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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Alien Allies Anyone(AAA:P)?


Ylenard

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In my recent game I saw aliens only attack me and my allies on purpose, but leave my enemies be.

This got me thinking - if that's the case, then they must be subject to the same "enemy of my enemy is my ally" rule as organisations are. Would it be possible to get non-hostile with aliens then?

 

Example:

X-Com allied with Megapol

Aliens hostile towards X-Com

Aliens hostile towards Megapol

X-Com attacks Megapol doing a helluva lot damage

Megapol hostile towards X-Com

Aliens allied with X-Com

 

I haven't seen such a situation yet, but if such a situation arose, I probably wouldn't even notice it, because UFOs and Aliens are probably always marked as hostile, even if they are not(like rent-a-cops during raids), so I probably would have shot them and went hostile again.

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You can use an editor to make the aliens allied with you, but they're still totally hostile in game.

I think it's only a coincidence that they're hitting those organizations, and those organizations had their property damaged by the aliens to shift them away from neutral

 

Are you searching the enemy organizations' buildings manually? They don't report aliens if you're hostile if I remember correctly

Edited by Mustang
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Haven't seen it work with the aliens since they do not generally favour many organizations, and those that do like the aliens (a lot) have a very one sided relationship.

 

Have seen it happen with the Cult of Sirius, although that was thanks to the aliens dropping an Overspawn near the Temple of the Apocalypse during an Overspawn run. The thing's so dimwitted it didn't realize it was destroying the cult's temple. (Well, technically its AI can be summed up as randomly selecting any of the four compass directions and walk one tile - ignore and destroy whatever is in the way. Lather, rinse, repeat. )

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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You can use an editor to make the aliens allied with you, but they're still totally hostile in game.

I think it's only a coincidence that they're hitting those organizations, and those organizations had their property damaged by the aliens to shift them away from neutral

 

Are you searching the enemy organizations' buildings manually? They don't report aliens if you're hostile if I remember correctly

 

Totally hostile as in "UFOs shoot you in cityscape withouth you shooting them first, and Aliens shoot you in battlescape without you shooting them first"?

If so, then they probably can get allied to you at some point in the game, but it just won't make any difference.

 

I don't mean them beaming aliens down - it seems random. What I meant was cityscape bomber attacks. Before wacky politics jump in they attack pretty much only you, Megapol and Goverment. Later on they start to attack other organisations, but still only seemed do attack enemies of your(or Megapols or Goverments) active enemies.

 

Haven't seen it work with the aliens since they do not generally favour many organizations, and those that do like the aliens (a lot) have a very one sided relationship.

 

Have seen it happen with the Cult of Sirius, although that was thanks to the aliens dropping an Overspawn near the Temple of the Apocalypse during an Overspawn run. The thing's so dimwitted it didn't realize it was destroying the cult's temple. (Well, technically its AI can be summed up as randomly selecting any of the four compass directions and walk one tile - ignore and destroy whatever is in the way. Lather, rinse, repeat. )

 

- NKF

 

Well, the Overspawn does seem to be random, just like beaming aliens down, and I suppose it's not an attack per se. I meant only bomber attacks in the earlier post. Overspawns suck BTW... they mostly die as soon as they are dropped down thanks to "falling buildings".;/

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AFAIK alien political relations do follow the same rules, and if they happen to become non-hostile to you they will not open fire on you in the cityscape or battlescape, until you kill too many of them again. They bomber attacks specifically target organisations the Aliens are hostile towards. Ofcourse the game will still expect you to attack the aliens, even if X-Com somehow got allied to them, reporting alien incursions, UFO spotted and hostile unit spotted in battlescape. (though I assume your own units will not automatically open fire if X-COM is not hostile towards the aliens)
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In my recent game I saw aliens only attack me and my allies on purpose, but leave my enemies be.

This got me thinking - if that's the case, then they must be subject to the same "enemy of my enemy is my ally" rule as organisations are.

Yes, but that rule is not direct; it relates to how relations are updated when you damage their enemies.

 

Would it be possible to get non-hostile with aliens then?

 

Example:

X-Com allied with Megapol

Aliens hostile towards X-Com

Aliens hostile towards Megapol

X-Com attacks Megapol doing a helluva lot damage

Megapol hostile towards X-Com

Aliens allied with X-Com

Well, that works quite well for the gangs vs. MegaPol (the three games start out hating each other moderately, but usually MegaPol only hates one of them enough [-50] to attack. That rapidly improves the other gangs' opinion of MegaPol.

 

There seem to be three fixed-points in the relation update system:

* Civilians start out at zero to everyone. This never changes.

* The 100 with respect to yourself never changes.

* I've never seen any other organization pair that operates at mutual -100, so I don't know whether the immutability of this rating pair for X-COM/aliens is hard-coded or not. I do know that inadvertently destroying police cars doesn't improve the aliens opinion of X-COM. [Generally, rating -50 is enough to qualify for enemy-of-enemy adjustment; +15 is enough to qualify for enemy-of-ally adjustment, and is why Transtellar always goes hostile (Transtellar starts out at 15-20 positive view of aliens).]

Edited by zaimoni
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Thanks for the replies, seems there is still quite a bit life on those X-Com Forums;).

 

Seems Mustang pretty much aswered my question. I tried attacking Megapol, but couldn't get them to not fire at me. If setting them to allied via editor doesn't help, then it means I probably was allied to aliens, but it doesn't change much in the game. That's a shame, it could allow for some pretty funny games;).

 

Would you guys happen to know what are the random changes to the relations done when starting a new game? In my last playthrough I didn't experience Transtellar's hostility at all, but in my current game they got hostile after I shot down the first two waves of scouts and probes(no excessive damage to roads, or other properties). I'm asking, because the difference seems huge.

Edited by Ylenard
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A few things to check: wait a day or until the end of the week. Many things happen at these important update points. The fact that their alliances changed might not have clicked with them yet. This at least happens with new technology updates/downgrades when score changes.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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I don't know NKF. From my experience aliens definitely do change battlescape tech in the middle of the week. The only thing that I notice changing regularly on the week basis is cityscape tech - namely UFOs and shields.

 

For example in my current game, in the beggining of week two Aliens started sending Transporters and FASs. I downed a Transporter, and captured it. Anthropods were armed only with Bransucker Launchers. The other Transporter successfully dropped it's payload into a police station. I went to clear the mess up - Anthropods were already armed with disruptors - the same week, game time difference of ~10 minutes.

Edited by Ylenard
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Can't say I disagree with that. Have noticed sudden upgrades in technology between missions. However when I was experimenting by reducing my score to deliberately downgrade the technology (back to brainsucker launchers), I seem to recall having to wait until either the end of the day or week before it seemed to register.

 

- NKF

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