Base under attack

[Strzelec]

Hi,

My base was attacked for the third time and I can say that this is THE WORST type of battle in the game and I HATE it so much. Why? Because the map is so big and the aliens are spread far away from each other so that means more time is needed to kill them all, but the worst part is that they behave in such strange way that they actually often are wandering around or even standing near spawn point and aren't going to attack, so I have to attack them (which is so weird because they are the invaders in this battle) and getting to each alien is soooo long that the battle is so boring, because it mostly consists of many turns in which I have to rush forward and then wait for the aliens to move two tiles or even go further from the base. I don't know how much time has to pass till I will gain the strength and will to go through this battle. I think that Al should be reprogrammed in order to work better during base attacks because now it is terrible for me. Also option of auto mission should be available to help me skip these painful hours of the game.

[anonymissimus]

Base defenses belong to the easiest and sometimes quickest missions.
1. Alwas use the cameras. Keep track of all of those aliens which are currently on the bottom level to not be surprised from behind.
2. Build the base so that the living quarters and/or interceptor hangar sniper hosts can oversee plain areas. Move a cannon fodder unit onto the toplevel or into the large hangar tower if available to spot aliens wandering around way off track aimlessly, then throughwall-shoot them.
3. In 2.6, just wait near the power plant for aliens to arrive. Maybe 70% of them or more can be killed by only throughwall shots out of a nearby living quarters or small hangar.

[Strzelec]

Thank you very much, but the problem is that I've already known about cameras and power plant... It still contains too many turns in which nothing happens... Actually base defense was better in 2.4, but in this version there weren't cameras. Despite that it was better because aliens were attacking. Now this battle is totally spoiled and not having the option to skip it annoys me the most because I can skip every single battle, but not the one I don't want to play.

[Strzelec]

Ok, so I have one question. Is it possible to change some variables in game files in order to turn off base attack events and how to do it?

[anonymissimus]

You may be able to shoot down the harvester before it arrives but it'll take at least 2 stilettos with sparrowhawks.

In 2.4 base defense was similar to 2.6, just that the location where aliens accumulated wasn't pre-determined.

The 2.5+ AI iterates through all of the team's units and checks for all of them which units they can see/shoot from all of the positions they can reach within the upcoming turn of the unit, though the amount of movement points used is not the maximum, they tend to reserve some for reaction fire and if that's not possible they tend to not attack instead. But if no enemies would be visible from their complete reachable area, they just move to a random position using some 1/3-2/3 of their movement points. Most of the time at least, so this probably is what you call "not attacking". I think it occurred to me at least once that *all* aliens were drifting towards the power plant in 2.6 though, it was over quickly.

[Strzelec]

I also experienced all aliens assaulting power plant, but it also took a lot of turns for them to gather. Maybe I should try with shooting down the harvester, but I tried it once with 2 stilettos and despite my efforts I didn't manage to outrange it and lost my aircraft (of course I was using sparrowhawks).