Bay 12 Games Forum

Stages of psi battle with MECs:
1) encounter: Sectoid commander 10 hp, turn one kill unless everyone on the team fails apocalypticly (being xcom I do not write this off as a possibilty, I know full well that Xcom is sentient and it hates me.) Ethereal 20 hp, forces spread out in two fire groups, infantry flank, MECs close
2) mind control: Sectoid commander, will die before this becomes a problem.  Ethereal, likely to reflect multiple incoming attacks on round one, assuming optimum damage dealt still dead now.  Assuming xcom, around 7-12 damage taken, action used to absorb hp from MEC, if you did this round right NOONE is on overwatch to kill the MEC and the MEC CANNOT kill anyone due to proper use of cover and position round two ethereal dies.
3) mission over or move to next target.

This is exactly how every single battle I have with psi enemies breaks down, they are too damn frail and rare to worry me at all.  I reserve my stress for Muton Elites.

I vastly prefer having my MECs punch Ethereals in the face.  And everything else for that matter.  A lot of the MEC system felt limited frankly, only six equipment options?  Three weapons?  And the perk tree hurt my head, on most levels there is a clearly superior choice, and on the others it's universaly 'more damage, or more defense?'  While I can see arguments for loading out with either the strike module or the flamethrower, or the healing mist vs. the grenade launcher, I can see no purpose to choosing the proximity mines over the shock pack (maybe if you play a really, really defensive style).
I love the MECs, don't get me wrong, but compared to the choices for the main classes, I felt a bit like I was being pushed into a generic 'mega assault heavy' role.

That said nothing about fourth-factioners  being a 'myth'.  It clearly stated that they have inconclusive data, as they cannot track multiple accounts currently.  I am not simply imagining things when I am rolling with a successful zerg and we sieze multiple bases, then the population massively dips on (insert faction) and suddenly jumps for (insert other faction), usually including a large percentage of the Zerg I'm currently rolling with.

I can't say if this is the result of multiple accounts or simply toon-jumping, but it definitely happens, and repeatedly over a relatively short time.  (Frequently on a near hourly basis)

...

The turkey on this sandwich is perfect, and you savor every bite.  About half a minute after you finish, the door opens quietly and Admiral Kruschev enters.  The admiral is easily six and a half feet tall (sorry, bad at metric conversion) and, while very thin, a massively imposing figure.  He walks silently to a nearby chair and asks, "Do you mind if I sit Captain?  It's been a rather long day keeping High Command entertained."
"Certainly, Sir.  You wanted to speak with me?"
"Oh yes, indeed, it's not everyday that I get to speak with someone who has pulled off what you have.  After that dropship got past our screening force and we started getting reports of units being wiped out, I thought I was defending a dead world.  The IFF transponder on your reaver was the only thing that kept me from pulling the fleet back to Earth."  He pauses for several moments, "Do you have any idea how many lives you saved down there captain?  After four months of sweeping the wreckage of Noctis colony I can say with certainty that you saved ninety percent of the population of Mars."
You stare blankly for several seconds, ninety percent?  "What do you mean sir?  Didn't the Ocarai destroy the other cities first?"
"Surprisingly, no.  Apparently they decided to remove the defenders, then eliminate the civilians.  If you had not stopped them in Noctis, they would have killed everyone on the planet, and nothing could have prevented it."  He scratches at his gray-shot beard, "It tooks us most of the day to break the attacking fleet, you had been out for hours by the time we reached you, more than enough time for them to finish the planet.  There's very serious talk among High Command about presenting you with honors that don't even exist yet."

Go ahead and post any questions you want answered or anything you want to say to the Admiral.


Mission: Talk to various highly ranked persons
Status: Healthy, damn that was a good sammich
Reaver: unknown
Location: private room, 101st floor, Olympus Mons Federal hospital

Actually, there are circumstances under which you do not recieve migrant messages at all, if your population cap has been reached/exceeded for instance.  I like to build generational forts, with the founding seven and the hard waves, but with pop-cap set at 0 in d-init.  The only situation where you continue to recieve warnings under that setup is with a dead civ and no caravans, if no one reports on your growth then DF continues to send waves.  I cannot find the post right now, but I believe that it is possible to recieve a 0 migrant or 'empty' wave, it may even be up on the bug tracker.

The hard-coded aspect of the first waves is as follows: no matter what you do, no matter how you try, these two waves of migrants WILL ALWAYS ARRIVE.  I personaaly have ne direct insight into the exact language of the code that governs it, for all I know it's simply an oversight that even if one of the first two waves is empty it still gives you the message that migrants have arrived.  I don't have a screenshot to draw conclusions from, I have only the word of the OP that this event occured, I am simply offering what I believe to be an objective veiwpoint on the possible course of events.

As I understand it, and as Quietust and others who have poked around in the actual source have stated many times, you should always get two waves of migrants.  Period.  End of declaration.  I think it may be possible, however, for a fortress to have experienced several deaths or failed to accumulate enough wealth (or a combination of the two) to actually have no units arrive in one or both waves.