Can you actually prevent the alien invasion or have I bugged something?

[Ennismore]

So I'm currently playing Exodus, year 2035, and the aliens have had no presence on earth for well over a year. They haven't sent an agent in quite a while, there's no xenoforming, nothing. My previous saves had at least the starting invasion of earth by this point, but it seems like there's something stopping them from starting the invasion, or even sending new agents.

On one hand I'm having a "Did I win?" thought but it also doesn't quite seem quite right. They have multiple huge and impervious fleets in orbit but are not doing anything at all earthside.

Do the aliens have mission control and maybe capped out with no landing ships? Or some set requirements of conditions on earth in order to start the invasion? Do they require a strong servant (who are bullied to 2025 tech and have only completed up to alien origin)/protectorate to start it?

Or am I just overthinking this and I just won a resistance game as exodus?

[adobo]

How strong are the Resistance and HF? In my Resistance game, HF was doing a good job of suppressing the Servants and cleaning up the xenoforming.

[Grumpy_Tiger]

I feel like based on my experience which is similar to yours and other's comments that the alien invasion may be tied to the Servants completing some sort of tech and initiating the alien invasion. I bullied the Servants pretty hard in my current game and sabotaged their tech while also making sure I've cleansed the Earth of alien agents. The aliens are full 5 pip I hate you mode but they still havn't actually tried to invade Earth for me and it's 2034.

[Ennismore]

HF is in the same boat as the servants, stuck to africa and south america and being irrelevant, Resistance is 3rd in strength, behind me and initiative. I'm the one responsible for most of the anti-alien operations so I know why aliens aren't having a good time of it, but they just suddenly stopped even trying is more my concern. They just have their dreadnought/mothership fleets in orbit doing nothing for 2 years now, and smaller ships running around harassing my stations, but they just stopped caring about earth, no new agents in a long time and never landing any armies. I could just be really overthinking it and maybe I've just won, but it seems odd that they just stopped even trying. They are in total war mode with my space assets, maybe that's distracting them from dropping agents/invading? Constantly playing wack-a-mole with my stations across the system might be breaking them.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Ennismore:

Can you actually prevent the alien invasion

Yes (on normal at least) but hard - as you need to deal with motherships early.

Originally posted by Ennismore:

or have I bugged something?

If you don't have a spam "alien docked / undocked" - nah, just wait a bit. Especially if you're on easy :)

[adobo]

HF and Resistance don't need territory to kill/capture aliens and they both come with very powerful faction orgs thats with good espionage and command. Did you check their techs?

I thought HF was weak and irrelevant but they manage to build some space mines on the back of small nations. HF seems to be assassination happy. Check their techs if they have exotics. I wasn't really paying attention but I was the last one who got alien salvage while everyone was already researching alien tech.

I think the other factions wiped the alien recon ships while the aliens were busy trying to smash my fortress stations.

[RandyNewman]

They invaded the Caribbean States, but they're scared of water so they just stay there. Also the UFOs won't land anywhere else. I guess they finally found a spot they like

[Premu]

They might have been hit by some nasty event - they can be a victim of the RNG as well.

Perun who's doing a playthrough on YouTube had actually such a nasty event hitting his aliens right at the beginning of the game, totally crippling them - so much, that he searched why the aliens were so tame. In his case he edited the savegame to bring the aliens back to proper form. Now a protection against such events is even in place at the beginning of the game. But I believe that Alien protection doesn't last forever.

In your case they might recover, of course - so be on your watch and take the breather to build up your economy and defences.

[Ennismore]

Originally posted by Premu:

They might have been hit by some nasty event - they can be a victim of the RNG as well.

Perun who's doing a playthrough on YouTube had actually such a nasty event hitting his aliens right at the beginning of the game, totally crippling them - so much, that he searched why the aliens were so tame. In his case he edited the savegame to bring the aliens back to proper form. Now a protection against such events is even in place at the beginning of the game. But I believe that Alien protection doesn't last forever.

In your case they might recover, of course - so be on your watch and take the breather to build up your economy and defences.

Definately not an event issue, they have a massive amount of infrastructure and ships, they just don't do anything but poke at my stations and sit in orbit. From what I'm understanding now, seems with servants basicaly dead and protectorate barely alive, aliens can't do their invasion. Either that or them constantly attacking my stations and then leaving to reload might be soft locking them. So I'm just finishing the tech to build the Exodus ship (I actualy have the tech for the ship without knowing I'd need T3 or rather knowing T3 stations even exist.) and leaving.

[💖Medibot💖]

The update made the aliens slow down with the xenoforming as they made them less likely to choose that mission