How many aliens do you expect from a UFO?

For almost the entire period of development opinion has swayed back and forth on how many aliens there should be, especially in the starting UFOs. The number of aliens has risen and fallen in response to feedback, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be something that no two people are going to agree on. At the same time, I'm interested in what people think are the "right" number of aliens per UFO type. So guys, what do you think? How many aliens do you expect from each UFO?

*Outside* the UFO, probably something like:

Small Scout: 3-5

Scout: 5-7

Corvette: 7-9

Landing Ship: 9-11

Cruiser: 11-13

Carrier: 13-15

Battleship: 13-15 (under the assumption that there's more aliens inside the UFO compared with a Carrier)

Whatever the numbers are inside the UFOs seem fine to me, though.

Basically, I'd like all the numbers to be revised upward a little to make more use of the maps and - especially - to make the earlier UFOs more interesting. I've been testing out my random map pack with a mission that has consistantly generated 4 Sebillians outside the UFO, and that feels like a good base number. That was for a Scout mission, though, not a Light Scout mission. So my thinking if four produces fairly interesting missions, it's a good base number for a Light Scout and can be scaled up from there.

I've modded the crash site alien numbers to fit my own preference like this:

outside: light scout +1, scout +2, corvette and landing ship +3, larger +4

inside: light scout 0, scout +1, corvette +2, landing ship +3, larger +4

I strongly think that this game plataform is not suited to deal with more than 8 to 12 aliens units, the AI calculations before the game gets more than 3 hours running without exit takes about 10 minutes.

I hate the late game because the amount of units. I'll strongly prefer that unique or elite units will less in number and flavor the mission dealing with lower alien ranks in mass.

I strongly think that this game plataform is not suited to deal with more than 8 to 12 aliens units, the AI calculations before the game gets more than 3 hours running without exit takes about 10 minutes.

Really? I've honestly never encountered anything like that: I'd be surprised if I'd seen turns take longer than one minute, let alone 10. Perhaps it's a hardware issue?

(The only time I've seen *any* turn-based game take more than 10 minutes to process a turn was playing UFO Enemy Unknown on an Amiga 600. It had the added fun of sometimes running out of memory and crashing on the hidden movement screen, but without any clear indicator that it had done so. Why I kept playing I'll never know!)

I have only played up to corvette, but the numbers seem pretty good as they are now.

Light Scout = 3-5

Scout = 5-8

Corvette = 8-12

Honestly the numbers to me seem pretty good. Enough to make it interesting without requiring obscene amounts of ammo for every drop.

I jack the number of aliens in scout & light scout missions way up and add a few to corvettes. The numbers on the larger ships are more or less ok as is. In general, the figures kabill posted above seem about right