EclipseDog Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 Did you know that if you spread your soldiers sufficiently far enough seperate that the alien psi's attempt their dirty work far less often? I had a saved state once just prior to my breaching of a harvestor. Originally I had stormed five soldiers in at once. By the time I made it to the psi alien guy I'd been controlled twice and lost another two guys to friendly fire thanks to it. Ordinarily I'd either just take the loss with stoic dignity or restart from the beginning but this time I decided to retry it from the save state since it seemed weird that my guys could be controlled when no aliens saw any of my guys at the time of my guys being put under. Turns out that the alien psi's can control you at any time once contact between your guys and there's has been initiated regardless of whether you already killed the one who made contact. This is the bad news... The good news is that often the alien psi will not put your guys under unless they feel it is very beneficial for them. I tested that saved state mission 20x (10x going in as a squad, 10x each soldier going in alone and the next one staying at least one room away from the first and facing away from the others at all times) and found out that while the alien psis can get you at any time, they only do it when there is the best opportunity to cause damage to you. Out of the 10 squad missions, 9 of them had at least one guy going under and sometimes multiple people. Whereas on the 10 individual assaults, only twice was anyone put under and never twice in one mission. Just in case I'd encourage others to do their own unprejudiced testing but if my findings are correct then it is possible I just may have stumbled across a way to minimize the risk during those assaults on psi's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 What difficulty level was this on? We suspect this makes a difference to whether the aliens have to have you in sight or not. Was it an Ethereal harvester? Also do the aliens on the top floor (the usual psionic lounge area) have visibility out the windows or something? Or do they just share info with spotters? Some of the UFO's have funny visibility rules from that top floor and the diagonal walls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyrus Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 The computer is cheating a little, so the aliens know your location even if none of your units is visible to them. The alien spotter may walk out of the field of vision and still be able to fire at your units or use MC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M. Hoz Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 It actually makes sense...::Waits for the Dog to bark:: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EclipseDog Posted December 22, 2003 Author Share Posted December 22, 2003 Actually it wasn't anything like that, Jelly, only a lowly level 1 game that I had saved from ages ago. It was set in March of 99 and it was only Sectoids none of those 'effin' eths. My guys that kept getting brain controlled were in the bottom floor just inside those first two rooms. The only alien on that floor was already dead and all aliens outside the ship were dead. 3 aliens on the top floor when I finally got around to killing them all. Up until I killed that final one that was doing the psi-ing my guy in the ground floor kept getting nicked the moment I put a second person into his line of view... it's as if the aliens know what my guys were seeing and knows just when to initiate a hostile take over of the mind. I'm definitely suspecting that the computer is cheating and giving them free looks like cyrus suggested. But it gets even worse since there wasn't even a spotter anywhere and the one guy that kept getting controlled the most was in a closed off room with no windows and even after the sliding doors closed him in he still would get controlled - it's freaking nuts! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pumpkinhead Posted December 23, 2003 Share Posted December 23, 2003 I think it's fine that the aliens can MC anyone, anytime, anywhere! I mean, if the Ethereals are powerful enough to support their entire body just with the power of their mind, then surely they can "detect" where an X-COM agent is just outside their ship, and hence, MC them... And in reference to this thread, I think that they would only MC an agent if they were in close proximity to others... I mean, what would be the point if not to inflict harm upon the enemy... It's not like they're gonna do it just to waste that unit's "turn"... Although, that could be a strategy upon itself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted December 23, 2003 Share Posted December 23, 2003 Pumpkinhead, if you observe the sectoids, the sectoid leaders and commanders are often the ones that are hanging around inside the command centre of a UFO and don't venture much outside. They use their psi powers on units all over the field. Therefore proximity is definitely not part of it. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted December 23, 2003 Share Posted December 23, 2003 That's why I was wondering about the visibility from the upper levels. But more likely the AI has a cheat for tracking a soldier without being in line of sight. If that situation ED describes ever comes up again, the best cure is to hammer some HE or a grenade into the ceiling. Hey, if they're cheating, they're only getting just desserts, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EclipseDog Posted December 23, 2003 Author Share Posted December 23, 2003 Ok just duplicated that with yet another Sectoid assault mission. No sectoids on the bottom floor of the shuttle, everyone outside the shuttle dead, and my guys getting nabbed. I even took the precaution of leaving my most commonly controlled guy back in the sky1... he still got triggered by the psis although not as commonly as the ones who were next to each other. I think this kind of proves that there's something fishy going on in those cloning tanks of theirs... The good news is that this'll now make those sectoid and eth missions a lot easier since from now on I'll know to only send one man at a time in since it only rarely affects them if they go in alone. (Edit: Only added the signature... for some reason it wasn't appearring in this single post of mine...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyrus Posted December 23, 2003 Share Posted December 23, 2003 There is one more tactic, maybe not very useful, but I adhere to it during psi intensive missions. At the end of the turn I put the guns of those soldiers, that I suspect will be more likely to fall under psi control, on the ground. It only takes 2 TUs and computer controlled units are stupid enough to get the weapon back from the ground. Of course, they lose the opportunity to reaction-fire, but if keeping them behind just for support it's not a big problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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