Flood of Terror Missions. Is this normal?

[IMBACORE]

I was hoping the devs preserved the normal "Beginner" pacing of the game but nope. The first five skirmishes I had were all Terror Missions. Now the first of the snakemen and psychic sectoids have made their appearance and my operatives are all still in coveralls.

While people are obsessing over Pokemons, I'm here lamenting over the dearth of Elerium-115 in my latest X-COM run.

In the original X-Com, I always had 1-3 skirmishes involving a downed UFO before a terror mission. Five in a row with no downed UFOs is just frustrating. There's no Elerium to be had hence no armor research is possible.

Is this normal in OpenXCom? If so, how do I set the game to be more like the original X-Com?

[Hobbes]

For the vanilla game that's not normal. What nightly are you using and what mods have you installed?

[Meridian]

Also, which month of the game are you in right now?
And can you post a save?

[IMBACORE]

Also, which month of the game are you in right now?
And can you post a save?

I have it on my laptop (I'm using my main gaming rig at the moment). I'll retrieve it later after work but... where can you find the save files?

About the month thing, it's kind of irrelevant as in the original game, when I finish tidying up the supplies, placed build orders, and renamed the soldiers, I go to the Geoscape and fast forward the time, invariably, the very first thing to pop up would be a small UFO.

Always without fail.

Here I got surprised when after I did the usual process the first thing that came up was a terror mission. And the four or so skirmishes after that were all the same---terror missions. No small UFOs.

For the vanilla game that's not normal. What nightly are you using and what mods have you installed?

Version 1.0. I downloaded from the official site's Download page (under the "Milestones" tab). I didn't bother with the nightlies, just the stable version. No mods were installed.

[ohartenstein23]

Version 1.0 is pretty buggy, and the nightlies are plenty stable for regular use around here.  I think the save games for the milestone are under Documents\OpenXcom for Windows - if you have trouble finding it, try searching in your file browser for <name of the save>.sav

[Hobbes]

Here I got surprised when after I did the usual process the first thing that came up was a terror mission. And the four or so skirmishes after that were all the same---terror missions. No small UFOs.

This could be explained by bad RNG rolls actually.

Your radar failed to detect any of the UFOs of the initial Alien Research that takes place on the region of your starting base, and the terror mission took place on another region. Then on the following months the regular non-terror alien missions all take place in locations where you don't have bases, so you don't detect those as well.

This is easier to check: just go to the Graphs and see if there's any UFO activity reported

[IMBACORE]

Version 1.0 is pretty buggy, and the nightlies are plenty stable for regular use around here.  I think the save games for the milestone are under Documents\OpenXcom for Windows - if you have trouble finding it, try searching in your file browser for <name of the save>.sav

Oh. Durn. Should I download the latest nightly then and restart? Thanks for the tips!

[ohartenstein23]

Latest nightly is a good idea, and the save might be still compatible.  For the most bug-free experience though, a restart is recommended.  For the most part, upgrades between nightlies shouldn't break your save games.

[yrizoud]

This borders on spoilers (because the game never explains it), but when you shoot down "scout" ships, you actually thwart the aliens' plans, and it prevents more UFO from appearing.

[Meridian]

This borders on spoilers (because the game never explains it), but when you shoot down "scout" ships, you actually thwart the aliens' plans, and it prevents more UFO from appearing.

Just to prevent rumors and myths, shooting down scouts doesn't prevent more UFOs from appearing.
It will slow them down (a little bit), but never stops them.

The only thing it can do is prevent them from finding your base (if they are even looking) and thus prevent a retaliation run by the final attack UFO.

PS: (to respond to previous posts) the nightlies have indeed fixed a lot of bugs... but by sheer statistical probability, they have also introduced a same/similar amount of new bugs... the functionality this thread is about is absolutely functional and stable also in v1.0 and there is no need to upgrade to nightly because of this issue only... of course upgrading to nightly in general is a good idea and if you want to play recent mods, you will be forced to do so

[Hobbes]

Just to prevent rumors and myths, shooting down scouts doesn't prevent more UFOs from appearing.
It will slow them down (a little bit), but never stops them.

To clarify what 'a little bit' means: the delay addeed from shooting a UFO can vary between 12000 and 13340 minutes (roughly between 8-9 days)

The function that determines it is: _spawnCountdown += 30 * (RNG::generate(0, 48) + 400)

[yrizoud]

I think you're both talking about retaliation missions. My point is about all other alien activities : AFAIK, alien missions are a sequence of UFO sightings in a region for a month, and if you stop one, the remainder are cancelled. If you want to see large UFOs with many power sources (ie Elerium), leave the small scouts fly.

[Meridian]

I think you're both talking about retaliation missions. My point is about all other alien activities : AFAIK, alien missions are a sequence of UFO sightings in a region for a month, and if you stop one, the remainder are cancelled. If you want to see large UFOs with many power sources (ie Elerium), leave the small scouts fly.

No, I am not talking about Retaliation, that was just a side note.

I am talking about all other missions (research, abduction, etc.).
And I am 100% rock-solid sure that the alien missions are not cancelled, ever.

[Hobbes]

I think you're both talking about retaliation missions. My point is about all other alien activities : AFAIK, alien missions are a sequence of UFO sightings in a region for a month, and if you stop one, the remainder are cancelled. If you want to see large UFOs with many power sources (ie Elerium), leave the small scouts fly.

You're correct in saying to leave the small scouts fly, but only if you don't want to delay the large UFOs from appearing.

As Meridian has stated, shooting down UFOs only delays the next UFO scheduled in the alien mission, up to 9 days, and never cancels them. This can really have an impact on certain missions like Alien Harvest, which have 9 UFOs assigned, since the mission can be delayed for several weeks or even months. This also applies to Retaliation missions: shoot down the scouts both to prevent them detecting your base, and to delay the next UFO in the wave.

The other effect that UFO shoot-downs have is to prevent the aliens gaining points from UFOs landing, although is only applies to Infiltration, Harvest, Terror and Abductions missions, if I'm reading the code correctly on Github.

And I am 100% rock-solid sure that the alien missions are not cancelled, ever.

And this can be confirmed if you check on Github the code that generates alien missions

The thing that is bothering me is that the UFOPaedia.org page has different values for the delay introduced on the original game, stating that they can vary between 1-9 days. Either I misinterpreted the OXC code or something else

[yrizoud]

Thanks for answering and the corrections