I have been playing for a little while now, and I am just wondering, what exactly goes into deciding what kind of baddies I run into? Is it just the Strength score of a region, the Avatar Project progress, the amount of time the game has gone on, or some combination there-of? Do reinforcements follow the same rules, or are they drawn from a global pool? I ask because I haven't seen a Sectoid in ages, but I am running into Berserkers and Mutons in regions with relatively low strength, and almost all ADVENT troopers are the advanced kind now, even in regions with 1 strength. I'm running into a lot of higher powered MECs too on a fairly regular basis, especially in ADVENT reinforcement waves.
What's the deal here? What do the pods scale to?
What Determines Pod Makeup?
Re: What Determines Pod Makeup?
The type of alien you see is governed primarily by something called "force level." This is an invisible global number that goes up by 1 point every 16 days (except that the first time it goes up is dependent on difficulty level). I *think* the max force level is 20.
The number of aliens you see is governed primarily by something called "advent strength" or "alert" (this you should be familiar with).
Depending on your force level, there is a certain distribution of possible aliens that can show up for given pods. It might seem like advent strength affects type of aliens, but not really, it's just that if your advent strength is super high, then a large number of aliens show up, so it is more likely to see all the different types of aliens within that force level.
There are other minor factors that affect type of aliens/pod compositions; one obvious one is mission type. You always see faceless in the rendezvous mission (and never turrets), you always see advent general in the HQ, you always see a sectopod in the blacksite mission, etc. Dark events (chrysallids/faceless) can give you enemies you would not normally see in certain missions.
Based on this information, it is entirely possible to see advanced aliens at advent strength level 1 simply because the force level is great enough (enough time has passed that the entire alien force has upgraded their types). Advent strength again determines number of enemies in a pod/map.
The number of aliens you see is governed primarily by something called "advent strength" or "alert" (this you should be familiar with).
Depending on your force level, there is a certain distribution of possible aliens that can show up for given pods. It might seem like advent strength affects type of aliens, but not really, it's just that if your advent strength is super high, then a large number of aliens show up, so it is more likely to see all the different types of aliens within that force level.
There are other minor factors that affect type of aliens/pod compositions; one obvious one is mission type. You always see faceless in the rendezvous mission (and never turrets), you always see advent general in the HQ, you always see a sectopod in the blacksite mission, etc. Dark events (chrysallids/faceless) can give you enemies you would not normally see in certain missions.
Based on this information, it is entirely possible to see advanced aliens at advent strength level 1 simply because the force level is great enough (enough time has passed that the entire alien force has upgraded their types). Advent strength again determines number of enemies in a pod/map.
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Mooncabbage
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Re: What Determines Pod Makeup?
Ahh, I did not know about force level. Thank you! I thought perhaps it would be possible to keep the enemies weaker if I played well and defeated them a lot, but it would seem not. This info will help my current campaign 