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Random questions about the game mechanics.


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I've got to a point where my forces are too stretched out to fight everything so I need to prioritize which UFOs are worth targeting and which are unimportant. So my questions are:

1) Do single Fighters and Scouts have any purpose except for generating missions for you to train your troops and get alien tech? Is there any point in shooting down & clearing the crash site for these type of UFOs more than once?

2) Medium UFOs(Landing crafts?) - those ships that keep landing multiple times... Do they actually do any harm if I leave them alone?

3) Can any medium UFO on the map attack my base if it gets too close or there are specific UFOs generated that will attack my base?

4) Are there any repercussions if I don't clear I crash site?

5) Do higher tier UFOs appear faster if I destroy many UFOs?

6) Does it matter if I clear the skies in my AO? Will I get a small breathing period or UFOs are being generated every X seconds regardless of what I do? Same goes for Alien bases, any reason for me to hurry up and attack the base as soon as it pops up?

7) Can I only send 3 airplanes max. in one mission?

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1. Funding and material preventing the alien ticker from going up too fast.

2. yes UFOs hasten the ticker that decides the aliens progress for each mission they complete, and they also reduce your funding from the different nations

3. no clue think it is the latter.

4. No.

5 No, it is the other way around afaik.

6. it should come in waves so yes you should be getting breathing space if you clear. it also helps your funding.

7. yes.

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Thanks for the answers but I'm a bit confused because on the Alien Mission Tickers Trashman said:

Ticker is a number that increases everytime you shoot down an alien craft and with time. It's basicly an indicator of alien invasion progression.
So shooting down alien spacecrafts increases or decreases the invasion progression? Edited by BogdanM
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Thanks for the answers but I'm a bit confused because on the Alien Mission Tickers Trashman said: So shooting down alien spacecrafts increases or decreases the invasion progression?

Nothing decreases the ticker number afaik but shooting down UFOs should prevent them from completing missions which is what I thought made the ticker number increase. I'm not sure why Trashman says the ticker increases when the UFOs are shot down... might be some balance change I've missed.

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The ticker is what determines what level of UFO you run into.

Apparently, the ticker does not increase if you let the aliens do missions unmolested. At least, not as currently implemented, because the values for everything that causes the ticker to go up is dummied out to 0 right now, except for simple linear progression-over-time.

Basically, you get 100 ticker per month, and the game seems to top out at 600 on the ticker. This appears to essentially mean you have 6 months before all the stops get pulled out, completely regardless of what happens on the geoscape.

This is almost certainly going to change in the future, but it's what it is now.

Also, the UFOs all seem to be spawned with a mission that they will keep performing until they are removed from play (either by being shot down or returning to space) - landing ships that attack your base are spawned to attack your base. UFOs that attack your aircraft are spawned to attack your aircraft.

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It also rather mitigates the usefulness of relations/cash flows from nations - what's the point of cash bonuses from stopping alien attacks if you're only going to be playing for two more months? It's $15,000 per month for a perfectly completed mission, and if you're only playing for another two months, anyway... You get more than that on the spot for busting the UFO and selling their plasmas.

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I was better not knowing that there is a unstoppable countdown. It's already January in my game and I'm still using Jackal armor...

Also I'm already having trouble bringing enough fire power to clear the bigger alien bases. Rookies just don't have enough strength to carry anything more than Jackal armor, Laser rifle, 2 mags, 2 HE grenades, 1 smoke grenade and a medic kit. My squad is 5 riflemen, 1 sniper, 1 gunner(only 15 shots for the laser MG, wtf?) and 1 grenadier(with 5 spare rockets). For me it's just not enough to eliminate 20+ hostiles, all entrenched. I always have to pick up alien gear and afaik in the next versions the accuracy of alien weapons in human hands will be greatly decreased so I don't know I'll do than. They should be able to carry more, a modern soldier can carry up to 40kgs of gear not including the ballistic vest.

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Yes, you probably did something wrong there. If you're in January with large alien bases, you need not only better tech, you also need experienced soldiers. A core of them at least. And also things get easier with more soldiers in the better dropships.

If you're trying to assault large alien bases with teams of 8 rookies with crappy equipment, you're going to lose.

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Yes, you probably did something wrong there. If you're in January with large alien bases, you need not only better tech, you also need experienced soldiers. A core of them at least. And also things get easier with more soldiers in the better dropships.

If you're trying to assault large alien bases with teams of 8 rookies with crappy equipment, you're going to lose.

Well it's my first playthrough so I didn't have a strategy, I just did the research and the missions as they appeared. My current situation is not as grim as you might think, I do have a 8 men squad filled with commanders and majors but I like to rotate 2-3 of them with rookies every mission, I also have laser weapons for all my squad and 5 sets of Wolf Armor, it just seems that it all came too late... Not sure what to do differently, I've tried to start a new base to increase production but it bankrupted me so I'll probably have to start a new campaign.

Just one more question. Is it worth creating a new base in the first 6 months? I've figured out that I'll get more missions that way but setting up an efficient base will cost ~2 mil so it will pay for itself in about 15 missions. I also like the idea I've read in another topic, to make specialized bases for production or research and probably just put them right next the you main base to handle the defense of both of them with just one taskforce.

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It's not a countdown, it's a countup.

Someone just said in another thread they've played their game for over 20 months. It's just that the top-level crap comes at you starting 6 months in. (The biggest bases and toughest enemies start in March.)

And for one more answer to your one more qeustion, build bases as fast as you can possibly afford them. I start my second base the second the game starts. You have everything you really need in your first main base from the start, besides maybe a med bay and second barracks.

You don't need soldiers in every base - just make research/manufacturing bases and radar/interceptor bases so you can shoot down more aliens, get more gear and cash, and ram through the tech tree faster.

Think like a capitalist - any money you aren't investing is money you're wasting.

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You have to put missile/laser batteries in your bases to prevent them from being assaulted, right? At least the ones that don't have your soldiers in them...I found that two missile batteries (that get upgraded appropriately) stopped base assaults. I never had a base w/o soldiers get attacked...can this happen?

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You're quite the orator W_M! :) Thanks for the tips, I'll try to expand faster in my next campaign.

@kenmtraveller, so your base wasn't attacked at all or it was attacked but the ship was destroyed by the base defenses? So my question (maybe yours too) is that the missile batteries are a deterrent or an active defense system?

Edited by BogdanM
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I'm not sure if it can happen. I'm just assuming it can, to be safe. (They could in the original.)

Missile batteries, I haven't tested, but I assume either have some sort of % roll to blow up an enemy ship before it lands, (how the original worked,) or else cuts down on the number of surviving aliens to attack your base.

Before aliens can attack your base, however, they have to find your base. (I'm not sure if this sort of recon mission has been implemented in Xenonauts yet, so the game may just "know" where your dropships come from when you blow up their ships a lot, and send retaliations against those bases.)

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I have!

Defence batteries roll to hit (a straight 80% chance to hit) and do damage to the target. While a single missile battery is unlikely to blow up even the smallest of base invasion ships (corvettes), the damage it inflicts does cut down on the number of aliens you will face in the following base assault mission. Given that batteries auto-upgrade with each weapon tier, you can invest early and reap the dividend all game.

Base assault missions are tilted so they are most likely to target the oldest bases first.

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Yeah, that means that they don't have an actual "detect your base" mechanic implemented yet, they just use a kludge of auto-knowing which base you have, and assuming it's best to target the oldest that is probably a placeholder. If you make your first two, three bases the ones that have the soldiers, and leave the defenseless research bases for last, it should be fairly safe. If a research-only base gets taken out, anyway, though, it's actually not that big a deal, since you can just rebuild it with nothing but time and some cash lost, but nothing that you couldn't recover from with a bit of time.

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From a previous comment by Aaron, this is a not a cludge, nor a placeholder. Aaron has mentioned in a post that previously a scout had to find a base before it could be attacked. This was changed for a reason that escapes my mind and I can't find the post now to see why (damn). In that same post, again previously, base attacks picked the base completely at random. Now base attacks are set so they prefer older bases.

If I remember, someone had complained that their newly-built interceptor base got jumped before the builder could build any defences. I'll see if I can find the post.

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On the subject of base defense, I'd love it if aliens could attack any base that they discover. If they attack a newly established base, well, tough luck. That would be extra motivation to outfit every base with at least a skeleton crew of defenders. As it stands, it seems that aliens not only prefer to attack older bases but also prefer bases from where you launch strike teams. Meaning generally that protecting your first two bases is sufficient.

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