Alien is hiding in base mission

[Dinis]

He's driving me nuts. The aliens have invaded my base, I've killed a lot of them, one has panicked and he's hiding. I can't see an end to the mission.
I have the latest nightly.

[Solarius Scorch]

You, and me, and every X-Com player since 1994.

There is no easy way to deal with this (other than hacking the save), rounding up the last skirmishers is part of the mission. Maybe the OXCE+ devs will think of some sort of surrender mechanic, since it was already requested, or maybe at least some sort of a hack to force the aliens out after turn 20, but nothing's guaranteed.

I guess your best bet is to sweep the base systematically and if possible, use Motion Scanners. Yes, it takes long, but that's X-Com life!

[ohartenstein23]

Using debug mode is also an option, but I agree with Solarius, that's X-Com, baby!

[RSSwizard]

This is part of the game unfortunately.

That last alien is waiting for your soldiers to let their guard down, and when they least expect it will come up behind them and kill them with their own weapons one, by one, by one. With a butcher knife from the mess hall if necessary. It will start with the janitors, then the researchers will start turning up missing, and then one night the entire soldiers' quarters will get hit with an HE pack.

If you cant find him now, there's no chance youll find him later on either, he'll be in the ductwork at that point. 


The more frustrating bug hunt is in TFTD during the cruise ship terror missions. Because there are no civilians on that upper floor in the 2nd stage and there's only 2 ways to get up there (elevator, which will probably explode), and that one set of stairs just before reaching the engine room.

And there are often aliens up there . . . especially oddly enough Triscenes which shouldn't be able to logically fit in those corridors (maybe the civilians saw those and ran, which is why they're all cleared out of that floor of the ship?).

There's all sorts of cool stuff up there, including a Theater!

And sometimes as many as 4 aliens on that floor.

Now running away from a cruise ship terror mission isnt quite as game breaking as giving up on a base invasion, but getting hit with upwards of -700 points for losing a cruise ship is not healthy to xcom one bit.

[Meridian]

Just FYI, surrender support and bug hunt support have been added to OXCE+ this week.
Would appreciate some help with testing/fine-tuning it.

[RSSwizard]

My suggestion for the surrender dynamic is to do a couple checks:
* Is it earlier than Turn 30?
* Are there at least 3 conscious aliens left?

If both are untrue then wait until the end of the next turn and permanently Reveal their presence on the map. In fact the entire map could be revealed from that point on too.

Then you know where they are, you can rush your units there, or ship them a blaster bomb and be done with it. Its satisfying to know where they are and then be able to deal with them yourself, even if it means costing you 3-5 more turns because you know the end is near.


Maybe post a popup like this to give it a logical reason:
"Advanced reconnaissance satellites have mapped the area and isolated hostile signatures in your area"


Additionally having a Mind Reader / MC Reader equipped with a soldier somewhere could hasten the delay to Turn 20 and thus give another practical use for having it

(aside from tuning into mindwaves, maybe it also generally detects their presence in the area, if its reading less activity then xcom may have reason to want to confirm with a satellite scan)

[Meridian]

My suggestion for the surrender dynamic is to do a couple checks:
* Is it earlier than Turn 30?
* Are there at least 3 conscious aliens left?

If both are untrue then wait until the end of the next turn and permanently Reveal their presence on the map.

Doable with the following ruleset:

Code: [Select]

bughuntMinTurn: 30
bughuntMaxEnemies: 2
bughuntRank: -1
bughuntLowMorale: 999


Maybe post a popup like this to give it a logical reason:
"Advanced reconnaissance satellites have mapped the area and isolated hostile signatures in your area"

The text is too long, but I'm sure you can shorten it

Code: [Select]

extraStrings:
  - type: en-US
    strings:
      STR_BUG_HUNT_ACTIVATED: "Advanced reconnaissance satellites have mapped the area and isolated hostile signatures in your area"