Straight Chain Alk*nes without Order
JavaScript (ES6), 107 bytes

A=n=&gt;n&gt;9?2*A(n-1)+3*A(n-2)+3*A(n-7)+A(n-8)-5*A(n-3)-A(n-4)-2*A(n-6)-A(n-9):[0,1,3,4,10,18,42,84,192,409][n]


Recursive solution, using the recurrence relation that was pointed out in the comments of the question. Execution time rises much quicker than the input (complexity of O(9^N) if I'm not mistaken), so be careful with values higher than 20.