Alien agents seem to spawn from time to time without any alien ships crashing. I've also been hunting them so as soon as any alien activity is detected, I have people identify and exterminate. But more keep on popping up now and then.
Do these creatures hatch out of pods or something?
Alien agents spawn without UFOs?
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neilwilkes
- Posts: 184
- Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:44 am
Re: Alien agents spawn without UFOs?
A good question and one I have been thinking about too.
I have got the suspicion some of the Hydra agents arrive via one of the solo Alien ships - the reconnaissance/scouting vessels that appear, and not just surviving from crashes. Indeed, I think the whole purpose of the crashing of UFO's is not to deliver agents at all, but to try & spread their vegetation & that their agents are dropped off by ship from orbit.
Once you manage to find one of the buggers, and investigate it a few times (they only seem able to go from one region to a neighbouring one at first) you'll notice that in their mission list most of them can go to Orbit....Kill one as quickly as you can, as this will trigger some new Xeno projects.
The best way to find them is to look with your highest level investigation councillor and look for those 'unknowns' with the vanishingly small chance of success - eventually this is possible to pull off, and I have found a 50% assassinate chance is worth rolling the dice on. You'll either need an agent with both high Investigate, Espionage & Command ratings to do what needs to be done, or a combination of agents with the above stats.
I have found that most of the time you detect activity there is nothing ground based which suggests ship based activity to me.
In my current run, my next 2 tasks are to Detain an alien & kill one of their scout ships in low earth orbit - both easier said than done too
I have got the suspicion some of the Hydra agents arrive via one of the solo Alien ships - the reconnaissance/scouting vessels that appear, and not just surviving from crashes. Indeed, I think the whole purpose of the crashing of UFO's is not to deliver agents at all, but to try & spread their vegetation & that their agents are dropped off by ship from orbit.
Once you manage to find one of the buggers, and investigate it a few times (they only seem able to go from one region to a neighbouring one at first) you'll notice that in their mission list most of them can go to Orbit....Kill one as quickly as you can, as this will trigger some new Xeno projects.
The best way to find them is to look with your highest level investigation councillor and look for those 'unknowns' with the vanishingly small chance of success - eventually this is possible to pull off, and I have found a 50% assassinate chance is worth rolling the dice on. You'll either need an agent with both high Investigate, Espionage & Command ratings to do what needs to be done, or a combination of agents with the above stats.
I have found that most of the time you detect activity there is nothing ground based which suggests ship based activity to me.
In my current run, my next 2 tasks are to Detain an alien & kill one of their scout ships in low earth orbit - both easier said than done too
Re: Alien agents spawn without UFOs?
Oh I'm advanced along the game, it's no problem to take out the xenos as soon as they appear. Resistance gets a project to design a bio weapon that gives you 50% assassinate chance on fully developed agent.
Finding xenos is actually easy, as soon as an alien activity appears (abduction etc), there's an unknown target in the same location. They have to send someone to carry out a mission, same as you. Xenos have high espionage so you can tell them apart from unknown human agents in the same location, if any
.
I should check what's the running tally on alphaforms by now, they can be killed in two turns after spawning with a bit of luck with two inspector/espionage agents.
There's no automated space defence network around earth so gunships do slip through and they usually do insertion right away so you don't have time to arrange an intercept manouver. But there are new xenos spotted more often than you get crashed ships..
Now that you mentioned "orbit" mission, I think Academy might be helping them and xenos can deorbit from Tiangong Station. Perhaps I should pay a visit to that tin can. I tried to make nice with Academy but they appear to get upset over engaging xenos.
Finding xenos is actually easy, as soon as an alien activity appears (abduction etc), there's an unknown target in the same location. They have to send someone to carry out a mission, same as you. Xenos have high espionage so you can tell them apart from unknown human agents in the same location, if any
.
I should check what's the running tally on alphaforms by now, they can be killed in two turns after spawning with a bit of luck with two inspector/espionage agents.
There's no automated space defence network around earth so gunships do slip through and they usually do insertion right away so you don't have time to arrange an intercept manouver. But there are new xenos spotted more often than you get crashed ships..
Now that you mentioned "orbit" mission, I think Academy might be helping them and xenos can deorbit from Tiangong Station. Perhaps I should pay a visit to that tin can. I tried to make nice with Academy but they appear to get upset over engaging xenos.