Massive alien activity causing negative rating

[Boogeyman]

So at the end of a month I surprisingly got a massive negative score/rating. I had done all missions popping up so it was quite unexpected. I looked around and found out that an area outside my range had generated thousands of alien activity points causing the penalty. I looked up my savegame files and already at 13th of the month the region is at -3600 points. This is month 10/11 in the game so I really have no means to react to this.

What is going on? Are you supposed to get global coverage before 1st year ends? How is it even possible to generate so much alien activity score? Is this a bug? In some other thread it was mentioned that you get -2/30min for landed ships. That would mean that to get -3600 there had been multiple ships landed for the whole month!

I didn't fail any pogroms or skip them and I haven't researched the Mutant alliance.

[cc]

The aliens might've constructed a base in that area or you got hit with a bad combo of peacekeeping/conversion missions. Anyway, this will mean less money for the month, reduced funding and if it is a base more of the above. It's just bad luck, but not something that will kill you or permanently ruin your game.

[Boogeyman]

The aliens might've constructed a base in that area or you got hit with a bad combo of peacekeeping/conversion missions. Anyway, this will mean less money for the month, reduced funding and if it is a base more of the above. It's just bad luck, but not something that will kill you or permanently ruin your game.

I looked around my savefile and found no alien base mentions. If it is just bad luck with missions this can keep on happening again... In vanilla aliens get max 50 points for a successful mission. To get 3600 it would take multiple successful missions daily.

The more I think about this it has to be a bug.

[ohartenstein23]

This is not a bug; this is probably an excavator ship landed for a long time. Landed ships generate 2 points per half-hour, so a single ship can cause -100 per day. You should watch your graphs occasionally to see if something is happening where your radar can't see.

[Boogeyman]

This is not a bug; this is probably an excavator ship landed for a long time. Landed ships generate 2 points per half-hour, so a single ship can cause -100 per day. You should watch your graphs occasionally to see if something is happening where your radar can't see.

To get 3600 in 13 days means it would have to have been 3 ships landed 24/7 since day 1. Seems unlikely.

I usually do check the graphs every now and then, but if by day 13 you are at thousands in the negative there isn't really any mean to recover.

[cc]

A Conversion mission has a 200 points score. This means whenever a ship lands and takes off again, you lose 200 points. There's four ships doing two landings each (4x2x200), so that's 1600.
An Alien Base mission also has a score of 200 and 8 landings as well; 7 if there is no base yet. So that's 1400.
Sway Government has a 300 points score and 6 landings, so that's 1800.
Pacification only has a 100 points score and 8 landings, so that's 800 points.

Please note that the above are in addition to the points generated by UFOs flying on the map (1 per 30 minutes) or landed (2 per 30 minutes). So yes, a 3600 score can happen in 13 days if two high-scoring missions are triggered at the same time.

[Boogeyman]

A Conversion mission has a 200 points score. This means whenever a ship lands and takes off again, you lose 200 points. There's four ships doing two landings each (4x2x200), so that's 1600.
An Alien Base mission also has a score of 200 and 8 landings as well; 7 if there is no base yet. So that's 1400.
Sway Government has a 300 points score and 6 landings, so that's 1800.
Pacification only has a 100 points score and 8 landings, so that's 800 points.

Please note that the above are in addition to the points generated by UFOs flying on the map (1 per 30 minutes) or landed (2 per 30 minutes). So yes, a 3600 score can happen in 13 days if two high-scoring missions are triggered at the same time.

Ahhh. I didn't know that they land multiple times and score each time. With that the score is attainable.

If I ever get time for a new campaign I'll need to remember to micro the graphs daily. And to rush some vehicle that can actually scout.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Together with the low score rating the report must've told you regions that reduced 'funding' or simply withdrawed (zero tolerance policy).
Scouting those regions using crafts like the hunter-killer or any vessel capable of staying for hours 'anchored' in the area to spot the ufo is a solution to look into.

The academy loves to 'dig' for resources in Siberia. The 'excavator' craft used is poorly armed and can't hit your crafts too good (considering decent pilot/s driving it) and the drill-ship can be easily gunned down using 10mm craft-guns, spike rockets and seagull rockets. The crew is poorly armed and no armor. The toughest opposition are the 1x1 drones and one single engineer. The rest are 'Explorers' and researchers.

The traders guild does this mission from time to time as well, they have the same poor equipment and armor with mostly G.O. and Guild Security running around the surface.
Capturing an excavator always nets you 48x Metal Ore. You can either smelt it into x50 scrap metal or bunker it for late-game 50.000 $ obsidian chips (Mint required).

Also go for research! Research nets score for every topic done. It's a sizable source of positive score income you've to invest into to progress the tech-tree and 'bandaid' months of inactivity due to wounded hands or simply no activity in your region.

[Boogeyman]

Together with the low score rating the report must've told you regions that reduced 'funding' or simply withdrawed (zero tolerance policy).
Scouting those regions using crafts like the hunter-killer or any vessel capable of staying for hours 'anchored' in the area to spot the ufo is a solution to look into.

The academy loves to 'dig' for resources in Siberia. The 'excavator' craft used is poorly armed and can't hit your crafts too good (considering decent pilot/s driving it) and the drill-ship can be easily gunned down using 10mm craft-guns, spike rockets and seagull rockets. The crew is poorly armed and no armor. The toughest opposition are the 1x1 drones and one single engineer. The rest are 'Explorers' and researchers.

The traders guild does this mission from time to time as well, they have the same poor equipment and armor with mostly G.O. and Guild Security running around the surface.
Capturing an excavator always nets you 48x Metal Ore. You can either smelt it into x50 scrap metal or bunker it for late-game 50.000 $ obsidian chips (Mint required).

Also go for research! Research nets score for every topic done. It's a sizable source of positive score income you've to invest into to progress the tech-tree and 'bandaid' months of inactivity due to wounded hands or simply no activity in your region.

Yeah it was some asian region/countries. I didn't have anything with good radar range to scout the region and the damage was already done once I noticed it. Also while I did have spike rockets and seagulls they were too expensive to keep actually in use. Keeping then in planes that shoot down stuff made most missions just not worth it. If I had had more hangar/base capacity it could have been possible to keep a dedicated craft with them equipped for bigger stuff.

If I had actually gotten to meet them in battlescape I have no doubt it would have gone down well. I just didn't yet have the capacity to get there and was caught off-guard.

I was capped at 16/16 brainers and they were busy all the time, but they didn't really matter at this scope of score.

If the missions are coded to target specifically siberia making an asia based start could be a nice early counter to this.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Around month 10/11 you should have 2-3 bases established covering Europe, North America and Asia/Russia.
With the main base sporting 1-2 hangars and +1 hangar for each expansion there should be room to field at least 2 crafts as 'interceptors' , one been your menace-class ship (Boni/Fuego/Fortuna/Metallo) and one hangar holding the airbus.

An aircar is a good early investment to gun down civilian traffic. Those small ship engines are worth 100.000k among all the loot and captives you can get for minimal investment.
I've to admit that spikes and seagulls are really expensive early on that's why you save them for the important tasks.

25mm, 30mm and 50mm guns are worth to be used in exchange for every craft you can gun down with them. Those are all light weapon gunmounts so it's little trouble to get them hooked onto an aircar or onto most of the codex-locked ships. Even the Hunter-Killer can be of great use using this armament.

At some point you've to decide what codex you want to look into. You can't even advance the tech tree without choosing one since you need to research one of the codexes to get the topic 'Crowning'. This research topic is needed to research 'School Graduation' (T3 tech).

I went for grey codex in my current run and made good use of the 'Jellyfish' as my 7man dropship until I had the research topics necessary to build to Fortuna.