Catching aliens in their Crashed Ship

[ferralll]

So it has been a long long time since I have played x-com.  But I remember those days well.

One thing I remember, but have not been able to reproduce in openxcom is when you catch all of the aliens in their ship.  I remember this was one of the only ways that I was able to defeat battle and terror ships.  You attack with your transport ship in at closest range.  (I did this with the avenger, I do not recall if you could do this with a skyranger) and when you enter the crash site, the aliens did not have time to exit their ships and it would let you set up a shooting gallery around the entrance. 

So for exactness, this is what  I remember:
*Load your avenger with "lighter" weapons.
*Intercept the UFO.
*Select Aggressive attack
*When the ship is shot down, you start the mission right away.
The result is that the starting positions of the aliens is limited to just the ship (non outside in the rest of the battlescape)

I assume that the same could be done with a skyranger:
* Intercept the UFO with Skyranger and 1-2 interceptors.
* Bring the Skyranger to aggressive distance (as close as possible)
* Then engage with Interceptors
* Start mission
When I have tried this, I have been unable to catch all aliens in their ship.


So my questions are:
Does any one else remember using this tactic?
Does it just work with the Avenger/Lightning? (ie, the mechanic just does not work with the skyranger)
Was this mechanic in the original x-com but not in openxcom.
Am I crazy and just forgetting how things actually were?

[NoelBuddy]

Can't recall this in the original, but for OXcom the deployments are independent of the crash circumstances.  You could get that deployment by luck(the deployments listings give a percentage chance that each unit will be outside the UFO), but how long the crash site has existed won't change things.

Sidenote, after assaulting a Sectoid terror ship in where all the cyberdisks decided to deploy inside and patrol the hall ways, I'd prefer they wander out in the open so I can pop these weather balloons from a distance.

[Hobbes]

One thing I remember, but have not been able to reproduce in openxcom is when you catch all of the aliens in their ship.  I remember this was one of the only ways that I was able to defeat battle and terror ships.  You attack with your transport ship in at closest range.  (I did this with the avenger, I do not recall if you could do this with a skyranger) and when you enter the crash site, the aliens did not have time to exit their ships and it would let you set up a shooting gallery around the entrance. 

So for exactness, this is what  I remember:
*Load your avenger with "lighter" weapons.
*Intercept the UFO.
*Select Aggressive attack
*When the ship is shot down, you start the mission right away.
The result is that the starting positions of the aliens is limited to just the ship (non outside in the rest of the battlescape)

I assume that the same could be done with a skyranger:
* Intercept the UFO with Skyranger and 1-2 interceptors.
* Bring the Skyranger to aggressive distance (as close as possible)
* Then engage with Interceptors
* Start mission
When I have tried this, I have been unable to catch all aliens in their ship.


So my questions are:
Does any one else remember using this tactic?
Does it just work with the Avenger/Lightning? (ie, the mechanic just does not work with the skyranger)
Was this mechanic in the original x-com but not in openxcom.
Am I crazy and just forgetting how things actually were?

I'd say that there is a bit of a confirmation bias here involved since there is nothing on the game code to support this.

Personally I've never seen this type of game behavior nor anything in the game files that support it. But I can hypothesize that you've noticed 2 unrelated events, shooting down a UFO with an Avenger and no aliens being generated outside the craft (which is possible for every UFO, although the odds are rather low) and made a connection between both.

[ferralll]

Does any one have the ability to play the original game and can try to confirm/deny this mechanism?

[moriarty]

another example of Apophenia.   see also --> this thread

Julian Gollop is right, that random thing really works for making things seem smarter than they are.


and again, this would be really cool: the game should change some things according to "how long ago was the crash": fires/smoke, alien positions, perhaps even alien weapon allocation (if the aliens had time to re-distribute the good weapons from the aliens that died in the crash, why shouldn't they?). I've proposed this before but no, the original game doesn't work this way, never has, and openxcom (being true to the original mechanics) doesn't, either.