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Do some alien races go away for good?


CapnKill

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At this point I"m seeing Etherals, Mutons and Snakemen... I haven't seen a Sectoid or a Floatter in eons... aside from the last time I got my base attacked, which was Sectoids, which I assume is because they know where it is pre-mindshield installation...

 

But should I expect Sectoids and Floaters to make a return or are they pretty much gone for good?

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You will bump into them occasionally, but once they start sending in the big guns you're more likely to run into Mutons more than anything (at least that's how it feels to me).

 

You'll likely meet them again though when you assault an alien base or in the final mission.

 

This is where the Hyperwave Decoder also comes in handy further down the line so you can see who's flying about and decide if some missions are really worth fighting - late on in the game I tend not to bother landing at every small or medium scout packed with Mutons as the death toll isn't generally worth what you get in return in terms of equipment, plus you'll be extremely lucky to get any elerium from the smaller shot-down craft.

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Seems like right now I have more Elirium than I know what to do with, but I have just now begun building my first Alien ship, so that will start to get used up a bit.

 

Yeah I have the Hyper Wave on 3 of my bases, so I basically just avoid all Etherals, and for some reason have not fought any Mutons yet, mainly beacause I've only downed small ships with them.

 

Do Snakemen go away after a while as well?

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Depending on your level, the early aliens don't die, they essentially move to the back burner. One more thing, never, ever, allow anything less than a battleship go about unscathed. It'll do more damage than good. As to Battleships, use Firestorms and Avengers on them. And as many as you can send. Probably 6 to 8.
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Depending on your level, the early aliens don't die, they essentially move to the back burner. One more thing, never, ever, allow anything less than a battleship go about unscathed. It'll do more damage than good. As to Battleships, use Firestorms and Avengers on them. And as many as you can send. Probably 6 to 8.

 

Yeah, I pretty much blow up anything that doesn't outrun me... Battleships I leave alone, if they land and are not Etherals then I go and throw them a party, aside from that, I try to keep the skies as clear as possible.

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Yeah, I pretty much blow up anything that doesn't outrun me... Battleships I leave alone, if they land and are not Etherals then I go and throw them a party, aside from that, I try to keep the skies as clear as possible.

 

Yeah, all but battleships get taken down when and where I can get them. I'll even tackle Etherals once in a while. But usually only for research. And I just usually kill all of them, except a soldier, engineer, or a technician. But only one of those, usually I kill on sight Etherals.

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Yeah, all but battleships get taken down when and where I can get them. I'll even tackle Etherals once in a while. But usually only for research. And I just usually kill all of them, except a soldier, engineer, or a technician. But only one of those, usually I kill on sight Etherals.

 

I tried one Etheral mission, they mind controlled 3 guys inside the sky rangers who ended up killing almost everyone. So... no thanks! >:]

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  • 10 months later...

I'm necromancerinating this this thread only because it's close to a thread or discussion I've been trying to refer to, but for the life of me cannot recall where it was. Might not have been this forum, but some here might recall. Figured it was on the wiki, but with such a massive number of articles and the wiki's rather inadequate search feature, is proving to be a literal needle-inna-haystack process.

 

Someone had posted a comprehensive table of showing the appearance by time probabilities for each race via a code dig via assembler. It was a good find but I didn't think to save a link to the discussion at the time. Now that I need to look it up, I suddenly feel that it's a worthy table to add to the wiki.

 

- NKF

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I posted something which maybe fits your description for TFTD?

 

For UFO EU the same table reads:

0-1 (month)

00000000000000010404

00000000000101040404

00000000000004040404

00000000000001010404

00000001010404040404

00000004040404040404

00000000000001010404

 

2-3

00000000000001040404

00000000000404040404

00000000040404040404

00000000000101040404

00000000010104040404

00000000000004040404

00000001010104040404

 

4-5

00000001030303040404

00000003030304040404

00000000000404040404

00000101030303030304

00010101010303030404

00000101010101010404

00000101030303030404

 

6-7

00000103030303040404

00030303030404040404

00000004040404040404

00010202020203030304

00010101010203030404

00010102020202030304

00000101020203030404

 

8+

00000001030303040404

00000003030304040404

00000000000404040404

00000101020303030304

00010102020203030204

00000101010202030304

00010202020203030404

 

...where

00 sectoids 01 snakesmen 02 ethreals 03 mutons 04 floaters

 

and rows:

0 Research

1 Harvest

2 Abduction

3 Infiltration

4 Base

5 Terror

6 Retaliation

 

BTW, this shows quite well that ethereals are really rare, not showing up till 6 month elapsed. And even then, they don't dominate.

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I'm starting to tabulate the information into a table but have got one question for month 8+ base attacks.

 

The probabilities seems to have an extra Ethereal (02) listed amongst the Muton's (03) probabilities. Does this just mean the Ethereals have a total of 40% for their appearance rate?

 

- NKF

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The probabilities seems to have an extra Ethereal (02) listed amongst the Muton's (03) probabilities. Does this just mean the Ethereals have a total of 40% for their appearance rate?

Yes, 40%. Although the appearance of 02 after 03 is strange (this was copied directly from the exe file), it works normally.

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I've just compiled the probabilities for TFTD based on the data dump you provided and I see that's got one or two similar mission where they are slightly out-of sequence as well.

 

I started wondering if it was done that way because the game was treating the row of values like a dartboard target, for example they're loaded into an array, and the index is selected with rand()%10, and where ever the index falls, that's the race it will use. I guess it's basically the same result.

 

Now that I've got them in decimal format, the tables are actually quite fascinating. I will start converting them into wiki tables and hopefully get them up tonight.

 

edit:

 

And up they are!

 

UFO: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=A...pearance_Ratios

 

TFTD: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=A...tios_%28TFTD%29

 

 

Thanks Kyrub.

 

- NKF

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I posted something which maybe fits your description for TFTD?

 

For UFO EU the same table reads:

0-1 (month)

00000000000000010404

00000000000101040404

00000000000004040404

00000000000001010404

00000001010404040404

00000004040404040404

00000000000001010404

 

2-3

00000000000001040404

00000000000404040404

00000000040404040404

00000000000101040404

00000000010104040404

00000000000004040404

00000001010104040404

 

4-5

00000001030303040404

00000003030304040404

00000000000404040404

00000101030303030304

00010101010303030404

00000101010101010404

00000101030303030404

 

6-7

00000103030303040404

00030303030404040404

00000004040404040404

00010202020203030304

00010101010203030404

00010102020202030304

00000101020203030404

 

8+

00000001030303040404

00000003030304040404

00000000000404040404

00000101020303030304

00010102020203030204

00000101010202030304

00010202020203030404

 

...where

00 sectoids 01 snakesmen 02 ethreals 03 mutons 04 floaters

 

and rows:

0 Research

1 Harvest

2 Abduction

3 Infiltration

4 Base

5 Terror

6 Retaliation

 

BTW, this shows quite well that ethereals are really rare, not showing up till 6 month elapsed. And even then, they don't dominate.

Awesome stuff! Can you give me the location in the executable where this data starts? Searching the exe in MS-Edit for anything with a 0 in it is impossible. :D

 

I've just compiled the probabilities for TFTD based on the data dump you provided and I see that's got one or two similar mission where they are slightly out-of sequence as well.

 

I started wondering if it was done that way because the game was treating the row of values like a dartboard target, for example they're loaded into an array, and the index is selected with rand()%10, and where ever the index falls, that's the race it will use. I guess it's basically the same result.

 

Now that I've got them in decimal format, the tables are actually quite fascinating. I will start converting them into wiki tables and hopefully get them up tonight.

 

edit:

 

And up they are!

 

UFO: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=A...pearance_Ratios

 

TFTD: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=A...tios_%28TFTD%29

Good job NKF! :P

 

- Zombie

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Now that I've got them in decimal format, the tables are actually quite fascinating.

Tables are nice and all, but it's kinda hard to visualize what is happening with just numbers sometimes. So I plopped all the data into an MS-Excel spreadsheet and graphed the percents by alien mission type. I first tried a line graph, but there were overlaps in the data which masked some races out - so I ended up with a 3-D line graph. Probably not my best effort, but it gets the job done :D :

 

Alien Research

Alien_Research_Appearances.png

 

Alien Harvest

 

Alien_Harvest_Appearances.png

 

Alien Abduction

 

Alien_Abduction_Appearances.png

 

Alien Infiltration

 

Alien_Infiltration_Appearances.png

 

Alien Base

 

Alien_Base_Appearances.png

 

Alien Terror

 

Alien_Terror_Appearances.png

 

Alien Retaliation

 

Alien_Retaliation_Appearances.png

 

This makes it a little bit easier to visualize how each of the races interact with each other. :P

 

- Zombie

Edited by Zombie
Uploaded new version of a graph.
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Lots of great info here, I literally drool over stuff like this. :D

 

It also proves some observations: no Snakemen, Ethereals or Mutons in alien abduction missions. In the past I was called out for commenting that Mutons never carried out abduction missions, so it feels good to have data to back it up. Hopefully, the percentages hold for all versions of the game. :P

 

- Zombie

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  • 1 month later...

I just went and tried this. Edited geoscape.exe to produce Sectoids only in the first block of missions. The second block was Mutons. Mutons, and nothing else but Mutons. The third block was just the standard lot.

 

Started a new game, edited base.dat to add a HWD to the main base and threw in some plasma cannons, fusion ball launchers and 100 units of ammo.

 

Ran through a couple of games and the results were:

 

January: all Sectoids

February: all Mutons

March: all Muton

April: back to normal (also seems my aggressive shootdowns caused them to start using Battleships for a harvest mission)

 

So the first block only covers January?

 

Unfortunately Mutons form part of the third block, so it doesn't tell me if there's any overlap. However, for the first three months, there was no overlap at all.

 

Maybe I'll go back and set the third block to, say, snakeman and try again.

 

edit: also, much to my astonishment, the FBL doesn't have a 100% hit rate after all. I had to use two to take down a small scout. Either that or the small scout has better evasion?

 

- NKF

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Second run with block 3 as all snakeman,

 

The results

 

Jan - May: exactly the same as previous test

April: mix of Mutons and Snakemen

May: Snakeman only for new UFOs. Only Muton UFOs created were or the base supply runs, otherwise they don't count

June: almost a repeat of May (suspect it's business as usual though - just going through the previously scheduled stuff)

July: mostly snakemen but some new Muton and Sectoid UFOs on missions (business as usual)

 

Other incidental observations:

 

A Muton base construction fleet were on their way to the area just around the main base. I sent an interceptor out to wait for them. Immediately spotted a base nearby my own base, and the UFOs had only just been passed through the HWD detection edge and were still in transit.

 

Interceptors do appear to be able to detect UFOs in flight, but range is short. About the horizontal width of India from Bombay to the other side. This was a previously detected UFO that had fallen out of radar range.

 

- NKF

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edit: also, much to my astonishment, the FBL doesn't have a 100% hit rate after all. I had to use two to take down a small scout. Either that or the small scout has better evasion?

Nope, it's just smaller. Size and distance plays a role in chance to hit determinations. Because the FBLs always fire at such a long distance and also the size of the Small Scout is so tiny, there is a chance FBLs will miss. With larger UFOs you are basically going to hit every time due to them being a bigger target. :P

 

I don't think that the acceleration stat really comes into play if you are using an Avenger to shoot down a Small Scout, but slower accelerating X-COM craft may play a role in chance to hit (no real data on this unfortunately). My guess is no, but you never know. :P

 

- Zombie

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