Talk:Alien Appearance Ratios

Don't Alien Retaliations depend on who you shot down. So in August if you shoot down lots of Snakemen Ships they will retaliate not the Ethereals who have 40% chance to be the race on the Retalation?

Retaliations are done in two ways. The aliens can be generated to appear on retaliation scouting missions, with the race determined by the probabilities in these tables. This means any race can start scouting for X-Com bases to attack even if you haven't shot down any UFOs of that particular race. They still have to find your base to attack it though.

The other method is the instant base attack. Every time you shoot down a UFO, the game has a 2% chance to instantly retaliate against the interceptor's home base and will send a battleship straight to the base without having to scout for it. In this scenario, the race is determined by the crew of the UFO you shot down.

I think it was determined that researching the Martian Solution (or was it Cydonia or Bust?) may generate a base attack as well. -NKF 17:21, 19 June 2012 (EDT)

I have never seen either of those ways in the Collector's Edition. The only way that works in the Collectors Edition (verified by examining MISSIONS.DAT) is to shoot down a UFO, which has a difficulty-level dependent probability of immediately generating a Retaliation scouting mission of the same race as the one you shot down.

Note that since DOS does not do an awesome job of default-initializing its files, that garbage data in XBASES.DAT can do strange things. For the Collector's Edition, correctly tweaking that file will convert the next mission by that race into a base attack, and cause the scheduled mission to be rescheduled for later. -Zaimoni 17:21, 19 June 2012 (EDT)

I think the 2% probability I mentioned is part of what you're referring to. Having it adjusted by difficulty would make sense, as 2% on its own seems a bit low for superhuman. But now that I think about it, I might be getting confused with the terror mission mechanics. I'll have to run a practical test and check this out manually. Should be easy enough by setting all the races to one type and all the retaliation rows to some other race. -NKF 03:31, 20 June 2012 (EDT)

The retaliation rows aren't used. At all. -NKF 05:15, 20 June 2012 (EDT)

Ran a few more tests just in case, and still nothing. So if it's unused data, why were they set in TFTD's rows as well? NKF 05:20, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

Shouldn't we add this to the bullet points at the End? -Ditto51 19:20, 22 June 2012 (GMT)

So, to clarify, are Alien Retaliation missions always the same race as the craft that was downed? If not, what does determine their race if it's not these tables? Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:42, 8 May 2015 (EDT)

On another note, when an Iflitration mission is complete a base almost immediatly spawns in or around the Area of the contry being inflitrated, it is of the same race as the inflitration aliens so won't the Alien Base and the Alien Infiltration missions can have the same probably, just without the mission of an Alien Base. Meaning that Alien Base can still spawn even without the presensce of an Alien Base Missions, so it is just as common to have Muton Base as Etherial bases.

Just Saying we may need to add this to the Bullet points at the bottom. -Ditto51 19:20, 22 June 2012 (GMT)

That's one of the possible outcomes of an infiltration mission. The probabilities here are more for the generation of the 'alien base' teams that look for the base site that eventually lead up to the base creation. Certainly this can be clarified in the notes. -NKF 19:27, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

Snakemen in Jan

Is it really true the Snakemen can do a Harvest mission in January 1999, or is that a typo? It's not a mission they normally do. --Darkpast (talk) 17:24, 3 July 2014 (EDT)

Yes it is possible, I'm pretty sure the numbers were pulled from the game's coding so they would all be right. Its probably just so rare to the point that it doesn't happen. Or it does and you just don't detect the ships because bad luck or different continent.--Ditto51 (talk) 13:34, 12 August 2014 (EDT)

All rows except Alien Research and Alien Terror are unused in January, since the non-terror mission for that month is hardcoded to be an Alien Research mission in the area containing X-Com's first base. So it seems there is a 10% chance of encountering Snakemen in the first month, but a Snakeman Harvest is impossible in the unmodded game. Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:42, 8 May 2015 (EDT)

However, now that I think about it, it's also possible the Alien Research mission is locked to Sectoids. I know I've seen both Sectoid and Floater Alien Terror missions in the first month, but I don't seem to recall getting Floater Alien Research, and I've never seen Snakemen in the first month. Anybody remember getting a non-Sectoid Research mission in the first month? Or has anyone done a code dig? Magic9mushroom (talk) 23:56, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

The first research mission is hard set to be sectoids. The first terror mission of the game has a 30% chance to be sectoid, 70% chance to be floater. -Tycho (talk) 13:34, 18 March 2016 (UTC)