X-Com Cydonian Strategy

[Darth Smiley]

For all the resources and power of the Cydonian aliens in X-Com, they are extremely stupid. They start off with such extreme advantage that its pretty pathetic that a bunch of over-evolved simians actually manage to kill them off.

So, given a competent hivemind, what do the Cydonians do? This includes not only how they screw over whatever poor dumb human that's in charge of X-Com, but also how they run their endgame; even without X-Com, its not like Earth is going to go down without a fight.

[Samuel]

For all the resources and power of the Cydonian aliens in X-Com, they are extremely stupid. They start off with such extreme advantage that its pretty pathetic that a bunch of over-evolved simians actually manage to kill them off.

So, given a competent hivemind, what do the Cydonians do? This includes not only how they screw over whatever poor dumb human that's in charge of X-Com, but also how they run their endgame; even without X-Com, its not like Earth is going to go down without a fight.

Hit Earth with an asteroid and laugh or do you want something less effective?

[Darth Smiley]

Presumably they want Earth intact, otherwise why bother with invading in the first place? They also probably want the biosphere mostly intact, based on some of the in-game research.

[Samuel]

Presumably they want Earth intact, otherwise why bother with invading in the first place? They also probably want the biosphere mostly intact, based on some of the in-game research.

Than bioweapons are the way to go. Given their advanced genetic engineering techniques, this shouldn't be a problem.

Or just drop rocks into the ocean, flooding the coasts where most of humanity lives and mop up from there.

[Darth Smiley]

I had always assumed that was what they were up to in the first place - a good chunk of those UFOs were on research/abduction missions, which are pretty much necessary to building a bioweapon. The key is not getting them shot down by the locals.

[RedImperator]

At Superhuman level, the aliens can and do send an alien retaliation mission against X-Com's base in the first month. Using Mutons for this attack instead of Sectoids or Floaters almost certainly ensures an X-Com defeat. Mutons might be the best choice because nothing this side of high explosive in your early kit can take them down--I've seen high level Mutons keep going even after a direct hit from a rocket. A properly laid-out base won't help, because Mutons can walk right though any proximity bomb traps in the access lift chokepoint.

Snakemen are another good possibility, because basic kit takes a long time to kill them and forever to kill Chryssalids. Snakemen are best if X-Com is using the default base layout, because there won't be any chokepoints to contain the Chryssalids. Also, Snakemen have blaster launchers, and properly used blaster launchers should be able to level the entire base and kill any human defenders. In fact, if you can teach Sectoids or Floaters to use blaster launchers properly, they could do a base attack and win easily, too, chokepoint or no chokepoint.

There's really no reason whatsoever why the aliens should lose a base assault in the first month.

[Darth Smiley]

I was thinking of all the little things an intelligent adversary would do. Like self-destruct landed ships that are in danger of being captured, so as to deny the humans E115. Or launch their base assaults in quick succession with their terror attacks, to catch the bases off guard. Or even land, to attract a skyranger full of troops, only to lift off and shoot it down.

[Nephtys]

The Alien craft aren't really that impressive. Presumably since most of them are non-combat in nature, and possibly suffer much degraded performance in atmosphere.

But I suppose they don't consider X-COM a threat in the first few months, believing them to be just local national armed forces. X-COM after all, does use hard to locate underground bases that are only found through psi-scanning.

The Aliens really need to send UFOs with escort or in groups though. Sorta like how they do in one of those UFO-sequels, where the main UFO is covered by fighter craft, that split off to engage interceptors and delay them. When the Aliens attempt a 3-Battleship landing for treaty signing, that's hard to stop. Even with advanced X-COM Craft.

[RedImperator]

I was thinking of all the little things an intelligent adversary would do. Like self-destruct landed ships that are in danger of being captured, so as to deny the humans E115. Or launch their base assaults in quick succession with their terror attacks, to catch the bases off guard. Or even land, to attract a skyranger full of troops, only to lift off and shoot it down.

I always wondered why the aliens didn't just take off again if X-Com showed up.

[Stark]

Let's face it; we're looking squarely at limitations of the game. If you attack a landed UFO, they don't detect your approach and prepare/leave. Once you land, they don't prepare defences or a skirmish line to intercept. Once you're in the ship they don't rush to destroy sensitive technology or simply fly away with your guys inside.

Why? Because the game randomly spawned enemies on the map and they have no over-arcing AI. In a modern game I'd expect to see more 'sensible' behaviour.

[Peptuck]

The biggest problem the aliens seem to face in X-COM is....they're retarded. That's quite obvious when you look at how none of them save the Mutons are actually wearing armor when it is trivially easy for humans to adapt their alloys into a somewhat effective armor, and then go further with power suits.

The only thing I can think of to explain this is that the aliens simply don't consider humanity a threat and they don't want to destroy the humans/local ecosystem for harvesting purposes. They're sitting way the fuck away on another planet and can attack at will, and their losses are trivial compared with their resources, so they've got no reason to try and launch a serious "kill 'em all" strategy until X-COM shows up at Cydonia.

I've always interpreted the fact that "if you lose or abort the Cydonia mission then you lose, period" as being the wake-up call to the aliens that they need to stop fucking around because the humans are actually able to strike back, and they subsequently launch a full-scale invasion that mankind has no chance to defeat.

[Stark]

You'd think their first sighting of a plasma-armed fighter or an Avenger would have escalated the conflict too, but I think it's just game balance. The idea that things like cyberdisks are inferior to human back-engineered stuff is just a game contrivance.

[Ryan Thunder]

At the risk of hijacking the thread, I think its possibly fair to state that the X-COM organization itself is rather poorly thought out in game. What sort of response could we expect to see from the real world?

[Stark]

Yeah, no, don't hijack.

Actually, I think the human plasma gun for fighters is better than most of the alien ones, and it's developed from hand weapons. It's pretty clear that the developers had trouble balancing the early and late games and the lack of intermediary steps made this very glaring - particularly considering plasma guns are literally an 'I win' button for interceptions.

[RedImperator]

Yeah, no, don't hijack.

Actually, I think the human plasma gun for fighters is better than most of the alien ones, and it's developed from hand weapons. It's pretty clear that the developers had trouble balancing the early and late games and the lack of intermediary steps made this very glaring - particularly considering plasma guns are literally an 'I win' button for interceptions.

I never thought about that, but you're right: there's nothing worth mounting between avalanche missiles and plasma cannons. And they do blow up the game balance completely; four well spaced hyper wave decoders and four plasma armed interceptors in my game, and nothing this side of a battleship can land anywhere on the planet unless I let it.

For those who are interested in a more challenging game of X-com, there are several mods in xcomutil which make the game significantly more realistic (read: harder). One I use makes elerium necessary for laser rifles and up (and alien alloys for heavy lasers and up), which means I've had to fund X-com with UFO recoveries instead of money printing laser cannon factories. The other, which I haven't tried on this game but I might try on the next, requires live aliens to unlock alien reverse engineering projects.

[Connor MacLeod]

Let's face it; we're looking squarely at limitations of the game. If you attack a landed UFO, they don't detect your approach and prepare/leave. Once you land, they don't prepare defences or a skirmish line to intercept. Once you're in the ship they don't rush to destroy sensitive technology or simply fly away with your guys inside.

Why? Because the game randomly spawned enemies on the map and they have no over-arcing AI. In a modern game I'd expect to see more 'sensible' behaviour.

Yeah. One thing that has always bugged me is that you could never deploy multiple squads. Logically they should be doing that in-game as well.

And more than likely the brunt of the fighting would be carried out by HWPs rather than mostly by troopers. The troopers would likely be support elements (and be used to do boaridng operations or something.) Although in reality they probably could and would have different sizes of remotely operated platforms (something that could drive inside a UFO.)

[Peptuck]

Although in reality they probably could and would have different sizes of remotely operated platforms (something that could drive inside a UFO.)

The bigger UFOs (Terror Ships and Battleships) do let you get a HWP onto the UFO. Not a real lo of good you can do with it on the battleships, and to a lesser degree on the terror ships, though they usually have the center blown out because you'll only storm them when you shoot them down.

You'd think their first sighting of a plasma-armed fighter or an Avenger would have escalated the conflict too, but I think it's just game balance. The idea that things like cyberdisks are inferior to human back-engineered stuff is just a game contrivance.

I've got the mental image of the Ethereals and the hive mind just sticking their metaphorical fingers into their ears and yelling "LALALALALALA" at the top of their lungs when someone tells them humans are developing improved weapons with their own tech.

Either that, or the alien equivilant of that bow-tie guy from the Starship Troopers movie, shouting "Frankly, I find the idea of a human that thinks OFFENSIVE!"

[weemadando]

Either that, or the alien equivilant of that bow-tie guy from the Starship Troopers movie, shouting "Frankly, I find the idea of a human that thinks OFFENSIVE!"

I prefer this explanation.

[PeZook]

The whole Cydonia attack plan is retarded, too.

"Oh, there's thousands of aliens in there, and hundreds of ships. Let's send twenty people to take out the base."

Is there any reason why X-COM can't just load an elerium-based nuke onto the lift and punch the button?

Or just plain drop a gigantic multi-gigaton bunker buster device from an Avenger?

[Lord Woodlouse]

The whole X-Com thing is pretty daft from either side. Either the aliens, who have no real reason not to be attacking with the same guys all the way through (and more of them) or X-Com, which is hideously small-scale in the face of potential alien invasion (and where national armed forces seem to not even exist, let alone play a part). If it were more realistic, the aliens could simply stomp on Earth by sending more than a few piddling UFOs, but equally the Earth in a more realistic scenario would be defending itself with more than 14 soldiers with zero combat experience.

I'd love to see a remake of the original UFO game, where national armed forces DO play a part (such as at very least being evident forming a perimeter in terror missions to assist X-Com, shooting down and destroying aliens in areas of the globe X-Com is not present in yet and generally being a backup to delegate tasks to). Also, as Stark mentions, it would be nice to see the alien AI react more intelligently, especially from out and out military UFOs. Dunno if the game could be balanced right that way, but I'd sure love to see it tried.

[Darth Smiley]

aliens, who have no real reason not to be attacking with the same guys all the way through (and more of them)

We don't know that. I've always figured that the Cydonians were building up their own base and forces as they went along, not just sitting there with an armada of ships, sending one at a time. We know from Apocalypse that E115 is mined on mars, and if X-Com workshops can produce ships, so can the Cydonian factories.

Dunno if the game could be balanced right that way, but I'd sure love to see it tried.

I'm pretty sure there's no way to keep the entire game premise, and still keep it balanced, without making one or both sides completely retarded.

The aliens have such overwhelming advantages in technology and resources (having the only access to E115) such that only a moron could possibly lose with them, given the premise of the game. One would have to alter the premise somewhat, to justify the alien's seeming stupidity. Maybe the hive mind is has already been destroyed, or is injured, and the uncoordinated, confused minions are trying to revive it, and can't think strategically until the hive is restored. That would give a nice time limit to the game - once the hive mind is restored, X-Com is toast, no matter what cool tricks they've built up.

The whole Cydonia attack plan is retarded, too.

That would need to be fixed too. The surface battle could be justified, and if they just mentioned why nuking the place couldn't be done, or some task underground that had to be completed first (I dunno - forcefield generators that need to be destroyed or something, maybe rescue prisoners).

[RedImperator]

Actually, I think you can handle the Cydonia part just by saying X-Com did nuke the surface, but the aliens have deep bunkers that have to be breached. Maybe make it so even elerium-enhanced nukes can't crack the deepest bunkers, so X-Com has to go to the surface and mind-control the aliens into opening the door.

Of course, once the door is open, then you ought to just be able to toss in the nuke. So maybe this doesn't work.

[Ohma]

You could probably also excuse the whole Cydonia assault thing if by saying that X-Com had to capture the hive mind or something like that. Still a bit bullshit but eh...

[Vendetta]

I've seen high level Mutons keep going even after a direct hit from a rocket. A properly laid-out base won't help, because Mutons can walk right though any proximity bomb traps in the access lift chokepoint.

Even on Beginner, Large Rockets are unlikely to take a Muton in one shot. On a direct hit you'll get 45-145 damage, and a Muton has 125 HP.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, no, don't hijack.

Actually, I think the human plasma gun for fighters is better than most of the alien ones, and it's developed from hand weapons. It's pretty clear that the developers had trouble balancing the early and late games and the lack of intermediary steps made this very glaring - particularly considering plasma guns are literally an 'I win' button for interceptions.

To be fair, Avalanche missiles are an I Win button as well, though you need two interceptors for larger ships.