Why the aliens half to relocate x-com bases after a retaliation mission fails

[darkestaxe]

Floater Engineer: My fellow clones and I were invading a planet when we located the main base of a resistance cell. Unfortunately the ship we sent to annihilate the local inhabitants was lost. Very few humans died that day...

Hypercorp Rep: I'm sorry to hear that, how can I help you today?

Floater Engineer: When I attempt to retrieve the navigation records from the PsyFit Fleet Tracker XT I get 'Error 37, records have been purged'. This will not stand! The humans must die, So saith The Brain!

Hypercorp Rep: I'm sorry, but you should have been informed that all navigation records made by Hypercorp trackers are the intellectual property of General Interplanetary LLC and it's subsidiaries. You need to file an access request with their records access department. Would you like me to transfer you?

Sectiod Engineer: Yes, quiclky! The humans must die, so saith The Brain!

Hypercorp Rep: Ohh k then, one moment please.

Recorded Message: If you are a new customer and would like to create a records retrieval account, squake gargle or speak now. *pause* If you are a returning customer without an account or are a Hypercorp customer with one of our premium devices, please squake gargle or...

Floater Engineer: The humans must die, so saith The Brain!

Recorded Message: Thankyou for calling General Interplanetary. We value our partners and we know that your plans for galactic domination are important. Please wait and the next available representative will be right with you. Please have you Galactic Zenar bank account number ready and be advised that all record retrievals cost 30,000TCN to complete. Please remember to allow 20 galactic standard stardates for record retrievals to be processed.

Floater Engineer: Hey Commander, how much is 30,000TCN? Can we afford that?

Floater Commander: 30TCN is a bit pricey, that's about the cost of the Battleship we lost. Pay it, The Brain must see humans die!

Floater Engineer: No, 30 'Thousand' TCN. How much is that?

Floater Commander: I'm not sure, my brain can't process that number either. Let's ask a sectoid.

Floater Engineer: While you're at it, you may want to find out how long galactic standard stardates are, this will take at least 20 of them.

[A few minutes later]

Sectoid Commander: You stupid floaters! Don't waste your time with GI and hypercorp, by the time they get back to you, we sectoids will be reaper meals. Just go scout that base again. What we do is we always have a few scout ships ready to restart the search in case our attacks fail.

Snakeman Comander: SSSYessss syuu needs to findss sss humaans eeeach timessss. Ssssilly Floooatersss, sssscalling hhhypercorpssse!

[pilot00]

Well you solved the mystery of why the didnt use WMD or chemical warfare in the invasion. I can only imagine the libernith of beraucracy that deployment of said weapons requires....

I am also pretty certain that once the base gets detected it gets detected (at least in vanilla) permanently. What gets reset is the attempt to detect if you stall the operation before it succeeds. At least that would explain why I get battleships monthly hitting me without having any other craft appearing.

[darkestaxe]

I am also pretty certain that once the base gets detected it gets detected (at least in vanilla) permanently. What gets reset is the attempt to detect if you stall the operation before it succeeds. At least that would explain why I get battleships monthly hitting me without having any other craft appearing.

There was a bug that caused the attack failed flag not to be set when the attacking battleship was destroyed by base defense facilities. Without the bug or if you shoot the attacker down with avengers, or let it land and defend your base the alien retaliation mission would end and the aliens would have to start a new retaliation mission. That's part of why so many people wouldn't even build base defense facilities.

[pilot00]

There was a bug that caused the attack failed flag not to be set when the attacking battleship was destroyed by base defense facilities. Without the bug or if you shoot the attacker down with avengers, or let it land and defend your base the alien retaliation mission would end and the aliens would have to start a new retaliation mission. That's part of why so many people wouldn't even build base defense facilities.

Not the thing I am saying though. I am speaking about the scout (not the ufo type) runs that are been made to discover your base prior to launching the attack. If you destroy the scouting UFOs, the mission is been reset. However if they succed in locating once, you will have visitors in the base so to speak on the schedule for the rest of the game.

[moriarty]

Actually, you are talking exactly about the same thing. Pilot00, you are right about the scouting runs, but wrong about the persistence of the actual retaliation (=battleship heading straight for your base).

The attacks on your base continued only when the battleship was destroyed or shot down. As soon as one landed and you played the base defense mission, the aliens forgot your base.

[Dioxine]

Actually it was cancelled if it was shot down with Avengers. Only shooting it down with Base Defenses caused the Battleship to be sent again, and again, and again...
Shooting down scouting UFOs will certainly delay next scouting UFOs, but not sure if it can cancel the whole mission.
However, once the mission has been played, the base is removed from aliens' "to do" list.
There is of course the possibility that you've build your base in a very unlucky spot, and it is trivial to aliens to find every time they start a Retal...

[pilot00]

Well I am talking from memory here, you guys are the coders so you know better than me.

I do have a tendency to delay craft development a bit and that means usually I am getting attacked, but I am pretty sure if you destroy the scouts you at least set the mission back (if the base remains uncovered that is).

There is of course the possibility that you've build your base in a very unlucky spot, and it is trivial to aliens to find every time they start a Retal...

Interesting, so there are UFO spawn areas so to speak? I thought it was completely random.

[Arthanor]

Yes, they spawn in specific mission zones, then fly to other zones. In the vanilla version, there are defined spawn points and defined transit routes between regions.

You can use that to your advantage, either by setting up under a route or spawn point, which means you can discover UFOs that are en route to a different region and follow them to where they are going to intercept them (assuming you can't catch them in transit since they fly pretty fast), or you can setup in an area outside of their usual search pattern meaning that your base will be that much harder to find for them.

[darkestaxe]

Not the thing I am saying though. I am speaking about the scout (not the ufo type) runs that are been made to discover your base prior to launching the attack. If you destroy the scouting UFOs, the mission is been reset. However if they succed in locating once, you will have visitors in the base so to speak on the schedule for the rest of the game.

Ah, well now we know how long 20 galactic standard stardates is.

[pilot00]

Yes, they spawn in specific mission zones, then fly to other zones. In the vanilla version, there are defined spawn points and defined transit routes between regions.

You can use that to your advantage, either by setting up under a route or spawn point, which means you can discover UFOs that are en route to a different region and follow them to where they are going to intercept them (assuming you can't catch them in transit since they fly pretty fast), or you can setup in an area outside of their usual search pattern meaning that your base will be that much harder to find for them.

Care to share the knowledge of the spawn points?

My Usual setup is to Build a base either on Cuba or Mexico, One on the Phillipenes, my H.Q Usually in Lybia or Crete and one on either poles.

[Arthanor]

Unfortunately, knowing that it is doable is the extent of my knowledge. I think building bases using prior knowledge of ufo paths is akin to cheating. There's no way humans should know that. I always start in the US at Area 51 (you can then cover Hawaii with a hyperwave), then cover Europe and kind of take a continental approach thinking of which area would be more likely to get a base from politics and resources.

I have read of people doing it though and if i remember well UFOs like to transit over the north pole. You can look on the UFOpedia website for the mission zones and the ruleset details all the areas of spawning from which you can infer the transit zones. I think Falko has a globe visualization tool that could help too.

Would be a neat thing to do for Piratez though, since pirates would know the shipping lanes..

[pilot00]

Meh I dont want to know in order to cheat. I cheat enough with save scumming on in my test runs. Plus I am building my bases based on a role playing style.

 But info is always info

[Dioxine]

UFOs do cruise between spawning points only, but they use them as waypoints. Spawning points have 5 types, and when an ufo is told to go to type 3, for example, it choses a random one from every type 3 present in the target region (Syberia, Northern Africa etc). Still, every ufo flight comprises of several waypoints, and there is a LOT of spawning points and finding out & mapping all the connections used by existing trajectories, much less all possible connections, is not a work for a human. Plus, it'd take away fun IMO. There are no safe regions; the range of base detection is rather tiny, and every region is criss-crossed by hundreds of possible routes. Sometimes it's just a matter of few pixels difference between a base that'll get raided regularly, and one that almost never will. I'd say it's chaotic enough that it can be called technically random.

Oh and one more thing: it definitely helps to shoot down UFOs over regions where you have no bases, because they will target the Retal against the region where the UFO was shot down.