Some "short and simple" tips to start me off. .

[Zombie]

Though your description is funny Bomb Bloke, it is also accurate! If you don't like the look of things at a Terror Site and decide to dust-off, you actually get at least 520 points back than if you left the Site alone. Depending on the civilian situation, you might even get all 1000 points back!

 

I just tested your theory on Terror Sites Bomb Bloke. Started a new game and ran time forward until a Terror Site was detected. Now I saved the game, then ran time forward some more until it disappeared. The time that this particular Terror Site stayed on the map was exactly 9 hours. It started at 16:00:00 (middle of the night for Novosibirsk) and ended the next day at 1:00:00 (or about 2 hours after sun rise).

 

Since I knew when the Terror Site would disappear, I just sent my Skyranger out so it would arrive around 3:00:00 (or 2 hours after the Site would normally disappear). Then I watched what happened. Two hours after my Skyranger returned to base, the Terror Site went away. This proved my suspicion that a Terror Site will only stay on the map for however long it was supposed to be there, but not including time it was targeted by a craft.

 

So, in this instance, the Site would normally disappear at 1:00:00. I just targeted the Terror Site with my craft at 0:59:00 and watched if the site would go away 1 minute after the craft headed home. Sure enough, roughly a minute after the Skyranger turned around, the Site disappeared. Dusk or dawn, it doesn't matter. If a Terror Site is only slated to be active for 9 hours, it will disappear after this time is up (neglecting the time spent being targeted).

[NKF]

I think I said something similar in an earlier post. The funding countries would look at you less severely if you actually made your soldiers make the effort to get out of bed, go to the site, and then decide whether or not to run away rather than to just not go at all. It's the effort that counts!

 

And now to step back a bit:

 

While fiddling with the save game I'm putting together to test the damage modifiers (1), I noticed a most insidious use for incendiary rounds.

 

Something's always bugged me about incendiary rounds. I always asked myself, why is it that when I shot this person then shot another person with incendiary rounds, it's the first person to get hit that dies first? Now I know why.

 

Every unit standing in a fire patch will receive the effects of any incendiary round fired on that turn. That's what I said. Any incendiary rounds that you fire during the turn will damage EVERY unit standing in a fire patch. So if you had ten units standing in fire, a continuous barrage of incendiary rounds at a nearby wall will kill them all!

 

I just tested it. I set fire to some ground. Then on the next turn, I had four soldiers just temporarily stand in the fire. Then I had a bunch of soldiers with incendiary weapons open fire randomly at bits of scenery.

 

What was the result? Every single soldier standing on a burning tile got hurt (some even got set on fire)! But the rest of the soldiers who were standing outside of the flames got away unscathed (yes, even if the IC-rounds just popped without setting fire to anything since the fire/smoke table's full, those that were standing in fire still got hurt!).

 

Well, that's another interesting weapon 'feature' to be added to my arsenal of fighting techniques. Heh, only this time it's a sure-hit attack. You only need to get the target into a patch of flames, and you can then easily wipe it out without even shooting anywhere near it.

 

I feel a little wretched whenever I find these strange things in the game. But that's just the programmer in me at work.

 

- NKF

 

(1) I got a superhuman sectopod now thanks to one of Hobbes test save games for his new terror site maps. I gave up on that buggy sectoid and decided to copy and paste something else in. Thought I'd start off with one of the tougher buggers.

 

It's rather amazing, but a laser of 50 damage actually punched through armour of 130 (for some reason, I kept hitting the sides)! This must mean the modifier for lasers is even greater than I imagined - will find out for sure once I strip off the armour! Or maybe armour rolls are not fixed and are random numbers...but hey, that's an experiment for another time.

[Zombie]

*cheering is heard in the distance*

*cheering and applause gets louder*

*the crowd starts chanting*

* N - K - F, N - K -F , N - K - F! *

 

*Zombie pats NKF on his back*

 

Good boy, NKF! Another mystery solved. I often wondered the same thing why fire would kill someone nowhere near where the Incendiary rounds are going off.

 

This past summer, I was doing some testing with fire on unarmored soldiers. I had them all standing in a patch of fire and recording the health drop for each one, as well as if the guy caught fire. By gathering this data I hoped to show how much health could be lost by an average soldier, and how many rounds he/she could survive standing in flames.

 

Fire doesn't last forever, so I had to "replenish" the supply after 3 or so rounds. What I noticed was this: when I shot off those extra Incendiary rounds, the units that were in fire got an extra drop of health loss, way beyond what was the average drop for the rest of the group not in fire. Somehow, I never put two-and-two together like you did to resolve the answer! It seems simple enough to me now, but while I was doing the tests I was totally confused. Thanks for clearing that mystery up!

 

----------

 

Let's see, a damage of at least 130 for a weapon that only does 50 points... That comes to roughly 2.6, or 260% more damage from lasers. The OSG says 1.5 times, or 150% more! That's like 110% more damage than it's supposed to deal! If lasers actually deal 260% damage to Sectopods, then you'll need to modify the weapon damage down a bit. Like maybe 25 points of damage to be on the safe side. However, if you are going to crank the Sectopod's health up to 200, a weapon damage of 50 should still be low enough without blasting past the 200 cap!

[Bomb Bloke]

Are there any critical hits rolls that could furthar raise the damage of the laser?

[Zombie]

That is what we hope to find out. By doing these tests, we are trying to establish what the resistance of an alien is to each weapon type. If the OSG's numbers do not match our final results, then the "Damage Modifiers Against Various Forms of Protection" (Table 8-7, pg 230 in the OSG) is wrong.

[NKF]

At long last:

 

https://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/fun/testgames.html

 

I've started off with the sectopods. As I'm working on large units now, I might as well get all the large enemy unit done and over with before moving on to the smaller units.

 

I'm going to need a superhuman Reaper, Cyberdisc (I won't be able to do much about the self destruct mechanism, by the way) and ... um, I think that's it.

 

The obdata change now sets weapon damage to 50, and sets snapshot speed to 1% for all the test weapons. Did this so that you could fire shot after shot without having to end the turn (don't forget to make a backup of your original obdata.dat!). Also increased ammo quantity to 100 per clip in the battlescape.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

And here was me thinking you'd published all your notes!

[Zombie]

Thanks NKF! I downloaded your Sectopod saved game and related files and will start work on it tomorrow!

[Stewart]

These holidays I'm going to get back into X-COM and for once, try and finish UFO. When I played it last, I always got slaughted, and some times I didn't even set foot on ground...

 

I know people have released guides and walkthoughs but I know how to play this game, I just need some tips!

 

Like for example, posistioning troups, how to find the aliens, base locations, etc.

 

Help much appreciated people!

 

~SG

In Xcom if you havent lost then you're winning. Xcom is won and lost in Geoscape not Battlescape. The 7 basic tips if you're rusty:

 

1 ) Xcom is paid to shoot down UFOs . . . shoot down UFOs

2 ) Dual avalnche, Read ( 1 ) again

3 ) build basic radar bases around the world (expand them later) to get eyes around the world. Read ( 1 ) again.

4 ) Don't build-up your individual bases too quickly you need the money

5 ) Only go nutz with engineers once you have laser cannons NOT UNTIL THEN.

6 ) 14 guys with autocannon, 2HE, 1AP as long as one comes home you defeat the aliens. Do not worry if the score isnt too bad, read ( 1 ) again.

7 ) Terror missions, 2 interceptors read ( 1 and 2 ) again. If they get through let the aliens have their fun.

 

That will hold you until you remember how to play.

[Bomb Bloke]

Er, I cannot agree with allowing unhindered terror missions.

[Zombie]

Uh, I don't think that's what Stewart was getting at. He meant to try and shoot down those Terror Ships with 2 Interceptors loaded with dual Avalanche Launchers. If they were unable to do so, then let the aliens form a Terror Site and go after them there.

[Stewart]

Nope I said let 'em go and chew up people (if they get past your interceptors). There's only one attack a month. If you keep your scores high you can eat it. Remember most months your planes will get them.

[Bomb Bloke]

It is actually more score effective to send troops to terror sites, even if you don't bother to do anything there, and simply take off straight away. You'll lose half as many points (or even less) if you do it that way.

[Stewart]

I had always wondered about that but never checked.

[Bomb Bloke]

Zombie did some trails. I believe the maximum amount of civilians that can appear on a map is 14, the minimum, 0. The score for losing a civilian is 20, so the maximum score you would lose for visiting a terror site and exiting immediatly is 480 - whereas you lose 1000 points for not turning up at all. You might even get lucky and lose 0 points, if there were no civilians on the map at all...

[Zombie]

"Some" trials? Try 2000 reloads. That's a pretty good sampling. Gee, my hand still hurts from that one!

 

Those civilian numbers aren't quite right though. I'll just retype 'em here:

Minimum: 0

Maximum: 16

Mode: 12

Median: 11.5

Anticipated Ave: 8

Actual Ave: 11.45

Range: 17

 

The number of points lost for each civilian is -30 points. Hence, the maximum number of points you could lose by dusting off from a Terror Site is 16 * -30 = -480. If you never visited the site and just neglected it, you lose -1000 points, or more than double if you just showed up and aborted.

 

Because the distribution is skewed, you will almost always see between 8 and 16 civilians at a Terror Site. Percentage-wise, it's a little over 96%. Those lower numbers are pretty rare events. You only have a 3.95% chance of seeing between 0 and 7 civilians. And in the best case of 0 civilians, it happens 0.3%. Always assume you will see the average of 12. It's a safe assumption because it has a 13% chance of happening (the most out of any number).

 

So I agree with Bomb Bloke that visiting every Terror Site that forms is to your advantage. You simply cannot ignore one when the points always favor you for showing up. If you don't like what you see (like Ethereals and Sectopods), fire off a few Blaster Bombs, then leave!

[Stewart]

Did you get at least one of each sample between 0 and 16 (ie every number in between)? Judging by your data the anticipated average should be twelve. Rather than an even distribution it is squewed higher.

[Rzhanov]

Was wondering if somebody can explain me the idea of usage of non-energy weapons? I mean that for my UFO practice i never had used anything exept laser rifles, plasmas and blaster bombs.

[NKF]

So, you wish to use standard armour piercing weapons, high explosives and incendiary weapons, eh?

 

Hmm, let's see...

 

For Armour piercing weapons, being one of the weaker weapons in this game (I say weaker because the damage levels are really low for almost all the weapons), the one thing you really must familiarise yourself with is your enemy's armour levels. Okay, so you needn't memorise it, but you should have a general idea of what you're up against.

 

Basically, sectoids, floaters and snakemen all fall into the category of having very light armour. Practically all terrorists, mutons and ethereals have relatively medium to very heavy armour. For all the aliens, the front armour is the hardest, followed by the sides, the rear and finally the under-armour. Only explosives affect under-armour. So for the best effects, try to shoot them from the side or in the back if you're having trouble.

 

Your two basic armour piercing weapons are the standard pistol and the standard rifle. The standard pistol is just as accurate as the rifle for snapshots, but it is very fast firing. You make up for its lack strength and lack of aimed accuracy and autofire by its sheer speed and cheapness (sure, it's just 1 extra snapshot over the rifle, but better an extra shot at the higher snap-shot accuracy, right?). The rifle has an autofire option, which makes it decent for short range combat, and a slow but accurate aimed shot, making it a slow but fair sniping weapon. The difference between their damage levels is only 4 points, so they're technically interchangeable. Note however, that of all the aliens, the only real aliens they'll be able to deal with are the sectoids, snakemen and floaters (at least on superhuman - on easier levels, you can take out cyberdiscs and reapers too).

 

Your next set of armour piercing weapons are the heavy cannon, auto-cannon and tank cannon. The heavy cannon features strength and accuracy, while the auto-cannon features an auto-fire mode albeit it is not as strong as your heavy cannon. While you'll normally want to use these with HE shells, the AP shells are useful for taking out certain enemies in the early game who are resistant to HE. Such as chryssalids (who take less damage from explosives but take normal damage from AP shells). The tank cannon is the strongest AP weapon in the game, sadly, it's stuck on a tank with its poor accuracy and bulk. However, it is still powerful, and can take out cyberdiscs a lot easier than the rocket tank.

 

Apart from knowing who to use the AP shells against, you'd mostly use them in the same manner as you would your energy weapons.

 

Note: For pistols and rifles, as mentioned before, they are best used for attacking sectoids, snakemen and floaters. You don't want to end up facing a bunch of enemies that you cannot defeat. They are best used in combination with explosive weapons - namely grenades. Cannons with HE shells work okay, but they lack strength for taking out some of the stronger terrorists. For these, you'd need large rockets and high explosives. For most other enemies, alien grenades and proximity mines work wonders.

 

Also note that the pistols, next to the laser pistols, are the best weapons in the game to use as reaction-fire weapons. Or, if you prefer, reaction fire 'training' weapons.

 

---

 

HE weapons

 

Grenades.

 

Well, there are plenty of strategies you can use with grenades. Like pre-arming the grenades and storing them in your shoulder slots or belt for quick retrieval. The grenade relay chain, where someone at the back arms a grenade and tosses it forward to where it's needed so that the scout can toss it and also run away or fire off shots.

 

You must throw the grenade in order to earn any experience from it. Dropping it, while effective, will not net you any experience.

 

Strength is the major influencing stat used by grenades, as it affects the distance of the throw. Throwing skill just controls where it lands. High explosives are literally twice as heavy as any other grenade, so the throwing distance is halved. Hence why you need plenty of strength to make use of them effectively. But they pack a punch!

 

If you're standing under a ceiling of some sort (well, the Skyranger's wings are technically a ceiling), your throwing distance can be drastically altered. Walk away so that you're no longer under the ceiling before attempting your throw. Otherwise you'll only be able to throw short distances. This is why it's so difficult for strong soldiers to throw grenades in cramped spaces, like the bases.

 

And just so you know, hitting enemies with grenades exercises the firing accuracy stat. So soldier that cannot shoot well but have overall good stats might want to be kept around as grenadiers for a while.

 

 

Ranged HE weapons

 

Well, there's the autocannon and heavy cannon. One with speed and the other with power and slightly more accuracy. As a lot of enemies have light under-armour, HE shells are the natural choice for these weapons. Note that if you're wearing power armour, these weapons become even more lethal because you can now use them as short range combat weapons. You'll only receive damage from direct hits, not the splash damage. Or little to no damage in the case of heavy cannons, being slightly stronger.

 

The rocket launcher is your second most powerful handheld ranged HE weapon (the Blaster launcher's the first). It's the most accurate aimed shot weapon in the game as well, so always try to use these with aimed shots and with kneeling and very accurate soldiers. Snap shots should be used when you're sure of a hit. Like firing from a high elevation right into the ground near a group of enemy, or firing it right into a wall.

 

Small rockets are not that powerful, but they are much more portable than the other rockets. They're about as powerful as a standard grenade. Still good for training. Also, in power armour, you can almost use these as close combat weapons. Not as effective as an autocannon though.

 

Large rockets are the rockets to use. You'll need some way of distributing the weight if you find them too heavy. Save these for clusters of enemies, or for tough enemies. Great against Mutons and Ethereals and practically everything else. Sectopods may need multiple hits, but will go down to large rocket eventually.

 

Incendiary weapons:

 

In general, lots of people use incendiary weapons as a very temporary but portable (and expensive) light source. Fire can be used to indirectly kill enemies over several turns(as long as the fire keeps burning and there's fuel to burn).

 

Incendiary weapons also have one very unusual effect. Any unit that is standing in a patch of fire will receive impact damage for every incendiary shell/rocket that detonates during that turn. Amazing, but true. Note, this may only be true for fire created in the current game. Not too sure about what happens if you save then reload. This is technically a cheat.

 

Unusually enough, you can even kill superhuman sectopods with autocannon incendiary rounds this way.

 

The incendiary rocket is the heaviest of the rockets. It also has the highest impact damage and blast/burn radius of any incendiary weapon in the game. I'd recommend using it as an opening move or if you want to deal tons of damage to units who are standing on fire. Note that there's a limit to how many fires that can be created at any given time, so using a lot of these is not recommended unless it's for the impact damage.

 

---

 

Overall, any of these weapons can last all the way through the game. Even pistols. You just need to know how to get the most out of your chosen weapon and when not to use them. Anyone can use a laser rifle or a heavy plasma, but with the other weapons, you need to use combinations to make up for their weaknesses.

 

But look, don't force yourself to use these weapons if they don't seem to be working for you.

 

Curses, I timed out while typing all this ... And somehow I get the feeling I'm not answering the question. oh well .

 

- NKF

[Stewart]

Quick rule-of-thumb, fight 'em with HE but when you get close use AP. This is a generalization of course.

[Zombie]

Did you get at least one of each sample between 0 and 16 (ie every number in between)?  Judging by your data the anticipated average should be twelve.  Rather than an even distribution it is squewed higher.

One of the reasons I did 2000 reloads instead of my "normal" 1000 was because some of the lower numbers were not represented, even up to the 1500 mark. However, that all changed within the last 500 values. Here is the distribution count, if you're interested:

# of Civies    Count     Smoothed     % of Total
    0            6           6           0.30%	
    1            3           4           0.15%	
    2            4           4           0.20%	
    3            4           6           0.20%	
    4            11          8           0.55%	
    5            10          12          0.50%	
    6            15          17          0.75%	2.65%
    7            26          85          1.30%	3.95%
    8            215         155        10.75%	
    9            224         225        11.20%	
   10            236         235        11.80%	
   11            246         247        12.30%	
   12            259         246        12.95%	
   13            232         228        11.60%	
   14            194         197         9.70%	
   15            165         170         8.25%	
   16            150         150         7.50%

So every number was represented at least 3 times.

 

The anticipated average was 8 - [0+16]/2. The actual average was 12. To get a better idea of how the data is skewed, plot the # of Civies vs. the Smoothed column as a line graph. That pretty much tells the whole story!

 

----------

 

"Non-Energy" weapons . I suppose that most players try to opt-out of these asap in favor of the Laser and Plasma weapons. This probably answers why people ask what the purpose of them are when you have a Heavy Plasma and a Blaster Launcher.

 

My response is: you have to start out somewhere, and the earth-based, non-energy weapons are all you've got at the beginning of a campaign. However, they still have certain advantages over the more advanced weapons as NKF so kindly pointed out. Granted, those starting weapons have rather low damage potentials, but each of them is unique in some respect.

 

For instance, I'd much rather use a High Explosive than an Alien Grenade. Even though it's tough to throw, it sure packs a wollop when compared to the alien grenade. For reaction training, nothing beats the low TU cost of the normal pistol. What alien weapon has the capability to shoot 3 different types of ammo? Nothing! That's why the Auto Cannon, Heavy Cannon and Rocket Launcher still are useful later on. See, you can't just overlook the earth-based weapons, simply because they cause less damage than the researchable weapons do. Everything has a purpose, but in the end, it's up to the player to decide if those weapons are worthwhile to use!

[Stewart]

Statistics was . . . god . . . 16 years ago. But my age degraded brain seems to recall something called a Chi Square Distribution or something like that; have a look.

[Zombie]

One of the reasons I did 2000 reloads instead of my "normal" 1000 was because some of the lower numbers were not represented, even up to the 1500 mark. However, that all changed within the last 500 values. Here is the distribution count, if you're interested:

# of Civies    Count     Smoothed     % of Total
   0            6           6           0.30%	
   1            3           4           0.15%	
   2            4           4           0.20%	
   3            4           6           0.20%	
   4            11          8           0.55%	
   5            10          12          0.50%	
   6            15          17          0.75%	2.65%
   7            26          85          1.30%	3.95%
   8            215         155        10.75%	
   9            224         225        11.20%	
  10            236         235        11.80%	
  11            246         247        12.30%	
  12            259         246        12.95%	
  13            232         228        11.60%	
  14            194         197         9.70%	
  15            165         170         8.25%	
  16            150         150         7.50%

So every number was represented at least 3 times.

 

The anticipated average was 8 - [0+16]/2. The actual average was 12. To get a better idea of how the data is skewed, plot the # of Civies vs. the Smoothed column as a line graph. That pretty much tells the whole story!

 

 

Necro, I know, but I have some new information!

 

I think the reason why the number of civilians vary and there isn't a normal bell shaped distribution is possibly because of three factors:

1. The map blocks which make up a city
   
2. The number of spawn points within the map blocks
   
3. Difficulty level
   

Map Generation

 

My theory is that the low civilian counts (0-7) primarily happen when there is one road (as there aren't any spawn points for civilians to go in those blocks) and more so when there are two roads that cross each other. Basically, the roads are empty space which ultimately limits the number of map blocks with civilian spawn points. Depending where the roads are situated, it may prevent the larger 20x20 blocks (like warehouses) from being placed and this is where the most civilians start out.

 

Spawn Points

 

This ties into the above, but if there are only smaller 10x10 map blocks being placed on the map because of the roads, there aren't going to be a lot of civilian nodes available. Also, certain blocks (such as the apartment building and large park - both 20x20) have surprisingly few (or no) civilian spawn points. If one of these bigger blocks are placed, it'll chew up a lot of area where there is a light civilian population. There are also other 10x10 blocks like small parks with no civilians spawn points.

 

Difficulty Level

 

This probably plays a pretty big role, but not in the way you might imagine. The game may or may not predetermine the number of potential civilians to place before the map is generated - even if the map is already generated however, the number of civilians isn't based on the composition of the map, it's a random number roll and I suspect the roll is the same across all difficulty levels. Additionally, I surmise the game only has one roll (between 8-16 civilians) it uses for all difficulty levels (the numbers 0-7 aren't in the roll).

 

The reason why the civilians are sometimes limited (or not even present) is the spawn order and quantity of units. Remember that X-COM tanks spawn first, then X-COM soldiers, then aliens and finally civilians. Also remember that "Civ-Scout" spawn points are not reserved for only civilians, if a lot of X-COM or alien units need to be placed, they will occupy those nodes instead. Since X-COM units are placed in their ship, this doesn't factor into terror sites. Aliens however, still need to get placed somewhere on the map and as difficulty level increases, so do the number of aliens. If enough aliens are slated to be placed, they will consume all the civilian spawn points and prevent them from showing up. I suspect that as difficulty level increases, the probability of those 0-7 civilian terror sites will increase also. (Needs testing).

 

So obviously I did my 2000 trials all on beginner difficulty level. Why is the distribution of 8-16 civilians not flat line, but instead sorta bell shaped? If different quantities of civilians were placed on the same terror site map, then yes, it would be a flatline distribution. Trouble is, the map generated isn't the same each time. And why are 8-11 civilians more probable than 13-16? I think this is because there are normally enough aliens (even on beginner) to almost always cut into civilian populations.

 

So I think that kinda covers it, until we find out where the civilian roll is located in the executable.

 

- Zombie

[magic9mushroom]

So obviously I did my 2000 trials all on beginner difficulty level. Why is the distribution of 8-16 civilians not flat line, but instead sorta bell shaped? If different quantities of civilians were placed on the same terror site map, then yes, it would be a flatline distribution. Trouble is, the map generated isn't the same each time. And why are 8-11 civilians more probable than 13-16? I think this is because there are normally enough aliens (even on beginner) to almost always cut into civilian populations.

 

So I think that kinda covers it, until we find out where the civilian roll is located in the executable.

 

- Zombie

That doesn't look like a flatline with corrections to me, it looks like a pyramid with corrections (i.e. 8 + [0-4] + [0-4]). Otherwise the mode wouldn't be 12.

 

Though of course this is armchair statistics

[Zombie]

Can't really be sure what type of distribution it is, but assuming that there is more than one way to construct a map with the requisite civilians then my guess is still bell shaped. With only 9 data points you can't really see it though.

 

And I'm beginning to think that I need more trials (above and beyond the 2000 on beginner) to see if that sheds some more light on the subject. What would be really nice is to log the map blocks for each terror site, but I don't think BB's logger is capable of that (might be able to sweet talk him into it though).

 

- Zombie