Talk:Overviews of Aliens (TFTD)

Originally from Tentaculat Commander's edits from the once-unified Overviews of Aliens page.

One recommendation on editing: before the "See Also" box on the beginning of each section, put an all-clearing line break:
<br clear="all" />
...otherwise, the alien image may overlap the grey box on Mozilla browsers.

--Papa Legba 11:45, 12 December 2005 (PST)

Alien Threat levels

We need to classify the aliens in threat levels just like in the Enemy Unknown alien overview.

I suggest the following classifications for the races; I've given a brief justification after each race for why I classify it as I do. Admittedly, I haven't played TFTD nearly as much as Enemy Unknown, so I may has misclassified some races.

Low Threat

Zombie - Slow, melee only
Calcinite - Melee only
Gillman- Poor stats!

Medium Threat

Aquatoid - Underwater Sectoids. Poor stats, but watch for MC; they seem to field Squad Leaders a bit more often than Sectoids fielded Leaders or Commanders.
Bio-Drone - Explosive, hovers, sneaks around alot.
Deep One - Ranged attack, doesn't need direct LOS.
Xarquid - Tough, powerful attack.
Hallucinoid - Ranged and Melee, powerful.

High Threat

Lobsterman - Strong, insanely damage resistant, and can turn a trooper into confetti in melee.
Tentaculat - As said: "Underwater Flying Chryssalids."
Tasoth - Strong Molecular Control
Triscene - Reapers with ranged attack!

A few thoughts on that list. Gill-men are like UFO's sectoids in that some of them do have psi, but I think only high ranking gill-men are capable of this.

I'd put biodrones into high threat. They're lite-Cyberdiscs and don't suffer from the cyberdisc's limitations in size. Also, please check out their snapshot accuracy.

I'm not too sure where to classify Hallucinoids. They are TFTD's equivalent of flying reapers. However they have fairly tough armour and their attacks are dangerous. I guess medium is the best place to put them.

Triscenes are another hard one, as they lack the armour that sectopods have, and can be blown away by a gas cannon with HE shells. However they share the same amazing accuracy that the biodrones have.

Calcinites are technically declawed chryssalids. They don't zombify, but they pack a whallop and can move very far compared to most units. I'd move them up to medium.

-NKF

Gillmen have psi? I never noticed that, and it's not mentioned anywhere on the wiki. Also, I know of no place to find the stats for the units in the game, other than a hex editor(and my free trial is expired. :~( Arrow Quivershaft 22:52, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

Could I interest you in using MS-Edit as a hex-editor of sorts? It's no where near as flashy, but it does wonders for something that was meant to just edit plain text.

Last I remember, I got barraged with panic and mind control on the first part of a shipping lane mission, where I thought I was only facing gillmen. They did quite a nasty number on me before I was able to clear the map. - NKF

Perhaps it was a Mixed Crew mission? In any case, I tried using MS-Edit, but it doesn't work properly. I get all sorts of symbols and no hex numbers. Any clue why this is? Arrow Quivershaft

Definitely not a mixed crew. I cleared out the first map down to the last Gillman.

With, MS-Edit, you'll be looking at the ascii character representation of the hex value. You actually look for the value of the selected symbol in the lower right corner of the screen, next to the rows and columns. The value will be in decimal, so have MS Calculator (scientific mode) open for some quick dec to hex number conversions.

When opening the executables, I recommend opening up files as binary with a column width of 100. This way you can look up your hex offsets quite easily - or decimal offsets I should say. Want decimal offset 116, 025? Go down to row 1160, go across to column 25. Note MS-EDIT columns start with 1, so you may have to adjust by one when looking for specific offsets.

With known data files, open them up depending on the size of each data structure. Say obdata.dat, use a column width of 54 and you'll get a nice regular table of sorts. Simple enough to read as long as you know what the values in each column mean.

The HackerTools page has a very brief explanation on how to use it. It's unorthodox, but a number of us have used MS-Edit quite extensively for our past findings, so it should do fine for looking up any values in the game files. - NKF

I'll give it a shot later; thanks! Arrow Quivershaft

You can visit my TFTD alien stats page at StrategyCore. The page is in a state of unfinished-ness right now, but the stats are there. Please be aware that the psionic stats only hold for every version except v1.0. The values for v1.0 are actually lower in some cases and the first patch changes them. ;) --Zombie 23:39, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

Hallucinoid weapons

As noted in Talk:Hallucinoid, I can't reproduce the claim that the Hallucinoid does not use its long range weapon, and that its melee weapon is ineffective. Can anyone confirm or deny? Spike 14:38, 15 November 2008 (CST)

I haven't played TFTD in a while but I recall the impression that Hallucinoids are target practice. Don't ever recall them even firing, they just swim back and forwards upon seeing an aquanaut. Hobbes 14:55, 15 November 2008 (CST)

In all the many years I've played TFTD, I've never seen the Hallucinoid use a ranged attack of any kind. And thier melee attack is more-or-less entirely negated by any armour, that is of course assuming that it takes a break from swimming around aimlessly to actually attack something.

Hallucinoids are easily the most worthless alien combatants, even a Gill Man or Aquatard can do something destructive. The jellyfish are just free stat boosts for your guys.

Tifi 13:17, 15 December 2008 (CST)

I don't quite recall seeing the ranged attack either (then again, the hallucinoids don't stay around that long), but I would not underestimate a hallucinoid's melee attack if it manages to get the jump on you. Lost a few good suits of Mag. Ion Armor to them on superhuman difficulty that way. Oh, and the aquanauts that were inside the suit too. -NKF 22:44, 15 December 2008 (CST)

I've definitely seen the ranged attack. I wish I'd grabbed a screen shot. Repeatedly, easily, and lethally (to unarmoured troops). It's good to hear the melee attack at least can cut through Mag Ion armour. Maybe you guys are too efficient and always kill them before they have a chance to attack? You can't tell which way they are facing, so they often won't spot you when you first spot them. And like any large unit they are vulnerable to area munitions. Maybe they also have low reactions and are not that aggressive?

Actually my test scenario was not perfect as I made my Hallucinoid test subjects by replacing other terrorists in a Liner terror mission (using XcomUtil). Since they don't usually appear on land, it's possible their ranged attack doesn't work underwater - which would be a dumb mistake but not out of character for TFTD. I guess to be more sure I need to get an Island or Port mission and persuade the Hallucinoid to chase me into the water. Spike 03:48, 16 December 2008 (CST)

It often concerns me that lots of folks completely underestimate the Reaper's bite in UFO. They are easy aliens to deal with, but their bite will most certainly hurt if you are not careful. Since the hallucinoid is TFTD's flying Reaper, the same caution should apply to it too.

Speaking of Hallucinoids, colonies always have them on the top-side portion - generally wandering outside. So grab your favourite anti-Tasoth, Aquatoid and Tentaculat weapon and go have a ball. Some MC Disruptors will be helpful to set up a testing scenario. Also perhaps rooting a hallucinoid to the spot by editing its unitref.dat energy recharge stat to 0 may be of assistance too. -NKF 04:16, 16 December 2008 (CST)

Digging into tftd reversed code, found NO traces of any kind of firing weapon for them. For both, CE edition and DOS. So, anyone, who claims he saw them firing, either simply saw other unit firing from the direction where Hallucinoid was (and thought it's him), or it's hacked (xcom utils/tftdextender/etc) version. Ufopaedia article reflects only "wishes" of designers, I guess. It wasn't implemented in the code. --Volutar (talk) 04:16, 24 December 2014 (EST)

Possible mistake in terror unit classification?

Ok, the Aquatoids have Calcinites on land and Hallucinoids underwater, this is easily confirmable. The Gillmen have Deep Ones on land and Xarquids underwater, this is just as easy to confirm. I also know that Lobstermen have Bio-Drones on land. However, it's listed on this page that Tasoths have Bio-Drones and Triscenes as their 2 terror units - which doesn't make much sense since both of those are land terror units! Can we clear up which terror unit Tasoths have above and below water? Is it the Tentaculat below water and Triscene above? So is it the Tentaculat that's the "shared" terror unit after all? (I didn't ever get a Tasoth terror site or Sub recovery with terror units, or a Lobsterman sub recovery with terror units, in my playthrough of TFTD, and I'm... hesitant to play through again.) Magic9mushroom 04:55, 9 August 2009 (EDT)

• Tested it myself and fixed

Vibroblade references

I hadn't re-read the whole of this article in a while (a bit of a habit of just checking paragraphs with recent edits), but I've only just noticed that the Vibroblade is frequently mentioned in reference to an alien's built in melee attack throughout the page.

If everyone else is fine with this, I'd like to remove these references as I feel this is erroneous and could lead to some confusion with images of aliens running around with drill arms or getting confused by the alien never actually dropping the device known as the vibroblade. -NKF 06:40, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

Not to mention that many of those aliens' attacks are not actually at Vibroblade power. Magic9mushroom 08:01, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

Sounds reasonable NKF. I have been confused by these references myself. Spike

Excellent update NKF, thank you. Spike 10:48, 2 September 2009 (EDT)