Damage Modifiers for Aliens

[Zombie]

A while back, NKF wanted to find out how resistant (or suseptible) each alien was to the different ammo types in the game (Armor Piercing, Incendiary, High Explosive, Laser, Plasma and Stun). He set up a shooting gallery with 4 Sectopods and 4 soldiers equipped with the different ammo types and posted the scenario on his website for download. The Sectopods were stripped of their armor, had their health modified to 200 and were turned into "Quarterpods" (1/4 of a Sectopod) to eliminate area effect weapons dealing extra damage to the other parts. The soldiers weapons were also modified to deal a maximum damage potential of 50 and a 0 TU charge for using a snap shot.

 

For the past couple of weeks, I have been feverishly shooting, checking the Quarterpod's health with a Mind Probe, writing the health number down, and reloading the game to do this all over again. After I had 1000 data points written down, I transferred them to an Excel spreadsheet for some good old-fashioned number crunching.

 

I started with the Armor Piercing rounds because the OSG claims it deals normal (100%) damage against Sectopods. Unfortunately, I forgot to switch the obdata.dat file so the ammo would do 50 for damage (I didn't know this at the time). Since the Heavy Cannon was the weapon firing the AP bullets, the unmodified damage for this type of ammo is 56. Imagine my confusion after I reached 1000 values and the maximum damage was 112, when theoretically the number should be 100. It took a little creative thinking, but I finally figured out that I forgot to switch the obdata.dat file around, and the maximum damage was just double the unmodified damage of 56 (56 * 2 = 112).

 

Since my values for the AP rounds are based off of a 56 for damage, I just transformed my results by multiplying the unmodified damage by a ratio of 50/56 to get the modified damage of 50. All we are really after here is how much damage a Sectopod will take on average, so I doubt my blunder has too much of a bearing except for comparing each weapon type against another. If I get some time, I will redo the trial. For now, I think my data will suffice. Here it is:

 

             Damage=56    Damage=50
Minimum:         0            0
Maximum:       112          100
Range:         113          101
Median:         58           52*
Mode:           29           26*
Ant. Ave:       56           50
Act. Ave:     57.52        51.36

* = these values are rounded to the nearest whole number

 

Results: Armor Piercing rounds do a maximum of double-damage against Sectopods. It averages out to the be the damage listed by the game's UFOpaedia for unmodified AP ammo. The frequency of each damage number happening is random, that is to say you have the same probability of damaging a Sectopod for 0 points, the average, or the max.

 

I have now fixed my obdata.dat file so all the ammo types deal 50 for damage. My results for the Sectopod vs. Plasma ammo is coming up soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

-Zombie

[NKF]

Sectopods take double from AP? That's actually news to me. Then again, few of us would even think of shooting a sectopod with AP shells. Hmm, so if the cannon tank can deal 60 AP damage, then it should be able to do the same sort of damage as, say, a laser rifle which does 60 laser? (Which isn't much on superhuman, but still...)

 

Could you do a small sample between laser and plasma just to see if the lasers do indeed do more than plasma. Say 50 - 100 each? Just to get a rough idea of the min-max. I'm just worried that my simple cut, paste and then disable method hasn't quite copied the ... oh let's call them "damage resistance" modifiers.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Well, if the Tank/Cannon has a listed damage of 60 for its AP shells, then that number would be the average damage you would see. The maximum would be 120. As for doing the same amount of damage as a Laser Rifle... You have to remember that lasers are supposed to deal 1.5 times its listed damage against Sectopods. For the Laser Rifle, that would come out to 75, though the max may be calculated by taking the weapon damage and multiplying it by two and then multiplying by the resistance modifier. In this case, the Laser Rifle against the Sectopod would come to 150 or so damage.

 

This is all theoretical in nature because I did not start work on the laser ammo tests yet. I'll run through about 100 or so trials for the laser just to get a rough approximation of the Min/Max numbers. For the Plasma (which I am almost done with) the Minimum is 0 and the Maximum is 80. This would hint at a damage modifier of 1.6 for the plasma. (80/50 = 1.6)

[Zombie]

Hold on to your hats, everyone! I think I just stumbled upon the answer to why an AP-shell modified to do 50 for its damage, ends up doing double damage (or 100 points) when you test it out against a Sectopod. It's pretty simple really, and I was on the right track in my previous post.

 

Ok, let's just assume for the moment that the Official Strategy Guide's (OSG's) Damage Modifiers Against Various Forms of Protection table is numerically correct. (For those of you who own it, it's Table 8-7 on page 230). It lists that the Sectopod will take 100% (or normal) damage from Armor Piercing shells. So theoretically, an AP shell modified to do 50 damage should do a maximum of 50, right?

 

Not according to my data! They actually can do double-damage, or 100. Why? The average damage in my tests was 50 for anticipated, and 51.4 for the actual. What creates a simple average of 50? Two numbers: the min (0) and the max (100) added up and divided by 2. (The equation is AVE=[Min+Max]/2 ). When the game says a certain AP round will do 50 for damage, it actually means that is the AVERAGE damage, not the MAXIMUM possible damage! Therefore, the OSG's values are for the AVERAGE, not the MAXIMUM!

 

All right, how about something a little more complicated. The OSG shows Sectopods will take (on average) 80% (or 0.8 times) the damage listed for a Plasma bolt. If a plasma bolt says 50 for damage, it means 50 damage on average. Multiply 50 by 0.8 (the damage modifier). That gives an average of 40, and therefore, a maximum of 80 points of damage against a Sectopod. What did my preliminary data show? (I'll post the ending results soon.) Sectopods took a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 80 points of damage from a Plasma weapon dealing 50. The anticipated average would therefore be 40, so everything checks out!

 

To check my hypothesis even further, I decided to do an initial test (about 100 values) of the Sectopod against a laser dealing (on average) 50 points of damage. The OSG claims 150% (or 1.5 times) more damage on average. Multiply 50 by 1.5 which is 75 points on average. For the maximum damage, take 75 and multiply by 2. That comes to 150 points of maximum damage. My preliminary results did indeed show a maximum of 150!!!

 

Now, I am not saying that all those numbers the OSG gives in Table 8-7 are correct. Some may be wrong, so we still have to run through these tests to find out for sure. So rest assured NKF, by the looks of things right now, your cut and paste job is flawless. The OSG (and the game) just failed to mention that when something says 50 for damage, it means 50 damage on average, not maximum! And we just assumed that the damage modifier meant maximum!

[Zombie]

I just finished 1000 trials with the Sectopod against a plasma beam dealing a modified damage of 50. Since the OSG claims plasma weapons do 80% damage against a Sectopod, I went under the assumption that the the average would be 0.8 * 50 = 40 damage, so therefore the max would be double the average (40 * 2 =80). So far, this theory of mine has held up under two full trials (Armor Piercing and Plasma), and one partial trial (laser). Indeed, the maximum damage I witnessed for the plasma was 80. Anyhow, here are my results for anyone interested:

 

[Zombie]

I really put the hammer down in the past couple of days and finished the 1000 trials for the Sectopod vs. Laser (damage = 50). The OSG claims 150% damage against Sectopods from a laser weapon. So therefore, the maximum damage inflicted should be 50 * 1.5 *2 = 150. Sure enough, my results indicate this is true:

 

 Sectopod vs. Laser

            Damage=50
Minimum:         0
Maximum:        150
Range:          151
Median:         73
Mode:            7
Ant. Ave:       75
Act. Ave:     74.62

 

Here again, the distribution of the different damage numbers is random. Things became really monotonous for me this time because I had to type 151 'COUNTIF' statements because the range was so large. 81 or 101 statements aren't too terrible to type, but 151 becomes a little tedious after a while!

 

Since I finished the laser tests in a timely fashion, I continued work on the Sectopod vs. High Explosive (566 trials), and started to test the Sectopod vs. Incendiary ammo (~50 trials). When I finish, the results of these two tests are almost guaranteed to knock your socks off! The damage numbers are not even close to what I would imagine!

 

p.s. By the way, NKF, did you modify the Quarterpods to only take the Incendiary damage when shot at, or to also take damage (when standing in fire) from other Incendiary rounds going off around the map? From my limited trials, the Quarterpods only take damage from the blast that hits it, not the other rounds going off. If this was intentional on your part, good thinking! It saves me from checking the health after each round was fired. I just took the health readings at the end because it didn't seem to matter. If this was unintentional, then maybe you should take a look at the mission file to see if everything is kosher!

 

-Zombie

[NKF]

Nope, not intentional.

 

Just as an experiment, try firing incendiary rounds at the 3/4 sections and see if all the ones on fire get affected. Then compare it against the full sectopod.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Ahhh... that did it alright! Funny how if you lite a Quarterpod on fire, his 3/4-pod counterpart also is on fire! I guess it's just not possible to totally separate any part of a Sectopod because it is inexorably coupled with the other sections.

 

I have a question for you NKF. In the Quarterpod test scenario, there are 4 Quarterpods and one "Au natural Sectopod" (as you call it) next to the ramp of the Skyranger. First of all, that Sectopod can't be "Au natural" since it's health is at 200. If I recall, a Superhuman Sectopod has a health rating of 120 or so. Secondly, what is the Sectopod doing there? For comparison purposes? Fill me in!

[Bomb Bloke]

Whenever a large unit is detected, the four components link to one unit. This can be played with. You can, for example, turn a soldier into a large unit. On screen, it'll look like four men, and they will all walk around as one unit.

 

You can't use items in this way, though. It simply crashes the game.

[NKF]

Zombie: The names are just for fun. That one, I think I was just a reference to its armour, rather than its other stats. It has natural superhuman level armour.

 

Yes, it was initially left in (well, it was the first sectopod, basically - the rest are copies of it) just in case you decided to try your weapons up against a properly armoured sectopod. Not that it would've been that useful with the 'modified' weapon.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

If I'm understanding you correctly NKF, that "Au natural" Sectopod was just the "genetic material" you used to clone the other Sectopods, right? That would explain why it has 200 for health then!

 

Because that Sectopod has 200 for health and 145 for the front plates, it's not a 100% born and bred Sectopod. That extra bit of health (80 points) practically makes it unkillable. We all know a Superhuman Sectopod can be killed with HE ammo, but when its health is increased to 200, HE ammo has no effect. The only things that can kill it is the Laser Pistol (with 50 for damage), and Incendiary ammo. So yes, I did try it, but just out of curiosity!

[Munkeylord]

so you found a way to modify alien attributes eh? i gots some things for you to figure out for me then as i have no idea what the hell i'm doing

[Bomb Bloke]

(And they would be...?)

[Munkeylord]

eh possibly

[Bomb Bloke]

Ah, that is a helpful step in my quest to find out what it is exactly you want figured out.

[Munkeylord]

lol aight here it goes then, i'm lookin to modify the alien attributes to be more human for that damn ww2 mod, thats about the only thing holding it back from being done. also for the tanks......don't know if thats around the alien area or not, but basically i want the aliens to be the same height and pretty much the same effects take place when using ap ammo since thats all thats used in the mod for weapon firing. and if you know where an armor editor is i'd like to get ahold of one so the GI units can't take like 30 rounds and still walk around eh just get with me later i suppose

[Bomb Bloke]

Don't suppose you've written an editor, NKF?

 

Or is there one out there? I haven't seen one.

[Zombie]

And now, back to the regularly scheduled topic already in progress...

 

As promised, I completed 1000 tests for the Quarterpod vs. High Explosive ammunition. I had to be exceptionally careful because a stray HE shell could easily inflict extra damage on the closely spaced Quarterpods. It took a little longer than the other trials because the results were anything but ordinary:

Quarterpod vs. High Explosive Ammo

            Damage = 50
Minimum:         16
Maximum:         48
Range:           33
Median:          32
Mode:            32
Ant. Ave:        32
Act. Ave:       31.59

If one were to strictly follow what the OSG says for HE ammo against the Sectopod, the average damage inflicted should be: 0.8 * 50 = 40. The minimum should be 0, and the maximum, 80. Look at my numbers above. It shows the minimum is 16, not 0. The average is 32, while it should be 40, and the maximum is 48, when it should be 80! The range is also 33, while it should be 81. The distribution of the damage numbers is random, like all the other trials I did.

 

Why the huge difference in the numbers? I really can't even guess until I test out a full Sectopod against HE ammo. The discrepancy may just be the game estimating the damage on a part, when the explosion is pseudo-3D in nature. An undivided Sectopod may take 2, or even 3 times the damage listed above due to the orientation of the blast. As it stands now, the Quarterpod takes an average 64% damage from High Explosive ammunition, while it should do 80%.

 

It's possible that the ground is actually interfering with the damage numbers. See, the shock wave from the explosion might reflect off the ground, inflicting at least 16 points more damage than anticipated. Since some of the power of the blast was redirected elsewhere, the game reduces the maximum damage downwards to compensate. Right now, this is only speculation on my part. The only way to be sure is to raise the Quarterpod off the ground, and do another 1000 tests.

 

The anticipated minimum damage for HE ammo against the Quarterpod is 0. My results show a minimum damage of 16 points. What this means is that even though the HE shells only do 64% of their listed damage (on average), you will ALWAYS damage a Sectopod with them! All the other weapon types can sometimes deal 0 damage. This might be THE best way to kill a Sectopod, because every HE shot that connects, does damage!

 

Because I was concentrating my efforts to finish the HE tests, the trials for Incendary ammunition suffered. I have about 100 done, so that's a long way off yet. After the Incendiary tests against the Quarterpod are completed, I will work on the area effect weapons (HE and INC) against a whole Sectopod to see how much extra damage is inflicted. Hopefully by this time NKF has modified the game so that the Quarterpods are floating in the air, with the soldiers standing underneath! *Hint, hint. Wink, wink*

 

-Zombie

[NKF]

In the air, eh? You know what, I hadn't thought of that. Would actually solve a few problems, actually. Must remember to do that.

 

For now, if you want to get things done right away, I'll show you how to manually do this edit for yourself.

 

Open up a MS-Dos console window and navigate to the directory you saved your game.

 

Open the unitpos.dat file with MS-Edit. Just type in the following to save time:

 

edit /14 unitpos.dat

 

It'll open the file in binary mode and tabulate everything at every 14 lines.

 

I put an obvious gap between the entries to separate the soldiers from the aliens. So move your cursor down to the second half. The first half are your soldiers, while the second half are the sectopods. The first four in the sectopod section is the 'Au Naturale' sectopod. You can choose to ignore this if you want. But for the rest, edit the 3rd column by doing the following:

 

Make sure your cursor is in overwrite mode (ins).

 

Move the cursor to the third column (should be filled with hearts). Hold down control and then press P and then B. The heart should change into a white smiley face. This'll put them on elevation level 2. The heart has an ascii value of 3, which is the ground level. So 2 will mean one level above. You can also use ctrl+p+a to move it to elevation 1, which is two levels up. I have no way of getting an elevation of 0 except by copying and pasting an existing value of 0 somewhere in the file.

 

Repeat this for all the entries and save the file. Make sure you're in overwrite mode so you don't accidentally add bytes to the file, and if you paste anything in, remember to delete the text you were wanting to replace. Very important as the game expects to read date in 14 bytes at a time. Any extra and it'll skip and really mess up the data it loads in.

 

This is pretty much how I do my editing all the time.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

I followed your directions NKF, and loaded the unitpos.dat file into MS-Edit. For some reason I couldn't figure out how to change the cursor to overwrite mode, so I just deleted the hearts and added the white smiley faces. Then I saved the file and loaded up X-COM to see if everything worked. Sure enough, the Quarterpods were in the air as well as the 3/4-pod counterparts.

 

Then I got to thinking. The soldiers should also be at the same level as the Quarterpods. So assuming the 3rd column is always the height above the battlescape for aliens and soldiers, I switched the hearts to smiley faces in the soldier area. Voila! Now the soldiers were standing up one level also!

 

Then I got to thinking some more. There are a few different scenarios to consider when assuming a partial 3D explosion. I'll list them here:

 

1) Quarterpod on ground (Level 0), and soldier on ground. (I finished this one already).

2) Quarterpod on Level 1, and Soldier on ground. (Alien in air and soldier on ground).

3) Quarterpod on Level 1, and Soldier on Level 1. (Alien and soldier in the air).

4) Quarterpod on ground (Level 0), and soldier on Level 1. (Alien on ground and soldier in air).

 

To see if any of these scenarios made a difference in damage levels, I performed a few trials on #2 and #3. By the looks of my preliminary data, there is a difference. I guess it wouldn't hurt to investigate this further, because sometimes Sectopods can be found in the air (like in the lift of an Alien Base or a Battleship), and sometimes your soldiers (in Flying Suits) will be shooting at a Sectopod from above. If you want me to do a full 1000 trials on these scenarios, I will. For the moment though, perhaps a smaller sampling of 250-500 trials would suffice.

 

Additionally, these same tests should be performed on full Sectopods to check if it takes 2, 3, or even 4 times as much damage as a Quarterpod. One good thing about having the Quarterpods in the air is that the 1/4 and 3/4 parts do not reconnect if you click on the "next round" button!

[Bomb Bloke]

Ok...

 

I need to know a few details about these maps, concerning how the unitpos.dat file is setup. It could make or break my log program.

 

So, can I get hold of a copy from somewhere?

 

My email address is written on my web page.

 

In other news...

 

I was skimming through the USG, when I spotted in section 10.3 a guy called Paul Close, who apparently wrote a program to loop weapons tests...

 

Not sure how such a thing would be achieved, but I'm not sure how to contact him, either. The referrance is years old.

 

Another thing the USG seemd to suggest that craft speed/range was affected by what was on the craft, in terms of equipment/soldiers. Dunno about craft weapons. Could be interesting to look into.

[NKF]

Well, the thing that connects the map file and the unitpos file are basically the coordinates.

 

The first three bytes in each entry are your coordinates. The first two are the X and Y coordinates, with (0, 0) being the top left-most tile on the overhead map.

 

The last is the elevation. 0 is the uppermost level (topmost), while 3 is the bottom-most, for a 4 layer map (most missions). A 2 level map (most base missions), 1 is the bottom-most.

 

Would've been much easier if they'd considered 0 as being from the bottom and 1 or 3 as the top. I guess you can still do that with 'map height - unit elevation', and there you have the actual map layer that the unit is on.

 

The dimensions of the map are stored in... blast, it's in my notes somewhere. Oh, that's right. My manifest says that wglob.dat has the map dimensions.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Er, are you replying to me?

 

What I wanna know is how you built your Sectopods. They won't be made the way the game makes them.

 

In truth, all I need to know is whether each unit still has all four segments in the unitpos file, as per normal (even if they are at different locations).

 

It'd be easier if I could examine a save file, though. Then there's no room for my confusion.

[NKF]

Oh, yes, each quarter has its separate entry in the unitpos.dat file. I simply changed the coordinates of each segment.

 

You can always just grab one of the test games I put up and see for yourself.

 

-NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

The saves are on your webpage. Now why didn't I remember that?

 

*bangs his head against the wall*

 

Ok, no problems now.

 

Ooh! You've put all your avatars up, too! Must download!