Talk:Alien Missions
I'm curious, can people tell me if the aliens will ONLY retaliate against bases if the player is shooting down UFO's, and won't retaliate against the player always attacking UFO's while landed.
Having recently tried Superhuman for the first time, I was caught off-guard when the aliens retaliated against a base in early March for me shooting a single UFO down (in February, I think) near that base. It wasn't even in the same country... I got the impression that simply being in the same world-region draws the attack.
I decided to restart the game from scratch, disbanded all my interceptors, and only attacked UFO's using Avengers following them until they landed... this actually worked extremely well... I have the alien menace under control so far, and I've saved tons of money by not having interceptors, avalanche missiles, hangars, and all the other support infrastructure.
However, I'm actually a little disappointed that the game lets you get away with this no-intercept strategy. I think next game I will come up with a strategy to go back to interceptors with "hardened" bases very early in the game (though how I'll get cash for that, I have no idea).
If I were to come up with one improvement to the game, it would be to make air-superiority more essential throughout the game... I would make the UFO's "aggro" vs. Skyrangers -- if they spot a nearby Skyranger they will attack and destroy it! Later in the game, I would make the Battleship ALWAYS attack any SLOWER craft it spots in the air... the idea is to wear down the player's air assets and knock him out of the sky. As the game currently is, you really don't need air-superiority if you have ground-superiority!
Eric 21:57, 12 July 2006 (PDT)
I've had more or less the same experience as you with Retaliations: after shooting down only one UFO, I got regular visits from a Retaliation scout on that continent.
Ground Assault-only works pretty well, but there are several cases where Interception is preferable:
- When the UFO doesn't make a landing at all (Retaliation scouts don't, for instance, and bigger ships often don't know where to land if you kill their scouts beforehand);
- Infiltration missions (4 or more ships show up at once, and unless you have 4+ Skyrangers, you'll need to shoot down one or more craft); Harvesters often show up in pairs, too;
- Distance (unless you've got multiple Skyrangers posted around the world, you might not be able to reach a UFO before it takes off again);
- Night missions (If the UFO arrives at its target at dusk, it'll probably leave before daybreak; it's easier to down it, then storm it at your leisure);
- Terror Ships (I bloody hate terror missions).
--Ethereal Cereal 10:31, 12 July 2006 (PDT)
To be fair, after running a few non-related tests that involved getting a HWD from the very start, I have noticed that the very first UFO you spot can begin on retaliation mission.
Interceptions - or rather - shoot-downs do attract them, that's for sure.
- NKF
I ran into the "latency" issue with using Skyrangers, but came up with a workaround: I figured out each month what region the aliens were focusing on -- Australasia in February 1999, for example. My main (first) base with my Skyranger was on the NORTH POLE!!!, so obviously catching a UFO scout picked up on radar over Australasia before it disappeared was extremely unlikely -- a 12 hour one-way trip -- and if I did it would probably be at night anyway. Well, my workaround was, once I figured out Australasia was "targeted", I would send the Skyranger down there on a regular schedule, timed to arrive an hour or two before dawn -- the immense fuel capacity of the Skyranger allows it to loiter on station, over Australia, for over 12 hours before returning. It would then spend the next 12 hours or so refueling and then be ready for the next mission -- thus I could have a Skyranger in the region of alien activity during daylight every other day. Turns out the aliens would frequently show up early in the day and land during daylight with the Skyranger right nearby -- I snagged several UFO's on the ground in Australasia this way.
Another strategy I came up with was placing my bases specifically to be equidistant around the globe -- the idea being to pick up the UFO's far outside the target region -- South Asia in March, for example, is picked up over New Zealand -- giving me plenty of warning to launch a Skyranger... by the time the UFO has picked a landing spot, the Skyranger is close enough to snag it on the ground during daytime. My bases are on the north/south poles, baja california, north africa, taiwan, fiji, paraguay, and madagascar -- roughly on the tropics every 60 degrees. I have Skyrangers based from the poles -- the rest are listening posts (and eventually interceptor bases).
Eric 21:57, 12 July 2006 (PDT)