Alien Mobility

[dpelectric]

If this has been posted before, my apologies, I looked but didn't see it.

My question is, do the aliens that are inside their vessels always stay inside?

I've only played about a dozen missions so far, but in every one of them there are a few aliens terrorizing people outside, while the rest stay hunkered down in their ship. Once I'm relatively confident that I've killed the enemies in the open, I can then seem to approach the ship with impunity. I distinctly remember in the original XCom that aliens would fairly frequently come out for their smoke break, and I'm hoping that I'll see that in Xenonauts, too, because closing in on an alien vessel should be a nerve-wracking experience.

Does this happen with the more advanced missions? Have I just gotten lucky so far? I'm playing on Normal, maybe they're more aggressive on higher difficulties?

[Chris]

Yeah, the aliens inside the ship will defend the ship. They may have their AI adapted to poke their heads out and check for enemies outside occasionally, but they'll return back inside afterwards if so.

[dpelectric]

Maybe, as in the original XCom, it'd be possible to dedicate most of the aliens strictly to ship defense (which is great the way it is, cuz they're dug in and hard to kill) but have a few that emerge aggressively at random turns? That way, as I mentioned before, you wouldn't feel like you could approach a ship with relative impunity, and take your time getting everybody in just the right positions...

[Alexey]

Agreed, would be tactical and unexpected to have aliens sometimes poke out of the ship and not wait until whole xenonatus team slowly gathers up, takes positions and storms the ship.

This was enabled in original xcom and aliens would poke out from time to time scarying assembling team. That is why I sometimes used proximity mines to keep aliens in the ship, until the ground around ufo was clear.

[FlyingShisno]

Agreed, would be tactical and unexpected to have aliens sometimes poke out of the ship and not wait until whole xenonatus team slowly gathers up, takes positions and storms the ship.

Wait, they don't already do this? Because in my last mission(current experimental build as of 3-16), I had gathered most of my squad outside their ship, and when I ended the turn, a Sibillian came out, and was promptly gunned down by 2 Xenonauts point blank.

[Monifix]

Please make the effort to add this, the Alien behavior is noticeably more predictable than it was in the original as it stands. Aliens having only semi random spawn locations, not being able to spawn on the second story of buildings or other "tricky" spots, along with the sharp division between offensive and defensive aliens basically allowing you to deal with them one half at a time all contributes to making the ground missions feel more predictable than they need to. I think allowing the defensive aliens to occasionally peek outside would go a long way towards bridging that gap, and making the aliens feel like a coordinated force, whilst adding more constant tension throughout the missions.

As it is now missions feel the most dangerous at the start, then the danger drops off as you kill off the aliens on the map, dropping down to no tension or danger at all when they are all dead only to then spike to perhaps the most dangerous moment at all, opening that UFO door and facing the reaction fire. Why have that drop in tension instead of maintaining it throughout the missions with one effective change to the AI?

[Monifix]

The only issue i see would be if all the defensive aliens would peek out one by one over time, thus allowing the player to simply wait outside and pick them off one by one, so perhaps it would be necessary to make it so only a few of them peek outside, and having the other aliens start sniping from inside the UFO if possible when they open the doors would be awesome, so the ones opening the doors to peek would have to be the first of the aliens to move i guess.

Not knowing how the game is coded i have no idea if this is even feasible though, especially given how close you are to release.

Edit: Oh, and they would have to be able to close the doors, or the doors should close automatically after 1 turn if you still want to maintain that cool moment of tension that is actually opening the UFO door once you are in position to do so. Otherwise we'd just find the doors always open with this change i guess.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Monifix

[Max_Caine]

@FlyingShisno: Defensive AI Sebillians are the most likely to stomp around because of their general AI is set up aggressively. The problem is if you set this up for the other alien types, then they would all behave the same.

[FlyingShisno]

@FlyingShisno: Defensive AI Sebillians are the most likely to stomp around because of their general AI is set up aggressively. The problem is if you set this up for the other alien types, then they would all behave the same.

Ah, so he just happened to stomp outside the door? At least that little surprise was funny, as he almost immediately took a shotty to the stomach. I remember when v20 Stable was first released, I had all my dudes clumped up nicely against the door, then in the turn I meant to invade, an alien had thrown a grenade at the door and killed all but 2 of my Xenonauts, and they were both panicked afterwards I believe. While that sucked, it was kinda funny too.

[Chris]

The next patch should have grenades working again, apparently there was a bug with them until recently that prevented aliens from using them.

[Gauddlike]

Let the screaming about overpowered aliens (re)commence!

[dpelectric]

... along with the sharp division between offensive and defensive aliens basically allowing you to deal with them one half at a time...

Exactly.