XCOM EU Disabling the Alien "Free Move"

[Beagcom]

The Alien free move sucks as a gameplay mechanic, in that it forces you to play in very "gamey" way to counter it. I frequently find myself not wanting to make otherwise good moves such as taking heavy cover, flanking or anything that involves pushing into the fog because I know if I push too far into the fog and unluckily trigger another pack of aliens, I'm completely screwed.

 

It subtracts from the experience in another way in that you effectively can't be shot at until you see it coming - as far as I've seen the aliens won't shoot on their free move, ever, which means you can happily end your turn in no cover, exploiting the fact that you if aliens patrol into you and get their free move, they won't be able to shoot and you'll have next turn to get to cover.

 

Both of the above are very gamey tactics which take away from the otherwise awesome experience the game provides. For that reason, I'd like to see a mod that disables aliens getting a free move as soon as they are spotted, and have them simply act normally throughout the mission. The possible drop in difficulty thereof would be replaced by the fact that those aliens could now be waiting in Overwatch in the fog to ambush you, which makes a lot more sense and is something you could plan for instead of being a luck thing. It would also allow you to properly sneak up on aliens - if you sneak up on them currently, they get their free move and all spread out into cover, so there's no point.

 

 

I'd love to hear if anyone thinks this is going to be a possible change or would be interested in doing it. I believe the game would be a lot more interesting for it.

[muon]

Double-post. Oops. Edited October 18, 2012 by muon

[muon]

+1 to this. There might be a mechanical reason that aliens get a free move that we haven't thought of yet (probably having to do with being unable to spawn aliens in cover/overwatch and the performance gains from not spawning aliens at the beginning of the mission), but I'd love to see the "reaction move" gone.

[Beknatok]

and the performance gains from not spawning aliens at the beginning of the mission

 

From my research into the game scripts, I'm fairly certain that everyone is loaded when the map loads.

[Ichthyic]

It's not really a "free move" so much as it gives you the opportunity to use two skills to "surprise" the aliens: invisibility and battle scanner.

 

If you remove the ability for the aliens to react to your presence, then battle scanner becomes next to worthless, and invisibility loses half of its strategic value.

 

look at it this way: You can hear the aliens moving, right? Well, so can they, and they, like you, take up positions to counter.

 

yeah yeah, don't ask why they can't hear you coming when you're invisible. I know... the ghost suit has sound dampening too!

[FlyingHigh10000000]

The problem with removing this is that if you're playing on Normal or Easy, the aliens don't move, so you would quite literally be able to send one person up to the aliens huddled together, then have your heavy fire a rocket into the middle of them or have the squad drop grenades at their feet. The "taking cover" move is so that unlike the original game, where you'd just randomly find aliens scattered all over the map,(like they suddenly forgot what they were doing on Earth, or something.) the aliens look like they're an organized force. If it helps, just imagine that when you see them take their free move, the aliens were actually waiting for you and dove toward cover. It makes up for the fact that the aliens will never, ever wait in Overwatch and decimate your squad the moment you have someone round a corner.