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Alien teleporter abuse


twitch

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Hi, all.

I'm on my first playthrough of Xenonauts, Veteran difficulty with save-scumming, as preparation for an Iron Man playthrough.

I've noticed that in UFOs with teleporters between decks, aliens like to surprise me jack-in-the-box style if my squad approaches a teleporter pad. I suppose it's using similar AI behaviour to the aliens that hang around the door of a UFO, waiting for a rookie player to bring his squad right up to the door.

This isn't too much of a problem with shooty aliens, because I generally throw a smoke onto a group of soldiers as they approach a teleporter. But Reapers are different, because their melee attacks aren't affected by smoke (I assume) and always hit (I assume). Both times a pop-up Reaper came through a teleporter in my current game, it died to reaction-fire, but I couldn't help feeling that I'd avoided losing a soldier only due to luck.

The best tactic I have developed so far for foiling these surprise attacks is selecting two guys with the best available armour and high TUs, and sending them through the two teleporter pads, looking around a bit (sometimes there are no aliens), immediately going back through the teleporter, and remaining on the two pads. Fortunately, this doesn't allow the aliens to telefrag my soldiers. After that point, I can take my time arranging my gadgies around the teleporters so that I can send them through together and deal with any camping aliens. This is not without risk, but in my experience, alien reaction-fire that hits and manages to kill a soldier is rarer than dying to a jack-in-the-box alien who shoots at point-blank (although it's much higher risk in the early game when you have poor armour).

Does anyone else know of any better tactics for dealing with this situation?

How exactly does reaction fire work? Do aliens/soldiers get a roll for every tile that an enemy moves in their line of sight, and is it affected by distance? I noticed the modifier depending on the weapon type.

ps. It would be amusing if it were possible to send armed C4/grenades through a teleporter. But alas, it only seems to work for soldiers and aliens.

Edited by twitch
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@silenced: I guess telefragging would be cool in the community edition. The ability to put anything through a teleporter (armed C4, live grenades, an alien's corpse to scare his friends etc.) would be fun too.

@llunak: I apologise abjectly for implying that it is in any way unsporting behaviour by the aliens.

I still take losses very ocasionally, when using a couple of guys to block the teleport pads, because they necessarily have to expose themselves to possible reaction fire when moving two tiles each. Harridans and high-end Caesans are especially annoying for this. That's why I'm not entirely satisfied with my counter-tactics. I take fewer losses than if let the aliens choose when to come through and take shots at my guys from point blank while I concentrate them ready to breach the next deck.

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@silenced: I guess telefragging would be cool in the community edition. The ability to put anything through a teleporter (armed C4, live grenades, an alien's corpse to scare his friends etc.) would be fun too.

I actually have both of these somewhere in my todo list. I'm not that happy with the game using teleports rather than e.g. lifts as the OG, as the teleports are horrible choke points. If the alien AI wanted, it could camp at them, making it very hard to get to advance past them.

@llunak: I apologise abjectly for implying that it is in any way unsporting behaviour by the aliens.

Gee. I was asking because if I found it to be that way, I'd add it to my list of things to fix.

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Hi Twitch

There is an initiative check that is done for any enemy that sees you move. It is a calculation based on reflexes, percent of remaining TUs and what weapon you are carrying. The soldier that has moved has his initiative calculated, and all enemies who have a higher initiative can take actions, until the selected soldier has a higher initiative again. The alien that shot has just used a good chunk of TUs up, so you should be safe for a bit.

So if a sniper takes a step with full TUs, they are probably OK. A guy with a pistol or a gal with a shotgun can take many more actions without triggering reactions too.

If I am approaching an ambush point, like a door/teleporter, I'll try and have my assault units end near to the threat, with lots of TUs.

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I wouldn't really call being able to get a reaction shot off vs reapers a matter of luck. If you set it up so high-reaction soldiers with quick weapons have plenty of TUs, they're going to have a chance to shoot. Of course, everyone might miss, but that's xcom and doesn't really have anything to do with teleporters in particular.

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@llunak: Ok, sorry (really) for being a bit "sensitive". I read a certain meaning into your reply, so apologies if it wasn't there.

@riT-k0MA: I had no idea you could do that - great suggestion, thanks! That will reduce the risk quite lot, so that the "block the teleporter" strategy should now be pretty low risk.

@winterwolves: Well, that's helpful, thanks, but I have to take what you've said with a pinch of salt, because I've read other explanations of how reaction-fire works that don't really agree with what you've written. There must be a random factor, right? In any case, I don't rely on reaction-fire, so I think I'll just accept that it isn't going to be precisely explained anywhere.

@crusherven: Well, I'd call it not luck when I can calculate a fairly accurate probability of taking out a Reaper before he gets into melee range, based on all the relevant factors. Right now, I haven't found a precise explanation of reaction fire, and I don't know all of the factors or how they are weighted.

Anyways, I think the way to go is not to rely on reaction fire and just block the teleporter pads before breaching the next deck properly (with the entire squad), using riT-k0MA's suggestion to minimise risk of reaction-fire.

ps. I finished my Veteran Save-scumming game just now, so I'm about ready to start a Veteran Iron Man playthrough.

Edited by twitch
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