Headscratchers / X-COM: UFO Defense

Terror missions

I'm a big fan of the first X-COM, but the idea of the "terror missions" has always bugged me.

Why would the aliens land ground forces to shoot up a city, when it'd be easier to just drop a nuke or asteroid on the site? Same results (tons of humans killed, proving X-COM's impotence to stop the invasion), and this way X-COM wouldn't get the chance to look like heroes blowing the aliens away or loot all that ultra tech.

Admittedly, in the case of the fricking Chryssalids, I can understand - seed those bastards anywhere on Earth and they'd overrun entire cities and nations in short order if you don't kill them all. But most of the other aliens are just dudes with guns. Why wouldn't they take it easy on themselves and push the button?

• Until X-Com arrives on the scene, they have free run of the place. It could be that they consider it more terrifying to land and slaughter everyone by hand, allowing some to naturally escape and tell the story. Or perhaps they are just sadists?
• I thought the whole point behind the terror missions was to prove X-COM couldn't defend civilian populations against alien attack in the first place. You know, show the nations in question that they can attack with impunity, and show the countries that if X-COM can't stop a single squad of aliens from killing a small population, how would they expect to fare against much larger invasions, etc.
• They may be considered "terror missions" by X-COM, but who knows the aliens' motivations? Maybe this is their way of testing out their latest critters and technology - they know a "terror mission" will provoke an X-COM response, and thus they'll get to see how they measure up. Also, small-scale 'terror' strikes will inspire fear in Earth's nations, without pushing them over into supporting X-COM through sheer desperation as nuclear strikes might.
• The Terror Missions are also used for abduction and organ harvesting, either for experimentation or food since the aliens think we taste good. There are cases with abducted humans and various organs in the alien bases, whether these are like larders or trophy cases remains unknown. It's also theorized by the in-game scientists that the aliens in Terror From The Deep use human brains for the Biodrones (which supposedly focus the tormented feelings and thoughts of their brains into sonic attacks... at least according to the autopsy and biopsy reports...), and that the Deep Ones are mutated/modified humans.
• I personally got the impression in the game that the aliens' numbers and industrial ability are just too limited to allow them to do anything other than small-scale terror raids and such. So, instead of unleashing a full-scale invasion, they're limited to covert operations and psychological warfare instead of carpet-bombing with nukes.
• Having heavily armed aliens running rampant in populated areas probably has a better psychological effect than just bombing, and they get to show off their newest and most powerful weapons. Also, the aliens don't seem to display much capacity for widespread destruction- perhaps they never got around to inventing large-scale explosives when you have plasma and mind control?
  • The Blaster Launcher/Pulse Wave Torpedo defies you, sir!
    • I'm thinking more 'two million nukes' levels than 'cruise missile' levels.
    • Actually, some hard to access files indicate X-Com does use nukes. Craft mounted blaster bombs make nukes cry, as it turns out.
• Also, IIRC the Game Over screen shows humanity being put to work as slaves. If that's what they wanted, it would rule out glassing the Earth from orbit.
  • If they wanted to do that, they would have done it and there wouldn't be a game.
  • That was what they were trying to do. Their methodology was more subversion and manipulation than outright war.
• I got the impression that the Terror Missions were deliberate traps by the aliens for X-COM. They land and start shooting up civilians, forcing an X-COM response. X-COM arrives and runs headlong into the best the aliens have in the form of their terror units, in tight urban terrain, with civilians all around them that limits X-COM's ability to employ heavy weapons. The aliens are forcing X-COM to send in troops and potentially wipe them out or send them scurrying away in defeat. Either way ends with X-COM suffering casualties and bad PR if the aliens are able to force a victory.
  • ...A round of applause, everyone?
    • Definitely. This troper surely understands The Art of War.
  • Classic Xanatos Gambit: X-COM responds, suffers high casualties and maybe loses standing, along with valuable troops and gear. X-COM doesn't respond, and they suffer even more.
• Way I see it, it's much like modern terrorist attacks. Small group of soldier get in, kill lots of unarmed civilians and get the hell out of there before X-Com enters. Result? Few surviving civilians spread rumors. Rumors = better than propaganda. Also, reason why they do Terror Missions instead of full-scale invasion... Perhaps they want Earth to surrender, since humans could easily nuke the whole planet into radioactive dustball.
• There is also the fact that, well. Having aliens appear and terrorize people spreads fear and terror. Glassing a city from orbit does nothing but piss humanity off. Theres no fear, there's no terror in it. It just convinces people that they have to fight even more if they're willing to do this horrific action. But yeah, the guy up there with the theory on the terror missions being traps is pretty good too.
• Basic tactics state that if you give your enemy a chance to escape (or to believe they have a chance to escape) then they will be less willing to fight. by nuking the planet from orbit earth will be forced to unite and they will throw everything they have at the aliens, thus rendering the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland and denying the aliens human slaves (as shown in the game over screen) by limiting the force they use to attack humanity thinks they have a chance and will believe that they can bargin with the aliens.
• The aliens have one large mars base and some ships but no manufacturing ability or E-115 mines/synthesizer. They can't take humanity in a straight fight without running into a very serious possibility that they would exhaust their limited supply of fuel and ammunition (EVERYTHING they have runs on E-115.) So instead they are trying to scare humanity, panic them and infiltrate the highest levels of government. They win if they manage to get enough humans on their side and obeying their politicians (either traitors or mind controlled).
• The aliens are not interested in conquest. They don't have the ability to defeat the combined military power of earth (despite their technological advantage), and even if they did, it's pretty obvious that an occupation would be disastrous for them (which makes them smarter than some earth governments we could mention). Their strategy rather resembles the actions of a colonizer - destroy the legitimacy of whoever is governing by discrediting it's ability to use violence to defend the governed (or keep them in line, depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall), and, when suitably weakened, begin a process of "dividing and conquering" (which explains the "infiltration" missions, even though they are probably more diplomatic in nature). Having the colonized do all the "occupying" for you is pretty much neo-colonization 101. That explains the terror missions - they allow the aliens to "close" with vulnerable sections of human society and cause chaos without giving the earth governments a pretext to escalate the war. It also allows them tactical flexibility - the logistics for a "terror" mission and a "harvesting" mission isn't all that different (I also suspect that those witnessing a "harvesting" mission would also consider themselves thoroughly terrified). A "blast their cities from orbit" strategy would merely legitimize the full use of WMDs, even if it comes with a lot of collateral damage - the vast majority of humans could expect little better from an enemy which callously exterminates cities - since governments would be seen as merely "reacting" to the alien threat. It's a pretty good strategy. The behavior of the alien forces strongly suggest that it's critical for them to avoid this - it's apparent that they aren't nearly as powerful as some of the in-game dialog suggests (which, at times in both EU and TFTD, seems more akin to hysterical Cold War propaganda than anything resembling real intel).
• "Why don't they just nuke it from orbit?" makes sense as the rationale behind why losing the Cydonia mission is an automatic game-over, even though you could theoretically just send another shipload of troops the next day if you have one. Once the alien intelligence realizes you've found its exact location and have the capacity to target it directly, it would be desperate enough to throw subtlety out the window and just order its remaining fleet to glass Earth's cities from orbit.

No one besides XCOM can fight?

Why do the host nations never try to fight the terror alerts with their own forces? Instead of just sitting around letting their people get slaughtered till the XCOM team shows up, wouldn't they fight off the invasion with their own cops and/or soldiers? Heck, even with conventional earth weapons, they would still probably easily be able to handle the situation better then XCOM can. I'd rather have an army of hundreds of cops or soldiers to fight then dozen or so aliens then just a dozen XCOM operatives.

• Unfortunately modern militaries can fight (and do) but it doesn't end well for them. The Aliens' first wave is weak enough that baseline stuff can crush them, but when the Aliens bring in bigger guns and meaner grunts modern human tech has zero chance of stopping them. If Human nations stop supporting X-COM and try to fight on their own they don't last long...
  • But I'm just talking about the terror alerts, which only involve 12-16 aliens. Even with conventional weapons, cops and soldiers should be able to defeat those with their sheer number advantage.

Selling alien corpses

With most of the stuff you retrieve from downed UFOs it makes sense that people'd be willing to pay a lot for them. But who's buying dead aliens for $20,000 each? And for what purpose?

---