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)
Interesting approach. In terms of global coverage, I usually wait until I've got the Hyper-Wave to build most of my bases. One per continent generally does the trick.
Could you detail your build-out sequence more? When do you build additional bases, how many Skyrangers do you have, and when do you acquire them?
--Ethereal Cereal 22:58, 13 July 2006 (PDT)
Yeah I'm currently torn regarding the hyperwave decoder issue... not too long after I get my bases built, the radar systems become "obsolete".
The idea is to have a "picket defense" -- rather than putting a base smack in the middle of each "high value" country, distribute bases evenly and try to pick up enemy UFO's inbound when they're far away from the high value country, and (eventually once the bases are built up) I can send multiple interceptors to converge on the UFO, because I have plenty of advance warning on where it is going.
OK, to detail my build plan: I build X-ARCTICOM first -- what can I say, I'm a fan of symmetry... it also has the benefit of being at the "center" of the northern hemisphere. I of course build an Alien Containment facility on day one. In my current game, I scrapped the third hangar and the 2nd interceptor... but if I had to do it over, strictly from a "winning" standpoint, I would scrap both of the southern hangars and both interceptors... the Skyranger is all that's required early on. But, I'm starting to think the no-intercept approach is a little cheesy so I'm trying to work out how to play the game "honest" while still maintaining my basic strategy.
On day one, I begin construction of X-NOAMERICOM, on the southern tip of Baja California. All future bases are added as money becomes available, but I give them extremely high priority in terms of funding... each base gets just long range and short range radars -- they are listening posts. The idea is, I'm trying to prevent the aliens from having any open spots they can harrass with impunity early in the game (my first Superhuman game, Australia signed a non-aggression pact in either February or March). As funding becomes availabe, the buildout is as follows:
X-NOAFRICOM (on the Prime Meridian and the Tropic of Cancer -- saharan desert)
X-SEASIACOM (western tip of Taiwan -- the closest I could get to E120 degrees)
X-AUSTRALCOM (actually in Fiji, closest to the international date line and Tropic of Capricorn)
X-SOAMERICOM (roughly paraguay -- W60 degrees and Tropic of Capricorn)
X-SOAFRICOM (Madagascar, closest to E60 degrees and Tropic of Capricorn)
X-ANTARCTICOM (south pole)
Technically the latitudes should be a tad closer to the equator to be truly equidistant (I worked the trig out once) but the tropic circles are easy to find on a map, have a pleasing simplicity to them, and the "high value real estate" is closer to the poles than the equator anyway, so nudging the bases a little closer to the poles works just fine.
The idea is to build a mirror of X-ARCTICOM down at X-ANTARCTICOM -- again, this provides both redundancy and also makes it easier to cover the southern hemisphere.
As I happened to play the game I only had one Skyranger until I built up X-ANTARCTICOM, but if I did it over again, I would probably go with two per polar base and 20 soldiers at each base -- enough for 10 men + 1 HWP per Skyranger. Then once X-ANTARCTICOM was built I would transfer one of the veteran squads from X-ARCTICOM down south and draft some new soldiers for both bases.
But, the idea is to give the the listening posts absolute top priority. Also, I've found that it's not ineffective to build small+large radars prior to the invention of the hyperwave decoder... they do the job... just not as well as the HWD. If I had to do things over, actually, I would postpone HWD research for better interceptor tech... and then once I have great interceptor bases, I would worry about having perfect UFO detection. Not that I'm opposed to HWD's... it's just a question of priorities. It's also more in keeping with what the game designers intended... they expected us to have to slug it out with simple radar tech for a while.
Eric 17:44, 14 July 2006 (PDT)
More info on mission waves
Every mission wave will be carried out by one alien race, typically in one continental zone over one month. Regular mission waves will consist of just a few small ships, increasing in size. These are the bread and butter missions for X-COM. Retalition waves consist of a series of scouts, increasing in size, ending with a battleship. If any of them detects the base then a new battleship will head straight for the base and attack it, otherwise the retaliation wave ends harmlessly.
The medium sized harvester and research ships have a different pattern, the same ships landing repeatedly until you deal with them. Large terror ships arrive once a month to terrorise cities but can also make extra unexplained flights without landing.
Alien bases are usually constructed by the simultaneous landing of a small ship, two large supply ships, and a battleship in the same zone. It's a good idea to recover at least the small ship to see what type of alien is building the base. Thereafter, two supply ships each month fly quickly into the base and depart, too quick for interceptors and distant skyrangers. - Egor
Something I noticed from a game I played when I made all my bases nearly impregnable with Fusion Ball Defenses and Grav Shields: The aliens seem to have a limited queue of missions. Since they were unable to break into any of my bases and had a large number of bases on Earth, the only missions I ever saw were Battleships on retaliation runs and Supply Ships on supply runs. On my newer file, where I use garrisons instead of flak, I see a lot of different types of ships on different types of missions.
--Dumas 13:36, 8 November 2006 (PST)
That is the FIRST decent reason I have seen to build base defense and avoid the tactical battles. With no infiltration or terror missions to worry about, the game becomes a lot easier. I wonder if the scenario can be easily reproduced?
- Bomb Bloke 14:32, 8 November 2006 (PST)
I think I only managed to get the defenses up after I'd lost almost all the funding countries to infiltration. It definitely did cut down on the Terror missions, though. The Harvest, Abduction, etc. also went down a lot. The large amount of research required to obtain Fusion Balls would make it impractical, I think. You would need to assault an Alien Base or large UFO (I'm not sure which ones carry Blasters) for the Blaster Launcher (or take one on a base defense mission). The Grav Shield requires even more time for development since it follows the Lightning. And of course you have to do research for armour and troop weapons, too.
Add on top of that the high cost of the defenses ($1.2Mil for the Shield, $800K per Launcher...say, $5.2Mil for five Launchers and a Shield) and the month-long construction, and I'm not so sure that base defense missions are worth avoiding. Also, the Battle ships seemed to come every five minutes or so.
--Dumas 15:01, 8 November 2006 (PST)