Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Aliens

[kai]

So what is the cruelest thing you have ever done in UFO?

 

The best one I did was a few minutes ago. I managed to get a few people who were quite competent at mind control (2 in the 90 range, one in the low 80s). I mind controlled a floater in a base. I found that my new friend had a blaster launcher. I made him fire the blasterbomb at himself. (would have been funnier if I made the bomb circle him a few times :devil: )

 

Another time I simply made a snakeman blow himself up with a grenade

[FullAuto]

If those things are cruel.....well, I do them quite a bit. They give me this feeling.

[Bomb Bloke]

You know, I gotta admit... The baby did get owned. That's the sort of photo you keep around for the wedding. Nonetheless, I feel that was a bit OT, so I turned it into a linked to save the dial-up users frustration.

 

(Odds are they'll click the thing anyway, but at least it will be their own fault. )

[EtherImp]

I'd have to say mind controlling an entire muton base without killing a single one of them, having them all drop their weapons, then stand together all in the same room, line my soldiers up, and let the reaction fire fly.

 

Firing squad anyone?

[FullAuto]

Thanks, BB. Should have thought of that.

[NKF]

Parking your tank next to an alien with a small launcher is both a logical and very nasty thing to do.

 

Or denying an alien the use of its blaster bomb by having everyone crowd up against it. This little act of self preservation by the way demonstrates where the UFO/TFTD's AI is slightly smarter than its Apocalypse counterpart. It's not much, but at least they don't go throwing grenades into a group of their allies just to get one of your soldiers.

 

Using a high explosive or larger rocket to take out an unarmed 1hp sectoid is sometimes a bit gratuitous and unnecessary.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Recently, I had to quiet a terror site in Moscow. Trying to be funny (or cruel), I equipped every soldier with a weapon that had incendiary capabilities on my Skyranger. The four strongest soldiers got a Rocket Launcher with 4 Incendiary Rockets. Five soldiers got the Heavy Cannon with 3 HC-Incendiary clips, and the remaining five got the Auto Cannon with 3 AC-Incendiary clips. I spread the weapons around so that no two soldiers next to each other had the same kind. The backup weapons for this mission were Laser Pistols for the unlikely event that someone ran out of ammo.

 

Ok, I get to the terror site and step the first soldier off the ramp. Looking around, I notice a Cyberdisc hovering close by. "Sunny Beach"!, I exclaimed. "Damn Sectoids and Cyberdiscs, this should be interesting".

 

I step another soldier off the ramp and fire an incendiary rocket at the Cyberdisc. Nothing happens. The first guy gets trigger happy and fires an auto-shot salvoe of AC-Incendiary rounds at the Cyberdisc. First shot misses, but the other two don't. Boom! The resulting Cyberdisc detonation sets off a chain reaction of two more Cyberdisc detonations, which in turn takes out 4 unlucky Sectoids standing nearby in the shadows. I was laughing so hard, because I killed 7 aliens with only 3 incendiary blasts!

 

I hit next round. The only thing that happens is I hear some doors opening and closing in the large brick apartment building across the street. Over the next three rounds, I move all my soldiers to cover the exits and windows on the first floor. I do not see any aliens - only hear door movement for a few more rounds. By this time, I decided to burn the aliens out.

 

Each soldier that stood next to a window shot an incendiary round inside the building. The soldiers covering the doors opened them and layed some fire down on the floor, and then closed the door again. When the fires started to die down, I shot some more rounds in. I even aimed some shots at the floor above for added measure. Then come the death screams!

 

At least three bug-eyed beasts fried that first round. Next round a Sectoid comes running out one of the doors on fire! The soldier guarding the door was more than willing to put the poor thing out of his misery with some incendiary reaction shots from the Heavy Cannon! Another unlucky Sectoid on the floor above fell through the disintegrating floorboards and was met with a flurry of reaction fire from a soldier with an Auto Cannon.

 

Now I storm the building and find nothing. Then one of my soldiers gets psi-attacked. Must be the damn leader! One soldier catches a glimpse of the alien standing near some gas pumps at a filling station. Every available soldier opens fire and peppers the pumps with incendiary rounds. Another psi-attack, luckily it was only a panic attack. Finally, the Sectoid Leader falls to a heap on the ground, stunned! That's it, mission over! And no dead civilians to boot!

 

"What's on the menu tonight?", my soldiers may ask. Your choice of Redi-cooked Fillet o' Sectoid served with a lemon-butter sauce and braised potato medallions, or Sectoid T-bone with a red wine Portabella mushroom reduction served over wild rice. Delicious! Dig in everyone. Hey, wasn't this the Sectoid Engineer we killed this morning?

 

The best thing was that I captured that Sectoid Leader before the end of January. That means I will have psi-capabilities by late April or May!

[Bomb Bloke]

Woah, that's very good work! Nothin' like that smell of napalm in the morning, or fried Sectoid, in this case.

 

I think Zombie's got the lead at the moment.

[Zombie]

* in my best Elvis voice *

Thank you. Thank you very much!

 

If you liked that debriefing, I have about 3 or 4 missions that are just as memorable. If I may present one now:

 

Like the time I went to a night mission of a shot-down Terror Ship. The Skyranger landed in a jungle, and it was the first time I ever encountered a Muton . Green Muton skin blends pretty well with the green foliage of a lush jungle, and it was near impossible to locate the aliens through the dense underbrush. Luckily, I had incendiary weapons. I just started firing shots in the middle of the map and worked my way out to the edges. Pretty soon the entire jungle map was ablaze and nearing firestorm quality.

 

Plus, as an added bonus, all the burning vegetation created a dense smoke cloud. This protected my soldiers from being spotted in the Skyranger. I kept the LZ lit up with fire so if a Muton wandered nearby, he would be injured getting to the ramp. There, my soldiers knelt down with laser pistols and picked off the closer Mutons one-by-one as they waded through the chest high flames. Every other round or so a death scream was heard coming from somewhere on the map.

 

After the flames subsided, I assessed the damage: 3 dead Mutons near the ramp, about 5 dead or unconscious laying around the map, plus 1 dead Celatid. Not bad.

 

Now I went inside the ship with a soldier wielding a Rocket Launcher and 4 incendiary rockets, plus another soldier with a Laser Pistol. The soldier with the laser pistol killed a Silacoid near the East door, while the other guy got into position below the bridge. He fired an incendiary rocket at the ceiling, reloaded, and waited. Two rounds later, he fires another rocket at the ceiling. One scream is heard, and the next round, 2 more Mutons sing their death songs in unison. The sweet sounds of success! No more aliens alive so the mission ends! As you may see I Love Incendiary Weapons!

 

-------------

 

Anyways, I have a problem with this "cruel" method:

NKF Posted on Sep 4 2004, 04:13 PM

Or denying an alien the use of its blaster bomb by having everyone crowd up against it. This little act of self preservation by the way demonstrates where the UFO/TFTD's AI is slightly smarter than its Apocalypse counterpart. It's not much, but at least they don't go throwing grenades into a group of their allies just to get one of your soldiers.

 

Aliens WILL use a Blaster Bomb or an alien grenade if you back them into a corner. I found this out the hard way when I first started playing X-COM. I figured "An alien with just a grenade will not use it if he can only throw it next to himself, right"? Wrong! The outcome was 1 dead Snakeman plus 2 dead soldiers in Power Suits. I corralled a Sectoid Engineer carrying a Blaster Launcher against the hull of a UFO with 5 soldiers once. Let's just say the results were not pretty!

[Bomb Bloke]

Perhaps the difficulty level has something to do with it... I know aliens are trigger happy with the stun launcher, and they always seem to blow themselves up when bombing civilians. When it comes to the blaster launchers, though, I don't wait to find out!

[NKF]

Oh, grenades, that's probably a different story. But something worth looking into in more detail when I get the time. Heh, though I've sent all-grenade squads against the aliens before, I've never had them do that to me.

 

I used the grenade example for Apocalypse, although perhaps I should've used the dimension missile launcher in that example instead.

 

But about denying them the use of the blaster launchers, I've done it many times and the alien wouldn't shoot at the soldiers standing next to it (those further away are still fair game). I can't quite recall if their other companions carrying launchers think the same way about their friend.

 

The aliens will gladly fire small launchers point blank, that's definite.

 

- NKF

[Ki-tat Chung]

i've had one mission where i rounded up all the aliens (this is a city/town/metro mission) and just sat them in a square. i surrounded them with my soldiors, faced outside so tey won't attack/dropped weapons, and practiced my weaker peeps psi. then i slaughtered them.

[kai]

I developed quite a nasty one. On a muton base I set up an MC chain. Took control of one alien. he saw 2 near him. My psi troopers took control of them. by the end I had about 5 or 6. One had a blaster bomb. :devil:

 

Time for some fun. All the aliens were lined up against a wall facing the muton with the launcher. I decided to keep a savegame of that moment for if I neeed cheering up. The morale drop was amazing

 

And of course, Psi is good for scouting crashed alien ships, just in case the little buggers have soldiers positioned around the door with way too much reaction fire. better a mind controlled alien goes down than an X-COM soldier. Now that pretty much my whole squad have good psionic powers They don't get out much anymore

[Zombie]

Going aside for a bit, I spent some time the other day to double check my information about whether a boxed-in alien will use a blaster launcher or an alien grenade against your soldiers.

----------

For alien grenades:

 

Test 1a: I MC'd a Sectoid Engineer and walked him to the top of a small hill, then had him prime an alien grenade. I also MC'd 7 Sectoid Soldiers and formed a U shape with them. The open end faced the Sectoid Engineer, and one of my soldiers stood in the center of the horseshoe. Next round, the aliens standing in the formation were panic attacked to keep them roughly in place, while the Engineer was left to his own devices. For some reason, the Engineer would not throw a grenade that was previously primed while under mind control. I even waited about 25+ turns.

 

Test 1b: Same situation as Test 1a except the Sectoid Engineer was given an unprimed alien grenade in his hand. After panicking his buddies which partially surrounded my soldier, I waited. Five turns later, the Engineer threw his now-primed grenade into the U-shaped formation! Result: all the Sectoids were dead and my soldier had 2 fatal wounds.

----------

For blaster launchers:

 

Test 2a: I MC'd the same Sectoid Engineer which was used in the previous tests. All he got was a blaster launcher loaded with a blaster bomb. I then corraled him against the side of an alien ship with 5 of my men. The next round he was on his own. It took about 10 rounds, but the Engineer did shoot off the blaster bomb, killing himself and 4 soldiers in the process!

 

Test 2b: The morale of the Engineer was 76 for the previous test. This was because I killed 4 Cyberdiscs to make things easier on myself. I then increased the Engineer's morale to 100 by having some aliens kill 3 of my soldiers. Now when I left the boxed-in Engineer alone, he fired the blaster bomb in 3 rounds!

----------

Ok, some conclusions:

 

An alien's morale probably plays a role in determining whether it will fire off a blaster bomb. Higher morale equates to a better chance of the alien "taking one for the team" rather than waiting for his buddies to free him from captivity.

 

Time probably also plays a role. The longer you wait, the better the chances that the alien will fire the blaster launcher, or throw that grenade.

 

NKF - Just be patient when testing things out with aliens. Randomness plays a pivotal role in determining what an alien will do. It means you might have to wait a few of rounds to see if an event will occur. Morale also seems to be a vital component of whether an alien will use suicide tactics or not. If your tests were run on aliens with low morale, or not waiting enough rounds, then possibly the alien would not fire the blaster launcher. Results gathered only during the first round of the test can be misleading. Trust me, aliens WILL utilize suicide tactics with blaster launchers and WILL throw grenades into an area with a high concentration of aliens just to kill one X-COM soldier!

[NKF]

Would 30 - 50 turns count? (edit, scratch that, I just did 344 turns...ugh)

 

I know there was a definite 30 turns I passed because the test game I just ran had a soldier with 30 health and 1 critical wound. A rather unconventional timer, indeed!

 

I just gave the blaster bombs a shot and went after a floater battleship. As luck would have it, the floater commander came down ahead of the grunts and had a blaster launcher. He was next to the doors, so he had no where to fly to. An excellent opportunity, methinks.

 

So, I sent a soldier up to him. Then, every turn after that, I had the soldier walk up to the commander whenever he moved and took shots at any other alien that passed by. The commander refused to shoot.

 

Then I repeated this experiment, but this time I manually edited the commander's morale back to 100. Same results. But this time, at one point, the commander stood still in one spot and refused to do anything until, about 40-50 turns later, when I purposely walked away 10 - 15 tiles. The commander immediately opened fire. (curiously enough, it sent the bomb around the soldier so that the bomb would explode on the far side)

 

As for grenades... I'll have to give that a try some time later tonight.

 

- NKF

[Jman4117]

Maybe different races are more likly to suicide on you.

[Bomb Bloke]

It may just be me, but I get the impression that Mutons are a lot more agressive in the air then the other races.

 

As for in the field, I would expect all aliens to use the same AI...

[NKF]

Course they would, well, at least for normal weapons. The blaster's slightly different.

 

One thought has occured to me. I was using only one soldier to shadow the floater. Well, there was one other soldier nearby, but the floater only seemed preoccupied with the nearest soldier.

 

Perhaps the alien AI knows how to weigh up the odds? I mean, let's say there's ten people crowding around the one alien. The AI then thinks "Ah, I'll lose one but the player will lose 10! Launch the missile". Seems logical enough, doesn't it? I might just be over-thinking things. Things are often simpler than they seem. But with this game, you can never tell.

 

I'll have to test this thought some other time. Bed beckons and I have to be up early for work.

 

- NKF

[ignore my tentacles]

Apologies for the trans-title (TFTD) reference but I recently imperceptably dented a Lobsterman to death with a gauss pistol when he was trapped in one of those freak one-tile holes in the ground you sometimes get from explosions. I think he had had a stun launcher for a weapon but ran out of ammo and couldn't get out of the hole to give one of my brave troops a nasty nip. My meekest rookies armed with gauss pistols (they were medics) took it in turns to fatally irritate it. I find myself wondering if there could be some similar UFO analogy. A sectopod wouldn't work 'cos of the inbuilt plasma gun but perhaps a reaper, but then they are a) too big and would need a four tile hole without sloped edges, i.e. unlikely and b) they are not tough. How do you make a Reaper go 'Woof!'? Expose it to a naked flame. No one needs to fear Reaper really. Ideas?

 

Oh, I can't resist it any longer- apologies to any non Red Dwarf fans, but Kai, you should be aware that there is already a group dedicated to alien interests. They were going to call themselves the 'Campaign for the Liberation and Integegration of Terrifying Organisms and their Re-habilitation Into Society' but didn't for some reason.

 

edited for unruly emoticons and well, poor grammar darn it!

[Zombie]

NKF - I hope my previous post did not annoy you, I think we were on different pages there for a while. To be more exact, we were working on two different scenarios. I was working on the premise of completely boxing in an alien (armed with a blaster launcher) with many soldiers. I think what you were trying to get at is take a lone X-COM soldier and run him up to an alien carrying the blaster launcher. Right?

 

If you take one X-COM soldier and get right up into the alien's face who is carrying the blaster launcher, the alien will not fire. He would much rather run away then stick close by and use suicide tactics. I tried this out just minutes ago. Most of the time the alien would stand cemented to one spot and would not do anything. A few times he would walk away from the soldier.

 

I do have some experience with blaster bombs. Remember my escapade with the Silacoid carrying this weapon a while back? There was a distance factor involved - the closer you are to the alien, the less of a chance that it will fire the blaster launcher at your soldier. Within a certain radius he would not fire at all. Therefore, if you stick like glue to the alien he will never fire a blaster bomb at your soldier because of safety concerns for himself. This works.

 

Ok, now to explain my scenario. I am thinking that maybe a diagram will clear things up a bit:

      SSX
     SAX
     SSX

S = An X-COM soldier.
A = An alien carrying a blaster launcher.
X = Either an X-COM soldier, or a UFO hull or any type of wall.

 

In this case, when the alien was surrounded, he fired the blaster bomb at my soldiers. I think you explain it the best:

NKF Posted on Sep 9 2004, 07:16 AM

Perhaps the alien AI knows how to weigh up the odds? I mean, let's say there's ten people crowding around the one alien. The AI then thinks "Ah, I'll lose one but the player will lose 10! Launch the missile". Seems logical enough, doesn't it? I might just be over-thinking things. Things are often simpler than they seem. But with this game, you can never tell.

The higher the concentration of soldiers around an alien carrying the blaster bomb, the greater the chance he will fire. This scenario is not worthwhile to include in your handbook of battle tactics.

 

I did do some more testing with alien morale. Seems as though morale does play a role, but very small. Randomness is the overriding factor. I had tests where the alien was static for 50+ rounds, and other times he fired the bomb within 3 rounds with exactly the same morale level. When morale drops to the 60% mark, that is when it starts to play more of a factor. When it dips below 50%, the alien has a chance of panicking. In this case, the alien with a blaster launcher could be close enough to fire, but yet it finds itself panicking because morale is at 49% or lower.

[NKF]

Not annoyed - just had to make sure I myself hadn't gone loopy.

 

Ignore my tentacles: One good parallel I have with your one is having a beginner level sectopod stuck up in the terror unit compartment of a terror ship. For some reason it wouldn't go down (it wasn't stuck in anything), and I was able to position a soldier in such a way that the sectopod couldn't fire back but I could (the trick here, you see, is that for all large units, the gun is actually in the first quarter, or the topmost quarter on your screen).

 

Normally, a laser pistol does diddly squat to a sectopod on most difficulty levels, or only a few points of damage or so after an eterinity of automatic laser fire. But with a few patient rounds, hitting the underside of the sectopod with laser pistol bursts, it fell rather easily. Not too long either, because I think it was using its under-armour rather than its front armour for damage reduction.

 

I can't verify that I was hitting the under-armour at the moment, but it seems to be the most logical explanation because I was able to take it down a bit too quickly.

 

- NKF

[kai]

I've found some weird stuff like that. One time I had a soldier launch a blaster bomb and he was launched out of the level. He was visable off the map and could not move, another time, after launching a blaster, soldier vanished without a trace. Still on the mission list but was not visable.

[Zombie]

Ignore my tentacles: One good parallel I have with your one is having a beginner level sectopod stuck up in the terror unit compartment of a terror ship. For some reason it wouldn't go down (it wasn't stuck in anything), and I was able to position a soldier in such a way that the sectopod couldn't fire back but I could (the trick here, you see, is that for all large units, the gun is actually in the first quarter, or the topmost quarter on your screen).

When you say the turret is in the first quarter, does that correlate to Quarter I on the x/y axis in Algebra and geometry? So like this:

                    +y

                   |
                   |
     Quarter II    |   Quarter I
                   |   So turret is here
                   |
-x -------------------------------- +x
                   |
                   |
     Quarter III   |   Quarter IV
                   |
                   |
                   -y

 

For me, it always seems that Sectopods and Cyberdiscs are "stuck" in the right terror unit compartment (or balcony). A lot of times, these units are "phased" in the wall between the terror unit room and the bridge. To add insult to injury (literally), the Cyberdisc or Sectopod can shoot back if you fail to kill it after your first auto-shot volley.

 

I usually just throw an alien grenade by this wall and hope that the "splash" damage is enough to incompacitate the robot. Where do you stand your soldier (in relation to the 2x2 hole in the floor on level 1), so that they can shoot back and the alien can't? Please educate me NKF!

[NKF]

Well, if you look at a large terror unit on the overhead map, the quarter I refer to is the upper left. It's always there no matter the facing of the unit.

 

Ever notice how tanks can sometimes sink into a wall after you try to move it off a ledge? That's because the game's only really using the first quarter of the unit for some of it collision detection.

 

I fired up my old computer and had a look at my old savegames. It was still there! So I grabbed some screenshots.

 

https://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/temporary...eens/tship.html

 

The first screenshot shows where you can stand to avoid being shot at. At least, in this particular scenario it worked.

 

Looking at it again, it does seem a bit odd, what with being right up against the wall. But I haven't made any additional holes. I guess the angle's just right.

 

This was actually a really old campaign that was started before I'd patched my game sufficiently to stop the difficulty level from resettin. No wonder the laser pistol was so powerful. The sectopod was just a beginner sectopod. And no, it never hit the under-armour. Just the front and sides.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

So the turret is located in Quadrant II then. Thanks!

 

I just looked at your in-game screenshots. The highlighted soldier can shoot a 2x2 alien (in this case the Sectopod) positioned to the top/right of the hole in the floor. Ok, so is there a place where your soldier can stand if the Sectopod is positioned to the bottom/right of this hole. Like where the dead Sectopod is located in the 2nd screenshot, except inside/partially inside the terror unit compartment by the door. I always seem to get terror units positioned there. Sometimes they are half in the terror unit room, and half in the hallway. This makes it tough to kill the thing because it can reaction fire into 2 different places! Any help here?