🚀 go-pugleaf

If you were the aliens, you'd concentrate on maintaining your war machine, 
farming your troops and your Zrbite, and taking all X-Com's sponsors away 
or destroying all its bases.

"The Blue Max" <brunos...@Jasta1.com> wrote in message
news:05c5e55bc9143606457cd17a0f1e1fc3@TeraNews...
> when playing TFTD it occurs to me that, if you had the option as to which
> side you played, you might have quite an interesting situation.
>
> as the human player, you face an escalating assault by aliens who deploy
> progressively better weapons. If you were playing as the aliens, how would
> that work? would you have a small number of troops opposed by better and
> better-armed humans? at what point would the humans outnumber you?
>
The way the game currently is, the alien forces get tougher as the game
progresses ( smaller subs in the beginning ).

In my X-Com experience even in good campaigns there are a significant number
of alien bases i'm not able to eliminate....so playing the alien side may
not automatically mean the humans will eventually outnumber you massively.

"RandallW" <rand...@smokedspamcore.com> wrote

> In my X-Com experience even in good campaigns there are a significant
number
> of alien bases i'm not able to eliminate....so playing the alien side may
> not automatically mean the humans will eventually outnumber you massively.

I am simply curious as to how many aliens there actually are available to
the AI. At any one time I have seen perhaps 4 or 5 large UFOs
simultaneously. The alien bases / colonies are always fully manned, so the
UFO crews are obviously not drawn from bases.

Playing as XCom, OTOH, one could quite quickly amass 100 to 250 soldiers in
total. I guess 1,000+ would be feasible if you built enough accommodation
and storgae. So if one could play as the aliens I imagine you'd start with
20 to 30 guys and would peak at probably 4 to 500 - it's possible, I
believe, to have 10+ alien bases, so their complement plus UFO crews start
to add up.  But this is late in the game - if they hit you with 400 guys in
month 1 you'd lose.

In effect the "arms race" imperative applies to both sides - the aliens
start with a numerical and technical advantage and have to win before it's
decisively eroded. Once XCom gets rich from weapon and tech sales, it can
afford to protect most of Earth so effectively that the aliens' chances of
achieving secret alliances plummets. If you played as the aliens and didn't
win quick you couldn't win at all.

"The Blue Max" <brunos...@Jasta1.com> wrote in message news:<c4560743279c4866...@free.teranews.com>...
> "RandallW" <rand...@smokedspamcore.com> wrote
> 
> > In my X-Com experience even in good campaigns there are a significant
>  number
> > of alien bases i'm not able to eliminate....so playing the alien side may
> > not automatically mean the humans will eventually outnumber you massively.
> 
> I am simply curious as to how many aliens there actually are available to
> the AI. At any one time I have seen perhaps 4 or 5 large UFOs
> simultaneously. The alien bases / colonies are always fully manned, so the
> UFO crews are obviously not drawn from bases.
> 
> Playing as XCom, OTOH, one could quite quickly amass 100 to 250 soldiers in
> total. I guess 1,000+ would be feasible if you built enough accommodation
> and storgae. So if one could play as the aliens I imagine you'd start with
> 20 to 30 guys and would peak at probably 4 to 500 - it's possible, I
> believe, to have 10+ alien bases, so their complement plus UFO crews start
> to add up.  But this is late in the game - if they hit you with 400 guys in
> month 1 you'd lose.
> 

here are some theoretical numbers based on ingame table sizes....

the maximum sites/ships/waypoints on the globe are 50, if Xcom has 8
bases and only fly's 1 craft (Avenger/Leviathan) at a time and only to
alien bases... that would leave a posible total of 41 alien bases and
no UFO's

each combat alows for a total of 80 units (i'll leave out tanks and
other large creatures for this) if xcom sends the max of 26, there
would be 54 Aleins per base (108 for TFTD's 2 part'ers)
so a total of 2214 Aliens at a time for UFO and 4428 for TFTD

X-com can have 8 bases... and 254 units per base. for a total of 2032

now 26 vs. 54 is abit lopsided but say they all were involved in one
battle at once. if they were evenly armed X-com would have a fighting
change to beat the aliens in UFO, but in TFTD it would take pure luck
with out superior tactics and stats.

-Blade FireLight

"The Blue Max" <brunos...@Jasta1.com> wrote in message
news:05c5e55bc9143606457cd17a0f1e1fc3@TeraNews...
> when playing TFTD it occurs to me that, if you had the option as to which
> side you played, you might have quite an interesting situation.
>
> as the human player, you face an escalating assault by aliens who deploy
> progressively better weapons. If you were playing as the aliens, how would
> that work? would you have a small number of troops opposed by better and
> better-armed humans? at what point would the humans outnumber you?


aliens would start off scouting, no terror missions.  with limited funds
too.
as time goes on, or maybe as inteligence comes in about the escelating power
of the xcom project, then you (as the aliens) will get more funds.  then
eventually you DECLARE WAR and this is when terror missions start.
also an interesting idea would be "mission number quotas"
what this means is that as the aliens, you will only be able to launch a set
number of missions per month.  maybe you will be FORCED to launch missions
as well.  as in, every 12hours, you must launch some kindof mission.  you
can launch no more and no less.
as time goes on, the time inbetween missions gets less.   this could be the
alien's version of the gradual increased funding of the human xcom project.

roid phrenetically blurted:
> maybe you will be FORCED to launch missions
> as well.  as in, every 12hours, you must launch some kindof mission.  you
> can launch no more and no less.
> as time goes on, the time inbetween missions gets less.   this could be
> the alien's version of the gradual increased funding of the human xcom
> project.

 Or perhaps the number of missions you can launch, or the time between them,
depends on the number of bases you have, including the one on Mars.

 Alternatively:
 I'd expect it to take a long time to get reinfocements from other star
systems, so all the resources (ships, aliens, etc.) have to be bred in
situ, with cloning vats (sectoids, mutons, etc.), hatcheries (snakemen,
etc.), breeding pens (reapers, etc.), and suchlike. This would make the
loss of a base almost as bad as it is for the humans.
 I would expect ethereals to have to be imported from out of system.

 I'd guess the Mars base would be the main/only source of alien alloys,
food, etc., so you'd have to send supply ships to Earth. :)

 - Mel C
 - Supplied

"Mel C" <mel@the-eend.org.remove> wrote in message
news:zWMCa.33225$xd5.1527626@stones.force9.net...
> roid phrenetically blurted:
> > maybe you will be FORCED to launch missions
> > as well.  as in, every 12hours, you must launch some kindof mission.
you
> > can launch no more and no less.
> > as time goes on, the time inbetween missions gets less.   this could be
> > the alien's version of the gradual increased funding of the human xcom
> > project.
>
>  Or perhaps the number of missions you can launch, or the time between
them,
> depends on the number of bases you have, including the one on Mars.
>
>  Alternatively:
>  I'd expect it to take a long time to get reinfocements from other star
> systems, so all the resources (ships, aliens, etc.) have to be bred in
> situ, with cloning vats (sectoids, mutons, etc.), hatcheries (snakemen,
> etc.), breeding pens (reapers, etc.), and suchlike. This would make the
> loss of a base almost as bad as it is for the humans.
>  I would expect ethereals to have to be imported from out of system.
>
>  I'd guess the Mars base would be the main/only source of alien alloys,
> food, etc., so you'd have to send supply ships to Earth. :)

Yep, and you'd have a finite supply to hand of various alien races so you
couldn't swarm XCom with your best guys early on.