What am I doing Wrong? (Alien Hunting)

[laughingman]

So I'm trying to grab the "future unlocks" for the set of alien hunting achievements. So far things have been dull as heck. By 212.13 I've only found two aliens (both slaughtered with ease) and have yet to see a hive.

Here's what I've done:

Setting: Hard (yes, I know this makes finding them harder, but I want the best possible odds once I finally find a Hive to capture or 100+ Hull)

First phase of the game was just gathering cash and leveling up, so as to get a good ship for hunting and the skills to use it (pissed off Thulun and Javat, the rest like me well enough).

Once that was done I even set up a couple fall-back ships in dry dock in case something goes wrong. Currently running a fully kitted out Omega Cruiser. Stockpiled a few hundred thousand credits for the inevitable fuel, torp, and repair costs I'd be seeing over the course of my hunt.

Then I put together my team: Military Officer, Bodyguard, and Templar.

Next, gathered every rumor I could find in the hopes of an Alien (space, not wilderness) rumor.

If I found the rumor, went to the spot. I set up a nearby cache and fuel supplier (I now have caches spread across the galaxy as a result) while patrolling the spot over and over again until the rumor was no longer shown at those coordinates.

If no rumor could be found, I sought out the most out of the way dead worlds I could locate. (those are the yellow/orangish planets that look kind of like gas giants, right?) I then patrolled those planets for a few months to a year, before going out looking for rumors again.

I have experimented with these skill spreads: Tactics=Level/Stealth=(1/2 Level), Tactics=Level/Stealth=Level, and Tactics=(1/2 Level)/Stealth=Level. I have not seen significant differences in my patrol results (any difference was well within expected random distributions).

So, what am I doing wrong here? Should I drop my bodyguard and pick up the Veteran Officer? During rumors, should I be patrolling the rumor coordinates or the closest dead world to those coordinates? What skill spread makes it easier to find aliens, if any? Is finding aliens on hard just too rare to make this approach reasonable in the first place?

I'm getting really bored with patrol->patrol->etc.->Port->Repair->Scrounge for WF->Patrol->Patrol->etc. for years on end with hardly any results (I do at least have Alien Hunter I and II, but my hopes that "the Ire of the Alien" would lead to a chain of encounters have been dashed). Please help me optimize this process, for my sanity's sake.

[contributor]

I'm not expert, just getting going on the alien hunting thing myself, but I think the difficulty level is at least part of the problem. I left my first alien hunter hanging on Hard because I just wasn't finding anything. I think he was about to the year 200. He found 2 or 3 aliens earlier in the game though. Also, it may just take more patrolling. I never chase rumors, just go patrol dead planets in the bottom right corner. I've had a lot of luck at Dahosha 3 (something like that, just to the east of Sernouann Alpha). There's a lot of places to reload/refuel there. I will easily work through 200,000 or more, just buying water-fuel and repairs while patrolling for aliens.

With all that said I almost never see hives, unless they're Narvidian hives, which don't count as hives for the award. So if there is a different strategy for finding them, I would love to know what it is.

Also what is your tactics level at? For patrolling to find aliens I think it's more important what that level is at verse the game level rather than verse your captains level.

[laughingman]

Tactics is at 25, stealth is now catching up as I read somewhere on here that it was as or more important than tactics for patrolling. I have no idea if that's true or not though.

Thanks to random Javat, Indy, and Thulun jokers bugging me every time I go back to port I'm more or less breaking even on costs, except when something unusually nasty happens.

I'll check out this world you mention. Maybe things will improve. Anyone else have some insights on this? Is it even possible to encounter a Hive or 100+ Hull alien on Hard?

One thing I don't get at all is why aliens would be *harder* to encounter as turns advance. I'd think they'd be jumping you more often (and at higher levels) as things get nastier.

[he]

Because that is what makes the achievement difficult? Just guessing.

I want to know the answer on how to find aliens, too. They hardly seem to show up on Insane difficulty and never by the time I can actually catch a space hulk (usually between levels 1 and 3, or between turns 10000 and 12000.) I'm thinking of starting an impossible run just to see if I can make them appear more often.

Also, contrary to what other people have found, I've found the most aliens near 1,1 - never any far away.

[laughingman]

So I think I found a solution, though that solution combined with the combat message problems ended up getting me killed.

I dropped the bodyguard and picked up a Veteran Officer. After that it took less than a half-dozen patrol rotations to find an alien.

Unfortunately it was a 500-crew Terrox (and I'm fairly sure it was a Terror-type), and without my bodyguard I wasn't nearly as prepared for the fight as I had been (as I'd also chosen my upgrades with my bodyguard in mind). I managed to kill 350 of the alien crew before they finally got me.

With this in mind, I've started a new Captain with a similar but more focused plan. I'm still doing hard, starting Thulun (I've chosen to piss off Rychart and Cadar this time), Star Trader Class (critical for getting the repairs I need from Indy ports).

Instead of dropping the body guard I'm going to try replacing the military officer with the Veteran/Alien Hunter. Losing his bonuses is sad, but my understanding is that he primarily helps with transitional boarding actions, while the bodyguard helps sustained boarding actions. Fighting aliens is almost all sustained, you *might* get a single transitional boarding attack in, maybe.

Going to go with the following upgrades:
Ram Prow
Leviathan
Mercenaries
Water-Fuel Recycling Plant

For the last one I don't know, maybe a Sail Command Probe? I could just as easily fo with a cargo pod or stealth array. Not sure.

From what I can tell it's more about how far away the dead world is from civilization in general; someone else suggested that distance from either green zones or port might be what determines the chance of finding an alien on a dead world. Not enough data to say one way or another at this point.

So... thoughts? Input? Advice?

[contributor]

That planet that I mentioned earlier. I just had a captain who found 5 of 6 aliens he encountered at that planet and it's surrounded by populated planets and green. I don't know if that planet is always that good, but it was for me. So that's one bit of evidence against it needing to be far from populated planets.

[laughingman]

Good to know, that helps pin down some optimal planets, for both convenience and viability.

[he]

Just a thought, perhaps the body guard also protects from alien encounters.
Also, mind posting your aliens/turn ratio? Excluding aliens found in the 26 turns following another alien.

Just would like to get an idea of the danger aliens represent, this far on insane playing normally (not hunting) I get about 1 alien per 6000 turns (2 or 3 in 15k turns) with most of them appearing early.

[contributor]

laughingman, also sorry for the loss of your captain. The first alien I ever met was a Terrox, but to this day I haven't seen another one. I just lost my captain to a lowly Knife alien who was 302% my level. It was sort of humiliating, but I was mixing up my strategy to do anything to find them and see what I could do as a gun-bunny. So no MO or Templar. Also I would try not to piss of any factions if you're trying to alien hunt. It will keep you from needing to get so many repairs, or from getting jumped by one of their pirates after a particularly nasty fight with an alien.

he just to compare notes my captain that just died was 50 turns shy of 15k. That was on crazy and he had 6 alien and 1 hive encounter but he was hunting them heavily. There definitely seemed to be more at first, but he was still turning them up later, with an alien vet.

[he]

Hypothesis: Aliens are "resources" just like trade goods, harvests, etc. And so their numbers diminish over time.
Hypothesis: stealth helps a lot with alien avoidance, so we shoot ourselves in the foot taking any stealth
Hypothesis: Deadly rogue trader + military officer/predator tracking array = alien bounty

Working on the last one now, but can't find a damn rogue trader.

[Deleted]

The best place to find aliens (not hulks) is over an indy dead planet with an alien rumor, then an indy dead planet without a rumor, than a red sector with an alien rumor. So patrolling dead planets with no alien rumors is better than patroling red sectors with alien rumors.

Patrols is largely based on game turn. By 1000AE you aren't turning up squat, so its best to patrol as early as possible. Tactics, Ship Speed, Wisdom and Solar Sails (in that order) help most for patrols, but its your tactics in relation to your game turn, not in relation to your lv. Alien Vet and carrying artifacts will also help, but artifacts can also increase alien attack power. Higher difficulty is better. And be patient. ou may need to patrol an indy dead planet for years and years before turning up an alien. And if after a lot of time you don't turn up anything, patrol a different dead planet. Some dead planets can turn up more aliens than others.

The thing about hulks is that their lv is 100X more than yours. So even if you find one, you won't be able to catch it. Also, there's probably a different strategy for finding hulks than aliens.

My request is to max the alien hulk at 4x normal enemy lv (as opposed to aliens who are upto 2x normal enemy lv). This would make it somewhat possible to defeat hulks. Otherwise, your changing range on an lv6000 hulk while your at lv50

[laughingman]

Well, I'm looking for Hives, not Hulks. Though from what I've heard not every hulk shows up with insane levels, just most of them. Not sure if that's actually true though.

Thanks for the advice on the patrols, it looks like I have a plan. From what I've seen bodyguard is somewhat better than MO for alien hunting overall. Still no luck on the Hive and 100 Hull achievements (the only two I have left now, I got RR3 just a little while ago). Currently I keep making a bad call during my ramp up and getting killed over something stupid before I can even start a serious hunt.

I think I've become a bit impatient. May take a break for a few days and try something else before coming back to this.

[Deleted]

Space hives are also refered to as hulks

[laughingman]

Oh, I thought that achievement was in reference to Narvidian Hives. Or are those all hulks as well? I'm probably just confused.

[Deleted]

Space hives or hulks are green xeno ships with hulk in the ship name. The exception is the narvadian hive which can be a space hive or alien, depending on its AI