Strange things in X-COM

[Thorondor]

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ai8mJhArCM8/UXqCwjkq91I/AAAAAAAAAHo/2Im_vVSoRjE/s1600/Aliens1.png

 

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D2cuPd7ILFU/UXqCwh4iApI/AAAAAAAAAHs/EcksxwGVG1o/s1600/Aliens2.png

 

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VRsvygTV2nE/UXqCwhwgNHI/AAAAAAAAAHk/RHNfF1UeYqk/s1600/Aliens3.png

 

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Julian Gollop says:

 

Here are some of the screenfuls of sprites that John Reitze created in the very early stages of development for UFO/X-Com in 1991. Thanks John for keeping these for so many years!

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

It would entirely cool if those unused aliens could be animated and used into a mod or an expansion pack....

[luke83]

If you have the skills and the time, i bet Openxcom would eventually support them

[NKF]

They'd be easy enough to make for the original game too. But yeah, the time and patience to do them is what is required.

 

- NKF

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

I'd have to have the original pics in order to do any animation work, patience and time I've got. If anyone can get a larger version of those ones above, I could start on them next week.

[luke83]

I just had a quick look on Gallops site, after opening them into Gimp , there actually pretty close to the original game arts size ( they may be exact , i didn't double check).

 

Best of luck on this endeavour, i already did a quick colour change of the Current floaters to more closely match the one shown on this artwork ( still there is a lot of differences) so i am really looking forward to seeing your results. Also i know of a OXC Mod site that would love to have anything you create added to it

[Bomb Bloke]

at the lemming.

 

I'd have to have the original pics in order to do any animation work, patience and time I've got. If anyone can get a larger version of those ones above, I could start on them next week.

Those ones Thor posted are actually at the correct resolution. If you scale them up before working on them then you'd only need to downscale them later, at the risk of some nasty blurring.

 

Or are you talking about colour depth? That can be altered as need be.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

yeah BB i was talking about the resolution, but you're right I'll just have to be careful when I revert them back to normal size. But I was also thinking of the walking and gun holding hands position, might depend on the alien.

 

later down the road we ought to have a vote as to what aliens should possibly be in mod, one step at a time.

[Tsathoggua]

Just had a UFO recovery mission, shot down rather than landed, And the previous mission was a writeoff. Terror site, turned ugly so packed up and left the civilians to rot, pretty much. Lost a valued member of the team, so naturally wanted some payback. Saw the craft was mutons on landing, thought fuck this, not going to piss about, and went to level the UFO down to the last tile with repeated blaster shelling. Had brought about 50 blaster bombs at LEAST, enough plasma rifles for the men and some grenades. Odd thing was, the damn thing hadn't a scratch on it, when coming to storm what should have been a smoking pool of glass in a crater a hundred feet deep after the time the crew were finished, operating in fireteams, one loading, tossing it to the stronger troops, firing, them reloading, firing again. Lather, rinse, repeat until the rest of the map was a smoking ruin. Never mind sneaking around with motion scanners, no taking prisoners...see a building? just level it and follow up with alien grenades and HE charges. Anything left standing got a shot from the two rocket launcher troopers. But for some reason the blaster bombs failed to penetrate this paticular UFOs hull. Previous times thats been called for, when the troops wanted revenge rather than just a cleanup the UFO was reduced to at most, a floor, since its difficult to target blaster rounds against the floor tiles. But damn...what a mess of the surrounding area. But direct hits on this one UFO didn't damage the outer hull. Although managed to absolutely devastate the interior, detonating the power core in the process.

 

Opened the door, had the soldier step back (run like hell more like it, and then hit hit the interior with 16-17 blaster bombs in the same turn leaving nothing left alive, and for that matter not very much dead or nonliving either. Would have hit the place with more still but theres only, since the unfortunate screw up of a terror site, two, maybe three agents strong enough to both carry reloads, blaster launcher and sidearm (plasma rifle) plus medkit, fire the launcher and only a couple of those are capable of reloading and firing in one turn, although a couple of them can do if they ditch the rifle for the timebeing before ending the turn.

[Kichijoji]

Hi all~

My recent game has been kinda odd. I'm playing genius with no mods other than the xcomutil difficulty fix.

Well, I went until mid-October before the aliens built their first base. Mostly just terror sites and a few research and harvest missions and then constant retaliations.

Then, between the end of October until the end of December they built 11 more bases, about 5 Ethereal and the rest Muton and Snakemen. I think there is about three more infiltration missions going on as well. Haven't seen any Sectoids since May.

I was so starved for elerium and cash I was letting their fleets land and taking them out intact, Snakemen were no problem but the Ethereal battleships can get pretty messy, I barely took one with one surviving trooper that was fatally wounded.She ended up with 9 kills on that one and made commander

 

I've played X-Com since the psx days on and off, maybe 50 or so playthroughs and I've never seen alien base missions starting so late and building so many in a short time.

[Space Voyager]

 

I was so starved for elerium and cash I was letting their fleets land and taking them out intact, Snakemen were no problem but the Ethereal battleships can get pretty messy, I barely took one with one surviving trooper that was fatally wounded.She ended up with 9 kills on that one and made commander

 

Damn, reads like a great story to tell! Battles like that really feel like an accomplishment.

 

Welcome to StrategyCore.

[magic9mushroom]

Hi all~

My recent game has been kinda odd. I'm playing genius with no mods other than the xcomutil difficulty fix.

Well, I went until mid-October before the aliens built their first base. Mostly just terror sites and a few research and harvest missions and then constant retaliations.

Then, between the end of October until the end of December they built 11 more bases, about 5 Ethereal and the rest Muton and Snakemen. I think there is about three more infiltration missions going on as well. Haven't seen any Sectoids since May.

I was so starved for elerium and cash I was letting their fleets land and taking them out intact, Snakemen were no problem but the Ethereal battleships can get pretty messy, I barely took one with one surviving trooper that was fatally wounded.She ended up with 9 kills on that one and made commander

 

I've played X-Com since the psx days on and off, maybe 50 or so playthroughs and I've never seen alien base missions starting so late and building so many in a short time.

 

Well, here's what I understand of it.

 

- Every month, the aliens start one Alien Terror mission and one "non-Terror" mission from the set {Alien Research, Alien Abduction, Alien Harvest, Alien Base, Alien Infiltration} (chosen at random, with weights depending on what zone it's being attempted in). Alien Retaliation missions are spawned by X-Com shooting down UFOs, and Alien Supply missions are randomly spawned by existing bases.

- Alien Base missions, unsurprisingly, build an alien base. Then they terminate. Alien Infiltration missions also build an alien base when a country is infiltrated, and they do not then terminate; they start over, and repeat until every country in that region has been infiltrated (spawning a base for each one).

 

I'm guessing that what happened was some combination of the following:

- a couple of alien bases that had already been built, but which you hadn't found

- the alien-mission die rolling Infiltration several times in a row, with the earlier Infiltrations continuing and spawning more bases even while the later ones were going on

[Kichijoji]

Damn, reads like a great story to tell! Battles like that really feel like an accomplishment.

 

Welcome to StrategyCore.

 

Thank you, I've lurked for quite awhile and appreciate all the good info on here.

 

That mission was one of the more memorable ones for me. I was so flustered during it I was having guys throwing grenades that I forgot to prime haha. Damn Sectopods were brutal.

Towards the end it was just her(Colonel with really good stats) and a unarmed rookie that was either mc'd or panicking non stop. She had just blaster bombed her way onto the south top floor taking out 3 or so in the process. I had her hide out in the nav room hoping to pick off an Ethereal that might come around since her reactions were really high.

The mc'd rook spotted an Ethereal near the grav lift but was shot soon after. I also knew there was another one in the opposite top floor room(command room?) because he had killed my former commander when he entered. By counting the psi attacks, I figured it was the last 2. Didn't have any BB's so picked up a heavy plasma.

I waited until turn 40 something and nothing, no door sounds either. Deciding to go for it, she came around the corner and bam, she got blasted head on. Lost half her health and 1 fatal wound but still got a kill on auto. Picked up a blaster from a corpse on the lift and blew up the opposite room, was so relieved to hear a death scream and score screen music^^ Lost a lot of good men and a hover tank but it's games like this that keeps me coming back.

 

 

Well, here's what I understand of it.

 

- Every month, the aliens start one Alien Terror mission and one "non-Terror" mission from the set {Alien Research, Alien Abduction, Alien Harvest, Alien Base, Alien Infiltration} (chosen at random, with weights depending on what zone it's being attempted in). Alien Retaliation missions are spawned by X-Com shooting down UFOs, and Alien Supply missions are randomly spawned by existing bases.

- Alien Base missions, unsurprisingly, build an alien base. Then they terminate. Alien Infiltration missions also build an alien base when a country is infiltrated, and they do not then terminate; they start over, and repeat until every country in that region has been infiltrated (spawning a base for each one).

 

I'm guessing that what happened was some combination of the following:

- a couple of alien bases that had already been built, but which you hadn't found

- the alien-mission die rolling Infiltration several times in a row, with the earlier Infiltrations continuing and spawning more bases even while the later ones were going on

 

Thank you for your feedback and good information. I didn't know that about the Infiltration missions. But it makes sense now that I think about it.The alien base spam seemed to coincide when I started building more bases, but just coincidence I think. Asia, Australia and Brazil have all pulled out, and Europe is falling fast. Antarctica and the Pacific had bases as well.

 

The only differences I can really notice between vet and genius difficulties is there seems to be retaliations very quickly and troopers that usually don't get mc'd (70ish psi strength) can get mc'd on one try. I'm curious if there a safe zone for psi strength on superhuman?

[magic9mushroom]

Thank you for your feedback and good information. I didn't know that about the Infiltration missions. But it makes sense now that I think about it.The alien base spam seemed to coincide when I started building more bases, but just coincidence I think. Asia, Australia and Brazil have all pulled out, and Europe is falling fast. Antarctica and the Pacific had bases as well.

 

There's no relation between the zones the aliens target for Base/Infiltration missions and the zones where you have bases, although for obvious reasons you will have an easier time noticing alien activity in places where you have radar coverage.

 

The two alien missions that are directly targetted on zones where you have bases are

 

- the non-Terror mission for January, which is guaranteed to be a Sectoid Alien Research mission in the same zone as your first base

- Alien Retaliation missions, which search for your bases and hence are targetted in the areas where you have bases.

 

The only differences I can really notice between vet and genius difficulties is there seems to be retaliations very quickly and troopers that usually don't get mc'd (70ish psi strength) can get mc'd on one try. I'm curious if there a safe zone for psi strength on superhuman?

 

The differences between difficulty levels are:

 

- alien stats are incremented by a small amount (2-6%, depending on which stat) each difficulty level

- alien Firing Accuracy and Armour are halved on Beginner

- the amount of aliens spawned is dependent on difficulty; Beginner and Experienced use the "low" number, Veteran and Genius use the "middle" number, and Superhuman uses the "high" number

- in air combat, UFOs' attack cooldown is decremented by a small amount each difficulty level (actual improvement in fire rate depends on what the cooldown originally was, but it varies from 1.17x to 1.5x the fire rate on Superhuman compared to Beginner). Note that this is moot if your interceptor is outside a UFO's weapon range.

- Alien Retaliation chance per interception is believed to increase with difficulty level, but we don't know the exact mechanics of how much and whether it's continuous or not.

 

 

Alien psi attacks do get much stronger with increasing difficulty; this is because psi attack power scales with Psi-Strength multiplied by Psi-Skill and both of those go up 4% per difficulty level.

 

"Safe zones" for psionics depend on distance and the stats of the attacker (all the psionic aliens have slightly different Psi-Strengths and Psi-Skills). The required defense strength to be totally immune to Mind Control from a Superhuman Ethereal Commander at distance 0 (the absolute worst-case scenario) is 112; that would correspond to Psi-Strength 100 and Psi-Skill 60, or Psi-Strength 92 and Psi-Skill 100. Of course, if you only needed to be safe from, say, a Superhuman Ethereal Leader at distance 10 you'd only need a defense strength of 86 (which would correspond to Psi-Strength 82 and Psi-Skill 20, or Psi-Strength 66 and Psi-Skill 100).

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, here's what I understand of it.

 

- Every month, the aliens start one Alien Terror mission and one "non-Terror" mission from the set {Alien Research, Alien Abduction, Alien Harvest, Alien Base, Alien Infiltration} (chosen at random, with weights depending on what zone it's being attempted in). Alien Retaliation missions are spawned by X-Com shooting down UFOs, and Alien Supply missions are randomly spawned by existing bases.

- Alien Base missions, unsurprisingly, build an alien base. Then they terminate. Alien Infiltration missions also build an alien base when a country is infiltrated, and they do not then terminate; they start over, and repeat until every country in that region has been infiltrated (spawning a base for each one).

 

I'm guessing that what happened was some combination of the following:

- a couple of alien bases that had already been built, but which you hadn't found

- the alien-mission die rolling Infiltration several times in a row, with the earlier Infiltrations continuing and spawning more bases even while the later ones were going on

 

Just to expand on this:

 

An alien "mission" consists of UFOs of certain types being spawned into the world map according a time table. There's simply no way to foil an alien mission; it'll run to completion no matter what you do, but you can stall the arrival of the next UFO in the sequence by shooting down prior ones.

 

Because missions can be delayed, it's quite possible to have multiple base-building missions complete within the same month (even if they started during different months). That's just if they're in different regions of the world, though - only one mission of each type can run within each area at a time.

 

Your fighter craft and transports have their own radars built-in, so don't be surprised if alien bases pop into view while you have them flying about. If you see a lot of UFO activity somewhere (or even if your graphs just tell you its there!), it often pays to have your ships patrol a few hours in that zone.

 

I waited until turn 40 something and nothing, no door sounds either. Deciding to go for it, she came around the corner and bam, she got blasted head on.

 

Normally, if one of your units is spotted during the alien's turn, or an alien is successfully but non-lethally attacked by one of your units, all aliens will know the location of that unit until a number of turns have passed (the amount of which varies depending on the "intelligence" stat of each alien, which goes up to eight at the most). Among other things, this allows them to fire psi-attacks at that unit whenever they like, regardless of LOS.

 

After turn 20, all of your units count as spotted all the time. At that point most aliens will start to make a beeline to your location - the ones which don't are typically either in a mad panic, or hiding around a corner so's they can get a reaction shot off when you go around it. Against Etherals it's often a good idea to try to mop things up before then.

[magic9mushroom]

Just to expand on this:

 

An alien "mission" consists of UFOs of certain types being spawned into the world map according a time table. There's simply no way to foil an alien mission; it'll run to completion no matter what you do, but you can stall the arrival of the next UFO in the sequence by shooting down prior ones.

 

Whilst all alien missions run to completion, most of them can be foiled.

 

 

Alien Research and Alien Supply don't score, so there's nothing to foil.

 

Alien Abduction scores 50 points every time an Abductor takes off after having landed; shooting down the Abductors, or Ground Assaulting them, will prevent the aliens from scoring.

 

Alien Harvest scores 30 points every time a Harvester or Battleship takes off after having landed; shooting them down, or Ground Assaulting them, will prevent the aliens from scoring.

 

Alien Terror primarily scores via generating Terror Sites (1000 points if you don't attend, or 30x however many civilians they kill if you do); you can prevent the generation of Terror Sites by shooting down the Terror Ships. It also scores 10 points every time one of the scouts takes off after having landed; you can prevent that as well by shooting them down or Ground Assaulting them.

 

Alien Retaliation doesn't directly score points for the aliens, but it does harm you by destroying a base; you can prevent this by shooting down the scouts or mounting a successful Base Defence.

 

Alien Base and Alien Infiltration are the only ones that always succeed, inevitably scoring 50 (base) or 150 (infiltration) points and generating an alien base.

 

Because missions can be delayed, it's quite possible to have multiple base-building missions complete within the same month (even if they started during different months). That's just if they're in different regions of the world, though - only one mission of each type can run within each area at a time.

 

Actually, for most missions, only one of that type can occur in a given area per game. Every time a Research, Abduction, Harvest, Base, or Infiltration mission is performed in a given zone, that mission is permanently removed from the table of possible missions for that zone. If all of them have been performed, that zone is permanently removed from the table of possible zones the aliens can attack. That's why Infiltration missions repeat until all countries in the zone have been infiltrated; a truly new Infiltration mission actually can't happen.

 

The exceptions are Alien Terror (which will always happen once per month in a random inhabited zone), Alien Retaliation (which triggers reactively in response to X-Com shooting down UFOs) and Alien Supply (which triggers at random from established alien bases).

 

(Yes, this means that if you play until 2003 and the aliens have performed every mission in every zone, they'll stop doing anything outside of Supply, Terror and Retaliation.)

 

Your fighter craft and transports have their own radars built-in, so don't be surprised if alien bases pop into view while you have them flying about. If you see a lot of UFO activity somewhere (or even if your graphs just tell you its there!), it often pays to have your ships patrol a few hours in that zone.

 

Worth noting that base detection only happens during "Patrol" - NOT when the craft are flying to a destination.

 

Normally, if one of your units is spotted during the alien's turn, or an alien is successfully but non-lethally attacked by one of your units, all aliens will know the location of that unit until a number of turns have passed (the amount of which varies depending on the "intelligence" stat of each alien, which goes up to eight at the most). Among other things, this allows them to fire psi-attacks at that unit whenever they like, regardless of LOS.

 

After turn 20, all of your units count as spotted all the time. At that point most aliens will start to make a beeline to your location - the ones which don't are typically either in a mad panic, or hiding around a corner so's they can get a reaction shot off when you go around it. Against Etherals it's often a good idea to try to mop things up before then.

 

Actually, that's not quite accurate. The aliens get a free look at all your units on turn 20, but they still only remember it for <Intelligence> rounds.

[Bomb Bloke]

Whilst all alien missions run to completion, most of them can be foiled.

 

I guess "no way to prevent an alien mission from completing" may've been a better way to phrase things. Whether it works out well for the aliens, on the other hand...

 

Worth noting that base detection only happens during "Patrol" - NOT when the craft are flying to a destination.

 

Good point. Best to have your craft patrol for a brief while after shooting down an alien craft - especially if it's a supply ship - since it's already out in the field and all.

 

Actually, that's not quite accurate. The aliens get a free look at all your units on turn 20, but they still only remember it for rounds.

 

Dunno what to tell you, for me the relevant counters reset every turn after 20 across both games.

[magic9mushroom]

I seem to recall a mission where the aliens psi-attacked my unarmed, un-psi-tested soldiers in the dropship after turn 20, but it tapered off after a few turns. And I've had cases where most of the aliens came out within a couple of turns after turn 20, but those that didn't kept patrolling. I dunno.