building.

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No aliens are removed but there is a limit of 36 aliens (+ a few slots reserved for spawning brainsuckers or hyperworms) in any battle. If the total number of aliens goes over that limit some will never appear. I just checked the data in apoc'd though, it seems no building/UFO reaches the 36 units limit so there actually is a safe percentage.
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No aliens are removed but there is a limit of 36 aliens (+ a few slots reserved for spawning brainsuckers or hyperworms) in any battle. If the total number of aliens goes over that limit some will never appear. I just checked the data in apoc'd though, it seems no building/UFO reaches the 36 units limit so there actually is a safe percentage.

 

This might be an interesting bit of information to have on the wiki... thanks :)

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  • 1 year later...

Great idea!

 

Please, can someone answer:

 

1) What is the biggest possible ALIEN setting that is absolutely safe, meaning i wont have problems seeing megaspawns and thus no problems with research and stuff. Or is the limit for total enemy units (or total units) on a map known, so i could calculate that myself?

 

2) It modifies EXE so it does work for games in progress, right?

 

3) I see people using some custom face pics for agents - is it some kind of mod? How do you do that?

 

4) You say about proxying and using explosives on chokepoints - wont that destroy loot? I mean my biggest problem always was NOT to let anything explode after first pack of aliens dropped down, since otherwise, the precious loot is gone.

 

PS: Ah, i see, someone just asked. So this only changes the beginning of the game, since in the end, you already have max aliens per ship?

I mean, the idea was to make the end game harder, since the beginning is already hard as it is (well, maybe i could go somewhat up, but not that serious as 250%).

Wouldnt the end be even more anti-climatic with this setting when you eventually come down to the usual one or two men clearing the biggest ship enemy has to offer?

 

PPS: Did some research, biggest enemy craft population is 30 for Bship and 26 for Mship, and descent is 22 for Bship and 24 for Mship.

 

So i think it is safe to use 150% setting, since that means 100% of Mship population would appear and you'd have your micronoids and megaspawns intact.

 

But you can find Micronoids and Megaspawns in smaller craft like bomber and escort.

If that craft is there forever (meaning it doesnt stop appearing like types 1/2 and 3) then you can safely use 240% those craft have 13 and 15 crew, meaning 240% of 15=36

 

I'll try a 150% game and see how it goes. Since this setting only makes early game harder and i dont want it to be 2.5 times harder since its hard as it is already, especially if you dont lower your score intentionally and play superhuman and dont save/load on bad combat results

Edited by Istrebitel
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I've tuned it to 150% and i must say its very fine tune for difficulty.

If this seting indeed never exceeds 36 limit for any ufo, i think it could be taken as a "default" since it really makes the game more fun (even at novice, i think).

It is now more difficult to fight, early missions are no longer "piece o cake" when 6 spitters come at you at once, they dont feel like something irrelevant anymore...

 

(btw, is it possible to make alien queen never appear with ALIENS: setting?)

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By the way, it seems that the more aliens, the easier the game is for me.

 

For example, at 100% aliens i always had problem with money for aircraft.

It costs ridiculous amounts of 100 000 for one hawk. And you need like 4 or more to put up a fight, since from week 2 and on bikes start to die, and so you cannot afford to equip them with lineages (thats 13 000 dead in one unlucky shot, or around 30 000 losses on every air combat), and with bolters they can barely stop assault ships and cannot at all damage fast attack ships. Missiles are an option but they are also costy (its like some thousand to down one enemy ship with janitors or even more with prophets) and if you use them as main weaponry you run out of them very fast. Not to mention again one bike starts to cost really much more and thus much more money lost in combat due to casualties.

This lead me to save/loads or just not being able to stop alien ships and having to deal with building missions (and infiltration and loosing on ufo equipment recovery).

 

(Well you can cheat of course with raiding but that is boring, and actually hurts you even more because that increases the timeframe in that you'll have to deal with entropy launchers without shields, or even worse enemy shields without toxins)

 

However, with 150% aliens its much easier since i am awarded with extra loot! And it helps!

With the amount of explosive damage you can dish out (grenades, mines, autofire canons, etc) you can easilly destroy the first offensive wave and then its the same chokepoint business - doesnt matter THAT much if there are more of them, especially since gas makes them run around like crazy).

 

As for casualties in ground combat, they are, as usual in X-Com, disposable and replacable.

By micromanaging it that rookies die first if possible (cannot do much with oneshot from devastators, but overall, meatshield and aggroing with closest unit works) you wont have to lose that many trained soldiers, and new ones are constantly availalble, and more wounded arent that big of a problem since second medbay solves it forever. You are just limited by amount of recruits which is kinda fair (you can get about 3 each day so you can safely lose about 21 each week, which is huge casualty level).

Also, casualties work in your favor - by reducing your score seriously and this means you get essentials (toxin, shield) faster and future combats are easier.

 

If anything, it makes the game more tedious and slow with extra % of aliens since you start having multiple encounters at once at different points of the map and have to manually fight them all, since your soldiers are DUMB AS if-you-see-Kay against poppers, brainsuckers and snakes... Which involves shift-clicking and checking if the dumb soldier actually shot or do you have to shift-click him again (it feels like they "forget it" if you dont unpause very soon or something). If your soldiers wouldnt be so dumb and inconsistent (if you dont click them manually, they often wont shoot the brainsucker until it is already on the head, or popper until it has already popped, if it appeared some tiles away) this would actually make the game more action-packed and fun!

 

Anyway, more aliens feels more like it, hordes of enemies coming to get you...

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If anything, it makes the game more tedious and slow with extra % of aliens since you start having multiple encounters at once at different points of the map and have to manually fight them all, since your soldiers are DUMB AS if-you-see-Kay against poppers, brainsuckers and snakes...

Not to mention that they tend to run away and infest nearby buildings.

 

I have played with higher UFO loads, but it got horribly tedious very fast. The game is hopeless any way - the horrible individual enemy AI kills most of the challenge and adding more aliens just makes the game more tedious and time consuming.

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Well i cannot agree, i love this game.

I agree maybe Ufo1-2 were more deep tactical-wise, but this game has more mechanics to work with, i mean, alot more. Jumping mines, shields, weapons going through shields, stealth fields, weapon destroying armor and items. Also - fighting saucers is also much more deep - you dont just click and its done, you have to position your craft around the city, predict, react, much more equipment for craft is possible, different roles etc.

 

Still, back on topic:

 

It seems that 36 limit is wrong. I just had a Mothership mission. Before, i NEVER had any mothership mission without psimorphs or micronoids. Now, look what i found:

 

7 poppers

13 skeletoids

6 anthropod

and from pods:

3 brainsucker

 

 

From wiki its crew:

5 Poppers

9 Skeletoids

4 Anthropods

+

2 Megaspawns, 3 Micronoids, 2 Psimorphs

 

It seems like those extra 2 poppers, 4 skeletoids and 2 anthropods have overwritten 2 megaspawns, 3 micronoids and 2 psimorphs directly! They didnt "add" to the craft.

Total number of aliens is then ~26, not ~36... Or maybe its 26 + 10 spare places for brainsuckers?

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Well i cannot agree, i love this game.

I agree maybe Ufo1-2 were more deep tactical-wise, but this game has more mechanics to work with, i mean, alot more. Jumping mines, shields, weapons going through shields, stealth fields, weapon destroying armor and items.

And with all that stuff the enemy just gets slaughtered. UFO1-2 weren't more deep tactical-wise. UFO3 is due to all the possibilities available.

The problem is that that while in UFO1 the player fights dangerous animals that can't cooperate but still have deadly instincts as units, in UFO3 the AI is completely broken - enemies often run around like headless chickens, have defensive AI settings instead of aggressive which removes the brutal alien reaction fire so characteristic for UFO1/2 and tend to walk and fire which completely messes up their accuracy.

Often I got into fights with very dangerous aliens and to my frustration they failed to massacre my men solely due to retarded behaviours described above.

 

Also - fighting saucers is also much more deep - you dont just click and its done, you have to position your craft around the city, predict, react, much more equipment for craft is possible, different roles etc.

Which also takes much more time. To the point that I started to wonder how could they not add stuff like ability to schedule patrols, give zones of controls to specific aircraft/groups of aircraft, etc.

Edited by Sorrow
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Well i cannot agree, i love this game.

I agree maybe Ufo1-2 were more deep tactical-wise, but this game has more mechanics to work with, i mean, alot more. Jumping mines, shields, weapons going through shields, stealth fields, weapon destroying armor and items. Also - fighting saucers is also much more deep - you dont just click and its done, you have to position your craft around the city, predict, react, much more equipment for craft is possible, different roles etc.

 

Still, back on topic:

 

It seems that 36 limit is wrong. I just had a Mothership mission. Before, i NEVER had any mothership mission without psimorphs or micronoids. Now, look what i found:

 

7 poppers

13 skeletoids

6 anthropod

and from pods:

3 brainsucker

 

 

From wiki its crew:

5 Poppers

9 Skeletoids

4 Anthropods

+

2 Megaspawns, 3 Micronoids, 2 Psimorphs

 

It seems like those extra 2 poppers, 4 skeletoids and 2 anthropods have overwritten 2 megaspawns, 3 micronoids and 2 psimorphs directly! They didnt "add" to the craft.

Total number of aliens is then ~26, not ~36... Or maybe its 26 + 10 spare places for brainsuckers?

 

I actually tested the limit and found it to be 36 a long time ago, though it was an alien investigation mission in a building. Perhaps it's different for UFO missions, but I don't see any reason why that should be. WTF

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Possibly after the battle is concluded, but during the battle they're all still there at least. I didn't try actually finishing one and checking again afterwards yet though, so I don't know.

I put 36 aliens on Transports and I remember them making a horrible mess - spreading around very fast despite immediate cleaning of the infested building.

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  • 5 weeks later...
When a lot of aliens are dropped some of them are immediately (at the time of the drop) moved to adjacent buildings. I'm not sure how many aliens there have to be before that happens though. Possibly when there's more than 26? Edited by j'ordos
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I've never noticed something like that, have you tried saving immediately after a drop and checking the savegame with apoc'd for the amount of aliens?

 

edit: by the way, I just redid my unit cap test, I put 50 anthropods in a building, started an investigation and saved again. Upon checking the savegame there were 14 anthropods left in the 'cityscape' building, and 36 anthros on the battlescape. So the unit limit (for investigations at least) is 36, not 26.

Edited by j'ordos
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Possibly after the battle is concluded, but during the battle they're all still there at least. I didn't try actually finishing one and checking again afterwards yet though, so I don't know.

I put 36 aliens on Transports and I remember them making a horrible mess - spreading around very fast despite immediate cleaning of the infested building.

 

 

When a lot of aliens are dropped some of them are immediately (at the time of the drop) moved to adjacent buildings. I'm not sure how many aliens there have to be before that happens though. Possibly when there's more than 26?

 

I found the code that spreads the aliens over multiple buildings when they are dropped, don't understand it, but I can disable it. :) I'll probably add it as a feature to apatcher. That way we can put large invasion forces on UFOs without it becoming tedious for the player, just one huge battle instead of multiple smaller ones to be fought.

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