Xenoform Alfas - All about the alien agents

"Threat you understand is one you can deal with." -- anyone wise, probably

[0.3.31] XAs, Xenoforms, Xeno-agents, Hydras: Everything you wanted to know about them (and you've been afraid to ask).
This guide aims to gather all knowledge about these alien xeno agents, called Xenoform-Alfas - for short XAs.

Introduction

This guide aims to gather all knowledge about these xeno agents, called Xenoform-Alfas - for short XAs.

So beware - The guide contains lot of spoilers.

note: work in progress - still collecting data on AI behavior and getting answers to some question.
If you'll see such underlined text in italics - this is an open question, on which you can participate and help me find the answer, to be later added to this guide. For that purpose I've created a discord thread, where you can share your findings and upload supporting evidence, like screenshots and save files. https://discord.com/channels/462769550841348126/1034190818820509807
Few people helped me a lot already, they are mentioned in Thank you section at the end of this guide - and I'll be happy to make that list longer. And of course you can suggest anything you feel is missing in this guide.

And now the long, warm and tearful introduction:
To every asset you control in the game, there is a threat. And to your precious council, to your core group of people which you tenderly nurtured to become invicible superagents over many years of thorough care, to these gems of your game, there is a threat. They are not that invicible. They might be unbeatable among other people. However, as you may know, there are not only humans in Terra Invicta. There are extraterrestrial beings, aliens, which arrived to ... ehm ... to interact with us, ♥♥♥♥ sapiens. Aliens form a council too. Their agents, XAs, somehow can move freely across our planet and perform missions same as human councilors can. They are a few differences though and they are quite lethal to say the least.

TL:DR

XAs are dangerous - they will plant Xenoflora, Abduct and Terrorize human population, effectively enslave people to work and rule countries for them, and they will hunt and kill your councilors.

Other than that, they work pretty much the same as human councilors.

If you want keep your superagents alive, don't make too much noise. If you make noise, like enacting national policy, make it with your best secured spy, protect them and go to ground right after. XAs are a bit blind, but if they do spot your councilors, they can easily kill them.

If you hunt all XAs down, be ready to face alien wrath and get your councilors and space assets attacked.

The Alien Council + their arrival on Earth

Aliens are considered another faction and they have as well council limited to 6 agents. They recruit their councilors - XAs - in their Alien HQ, far from Earth. They transport them to Earth via spaceships. These vessels always crash - presumably to be rendered useless for humans.

Few fellow players told me they've seen XAs being recruited in Alien Facilities built on Earth -

Attributes, Traits and Orgs

XAs are very similar to human councilors. They have the same attribute system, though they tend to have fairly high espionage (10-18) and very high security (13-25). And they always have loyalty at 25.

Base attributes:

• Persuasion 7-12
  
• Investigation 2-5
  
• Espionage 10-15
  
• Command 5-10
  
• Administration 4-8
  
• Science 2-8
  
• Security 10-13
  • traits always give extra +3, with Second wave +6 to this value
    
  • common org Salamander shock troops org +3
• Loyalty 25

XAs gain XPs as human councilors, which they use to augment themselves.

Traits - XAs often have Survivor and Hard Target traits. Even though there is only 50% chance for new alien councilors (available on their market) to have each of these traits, I guess Aliens chose those with the traits to recruit - or they augment them with these asap.
Later ones have special alien-only trait Second Wave (+3 esp +3 sec).

Orgs - they can have orgs same as humans, they also can purchase them on the market. They have special Enthrall Org mission to take over orgs from human councilors.

Missions

XAs perform missions in same frequency as human councilors, mechanics are the same. The also move across Earth same way human councilors can, without any restrictions.

They have only one "occupation" profile, called Hydra, which determines what missions they are egligible to perform. However, as they can control orgs, these can allow them perform more missions.

Normal missions each XA can perform (without orgs):

• Coup d'Etat
  
• Set National Policy
  
• Advise
  
• Increase Unrest
  
• Stabilize Nation
  
• Surveil Location
  
• Assasinate Councilor
  
• Turn Councilor
  
• Protect Target
  
• Sabotage Project
  
• Go To Ground
  
• Orbit
  
• Transfer
  
• Deorbit

Special Alien missions:

• Abductions
  
  Servants can do this as well with special org
• Enthrall Public
  
• Enthrall Unaligned Elites
  
• Enthrall Elites
  
• Enthrall Org
  
• Build Alien Facility
  
  Servants can do this as well with special research completed
• Pass Technology
  
• to Servants
  
• Xenoform

Wiki has a good overview on missions and their success chance parameters: https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Terra_Invicta/Missions

XA actual behavior

• This is the part where I need more input to elaborate on how XAs actually behave and which missions they tend to chose and when.
  
• Abductions and Xenoforming are 2 basic and most common early activities of XAs on Earth, as both are helping Alien cause tremendously - most alien missions are boosted by number of abducted people and xenoforming growth in target region.
  
  • Present xenoflora also helps XAs to hide - not to be detected

Detection

Detection of councilors is quite complex aspect of Terra Invicta in general, so I've created a separate guide for that: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2879336307
Here let's focus on some takeways related to XAs.

How to detect XAs?

• Impossible before Alien Movements project is completed
  
• Generally difficult due to XA high espionage attribute
  
• With successful detection helps especially:
  
  • If XA terrorizes a region, it's almost a guarantee you'll spot him
    
  • Surveil location mission helps a lot
    
  • If your councilor has mission in same location it helps a lot - if he has high investigation .
    
  • If they operate in nations you control it helps a bit.
• Even on success, you'll most often see just "unknown" grey pawn
  
  • You need to investigate this "unknown" agent to figure out which faction he works for - and thus whether it is a XA.
    
  • UI exploit: Here you can also exploit the game UI to check if unknown spotted councilor could be XA - they are always listed at the very bottom in the list of all councillors on Earth (to view that list just open any nations' infopanel, and click on the earth icon in top-right corner, just below the X and you'll find Councilors tab in the bottom of the infopanel between Stations and Fleets).
• If you recognize it is a XA, you'll see special notification icon on left edge of the screen.
  
  • It can happen directly if your detection is a critical success, or after your investigation of the target.
    
  • Recognized XA will most likely will have no knowledge about that detection (it has low investigation attribute and it will be even less likely if your councilors have high aggregated espionage stat).
• Penetrating a faction
  • You don't have to detect XAs on your own to see them. Faction you penetrated (turned their agent to your cause), provides you with intel they've gathered on regions and councillors. If they surveil a location, it's like you surveiled it yourself. Same goes for detecting agents. This effectively makes turning a councilor very strong detection tool, and more.

XAs detecting human councilors

• Weirdly enough, Alien faction does not receive any intel about councilors or anything else from Servants or Protectorate, unless they turn their councilor.
  
  • Aliens are capable of turning a councilor, they even have a good persuasion to so - however they normally have no ability to investigate a councilor, and even if they control an org which allows them to do so, their chances are low due to low investigation attribute.
    
  • Let me know if you've ever seen any councilor being turned by Aliens. On all turned councilors you can see the turned icon when you gain enough intel about them - and when hovering over that, tooltip will tell you which faction they secretly work for.
• XAs have low investigation attribute which hinders their ability to detect, but they can perform the surveil location mission, which helps with that greatly.
  
• Dangerously possible when enacting new national policy - this mission causes a lot of noice, thus makes detection much more likely in general.
  
  • To see how much noise each mission causes see the detection guide linked above.
• Even if they detect your councilor, they cannot investigate him, which hinders their ability to assassinate.
  • However with critical success on detection roll gives them enough intel on councilor to assasinate him/her.

Elimination

Eliminating a XA

• How do you eliminate a XA?
  
  • Via Assasinate or Detain Councilor missions - first the XA needs to be detected and his identity revealed to commence these missions.
• What if a faction successfully eliminate a XA?
  
  • Both missions have same result, the XA dissapears from the game.
    
    • Detention presumably leads to researching the live Hydra specimen until its demise.
  • Also the faction gets Xenoscience research bonus: +3% for Detention and +2% for Assasination
    
  • Aliens gets familiar with that faction methods, gaining +0.1 to defense for each successful assassination or detention of a XA, cumulatively.
    
    • so if you killed 5 and catched 3 XAs, their defense for success rolls will be stronger by +0.8, for both missions - against your faction
  • Aliens will hate that faction more by +-10 points
• What if the elimination attempt fails?
  
  • Well, if the councilor fails, XA remains alive, and life goes on.
    
  • But if the agent critically fails and the target XA has Hard Target trait (as they often have), the councilor dies. Unless he had protection - another agent on mission to protect her/him. This applies for both assassination and detention missions.
    
    • Chance to fail critically is 1/10 of chance to fail - so if mission success chance is 86%, chance to fail is 14%, thus there is 1.4% chance to fail critically. Keep this in mind when going on risky missions. Even with 98% success chance, there is 0.2% chance to critically fail.

XA eliminating human councilors

• Due to high espionage attribute and assassination mission always unlocked, XAs can easily kill any councilor below +-15 security. Of course, as mentioned earlier - if they are able to detect them.
  
  • Question is - how likely are they to do so when they have an opportunity to strike? Do they need to be at war with councilor's faction to attack him? Is there some kind of retribution mechanic in play?
• In one mission phase councilor can be detected, in the next one assasinated. So to be on a safe side, you should never do 2 noisy missions in a row - like enacting a national policy. Also most failed missions cause a lot of noise. After such each noisy mission, preferably Go To Ground. If you want to be even safer, for each more challenging and noisy action, wear a bring a protection.

Alien Facilities

• What are those Alien Facilities for?
  
  • Allows Servants to peacully give their regions to Alien Administration - through mission mission Grant Alien Control.
    
  • ? Recruiting new XAs ? - though multiple sources claim they've seen new XAs come out of these facilities, I am still not fully convinced - that would mean there must be Hydra population to recruit agents from inhabiting Earth - as in this science-based game nothing "just spawns out of nowhere."
• How does Alien Facilities appear on Earth?
  
  • being built by XAs via missions. Also unlocked for Servant councilors in certain stage of the game.
    • In-game mission description: "Construct a research base to support alien operations and transportation and allow us to transfer them direct control of Earth's nations. Requires at least 15 abductions in the region. Cost 500$."
• How do you locate/detect alien facilities?
  
  • Surveil Location mission automatically reveals them in target + adjacent regions.
    
  • Turning Servant agent, Capturing Alien base/hab with marines also provides such intel.
• How do you dismantle that alien facility?
  • Assault Alien Asset mission with high CMD agent, or attack with high miltech army.

Alien Administration

How does Alien Administration nation (AA) presence or lack thereof impacts .... basically everything metioned in this guide?
I got stucked creating this guide, so I didn't progress with the game far enough to see aliens found AA, so...this article is a stub, please help us expand it :)

Thank you

I'd like to express my gratitude to everybody who supported my efforts and investigation put into creating this guide.

First and foremost I thank guys from Pavonis Interactive for creating such fantastic game for us to enjoy (and extensively dig in to...)

And now shoutout to fellow players who helped me a lot:

Discord

• Leichter Vogel#4684
  
• jtwm1#2588
  
• Thanatos168#1046
  
• KtKr#1004

Reddit

• Viperions
  
• bobbechk
  
• Arcane_Pozhar
  
• descaan
  
• CowboyRonin
  
• mgong123
  
• Xeorm
  
• LateralThinker13
  
• Parawings
  
• rowleybirkin
  
• lentil_farmer

I would also like express gratitude to ILSpy and PSPad creators for their software which were also instrumental for populating this wall of text with valuable information.

[uskayaw]

What does "Pass Technology" do? How do you make aliens give free stuff to Servants/Protectorate?