How much of a difference does "Aggressive retaliation" make?

[Xilmi]

When browsing through the advanced options, my eyes landed on "Aggressive retaliation" in the Geoscape-options.

Can anyone who has tested it, give a rough estimate of how much of difference it makes?

Sounds a bit like "Brutal AI on the Geoscape"-layer when it does, what I think it does. Which would be much more frequent visits of aliens in my base.

[Solarius Scorch]

With this option, simply all UFOs can detect your base, not only those on retaliation mission. Meaning that if some random Supply Ship goes over your base, you are likely to get spotted.

[Xilmi]

With this option, simply all UFOs can detect your base, not only those on retaliation mission. Meaning that if some random Supply Ship goes over your base, you are likely to get spotted.

Thanks!

Do you have more insight on what happens after my base got spotted?
I mean obviously they'll sooner or later send a battleship to attack it. But what happens after they lose? Do they have to spot it again to send another battle-ship or does it mean that once my base was spotted they will do it again and again?

If so, are there cool-downs for that to happen again?

In general I'd also like to learn some more about the way the Aliens act on the Geoscape. How much of it is random? How much of it is part of some deterministic/procedural algorithm or maybe even a simulation by which the aliens have a "budget" they can spend or earn?

I'd like to understand and maybe even mess around with these.

[Solarius Scorch]

Do you have more insight on what happens after my base got spotted?
I mean obviously they'll sooner or later send a battleship to attack it. But what happens after they lose?

If they lose, your base becomes undetected again.

In general I'd also like to learn some more about the way the Aliens act on the Geoscape. How much of it is random? How much of it is part of some deterministic/procedural algorithm or maybe even a simulation by which the aliens have a "budget" they can spend or earn?

Generally speaking, alien mission can start according to region settings (in regions.rul) or scripts. Both are generated at the start of month.

Since you can read code, I recommend you start with examining alienStrategy in a save.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I have not played with this, but the difference is probably less dramatic than it sounds, however depending where your base is placed, it might cause incessant visits. Scouts on retaliation missions have a complex pattern which greatly raises the odds of them getting their tiny sightRange over your base. Also while they are going slow, they are more likely to proc a scan while your base is within sight. A random alien craft flying straight over your base at high speed will more often than not fail to proc a scan at the right time.

But mods can change their sightRange, and (OXCE only) you can also reduce their base detection odds by adding mindPower to the access lift facility (and correctly multiply the mindPower value for Mind Shield accordingly).

Default UFO sightRange is 268. In my mod I have set them to 600. I also set Access Lift mindPower to 2 and Mind Shield mindPower to 4. The end result is that aliens detecting your base is probably more akin to how most people thought it worked in the original game. It's far more predictable and far less dependent upon your base placement as to whether they will detect you immediately or can't detect you at all. With my settings, Aggressive Retaliation would probably make a much more significant but much more stable difference.

But again, I haven't used Aggressive Retaliation.

[Xilmi]

Just saw this old thread of mine and wanted to give some updates:

Aggressive Retaliation is actually one of the few things that works differently with Brutal-OXCE outside of Battlescape:

In addition to the effect it already had, there's now two additional effects:

1. The search for your base normally would be done by patrolling between mission-sites within the region your base belongs to. However, these mission-sites are distributed quite inconsistently allowing to accidentally or deliberately put your base at places that would rarely ever be flown over. So for retaliation-missions the UFOs will now simply fly around in a big square around the base they are looking for making the chances of base-discovery equal regardless of the base's location.

2. Finishing tactical missions against landed UFOs now has the same chance to trigger a retaliation-mission as shooting down a UFO has as the result is the same for the aliens.