What AI tactics in TFTD differ from UFO?

[Cazbol]

I've feverishly been playing TFTD for the last week and yesterday I encountered an alien tactic that I haven't seen in TFTD before and that I never saw in UFO. The tactic was total camping.

 

I downed a large sub of Gillmen, the kind of sub with 3 decks and the entrance on the 2nd deck above some stairs. As always I carefully and thoroughly combed the area around it but without finding any signs of life. Finally I spotted a Gillman coming through the door and down to the stairs tossing grendes before retreating back into the sub. Another was firing from one of the windows in the back at the 2nd deck. Grenades and missiles dealt with them, after which all was quiet. I tried to blow up the doors and make holes in the hull with Aqua-Jet missiles and high explosives but that doesn't seem to work for the big subs like it does for the smaller subs. Sending the troops in, I found 2 Gillmen guarding the door but was able to kill them without taking reaction fire, thanks to the non-intrusive way of opening doors in TFTD. Four gillmen camped on the lowest deck and the rest are seemingly camped at the upper floor, which is the most dangerous part with small rooms and many doors. An ideal camping site. I'll deal with them after work today.

 

Having played hundreds of missions in UFO and TFTD I have never before come across a mission where non of the aliens ever left their craft, and here there are probably around a dozen of them. Has anyone seen this kind of thing before?

 

Have you come across any other rarely seen AI tactics in TFTD that aren't used in UFO?

[NKF]

Seen this dozens of times. Most of the aliens that start inside the USO seem to stand still a lot more than the ones in UFO. In UFO, the aliens were rather ambulatory, and only a few aliens placed in special locations would never walk about (usually near the bridge). One place I notice aliens camping a lot in TFTD is in the survey or probe ship. When you open the doors, you have a clear view of the room, but there's one blind spot that you cannot see and there's almost always an alien waiting there for you to step through the doors. It's hard to deal with without blowing up the ion beam accelerator, and just waiting for it to leave the ship is really out of the question.

 

In UFO, I like to wait outside a UFO and let all the mobile aliens come out before I deal with the command room sentries. But this doesn't work too well in TFTD. You're often forced to take a more direct approach.

 

Come to think of it, aliens just freezing up and not moving happens often in both games. For example, the last-alien syndrome, where an alien stops moving in some obscure location and it takes you forever to locate. Sometimes they just stop moving out in the open, until they spot you.

 

- NKF