Victory Points

[Pumpkinhead]

As you all are probably aware, you get points at the end of each mission for each alien you've killed (and double the points for capturing it live)... But what I was wondering is where they would have gotten these point values from?

 

I myself think it must be a combination of alien "hardness" and rarity seeing as Sectoid soldiers are at the bottom and Ethereal Commanders are at the top... If it was just alien "hardness" the Chryssalid would be worth the most points I'd imagine, instead of being equal 6th...

 

Does anyone know if the aliens have a "rarity" value?... NKF??

 

Anyways, here's the list if you haven't seen it before:

 

Ethereal Commander 

[Jman4117]

You get points for zombies?

[NKF]

So do your soldiers. Only, they get treated as negatives. A brand new rookie may start with an arbitary value of 20. The super soldier who has advanced to the point where advancement is no longer possible may get a value of 70 and a bit.

 

- NKF

[Pumpkinhead]

You get points for zombies?

Sure do... but obviously there's no points for capturing one

[Jman4117]

So more points for blowing the hunks of skin off of the Chrysalid than if you just let it bust out on it's own?

[Pumpkinhead]

Precisely, my dear Watson

[Zombie]

Pumpkinhead: I seriously doubt "rarity" is a prime factor in determining Victory Points. Why? I encounter Mutons all the time (much more often than Sectoids) so the Muton rarity factor should put it below the Sectoid, which is not the case. Also, the Sectoid commander is 25 vps placing it far below the other species with this rank. Snakemen or Floater commanders seem to show up more often than the Sectoid.

 

As for "hardness" I assume you mean "toughness" or the ability to kill an alien. This probably plays a significant role in determining Victory Points. However, toughness is most definately a combination of other things. Intelligence is one of these which is highest in my mind. Another is rank - explains why the commanders are at the top and the soldiers near the bottom. In all probability, an alien's statistics and armor are also taken into account. Maybe also Psi and flight ability.

 

So how did the designers come up with these numbers? One can only speculate. They probably started with an alien with the lowest ranking statistics, armor, intelligence, rank, psi and flight. Maybe they had an equation to determine the overall ranking. Then they determined what the high and low Victory Points would be, and assigned the lowest overall ranking alien (Sectoid Soldier) the smallest Victory Point number. All the other aliens were based off of this low. Kinda tough to explain without the programmers or the actual source code to draw upon!

[Pumpkinhead]

I did mean "toughness"... It was on the tip of my tongue

 

I worked out toughness one day by simply multiplying all the aliens stats and the Chryssalid came out on top, which is why I thought they might have added a rarity value which could change the outcome...

[Zombie]

Pumpkinhead : I tried multiplying all the aliens' stats together a while back and all I got was a huge number - somewhere in the 10^33 range I think. Not really a unique small number to do any comparisons. I was taking into account psionic combat strength as well as psionic defense numbers which are pretty big. I suppose I could reduce the aliens's stats by dividing by 10 to get a more manageable number. How did you get your numbers so that you could compare them??

[Pumpkinhead]

Pretty much the same way, except I left out Psi because it only effected 4 of the aliens, and I added "damage" using the H2H values for Chryssalids and the like and used the Heavy Plasma value for the primaries... Then I just sorted by value (and yes they were in the millions) in MS Excel and voila -- Alien "Toughness"!

 

I even included the "aggression" and "intelligence" stats... Which I found (off-topic), all the NPCs in Jedi Academy have as well, so if UFO ever was converted to a FPS it would be quite easy to just transfer their stats B)

 

JA's are both 1-5 in value and UFO's are 0-2 and 2-8 respectively so it would only take a small adjustment... It also has the equivalent of "reactions" and "bravery"

[Pumpkinhead]

Here's the list that I posted in another thread ages ago:

 

1. Chryssalid

2. Sectopod

3. Cyberdisc

4. Ethereal Commander

5. Muton Engineer

6. Reaper

7. Celatid

8. Silacoid

9. Snakeman Commander

10. Floater Commander

11. Zombie

12. Sectoid Commander

 

Note: I left out Psi-skill purely for a "fighting" rating, but if it's included it brings the Ethereal to #1, beating the Chryssalid!

 

[EDIT]

[Zombie]

Question: Does including psi bring the Ethereal to #12 or #1? On your list the Chryssalid is #1. I recall that my list was very similar to yours with the Ethereal at the top and Chryssalid in #2. The minor differences were in the lower 4 spots.

 

By the way, I like your spelling on #9 "Smakeman Sommander"! Is that like a Snakeman Salamander?!

[Pumpkinhead]

Oops

 

The list was inverted on my original post, so yes, it does bring the Ethereal to #1!

 

By the way, I like your spelling on "Smakeman"! ... Gotta love the typos!!

[Zombie]

*Laughing*

 

I put that spelling in there on purpose, just to see if you were awake!

 

*Laughing some more*

 

Thanks for clearing up that list for me Pumpkinhead!