Alien hunting tips?

[absimiliard]

So, recently one of my captains hit the century mark and decided he'd had enough of killing humans. He wasn't the retiring sort however, and yearned to go out in combat accomplishing something good for the species, so he decided to take up alien hunting.

To find aliens to fight he tried several things.

1. Patrolling in sectors with rumors of alien attacks in space: to no effect. (Tactics ~15 with electronics)
2. Moving back and forth from sector to sector, in and out of alien attack rumor-space. This was also ineffective, adding 20 artifacts to my hold in hopes of triggering more events in red-space didn't seem to change anything.
3. Blockading/patrolling over wild planets with alien rumors seemed ineffectual.
3a. Exploring the world before/after seemed to have no effect as well.

In the end all of my captain's efforts were in vain. He never did manage to find any alien vessels or even space-hulks. Disappointed he retired to the Cadar homeworld, where he bought a farm and now raises spotted cow-oids near his neighbor (once an infamous "Dark Nemesis" who also retired to Cadar farmlands).

So, since I'm still sort of fond of the idea of hunting aliens, does anyone have any tips for a prospective alien-hunter? Did I just need more Tactics? Would a larger hold, with more artifacts, have made a difference? I was using a ship w. huge crew numbers (like 300) for what I hoped to be a big fight, did I need a smaller vessel so I would look weaker?

Or is alien-hunting just a hopeless quest? Is an alien-hunter doomed to wander the stars like a future-day Don Quixote, pointlessly tilting at windmills?

-abs

{edited for spelling}

[spike]

Lurking around Dead Planets was mentioned in another post, by Cory I think. I guess a Dead planet is one of those planets with no Wild Zone, no Urban Zone?

[jerry]

spike Yup, aliens can be found on dead planets, it's in game guide. Dead planets have no zones at all and have yellowish color.
Hulks can be found at feral planets, which have only wild zone and reddish color.
How to find them tho? I've no idea, besides raising difficulty level and checking the rumors.

absimiliard what difficulty level are you playing? If it's around normal I doubt you will see any alien.

[absimiliard]

Hrmm. Difficulty, damn, might have been my fault that I couldn't find any aliens.

I usually play at Crazy. But as I was working on the Century Award and just decided that after 100 years of playing nice I was bored I think I might have been playing "below my game". So it's possible it was much closer to normal than I usually enjoy. (when I "go for an award" I'm VERY focussed on getting ONLY that award, and maximizing my odds of getting it so I was probably down around "Hard" or something)

So maybe no aliens is my fault. I'll try hunting again when I get a higher difficulty character up to speed. (lacking an award for it that might be a bit, getting Dark Nemesis was a bear and definitely took "hey there's an award" for me to find it rewarding enough to keep trying, otherwise I surely would've quit in frustration after the 20th captain died)

-abs

[Unbeliever]

Sorry for bumping a month-old thread, but I've got something that sort of applies.

First off: Hi everybody, just broke down and bought the game after playing the free version for way too long, THEN discovered this forum and started reading.

So here's my story:

I've pretty much just played the one character (Vlad) from the beginning, and imported him into the full version of the game.

Vlad's a Syndicate man. Level 18 officer in all three Syndicates, with 1500-2000 reputation in each. As for the Houses? They're not fans.

He's pretty much a jack-of-all-trades, with straight 30's in all his stats and skills, and is flying a maxed-out Tiberia Runner (which I don't see in the list of ships in the online PDF, so I dunno how it compares to other ships, but he pretty much doesn't get touched in battle these days). Of course, this is all at Normal difficulty, so it's not all that impressive.

So not long after upgrading to the full game, Vlad gets the scare of his life. He hasn't ventured outside the happy green corner of the galaxy, so he's not expecting surprises, and he's carting home a shipful of lovely trinkets he picked up while defending his honor from Steel Song Scum while innocently blockading their homeworld, when out of nowhere, BLAM. Space Hulk.

[Now maybe some of you yawn at such things, but this was Vlad's first non-human encounter, and "unexpected" is a serious understatement.]

"SPACE HULK?!?", Vlad thinks? Sure enough, looks bulgy and green. Vlad sees that "Acknowledge" is not an option. OK then, let's see what he's made of.

No sooner does Vlad cry "Battle Stations!" than he sees PRECISELY what Space Hulk is made of. He's level eleven hundred and somethingdy something (you'll forgive Vlad for not remembering the last two digits of a FOUR-DIGIT level number, when he'd never seen one higher than mid-double-digits previously).

Space Hulk was lugging around 350 tons of cargo ("about right for a Hulk", a tiny corner of Vlad's brain peeps). And he had about 15 crew, and not a single gun or torpedo.

Not... a single... weapon...

Vlad froze. He remained very, very still, while he pondered his options.

Space Hulk. Level Eleven Hundred and change. No visible weapons.

350 tons of cargo... *DROOL*... and me with a 100-ton capacity, already stuffed full of Steel Song goodies.

Level Eleven Hundred. No VISIBLE weapons...

Utterly forgetting his "Normal"-difficulty-enhanced invulnerability, Vlad ran screaming into the night, leaving Space Hulk still scratching his head and wondering what happened...

...So to sum up: non-human encounters ARE possible at Normal difficulty.

But... are levels like that normal? And do aliens/hulks have ways to cause pain without guns or torpedoes? Was Vlad right to run away terribly fast?

Thanks for any/all input...

[slayernz]

First up, welcome to Elite and welcome to the Forum I'm sure you're discovering just how much more expansive the Elite version is than the free.

So Alien ships ... yes they definitely can bring on the pain. I did think they were armed and torp'd, but maybe not. Don't forget though, that even if you have absolutely no weapons, you can board an enemy ship, and you can RAM them.

Also ... running is a perfectly normal reaction. Other captains try their hardest to commandeer the alien ship, but soon discover the Captain's seat is far less comfortable than their current ship.

[onthewaves]

Hello, i'am also new to the forums.

I had an encounter with those alliens on hard difficulty while I was only at lvl 2 and flying a Neutiquam Erro.

Is it normal that it took me about a 1000 turns to defeat it with only boarding? I was almost ready to give up to be honest at around 500 turns, but i thought i just keep trying.

Have I done something wrong?

[Cory Trese]

No, there are clearly some bugs. There are a number of encounter generation systems -- one of them is still handing out the Alien early in the game.

1000 turns is too long, we need to limit that to a certain length

[onthewaves]

Thx for the reply .

[Raven]

Hello ! I'm also a total newbie to this game, even though I can't stop playing it since a few days...
I also encountered a few aliens, but could not manage to take one of them. Since this moment, I tried as hard as I could to meet other Alien, but it seems like the rumors only "state facts" : an Alien WAS here... But no longer is ! Because even after countless turns of patrolling, nothing happens... (except one or two mutinery... )
Do you think there is an efficient way of dealing with these rumors ?

[Cory Trese]

I will double check them, they increase the encounters by 10X, but they are still rare. If I did 100X I worry people would run into accidental Alien more by flying into random rumor sectors.

[Tenebrous Pirate]

100x sounds good to me. I mean, it would get people to double check their rumors much more often, like any good captain would!

Say, would it be possible on the main map to have tiles that are the locations of rumors be highlighted somehow? I may have to post this in wish lists...

[Cory Trese]

I have frozen any new graphic add ons for the main map while I diagnostic the screen turns black issue. Once I figure out what is up there I can start using up even more phone memory! hahahaha

[oldalchemist]

If alien attacks weren't rare, the factions would get together more easily as there would be a real outside threat to the quadrant.

"I can't stand you Cadar goons, but at least you don't try to probe me! Let's have an alliance, at least until we drive the aliens out!"

[Tenebrous Pirate]

The Cadar goons don't try and probe you? Lucky bastard!