Alien Sightings

Alien Sightings

“They were never here to make contact.”

Rare silver scout UFOs appear above the Overworld and across Ad Astra’s planets. The design follows Bob Lazar’s description of the craft he says he worked on, and the aliens draw on Len Kasten’s Secret Journey to Planet Serpo. They’re meant to be unsettling.

Sightings

• Scouts glide over the terrain, sweep the ground with searchlights, and dart from place to place with an eerie whisper.
• Don’t stare. Watch one too long and it charges up and warps away.
• Some scouts try to abduct your animals with a tractor beam.
• Land on top of one and it will throw you off.
• In Ad Astra orbit, scouts streak past on their way down to the planet.
• Each player sees one about once every 5 hours in the Overworld and every 30 minutes in space (configurable). Several can be flying at once across a server.

Shoot one down

• A downed scout spins out of the sky and crashes. The crash doesn’t damage terrain.
• It leaves a wreck you can scavenge with an empty hand for scrap and rare salvage. With other mods installed, that can include Ice and Fire dragon scales and blood, Born in Chaos dark metal, Iron’s Spells ink and more.
• The blue-uniformed Serpoian pilot lies beside the wreck. Usually it’s dead.

Sometimes it isn’t

• About a third of the time, the pilot is only playing dead.
• Walk up to the body and it either leaps at your face in a jump scare, or turns invisible and creeps up behind you. Don’t look back.
• Its claw leaves a curse. Seconds later your vision swims with Nausea. Then it lifts you into the air with its mind, with a cinematic camera, and blows you apart. The move is inspired by Frieza and Krillin.
• It squirms out of your attacks, raises a telekinetic barrier, and teleports after you if you try to hide.
• Players in netherite-tier armour get a fairer fight. Skilled players can kill it in time, and a Totem of Undying will save you.
• Kill it and it drops a Yellow Book, and sometimes its head.

Also included

• Yellow Books with holograms, star charts and biome compasses.
• Anomaly scanners, scout capsules, and Serpoian trophy heads.
• Spawn eggs for an ordinary pilot and a playing-dead body.

Compatibility

• Ad Astra: orbit fly-bys, and the aliens survive in space.
• ReviveMe: the execution can’t be revived.
• Ice and Fire, Born in Chaos, Iron’s Spells: extra salvage.
• Almost everything is configurable: spawn rates, how many UFOs fly at once, barrier strength, the curse countdown, loot weights and more. See serverconfig/alien_sightings-server.toml and config/alien_sightings-common.toml.

Requires Minecraft 1.20.1 and Forge 47 or newer, running on Java 17.