Electronic Fence Bugged?

[GrandMajora]

Since getting Rising Tide I've noticed an oddity in the game. Electronic Fence is supposed to make aliens stay at least 2 tiles away from any city that has it (3 tiles depending on what quest option you pick). However, even after building fences for my cities and improving them to the 3 tile protection, aliens were still passing close to my cities on a regulat basis, both sea and land based.

Has anybody else had this problem?

[Tank of Tiananmen Square]

It only disincentivizes them from entering the area now. It doesn't fully prevent them from entering. Read the building text carefully. It has changed...

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Yes, it was changed. Now it encourages them to move away, but doesn't totally prevent them from entering.

The change was probably made because in the past, you could set up ranged military units, and just sit there killing aliens for XP and whatever else, and they couldn't do anything if you had the fence up.

Now, the fence keeps them out until you make them angry enough, basically. So if you sit back killing them from behind the fence, be careful, because if you make them angry they will now eventually cross that line and attack despite the fence.

[Ezekial 🖖]

They added a new unit to deal with it. It's an orbital unit that makes the aliens move for you

[Hehaho15]

It doesn't do anything now, Unless you "reverse polarity" when the quest comes up. They need to buff it, so it's not overrided by the new biome effects on aliens.

BUT, And I don't think this was true in base game (At least before RT update to base), If you have an alien nest within your border, and do nothing to it, the aliens slowly start to like you way better... though this doesn't stop the huge aliens from completely ravaging your tile improvements.....

Seriously though, someone mod the old electric fence back in! I didn't really abuse it, and 1/5 times I'll lose the game due to the seige worm/Kraken camping my base and keeping me from developing anything for a long period of time. and then the AI CIVs get ahead while I'm stuck waiting for the seige worm to go elsewhere... Also Preferably mod the alien nests back to being Xenomass locations only......

[GrandMajora]

Speaking of alien nests, they are all over the damn ocean! I actually found about 3 or 4 alien nests all within just a few tiles of each other. Who the hell would choose a water city as their starting location?

[king_of_jamaica]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Speaking of alien nests, they are all over the damn ocean! I actually found about 3 or 4 alien nests all within just a few tiles of each other. Who the hell would choose a water city as their starting location?

They're all over the land too. Seems like they just decided to make it so 80+% of the strategic resources have alien nests covering them, thus forcing you to go hostile if you want to progress. That's been my experience at least.

[johnarhoades]

Buy the nest hex, and shoot the first bug. The nests tend to set dormant after that, and the bugs will go neon-blue passive.

[BuffHamster]

Additionally, the Alien Nests will tend to yield an Artifact when pillaged, the downside is that it will piss them off quicker.

Originally posted by king_of_jamaica:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Speaking of alien nests, they are all over the damn ocean! I actually found about 3 or 4 alien nests all within just a few tiles of each other. Who the hell would choose a water city as their starting location?

They're all over the land too. Seems like they just decided to make it so 80+% of the strategic resources have alien nests covering them, thus forcing you to go hostile if you want to progress. That's been my experience at least.

Mmmm, lots of Artifacts there.

As for the Water cities, if you do not attack the Aliens or pillage their nests, they won't attack, but the moment you attack one single Alien (including the Worm Quest), all bets are off.

As for 80% of the Strategic Resources being covered, it sounds like a bad draw of luck there. The amount of Aliens and their Nests on a planet depends on the type of planet you choose. Some have more, some less.

Anecdotally, I haven't had that occur in any of the games I have played.

[Hehaho15]

They should have just left the nest spawning to the Xenomass resource...

[Ryker Kohl]

What genius decided that the fences shouldn't do ANYTHING? cause I will be honest, I have never seen the fence work to any degree since the expansion came out, aliens just roll up and hug my cities and destroy improvments till I get a military force to kill them...kinda defeats the point of the fence really.

[c.l.bissell]

With the fence on and green level with aliens they come and bother my cities now. I try and to avoid killing aliens if possible. On the water the aliens are terrible they will continually throw themselves at any naval units you have its so annoying when you just are trying to explore or protect your cities. They need unnerf it so bad.

[Hehaho15]

What they could do is restore the way it used to work on the lower half of the difficulties, and rebalance it for the higher half of the difficulties... though I'm not sure their coding is set up in a way that would allow for that.....

[Awen]

I don't build them after getting the quest for trade unit immunity. As it stands, the fence seems to do nothing. In a game where I never once attacked an alien or cleared a nest, 2-3 green aliens were hanging out in the tiles right next to the city, pillaging the improvments and killing off any nearby workers. It's true they never did attack the actual city, so maybe that's what the fence does now?

One thing I'm going to try is distract them away with the alien becon orbital unit.

[Ryker Kohl]

Originally posted by Caribou:

I don't build them after getting the quest for trade unit immunity. As it stands, the fence seems to do nothing. In a game where I never once attacked an alien or cleared a nest, 2-3 green aliens were hanging out in the tiles right next to the city, pillaging the improvments and killing off any nearby workers. It's true they never did attack the actual city, so maybe that's what the fence does now?

One thing I'm going to try is distract them away with the alien becon orbital unit.

I...THINK that just spawns aliens rather than actually pull ones on the map towards where its deployed, could be wrong mind

[Pert Boioioing]

Originally posted by Hehaho15:

What they could do is restore the way it used to work on the lower half of the difficulties, and rebalance it for the higher half of the difficulties... though I'm not sure their coding is set up in a way that would allow for that.....

This is a very reasonable compromise. I don't think they are going to implement it unfortunately, but it's a really good idea.