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Alien Deployment


Danial

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I was looking at the Muton stats today, and the fact that they have no Commander, Leader, or Medic ranks, made me wonder what happened in situation where one of those ranks was usually deployed. I decided to look at a Battleship savegame...

 

Standard Beginner Deployment for a Battleship:

4-8 Soldiers

1 of every other rank

 

So then I looked at my unitref. I had:

 

1 Engineer... so that was ok

1 Navigator... ok too

10 Soldiers... :phew:

 

I then noticed the layout of the unitref:

 

Soldier

Soldier

Soldier

Soldier

Soldier

Soldier

Soldier

Navigator

Soldier

Engineer

Soldier

Soldier

 

And it stuck out like a sore thumb -- The list is sorted by ascending rank and the missing ranks were simply filled in with Soldiers, taking my Soldier count from 7 to 10!

 

I'm assuming the other Alien Races would do the same thing, seeing as Snakemen are missing a Medic rank, and Ethereals are missing Engineer, Medic, and Navigator ranks.

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You didn't know about that? It's old hat to me from seeing so many missions in unitref. :D

 

The soldier rank substitution only works with Mutons and Snakemen though. For Ethereals things are a bit different. Run-of-the-mill Superhuman Ethereal Base:

 

6 Sectopods

10 Ethereal Soldiers

9 Ethereal Leaders

1 Ethereal Commander

 

Why 9 Leaders? Well, it is just the addition of 2 Navigators, 2 Engineers, 1 Medic and 4 Leaders. 2+2+1+4 = 9. Not only that, but for Ethereal alien bases the number of Leaders and Commanders is a constant per difficulty level.

 

Beginner/Experienced: 5-9 Soldiers, 5 Leaders, 1 Commander, 1-3 Sectopods

Veteran/Genius: 6-10 Soldiers, 6 Leaders, 1 Commander, 3-5 Sectopods

Superhuman: 7-11 Soldiers, 9 Leaders, 1 Commander, 5-7 Sectopods

 

The same thing could be done for the Muton Base.

Beginner/Experienced: 9-13 Soldiers, 1 Nav, 1 Eng, 1-3 Terrorists

Veteran/Genius: 11-15 Soldiers, 1 Nav, 1 Eng, 3-5 Terrorists

Superhuman: 13-17 Soldiers, 2 Nav, 2 Eng, 5-7 Terrorists

 

Works for everything, not just bases. If you know the standard load-out, just substitute accordingly. :phew:

 

- Zombie

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Really? So Mutons and Snakemen substitute Soldiers, and Ethereals sustitute Leaders? Wonder why that is? Hmmm...

Why, to make it harder of course! :phew:

 

Though, I should probably mention that Ethereal Leaders will not be substituted on UFO's where leaders aren't normally present. For instance, the Large Scout never has an alien leader, so the Ethereal large scout mission can only have soldiers. I haven't checked all the UFO's to see what happens but it should hold. :D

 

- Zombie

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Hmmm... Okay, scratch that. :phew:

 

Ethereal Leaders are substituted for other ranks, even if leaders aren't supposed to be present on that craft. After lots of waiting, I finally nabbed a Superhuman Ethereal Large Scout. The OSG says a load-out should be 3-8 Soldiers, 1-2 Navigators and 2-3 Engineers. I had 4 Ethereal Soldiers and 5 Ethereal Leaders (3 Eng subs + 2 Nav subs). I guess that's another reason why Ethereals are so darn tough: Leaders are more prevalent. :D

 

- Zombie

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Yeah, good point Danial! Unfortunately, Ethereals are pretty rare early in the game so your best bet to nab a leader is still off the traditional Terror site at the end of the first month. (Not Muton though).

 

I suppose it is possible to see an Ethereal Scout early on, but come on, its tough. Still, an Ethereal Leader would be like the holy grail for people who play with psionics. As long as you researched a live alien already, the Ethereal Leader will divulge info about the Martian Solution and Psionics - all in one neat little package. :phew:

 

- Zombie

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  • 3 years later...

Whoa, this is an old topic, but I have some more results. This time, it's Cydonia style. :)

 

Ok for the mission on the surface of Mars, the host rank is Sectoids and the associated terrorist is Cyberdiscs. But those Cyberdisc spawn according to rank 7 (terrorist type 1). There is also a rank 8 which is also terrorist. When I changed the rank to 8 I still had Cyberdiscs so this is definitely a run-of-the-mill Sectoid mission like you would find on Earth normally... except only soldiers, leaders and commanders. ;)

 

For the underground base mission on Cydonia, we have the normal host rank of Ethereal Soldiers, Leaders and Commanders which account for ranks 1-3 (normally soldiers would be rank#6, leaders rank#2 and commanders rank#1 so there is a little mis-ordering going on). Since there are no Ethereal medics, the game substitutes Chryssalid "Terrorists", for navigators it substitutes Silacoid "Terrorists", for soldiers (odd, huh? there should be more Ethereal soldiers) it substitutes Celatid "Terrorists". Finally, the only terrorist (type 7) is Sectopods. When I edited the terrorist rank to #8 though, the game substituted Floater, urm, nothings. That's right, the Floaters don't have a rank designation. LOL. When I went into the mission, the Floaters were unarmed as well. Checking unitref.dat, these unranked Floaters are actually soldiers. I always wondered what type 8 would be, and now I know. Fun stuff. :oh:

 

- Zombie

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  • 1 month later...
I guess they just wanted to represent as many aliens as possible.

Well, they could have still done this by just using the proper rank designations that the other missions have, but no. Assuming the rank values are constants, my only conclusion is that the programmers are actually substituting Ethereal Soldiers for the Commanders and Ethereal Commanders for the Engineers. For example, this is what Cydonia looks like assuming a straight substitution for each rank value:

 

Rank Value	 Rank			Cydonia Rank
7		  Terrorist #1	Sectopod
6		  Soldier		 Celatid
5		  Navigator	   Silacoid
4		  Medic		   Chryssalid
3		  Engineer		Commander
2		  Leader		  Leader
1		  Commander	   Soldier

The only "expected" ranks are Terrorist #1 and Leaders. All the other ranks are substituted with something else. ;)

 

- Zombie

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