Threat priorization by aliens.

[Mordobb]

I m on hotfix version. (the game, not my brain.)

Something bother me a little about the AI, beyond their flee until cornered if ennemy superior in number.

Its the fact Alien don t seem to have a threat hierarquy sistem.

You get there kill one of them and they prefer to keep priorizing taking pot shot at civies than you, this give you sometimes a round of advantage for each alien you encounter, even on Insane.

Same as unarmed civie and security force, they don t seem to give priority to security forces even if shot by them, they ll keep shooting at a civie if he s alive.

Logic would dictate that you give priority to threats then you go to the pleasure party, i think.

I would like to see aliens giving priority to shooting me, that is a real threat to them (especially after killing one of them), than to make civies shot dance...

I know AI is on the WIP side.

[SalsaDoom]

I think this might make more sense on Terror missions, where their objective is to just cause as much chaos as possible, and they are suicide troops anyway. But in the field you'd think they'd be trying to repair their ship or whatever and might resist its capture as more of a priority.

[a_beorning]

Terror missions is a great dagger in common sence's back.

If Xeno team wins terror mission - alien mission failed, alien squad destroyed.

If Xeno team lose or ignore terror mission - alien squad destroyed by nukes no matter how big squad is.

Why do aliens send bigger and bigger squad to terrors?

Why don't they send a dozen of small (2-3 members) terror squads simultaneously, to make humans nuke own cities with minimal resources sacrificed?

Because aliens bosses are idiots unable to learn! At least I see no other explaination.

How to solve this situation developer-wise?

No nukes on failed/ignored terror.

Just "xxx thousands casualites, yy hundreds missing, $zzz mln damage - local politics are in rage (and maybe some are impersonated)".

[Mordobb]

Terror missions is a great dagger in common sence's back.

If Xeno team wins terror mission - alien mission failed, alien squad destroyed.

If Xeno team lose or ignore terror mission - alien squad destroyed by nukes no matter how big squad is.

Why do aliens send bigger and bigger squad to terrors?

Why don't they send a dozen of small (2-3 members) terror squads simultaneously, to make humans nuke own cities with minimal resources sacrificed?

Because aliens bosses are idiots unable to learn! At least I see no other explaination.

How to solve this situation developer-wise?

No nukes on failed/ignored terror.

Just "xxx thousands casualites, yy hundreds missing, $zzz mln damage - local politics are in rage (and maybe some are impersonated)".

Agree. After all nuking a city for even two dozen aliens is ridiculous.

Bring organized trops and stuff are fixed. Death toll might be high, but we kill the aliens with same weaponry given to average airsoft players (thats the quality or our troops).

[a_beorning]

Death toll might be high,

"Death toll" - is a word for politicans and pressmen, for military it's a "nonrecoverable loss percentage".

[Elydo]

There isn't much point for the aliens to try and get humans to nuke their own cities, if they were after massive infrastructure damage they own the orbitals. They can destroy whatever they want.

On the other hand, no population in history has ever been bombed into submission, and maybe they're smart enough to know that. So terror missions are an assault on morale instead; keeping people in fear, lowering their productivity and quality of life, sapping their faith in the future since they don't know when an attack will come of it'll succeed or not. If they become commonplace people will become fatalistically inured to them.

^ My justification for terror missions

Keep in mind that it is tactical nuclear weapons that are deployed. Battlefield scale, not strategic city-killers. There are quite a few websites around these days that allow you to input a particular yield and drop it on a city of your choice to see the outcome. Hell, I was shown that if you dropped Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) on LAX the primary blast area doesn't reach outside the airport. Nukes are not the boogyman on speed.

[Mordobb]

Well it continues to not make sense.

Why not randomly orbit bomb cities ? this would bring same fear as well.

If you take big cities, usually a % of people are armed, special police squads could bring down grey and sibyllian easely blocking an area. Other aliens could be dealt with RPG and anti tank material easely.

Terror site would make much more sense if after X hours aliens be recovered. They wouldn t loose so much asset for so tiny results. Another good explanation would be alien trying to make a massive base from cities (lot of infra), seeing such, government decide to nuke. But we woud need to see some spaceship at workafter X time (area cleaned of humans - X time without xenonanauts/ Xenonauts failure) so the major assumption would be base building. And poor countries could not even be able to nuke, and with such a base alien could multiply attack exponentially on the region. If base not nuked after X time it become nukeproof (energy shield, whatever).

That would make SOME sense.

1)We would be hard pressed to root the base build, by day or night;

2) if we fail aliens start constant fast attacks on nearby regions overhelming us in qtt of work.

3) Mutants could appear (human experimentation) / Human used as food.

4) As nuke fail we would need to invade or see government falling to the alien threat very fast in the region.

5) Those base could be huge and hard to defeat.

6) ...It would make some sense.

[StellarRat]

Maybe alien psychology is different than human psychology. Maybe in their minds gunning humans down in the streets is more terrifying than orbital bombardment. Should we begin a discussion of phenomenology? Maybe they don't have the capability for orbital bombing. Who knows? It's just a game!

[Elydo]

no population in history has ever been bombed into submission

Do I get to quote myself? Oh, what the hell.

That's not to say orbital bombardment might not elicit a different reaction of course, but even then not all of humanity lives in cities so even if the aim was global extermination that would only be the opening act.

On the other hand, 'western' society is much more squeamish than at any other point in history, but we humans tend to regress to savagery pretty quickly when given an excuse. It's part of our charm.