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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Getting Aliens To Leave Their Ships On Small Crash Sites


Bad-Wolf

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Playing a no reload game on veteran and I just ran into a bit of a snag on a level that is annoying the crap out of me. In UFO defense the aliens would eventaully come out of their ship rather than me walking in and eating their reaction fire. Well I just cleared up a small crash site with 0 loses or wounded and was feeling pretty good about it until I came to the last alien. Not wanting to run into his ship and eat reaction fire I sat all my high reaction fire guys aiming at the door. Well 50 turns later the bugger is still sitting in there. In TFTD do they still not follow the old strategy where they run out after so many turns and hunt you down?

 

Now normally this wouldn't be too horrible as I could just have some rookie run in and eat the reaction fire then mop the little bugger up. However, for extra lulz I threw a proximity grenade on the door so he will explode before I even get to reaction fire. Now I am not sure if the alien ai knows that it is there or something as the door is closed. Does the AI automatically know where all proximites are and just keeps clear of them? If so then I am kind of f*cked because I am gonna have to suicide a guy on my own grenade and then suicide another with alien reaction fire : /

 

Or... will they eventaully leave their ship ? I can't just reload because this is a no reload game and the previous one was a while back but this just seems like a lame way to lose guys : p

 

There are little vents on top of the craft... can I through things into it?

 

 

Edit: Freaking sweet, you can through things into the vents on top of USO's!!!!1one Can you smoke an alien out underwater????? I mean do dye grenades cause stun dmg? I guess that would be kind of retarded if they did but do they?

Edit*: Awww looks like those vents just lead to sealed off rooms anyway .....

Edit**: Well it looks like dye doesn't care if their are walls and just spreads anyway so.....

Question: Can you smoke aliens out under water with dye grenades?

Edited by Bad-Wolf
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The AI in TFTD's a bit odd. There is a bit of standard patrolling, but for some reason a lot of the aliens frequently end up standing still and not moving. This leaves them at full initiative - making them reaction fire nightmares.

 

When there's a door in the way and you know there's a camping alien just behind it facing the door, in UFO you could position some soldiers in line with the door, then have a soldier just off to the side blast the door away with a heavy plasma. The alien will not react against a unit that it cannot see and will also not react against a unit that hasn't moved.

 

In TFTD, you've got an extra edge to this strategy. Opening doors - which is coincidentally a free action, so you shouldn't trigger a reaction shot.

 

If you don't mind saving the contents of the USO (and this being a small crash site at that, I probably wouldn't care about the contents too much), open the door, then have someone out of sight toss a pulser or magna-pack inside for some pretty fireworks.

 

Or if you don't want to open the door at all, there are a lot of walls that aren't truly walls that you can exploit. Just toss a grenade or fire a torpedo or GC-HE shell or even a thermal shok bomb into one of these walls. You can tell which walls are truly walls and which aren't by whether or not you can step into the same tile that the wall occupies. Real walls are the ones that fit along the edges of the tile, like straight walls and doors. Walls the occupy the object space are like the wings of the Triton or a lot of the angled hull sections on USOs.

 

This bit's unrelated, but for future reference, the GC-HE is a very handy weapon to bring along. You can aim one right up at the ceiling above you and strike anything above and not suffer any backblast, even if it appears to be a point blank shot. What's more, even if the ceiling is indestructible to GC-HE shells, damage will still be dealt to anything standing on top of the ceiling. This is extremely handy on Dreadnaughts, alien colony interior levels or those port terror sites with the iron towers (in the event some bright spark on either side ended up destroying the stairs). The same can be done with thermal shok bombs as well.

 

- NKF

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Yea I had a similar encounter with a single lobsterman in a small scout. He wouldn't come out, so I had to rethink my strategy. I took a magna-pack and blew apart a small chunk of the ship's side. Sure enough the bugger went to check out the small missing USO. I thought "Perfect!", but came to realize throwing magna-packs and grenades at it just wasn't killing it fast enough and ended up with none left (4 magna-packs, 4 grenades). I was forced to use the guns and ended up getting 3 men killed and a couple wounded. I hate TFTD!

 

@NKF: When you blast a hole in the wall, that is considered a movement correct? Or does the blast have to occur after the wall is knocked down before AI considers it a legit movement? In Ufo2000, any type of movement, including tearing a wall down, will trigger reactions. I'm not sure if this is much different.

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Lobstermen take one heck of a lot of punishment thanks to their insane damage modifiers (30% susceptibility to HE attacks). Magna-blast are highly inadequate, dealing between 7 - 22 damage (at ground zero) before armour deduction!

 

---

 

It's only counted as a movement for the guy that's currently acting. If the alien were to see the unit that tore down the wall or door, then it would react. It shouldn't react against stationary targets that just so happen to come into view because the wall was taken down. Hitting a stationary target when attacking the unit that triggered the opportunity fire is always a possibility though.

 

Of course, with the tweaks to the AI, it is possible they've changed this for TFTD.

 

- NKF

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Thanks NKF I will keep that in mind. I eventually suicided a guy on my own proxy to get in and then naded the bugger sitting around the corner. I didn't know some walls were destructible as none were in UFO sans blaster bombs.

 

I have another question if you are still around. I am doing my first ship/land terror mission and have a question. I believe that I read somewhere that you don't get to keep the stuff or captured aliens from the first part? Is this true? I would like to attempt the second part but I managed to capture a deep one alive and get a few deep one corpses and this is only the first month of my game. I would rather not lose the MC tech that I will end up getting from this live deep one but I would also like to complete the terror mission. If I lose the loot then I would rather just evac with the live alien in tow. Is there a way to complete it and keep my live deep one, dead deep one, oh and I managed to snag a MC reader as well off a gillman. I am playing iron man so MC in the second month would help tons!

 

Thanks for the help.

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For this scenario, my advice would be to drag the body back to the Triton and dust off. Just grit your teeth and bear the loss in points. The live deep one is much more important.

 

Live aliens cannot carry across between the stages of a two-parter mission. Their bodies do, but their stats do not. A body without stats is automatically treated as a corpse.

 

As for equipment and corpses,you should pick up and carry everything you want to bring through the exit pads to next section of the two-parter starts, just drop the excess and it'll be recovered along with everything else once you've completed the map.

 

I cannot remember what happens if you leave your captured loot in the Triton or exit before moving over to the next level. I'll have to let others more knowledgeable than myself find that out for you. Also one more scenario to consider is whether beating the first part by wiping out all the aliens will recover the loot as opposed to progressing by dusting off on the exit pads.

 

If you choose to escape, drag captured aliens and equipment (and corpses - if you really need the cash) into the Triton for recovery. At least you'll get away with some stuff to sell. ;)

 

- NKF

 

P. S: Even if you are aware of this, I just have to give this advice out for the benefit of those who do not. Before researching the live Deep One, be sure to have Ion Beam Accelerators and Plastic Aqua Armor done first so you can nab the Ion Armor and the M.C.-Lab in one fell swoop. It helps avoid a game crippling bug where you end up not being able to get the Ion Armor - which is part of the requirements for Sub Construction.

 

Plus Deep Ones become very rare. So rare that you'll only find them again later in land missions with mixed crews. That's generally far too long a wait to get Ion Armor and the new subs.

Edited by NKF
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Ya, I read about some of the bugs and the scarcity of deep ones later in the game which is why I got so paranoid about keeping the one I caught ^_^ Especially as his capture came at the lives of 2 of my best agents(strangely enough, rather than attacking the rushing stunners the deep one killed one of my best guys on the other side of the wall and a hidden gillman shot 3 times through a fence to kill another). Thanks for the reminder. I didn't know you had to research those things, I thought you just had to have them in your store or something. Good thing you told me! Edited by Bad-Wolf
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  • 4 weeks later...
Playing a no reload game on veteran and I just ran into a bit of a snag on a level that is annoying the crap out of me. In UFO defense the aliens would eventaully come out of their ship rather than me walking in and eating their reaction fire. Well I just cleared up a small crash site with 0 loses or wounded and was feeling pretty good about it until I came to the last alien. Not wanting to run into his ship and eat reaction fire I sat all my high reaction fire guys aiming at the door. Well 50 turns later the bugger is still sitting in there. In TFTD do they still not follow the old strategy where they run out after so many turns and hunt you down?

Ah, the problem is that the Map developers of TFTD made some boo-boos when laying down the routes for aliens to follow and also mistakenly swapped the Survey and the Escort map files. In EU (and in all the other USOs in TFTD) there is a route for the aliens which allows them to leave the ship. The "real" Survey ship (actually the Escort in an unmodified game) has a spawn point which doesn't have a route leaving the ship. Thus, any aliens which show up inside the USO stay there permanently. I fixed these issues and added them to StrategyCore's TFTD Patches area in the files section, so you may want to check them out. :)

 

- Zombie

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