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I don’t think hunt protocol is a thing

What is a thing, though, is that once a patrol pod is activated, a stationary pod will become a patrol pod

And this can happen in the same turn

Which is what causes these clown car scenarios where each pod just rolls into you - specifically on these smaller ufo maps where there just isn’t that much room

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Also worth noting - the single most dangerious pod you can encounter during the 'mid game', which curiously wasn't mentioned here - is the sectoid commander + 4/5 outsider pods. Which can show up around when beserkers start showing up (July/August). That pod is very hard to prepare for, even with an A team, and can show up in any mission.

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Disagree what you say about battlescanners triggering hunt mode.

My understanding has always been - once you engage a pod, but fail to cleanly finish it off, such that all active aliens loses LOS, then hunt mode triggers. Furthermore, I've only ever seen it happen in trap landings.

Can't say I've seen battlescanners trigger a pod by itself - and I've thrown plenty of them literally at the feat at inactive pods. On terror missions though, be aware that spotting an 'inactive' zombie will cause it to 'activate', thus giving you 1 tile LOS around it, which may trigger other pods. This occurs whether you spot via battlescaner, or concealment.

Agreed though that spotted inactive pods in the fog can sometimes behave very strangely, and are very prone to teleporting. I've had the boss cyberdisk in a base assault teleport to the very first room, after spotting it via concealment in the last room. Not once, not twice, but three seperate times!

Also worth noting - flashbangs don't reduce movement by 50%. They nerfed it in the 1.0 release down to 40%.

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My personal experience with the Hunt protocol is very similar to what you have described, although I am only playing on normal difficulty. There are a lot of people talking about the one lose alien activating the other pods, or activating the command pod triggering the Callforhelp, and the Hunt protocol is none of those things.

I used multiple scanners and a concealment scout on a landed abductor (I believe? It has a command pod of 4, not 6) and after camping on the LZ for a couple of turns, I motion tracked and realized a stationery pod (which consists of 4 Thin men) behind me (!), so I go concealment scout to spot them then wait for next turn to take an opening shot with my ITZ sniper. All is well and I disposed of the pod very quickly, but then when I started camping again, another pod of berserkers just walked into me, which is not strange, but during the engagement I also spotted (through the fog) a pod of floaters beelining straight to my location, which is then followed by a pod of sectoids, sectoid commander and mectoid. Through sheer luck I disposed of them all and the only pod left is the command pod.

The strange things I noticed:

1) This happens to me only on large landed. I am not sure if it is because I play on normal and small or medium simply doesn't have enough pods to demonstrate the behavior. On crashed UFOs or normal abductions, I do not spot similar behaviors. No matter how long I wait, patrols behave normally and stationery pod remain stationery after tagged with battlescanners or concealment scout. Terror is of course Terror and they just ran around not killing civilians after battle scanned.

2) Battle scanned enemies seems to "noticed" they are battlescanned. I think this is not news but is something worth noticing. Supposedly the battlescanner cannot be spotted, because if you don't land it on their head they simply don't activate. However, during combat if you land battlescanners on enemies that are in the fog, they "notice" and will try to relocate to another location. It is particularly noticeable on Thin man, sectoids and exalts because they have the animations of "hey guys, seems like we are spotted. Let's relocate" before they actually take any actions. Funny thing the way they relocate seems random and sometimes expose themselves to squadsight flank. The point is, battlescanning enemies can triggers codes in the game for the enemies.

Another interesting thing is, people keep swear to god that the lose sectoid will activate other pods, and I don't think that it happens a 100% of the time. I see the lose sectoids and mutons wandering into another inactive pods, stationery or patrolling, and proceed to not activate them for several turns. Quite comical, come to think of it. It's like this little kid going to the police station and tell the officers that XCOM maniacs are coming to murder them and the officers are like "eh, not my problem".

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