Do some alien races go away for good?

[Bomb Bloke]

Indeed, FBLs miss on a regular basis. Their "manufactured ammo" requirement isn't the only reason I avoid them like the plague.

 

Reckon it'd be worth repeating the tests on different difficulties, also try hacking your score up and see if that changes things too.

[Zombie]

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)

Wait, you mean Jan-March, not Jan-May, right? :P

 

*snip*

 

So the first block only covers January?

It could be that the first block is Dec-Jan, hence 0-1. That would be my guess. It also keeps all the other month numbers correct (at least that is what it seems like according to your observations... no overlap). Oh well, looks like I'll need to update my graphs.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Oh, yes indeed, March. Looks like I have to go change the month labels in the wiki too.

 

I doubt difficulty will have much of an impact, but still worth a look. I might have done this in beginner to keep the UFOs easy and (as it seems) keep the base safe from retaliation. I'll bump it up to Superhuman and see how it goes from there.

 

- NKF

[NKF]

Here's the Superhuman test using the same test base and alien selection tables as before.

 

Jan: Sectoids

Feb: First thing was a sectoid terror mission. Mostly Muton UFOs, but a series of escalating Sectoid Retaliation UFOs, starting from a small scout, medium scout, large scout.

Mar: Mutons. Two Sectoid battleships appeared on a retaliation (scouting) mission, one at a time. Muton retaliation teams start scouting.

April: Snakemen. Some Muton abduction teams. Muton retaliation teams (as with the sectoids the UFO sizes gradually increased until Battleship, then base attack (twice)).

May: Snakemen

June: Snakemen

July: Floaters, Snakemen (mainly), Sectoid (clearly back to the usual selection)

 

Incidental Observations:

- Sticky base radar stats reset after a base attack.

 

 

June should have seen the usual mix of aliens, but was predominantly Snakeman. I didn't see any others in this run, but then I only had about 3 UFOs this month.

 

Chained missions like the retaliation missions will continue into the next month. Interesting about the Sectoid retaliation attempt - it seems like they gave up. I wonder if chained missions have a 1 month limit?

 

Also note, I was nearly up to UFO 58 before I stopped. The beginner campaign had no where near as many UFOs. I think it's because of the the higher frequency of UFOs scheduled that I managed to get a bit more overlap with UFOs scheduled in advance, like the out-of-season sectoid retaliation team and those Muton abductors.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

I had some time today so I retooled the graphs I made in post #20 to MS-Excel 2013, changed the months and optimized the images via PNGGauntlet.

 

Alien Research

 

Alien Harvest

 

Alien Abduction

 

Alien Infiltration

 

Alien Base

 

Alien Terror

 

Alien Retaliation

 

- Zombie

[Nookrium]

Very interesting. I went through a full UFO defense campaign and won the game in December, but the whole time I never saw a single Ethereal until I got to Cydonia. I guess I got very lucky by the looks of the graphs

[Zombie]

Not really, Ethereals are supposed to show up from June onward, but only for Infiltration, Base, Terror and Retaliation missions. Even then, their probability ratios are never above 40% which basically means they are harder to get than a different race from the remaining group (60%). Is it possible to flip a coin (albeit slightly skewed to heads) and have it come up heads 7 times in a row (that's the # of months between June and December what you mentioned)? Sure is.

 

December really is pretty quick to end the game. You could draw the game out by years (like I used to do for giggles) if you wanted. When you are flipping a coin this many times, Ethereals show up almost all the time.

 

- Zombie