Trigger for Alien Race Arrival

[Dalerian]

Hi All,

 

I've been playing X-Com intermittently since my first 386, and recently started playing again. (This has to be one of the best games I've ever played.)

 

I've only recently found this forum & wiki, and have learnt plenty so far. (Thanks to all who've posted advice and tactics in here.)

 

One thing I've not seen - what triggers when a given race arrives?

 

I'll be honest - I like fighting Floaters/Reapers early on. They're (relatively) dumb & weak - which makes them lucrative to deal with. This is great, given how tight money can be at the start.

Yet - pretty soon, we get The Green Sheep* & their masters arriving, who are far less easy to deal with.

 

What triggers the change in races? Is it purely the calendar, or do other things influence it? A few potential variables might be score / # of bases / bank balance / # of kills on sectoids/floaters...

If I knew that I could delay the Muton/Ethereals (etc) for another couple of game months by some slight change in play-style, I'd seriously consider it...

 

Does anyone know the answer to this?

 

Dal.

* The sheep reference... Muton is french for sheep; thinking of them as such tickles me. It also fits in with the concept of "these unfortunates" being bred for task...

[FullAuto]

If it is a calendar setting, then it must be subject to variables. I've had Floaters as my first mission before, a few times. But also, sometimes they haven't turned up until March.

I find them a lot easier to deal with than sectoids, even on the smaller UFOs. Ok, they can fly, but they're not half as sneaky...

 

Perhaps it's a calendar setting modified by your monthly score?

*scratches head*

 

Oh, welcome to the boards, by the way.

[Dalerian]

Oh, welcome to the boards, by the way.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the welcome.

 

It's good to see that I'm not the only person left playing this game. Mind you, I feel like such a novice by comparison ... all these things that I'd never known I could do! (Explosives through the edge of a ufo, or a ceiling, for example...)

 

I'm back in a brand new game, and still awaiting my first chance to capture some Psi... *mutters while "patiently" awaiting a sizeable sectoid craft*

[FullAuto]

Ah well, you sort of have to be hardcore if you're still playing ten/eleven years after the game was released.

 

Mind you, I feel like such a novice by comparison

 

Join the club. Some of the people we have on here (stand up and wave, NKF and Zombie) put even the rest of us to shame with their knowledge. It takes a certain kind of person to reload a save a hundred times or more for testing.

Put it this way, if we don't know it, we can find out.

[NKF]

Muton - or to stretch things a bit: mutton. Which can be sheep or goat meat. Or to stretch it even more: meat. They are the Meat Men. That actually describes the floaters a lot better, actually... oh forget it.

 

-

 

Well, let's look at what we've got. Five primary alien species, being: Sectoid, Floater, Snakeman, Muton and Ethereal - also they're generally released in that order - but due to randomness, we won't always see them strictly in that order in every campaign, but they should be available to the game for choosing.

 

 

I really couldn't say what releases them. But some possible factors include:

 

- Your activity score. But experience shows that you can scrape by with a score barely enough to keep the countries happy each month and still get swamped with Ethereals.

 

- They're time released. This is the most likely, and would work in conjunction with the other reasons.

 

- They will only become available when you've researched a certain technology. I highly doubt this one - as a lot of the more craftier (or outright lucky) players can be just about ready to head off to Cydonia - and have all the high-tech widgets and knicknacks to go along with it - quite early in the game. Or, conversely, you can be so bad at research that you're still stuck with rifles by the time the mutons arrive.

 

We know for sure that Sectoid and Floaters are available by default. That accounts for two of the five species. Snakemen generally show up shortly after, whether you want them to or not.

 

- NKF

[Blehm 98]

I once had a game, where i edited teh chrysallid file to get a chrysallid in a superman suit in the UFOpedia, and the effect was that i never saw a single snakeman mission the entire game. Not one. In fact, it went Sectoid, Floater, Etherial and stayed there for a few months and i got mutons

but no snakement

I imagine the file is somewhere on XCOMufo if you want it

[Zombie]

Welcome to the forums, Dalerian!

 

So what triggers the change in races? Like NKF said, the most likely scenario is that the races are time-released in some order. The calendar month probably is taken into account also. The further you get into a campaign, the more likely it is that you will see the tougher aliens appear.

 

I believe that the fundamental trigger is simply the difficulty level you are playing at. If you play at the Beginner skill level, it takes ages to see Ethereals on any consistent basis. Bump up to Superhuman, and Ethereals are commonplace, even in the first month.

 

The schedule in which the races are released is probably accelerated at the higher skill levels. So instead of seeing Ethereals in May 1999 on beginner, you will see them as early as January 1999 on superhuman. And because the detection-net in the early base is sporadic and unreliable, one would never know the exact order the races appear because some UFOs simply remain undetected. An accelerated schedule would also cram the aliens to be released in a shorter time frame. Miss the release of one, and you will be fighting the tougher foes.

 

One all the aliens are released, the species occur in a fairly random fashion. Just because the Ethereals are released, it doesn't mean you will be primarily be fighting that race from then on. Sure, you might see lots of one race for a while if they are conducting an extended mission (like base building or harvesting). Once that wave subsides, another race predominates for a short time. The mixture of aliens is surprisingly homogeneous later in the game.

 

- Zombie

[Blehm 98]

Actually, i noticed that the game tends to go in phases, with mostly sectoid mission, then mostly floater missions, then mostly snakemen missions, then depending on who you get first either mostly etherial or mostly muton missions. Then, after you have finished the cycle the game will then go back to random, i noticed that in Xcom and TFTD, where i would have like 15 missions all with the same alien, THEN the game would start doing random aliens on missions again(or in the case of TFTD do that and start throwing in mixed missions

[Hobbes]

It is called the difficulty bug....when a game is saved and then resumed by loading it, the difficult level is reset to beginner's level. It kinda spoils the gameplay but it also adds some variety from the hordes of mutons and ethereals at the later parts of the game.

 

To fix it download Scott Jones' XcomUtil

[Crouching Squaddie]

this is a little off topic, but related in a way (and in agreement with NKF's post)

 

the alien's transition from the mix of plasma weapons to strictly HPR's is related to your research progress on their weapons.

 

In my newest game, i've researched almost every artifact except the plasma pistol and rifle (just to get the few 'artifacts recovered' points.) It's December 1999 and i still see aliens toting the pistol and rifle, while the heavy's are the predominant weapon. ratio is between 4:2:1 to 2:1:1 heavy, rifle, pistol, respectively.

 

Meanwhile, from what i can remember from my old campaigns, they were toting all HPR's by july. but back then, i researched everything in a linear fashion (stupid me)