Aliens all eventually exit their ship

[SteamXCOM]

In harvesting my third Muton supply ship in a row, I noticed if I stayed outside, the crew would eventually come out and I could, with little risk to myself, capture or ambush them.  In my first games, I do not recall exactly, either; but then have seen the inside of the UFO's more than now in trying to conquer their defenders.

Of course I could mod the routing maps to not have the aliens  use the exits or even seal areas off until I blew them open, anyone have ideas on this?

[Meridian]

Commanders and leaders should actually be pretty stationary... did they come out too?

Oh derp, there are no muton leaders/comms... mutons all have "aggression: 2"... you could change their aggression to "1 balanced" or "0 passive" as alternative.

[SteamXCOM]

Thank you  Meridian

The aggression route might be the way to go for an easy fix, the Muton Navigator and Engineer should stay inside at least and force me to come looking for them.

[Hobbes]

The aggression route might be the way to go for an easy fix, the Muton Navigator and Engineer should stay inside at least and force me to come looking for them.

On the original game, most of the times the aliens will stay on their designated positions (Navigator/Commander on bridge, etc.) but a few times they might come out of the UFO because of the RNG after several turns

[SteamXCOM]

On the original game, most of the times the aliens will stay on their designated positions (Navigator/Commander on bridge, etc.) but a few times they might come out of the UFO because of the RNG after several turns

This might be more complex  than I thought, then if the RNG (Random Number Generator, I gather,) is agitating  the aliens  to move out of their ship to engage.  I also had a couple of sectoid scout missions with their sparsely low ranked crewed ships, and the same thing occurred, they all eventually appear at the door and I never have to pry them out.

In the original game it it seemed I always had to go in and see what was inside.

Another thought, does the AI respond to  commotion such as shooting at the door making noise and racket?

[Hobbes]

This might be more complex  than I thought, then if the RNG (Random Number Generator, I gather,) is agitating  the aliens  to move out of their ship to engage.  I also had a couple of sectoid scout missions with their sparsely low ranked crewed ships, and the same thing occurred, they all eventually appear at the door and I never have to pry them out.

In the original game it it seemed I always had to go in and see what was inside.

Another factor in the aliens exiting the UFO is how after turn 20 the AI become aware of all your units still alive and decide to use those officers to charge at your soldiers instead of ambushing them, as previously stated.

Another thought, does the AI respond to  commotion such as shooting at the door making noise and racket?

Nope

[SteamXCOM]

Another factor in the aliens exiting the UFO is how after turn 20 the AI become aware of all your units still alive and decide to use those officers to charge at your soldiers instead of ambushing them, as previously stated.

Thank you Hobbes, I shall check that more closely, I think that 20 turns was in the original game to help  keep the map from bogging down.

----------------

EDIT

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/40t4op/am_i_the_only_one_who_hates_turn_timers/
Talks about "turn timers,"

..."They don't want the players playing safe, sitting ...."  "....turn after turn"

"in the original 1994 XCOM aliens acquired full vision of your troops after turn 20, which was therefore followed by the spam of their psy abilities. So, there was a pretty good incentive to finish up before turn 20,"

I gather for MUTONS that is a safe strategy since they do not have any psi warriors so after the 20th turn the player does not suffer any psi attacks from them.

I set all the aggression for MUTONs to 0 and after turn 20 they were indeed exiting the supply ship at a faster rate, followed by the navigator on turn 46.

As far as the SECTOIDS exiting their scouts, well since they do have psi and  I have to study that further.

I thought about sealing up the outer doors of UFO's at least to easier compel a storming of the UFO since now the door was permanently open I would be more likely to venture inside.

How are other players doing the UFO's storming or awaiting the bum rush?

A discussion about that I just discovered

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1827.0/nowap.html

Quixote==> I used to love storming UFOs but then I realized...
« on: January 24, 2014, 06:35:50 pm »...that aliens will always come out if you wait till turn 20.

That took away a lot of the enjoyment of the game from me, because it's hard to justify the risk of storming the UFO when you know you could just line up a firing squad outside and wait for the reaction fire training.

Maybe we could make it a toggle to choose if aliens will automatically know where the humans are after turn 20? In that case, there would always be a couple of aliens left in the UFO, and you would have to take the chance.
.....it's just difficult to convince myself to go into the UFO when I know I don't have to.
 

yes THIS, how to keep a few inside...

 but obviously this has come up before but no clear answers

--------------
edit 2

 The inner UFO doors might be sealed as well as outer doors of the UFO in MCD,   changing the doors to have wall attributes but they would have to be made weak, very weak for grenades or gunshots to blow them, especially inner doors.  This I would not like to do since tilesets are shared by the Alien basemaps, though I have found the upper levels of those bases I have not been needing to clear since the aliens at some point always come to me before I get there.
 
 An alternative to this would be to edit the ship maps and add some sort of fragile security screens to avoid touching the doors. 
These security screens would prevent the aliens from moving around too far but would be easily destroyable in a firefight, maybe armor 10 so a rifle could destroy it.
Not a whole lot of work for vanilla maps but for mods like darkened UFO's, that is a lot of maps; plus those added by mods making altering the common tileset via mod more preferable.

[Countdown]

I think at a certain point you have to force yourself to play the game in the way it is fun, rather than manipulating the system to the point it is not fun.

Mind control is a perfect example. With MC in vanilla, you can just make the game a complete joke. Not difficult at all, almost never lose a man, etc. So I set a rule for myself that I could only use a PSI Amp once and could only bring three on a mission (I wanted to mod Psi Amps so they are only 1 time use, but there is no way to do this currently).

Yes, it'd be more optimal if I could enforce these rules in game rather than setting artificial restrictions on myself, but all the same once I set that rule "pretending" psi amps were only 1 per use and only bringing 3 on a mission, I had much more fun playing.

With your current issue, don't cheat just because you know the 20 turn rule. Play the game "pretending" you don't know about the 20 turn rule and storm the UFO because that's what a real life XCOM unit would do.

An analogy: If you are playing the board game Battleship, you have the ability to cheat and tell your opponent that they "missed" when they actually "hit." But just because you can cheat, does that mean you have to?


TLDR;

I storm the UFO anyway. Otherwise it'd feel like cheating.

[Meridian]

I think at a certain point you have to force yourself to play the game in the way it is fun, rather than manipulating the system to the point it is not fun.

This.

[SteamXCOM]

Is it possible to make the 20 turn effect a variable, moddable option in OpenXCom Extended+  (if not the vanilla game)?
--One could either select what turn the 20 turn effect occurs;
--or even make it random;
--to occur sometime after turn x
-- or between turns xx and xx or whatever?

This would be helpful for the larger ships.

In my situation, there  is more involved here than the post 20 turn effect where aliens are aware of your troop location and start heading in your direction.
Hobbes mentioned the RMG "...but a few times they might come out of the UFO because of the RNG after several turns"

For scout ships, the aliens do not have a whole lot of places to move so as they travel around in their ship, and pass the door, the odds are pretty good that the random number generator will select the option that happens to take them outside.   As a result, by the time I get to their ship; after clearing the outside defenders, the scout ship is well empty before turn 10.   In testing HWps only;  farm map, small scout (crew 3 to 8 ) I witnessed this several times.

Changing the routing map to have the shipboard aliens pass the door rather than a chance to go through it would help but that is a lot of maps to change if "Darkened UFO's" is used.   

Here I have created a mod ALIEN LOCKDOWN which in essence makes all the alien doors tu255 to travel through, and weakening the inner doors so they can be blown with most weapons.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5649.0.html

Not an elegant solution, but it seems to to work and can be turned on and off between saved games.

[Countdown]

Is it possible to make the 20 turn effect a variable, moddable option in OpenXCom Extended+  (if not the vanilla game)?

Yes, you can edit it in the rulesets in OXC or OXC Extended. From the UFO Paedia:

cheatTurn - When the aliens became aware of all your units (on vanilla it was after turn 20)

[SteamXCOM]

Yes, you can edit it in the rulesets in OXC or OXC Extended. From the UFO Paedia:

cheatTurn - When the aliens became aware of all your units (on vanilla it was after turn 20)

     WOW came to the party late on that one. 
     Some possibilities have opened up, Countdown thank you.  Offhand I will probably double the value to keep the aliens aboard;  especially helpful for larger ships.
     The SCOUT ships probably still need the ALIEN LOCKDOWN mod as too easy for them to ALL randomly wander out.
 
  In checking to see the cheatTurn variable in action ... 
     Hellrazor has been using that variable on his Hardmode Expansion maps, ie:
         cheatTurn: 10  #BATTLESHIP
         cheatTurn: 14  #SUPPLY SHIP
         cheatTurn: 14  #LARGE SCOUT
         
         No sure why he is DECREASING the turn from 20 to lesser values unless he WANTS them to vacate their ships,  I'm interested about hearing his thoughts on the matter.

[Countdown]

No sure why he is DECREASING the turn from 20 to lesser values unless he WANTS them to vacate their ships,  I'm interested about hearing his thoughts on the matter.

In general, decreasing the turn when all the aliens become aware of your troops' locations makes the game harder. If you're up against aliens with Psi, then you have a barrage of psi attacks. Even if they don't have Psi, the aliens will all converge on your position and you'll be fighting off a swarm of them instead of one by one as you sneak around the map. Decreasing the cheatTurn forces you to be more aggressive with your tactics because if you're not and there are still a lot of aliens remaining when they become aware, you're going to have a rough time.

Try changing the cheatTurn to 1 on a map with a large number of aliens and see how far you get.

[7Saturn]

One thing I'm still not sure about: Are the aliens somewhat trying to spread their units? They traverse from one designated point to another. That I know. But are they choosing their target points randomly, or is there some sort of directive, to distribute themselves somehow? I often encounter them trying to reach certain points outside, which seem to be standard spawning points. But as they are taken out one by one, trying to reach them, it's kind of a slow stream until only a few are left. Especially the last three take their time, until round 20 has been reached.

[SteamXCOM]

One thing I'm still not sure about: Are the aliens somewhat trying to spread their units?

As far as the  maps themselves drawing them out in an unmodded game... in checking the farm(in MAPVIEW), according to their routing priorities, most route tiles were priority 0-2, though one 2nd floor tile in a barn before a window  was priority 8, which in part explains the fascination that aliens have with peering out at least one of the barn windows. 

Higher priority like 6 or 7 means they should patrol/guard that tile over 0 or 1.

There are routing map priories inside the ship as described here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Tactical_AI

Notice outside of the bigger ships it is 0 or 1. 
On the Large Scout (must see it in Mapview as not shown there) the priory of the square nearest the door is 6 as well as adjacent tiles inside the ship. The route priority of the route tile outside is 2 which means they probably are encouraged to move around a lot in the ship, but priority 2 should give them a higher chance of going outside more than 1 or zero. 

 My experience with the Mutons and the Supply ship is rather extensive, and they will eventually empty it, with the scout ships being quickly abandoned (sectoids) by comparison.  Once they see a player unit outside, it seems they are unlikely to re-enter their ship and will do actions related to that spotted unit; 

Anyway, in using the AlienLockdown mod, it is a different game since it keeps them inside their vessel.  Once a door is breached, an agitated alien can come boiling out so even though I try to set up a kill zone before the door is breeched, results are less predicable as many rooms are unoccupied.