OFFICIAL Bug thread

[Bomb Bloke]

You definitely have to take care moving soldiers. At times, the yellow/blue lines won't show up clearly, and it can be hard to tell whether you're about to dash or not. I've only once had a soldier move to the wrong level, but the moment I clicked I knew why; the mouse pointer was over the upper level, but close enough to the edge that the game thought I'd highlighted a tile below.

 

There's no definite cause known for the teleport bug, but I once had a squad of floaters appear amongst my men, then NEXT turn, another squad of floaters popped in too. By this time the zombies had also arrived through rather more conventional means (by zombie-standards, anyway - it's quite amusing to watch them jump off a roof and land on their head), and this being Impossible mode, I thought it time to reload a save. I backed my squad away from that area somewhat and didn't have any more such problems.

[Hobbes]

I finally got the game for Christmas and have played (ahem) a few hours now. Love it. But have hit a few problems.

 

The most upsetting is the problem already described with multiple levels where it displays one floor but sends the soldier to the floor below. Just had to quit a mission when my top assault girl ended up on the wrong floor, out of cover and in the middle of three mutons, with pretty disastrous consequences. But then it got weirder when I hurled the entire squad in after her. One of the mutons standing on a ramp between floors could not be seen by the squad unless they ran past him down the ramp and onto the floor below. Total nightmare. They all survived - just - but then I found I couldn't get the movement thing to work properly at all because, like The Veteran, the game kept sending my soldiers to a ground floor tile underneath the first floor tile I had selected.This was an abductor mission too. I didn't have the problem with the roof displaying so I couldn't see my soldiers though - it just sent my soldiers to the ground floor when I selected first floor tiles to move to. Or just did nothing (presumably when there was no tile to move to under the first floor tile I selected). Very frustrating indeed so I had to stop.

 

I'll try it again tomorrow, but it's a very tedious problem and I'm not sure I can get round it for this mission. Also it stops me from playing iron man, which would be my preferred once I've learnt the game. Losing soldiers as a consequence of my own mistakes is bad enough, but losing them because of an interface problem really sucks

 

May you enjoy the game as much as possible

 

One of the patches fixed most of the problems with moving inside the Abductor. Before the patch it was a matter of being really carefully and using the camera commands to rotate the angle, which usually helps. The Line of Sight to me is a challenge - how to flush or get a shot to that alien sniping.

 

These can be really frustrating when playing Ironman but once you learn how to work around them - just take your time and let the game teach you how it wants to be played (am I mean it literally - once I started doing this on CI my games started being a lot more fun)

 

I've also had a muton soldier appear from nowhere right next to my troops that definitely wasn't there before, as described by The Veteran. No cut scene or group of three just pouf!

 

Most people call the AI teleporting activated aliens a bug. I call it a chalenge. What is happening is two different mechanics:

1) The teleporting of alien packs, either already activated or passive, or on patrol or sentry mode to speed up the game (although there are missions where you never see the AI doing it)

2) Activated aliens seem to be able to activate other packs on their own. Keep an eye on situations where a pack of 3 aliens is activated and 1 of them goes running away from your troops. That alien is going to try to call additional buddies and the AI may decide that they are too far away so it will teleport the running alien or any additional packs and once in a while you'll get 2/3 aliens being beamed directly on top of your troops with all the fun that ensues.

3) Also, as Bomb Bloke described, sometimes the AI will throw at your soldiers 3 or 4 alien packs at the same time. Watch out!

[Bomb Bloke]

It's one thing to teleport aliens around off-screen (though I'm not even happy with THAT idea), and it's one thing to drop them on the edge of my vision. Dropping them in the five tiles of space between my squadmembers is game breaking.

 

I assume what happens is that teleportation only kicks in when the path-finding routine has inspected a certain number of tiles and still hasn't found a route. Which wouldn't be so bad if it only allowed teleportation to places your units can't see. As it stands they can be dropped just anywhere, and usually they end up directly at their destination - your squad.

[Hobbes]

It's one thing to teleport aliens around off-screen (though I'm not even happy with THAT idea), and it's one thing to drop them on the edge of my vision. Dropping them in the five tiles of space between my squadmembers is game breaking.

 

I assume what happens is that teleportation only kicks in when the path-finding routine has inspected a certain number of tiles and still hasn't found a route. Which wouldn't be so bad if it only allowed teleportation to places your units can't see. As it stands they can be dropped just anywhere, and usually they end up directly at their destination - your squad.

 

Which can be also a very strong argument to prevent players from camping on a specific map location and waiting for the aliens to reach them through a map bottleneck. Or least to make them be aware that further surprises may be in store.

 

I just think the game gets a lot more interesting with this rather than having all the aliens coming at you from a certain direction because of the unpredictability. I just had a game where 6 Mutons got activated at the same time, and on the next turn I realize I'm actually facing 2 more that the AI just decided to pop into the middle of the firefight, already activated.

It ended up badly for all the Mutons involved (I had 2 Heavies loaded with rockets ready for such a situation) but I got 1 critical wounded in the process and with the realization of how bad things would have gone if I hadn't decided to bring the 2nd Heavy... live and learn.

[Misotu]

One of the patches fixed most of the problems with moving inside the Abductor. Before the patch it was a matter of being really carefully and using the camera commands to rotate the angle, which usually helps.

 

Yes, I saw some info on that after I'd posted, so that explains why I didn't get the problem with the roof. I loaded the game again today and had a really close look at it. It's not user error - it genuinely wouldn't let me move around properly but I found through trial and error (and a bit of desperation) that, as you've mentioned, rotating the view fixed the problem. Not exactly ideal but I'm also trying to remember not to mentally screen out the little blue line that traces the path the unit will take. It's a good indicator as to whether it will end up on the right floor

 

The Line of Sight to me is a challenge - how to flush or get a shot to that alien sniping.

 

Yes, me too. I find it very difficult to see how to move a unit to get line of sight sometimes, especially over distance. Even with careful sizing up, I am a square out way too often. I think someone suggested some kind of line of sight indicator in the suggestions thread. I would quite like this - I'm not sure it adds to the fun if you really can't see whether you'll have line of sight or not when you've expended the first of your precious two moves ...

 

just take your time and let the game teach you how it wants to be played (am I mean it literally - once I started doing this on CI my games started being a lot more fun)

 

No problem with that - actually, I play very slowly indeed. I'm one of those people who like the tension but can't bear losing soldiers. Well ok, maybe the occasional rookie. But no-one else. Ever. Well, ok. Almost never ever. Probably never going to make Impossible Super-Hard Level

 

Most people call the AI teleporting activated aliens a bug. I call it a chalenge.

 

Yes, I can see that view and actually I don't have a problem with the way they paradrop in from time to time. But the event I'm talking about is clearly a bug because it doesn't make sense in the terms of reference and feel of the game as I understand it so far. In the sense that you get a big fanfare all the time when they rush in - so suddenly seeing one muton appear from nowhere in order to stand plonk in front of your best gunslinger, doing nothing very threatening and then getting mown down, is a bit daft! I'd say that was a bug. The rest of it ... well, I don't know if I've played enough to know yet whether having groups of aliens drop in the middle of my carefully positioned squad adds to the excitement or makes me want to throw my mouse out of the window. Time will tell ...

 

I know about the aliens ganging up. Going through the spaceships is beginning to feel a bit like endless walking into bottleneck ambushes at the moment, so I'm trying various tactics to see how to sort it out. My latest involved a combination of scouting ahead from a side vantage point combined with nipping in and out down the centre to try to draw them out. Ha ha. Worked a treat for a bit and then suddenly they came at me with a sectopod, 2 drones, 3 particularly sprinty and bad-tempered chryssalids, 2 sectoids and an elite muton sharpshooter all at once. This was the turn after I had taken out a particularly sly and hunky muton backed up by an ethereal. It wasn't looking pretty, but I did land a rocket bang slap in the middle of the worst of them; the badly-damaged chryssalids took to the roof (er, they seemed to teleport through the roof to do it but hey, probably my rubbish eyesight) and then started jumping down on my troops looking ultra menacing in that determined way they have, reaction fire everywhere, balanced on a knife edge and ...

 

... the game crashed.

 

Ho hum. Now I'll never know exactly *how* bad that particular strategy was

[Hobbes]

... the game crashed.

 

Ho hum. Now I'll never know exactly *how* bad that particular strategy was

 

If you're playing Ironman crashes aren't a problem because the game is always autosaving. Otherwise that sucks

[Misotu]

Wait. How does that work? I thought Ironman meant save only on exit? I didn't think you got to save any other time?

 

Does it actually mean huge numbers of sensible, regular saves but you have to exit to desktop and go back in to load?

 

That sounds like a lot better option than my standard "oh damn I've sent my best sniper to certain death thanks to the cat leaping onto the keyboard at a critical moment, definitely time to reload oh no I haven't saved since the terror mission I did three hours ago" routine. Terrible choice that. Replay three hours or lose your best sniper to a purring predator with a brain the size of a walnut.

[Hobbes]

Wait. How does that work? I thought Ironman meant save only on exit? I didn't think you got to save any other time?

 

Does it actually mean huge numbers of sensible, regular saves but you have to exit to desktop and go back in to load?

 

That sounds like a lot better option than my standard "oh damn I've sent my best sniper to certain death thanks to the cat leaping onto the keyboard at a critical moment, definitely time to reload oh no I haven't saved since the terror mission I did three hours ago" routine. Terrible choice that. Replay three hours or lose your best sniper to a purring predator with a brain the size of a walnut.

 

Ironman is always saving automatically, you don't need to do anything about it but you only have your last save available. So if the cat jumps on the keyboard your Sniper is still going to be fried.

[NKF]

If the sniper has only just been killed by your cat you can force the game to shut down before it autosaves. Technically breaking the intent of ironman but better than getting killed abnormally by a game bug, household pet or if the game stalls while its thinking.

 

Saves tend to be frequent in the base, at the start of missions and seem to be after certain turns in combat though not every turn.

 

-NKF

[Misotu]

Ah ok. Well that sounds all right actually, better than I thought. I might try it, because the reality is that in this hypothetical situation I'd lose the sniper rather than replaying three hours anyway ...

[RiceBawlZ]

OK is anyone else having issues with the game lately?

Mine is freezing often, and glitching out...

 

Everything was working fine doing story mode, and about half way through it started freezing mostly after missions. Or , after a mission it would get stuck on or freeze on the plane flying back...

 

And during cut scenes everything looks glitchy or "8 bit" like when u jammed a game into ur Nintendo and everything was different colors? And following cut scenes icons are usually three same way like troop flag,troop type,scan in mission control,etc..

 

I thought it was corrupt data, so I deleted it restored all files manually and reinstalled, and the issue is still present. Can anyone help?

 

 

Note this is only in story mode, not multi player, not yet anyway.

[Space Voyager]

Perhaps it is Minecraft week in XCOM? I have no idea, don't have the game installed from before the dlc.

[RiceBawlZ]

And now its anytime I load... I can't do anything can anyone help please?

 

Perhaps it is Minecraft week in XCOM? I have no idea, don't have the game installed from before the dlc.

 

 

Well I just downloaded it about 2 weeks ago off the playstation store....

[sp1ke]

Hi all. I have started playing as the price point dropped to £2.99 or so on a Steam weekend special. :-)

 

Bugs I have found, more or less in order of irritation value

 

- the screen is too dark for my dodgy eyes to see, even with the gamma whacked up all the way

- auto scroll is way too sensitive making it impossible to target area fire accurately and just plain frustrating

- similar with the vertical scrolling as others have noted

- magnification gets too wide and the G and T keys don't work to return it to maximum magnification. Again this makes it hard to see what's going on

- very hard to find your own casualties on the map to stabilise them.

- similarly you can't switch to an agent who has used both actions, even though it would be useful to see the enemies they have spotted and also look out of their eyes

-doesn't seem to be a way to tilt the camera up or down though sometimes it does that by itself as you movemove the camera

- The Situation Room becomes unreachable by mouse sometimes, particularly when you have Ignored a mission to go sort out your soldiers before launch. But it still can be reached with arrow keys etc.

- similar issue with not being able to dismiss the current objective screen and so not being able to get back to the world clock thingy. This is quite annoying as it can take ten attempts to get back to the mission.

- tells you that you don't have enough uplink capacity because it's forgetting to add on the adjacency bonuses

-doesn't always reset the roster to the most veterany agents if you have edited the roster. Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. Maybe I am missing a subtlety. Maybe it's a feature?

-no way to tell if you have line of sight until after your move - a faithful and authentic XCom feature :-)

-NKF obviously designed the pistol rules. Or bought the designers many beers. Pistols get SO much love in this game. (Also a feature rather than bug, arguably)

-Run and Gun doesn't work with the Arc gun. As at least one unlucky Assault agent found out to her butter cost. So yeah that's a feature not a bug too. Just a "surprise". But the game is full of surprises. :-)

- Parking Interceptors over a place has no noticeable effect on Panic. Contrary to the in-game help. So I guess that's flavour text, not a bug? :-)

 

[sp1ke]

And now a word on baddies teleporting / spawning in the middle of your group. It's worth bearing in mind that we can do this to the baddies so maybe the game is just being fair and even handed. You can walk one or two or all of your guys into the middle of the baddie pack and they just stand there like lemons, not reacting, because it's not their turn". So though it seems to break the laws of physics when they do it to us, it's only in the same way that we break the laws of physics when we do it to them.

 

In original XCom, reaction fire does not always trigger even when it is reserved. I believe this game is the same though I may be wrong? I'm pretty sure I've seen agents on overwatch fail to react to something moving through their line of sight. And who's to say that the baddies in the middle of your pack did pass through the lines of sight of the agents who were left on overwatch? And no one can guarantee a pack was protected by a contiguous circular line of sight of overwatch, because the game never shows us its sight arcs, it only ever tells us after the event (movement) when we don't have a line of sight to a particular target or targets.

[Hobbes]

- similarly you can't switch to an agent who has used both actions, even though it would be useful to see the enemies they have spotted and also look out of their eyes

 

On a PC, place cursor on soldier and click - that should allow you to choose the soldier, even if both actions have been used. You can also use this to deactivate bombs during disposal missions or even switch between a rifle/pistol (and use it to cheat with Squaddie Snipers, by moving, setting overwatch with the pistol and afterwards using this trick to switch back to sniper rifle). This doesn't work on consoles.

 

-doesn't seem to be a way to tilt the camera up or down though sometimes it does that by itself as you movemove the camera

 

There are a couple of mods that allow that.

 

-doesn't always reset the roster to the most veterany agents if you have edited the roster. Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. Maybe I am missing a subtlety. Maybe it's a feature?

 

The rooster is a bit of black magic: the two things that influence the position of the soldiers are the number of kills and missions. But I think that the rooster only gets updated right after the mission.

 

-Run and Gun doesn't work with the Arc gun. As at least one unlucky Assault agent found out to her butter cost. So yeah that's a feature not a bug too. Just a "surprise". But the game is full of surprises. :-)

 

The Arc Thrower is considered an 'item' for game proposes.

 

- Parking Interceptors over a place has no noticeable effect on Panic. Contrary to the in-game help. So I guess that's flavour text, not a bug? :-)

 

I just did a quick search through the game files and I can't find anywhere on the tips where this is stated, only "Building satellites is the key to success. Satellites increase your monthly funding and lower panic in Council member countries". Do you have a screenshot or something?

[sp1ke]

Naw you're right, there's no mention of a direct connection between Interceptor cover and controlling Panic. Just indirect, as the Satellites control Panic and the Interceptors supposedly protect the Satellites. I must have hallucinated that 'flavour text'. I think I misread the part of the XCom Database called Controlling Panic. Thanks for keeping me honest Hobbes! :-)

[Hobbes]

In original XCom, reaction fire does not always trigger even when it is reserved. I believe this game is the same though I may be wrong? I'm pretty sure I've seen agents on overwatch fail to react to something moving through their line of sight. And who's to say that the baddies in the middle of your pack did pass through the lines of sight of the agents who were left on overwatch? And no one can guarantee a pack was protected by a contiguous circular line of sight of overwatch, because the game never shows us its sight arcs, it only ever tells us after the event (movement) when we don't have a line of sight to a particular target or targets.

 

It's not as the original, where the reactions/TUs of both units where compared, but there is one requirement for Overwatch - it only happens when the spotter sees the movement of an enemy unit in half or zero cover (I can't remember about full cover) for a set amount of distance, usually 2 or 3 tiles.

 

For instance, if there's a tree which is on the limit of a soldier's sight and there's an unseen alien at the back of the map that moves behind the tree, then your soldier won't fire since it has only spotted the alien when it arrived behind the tree, not during its movement towards the tree. For the soldier to fire on overwatch it would need to be placed one or two tiles forward, where it can see the tiles that the alien will cross before reaching the tree.

 

This requirement that a soldier/unit needs to see an opponent for a continuous X amount of distance to fire on overwatch has also another consequence - full cover can also 'prevent' overwatch fire if the movement path of the unit causes it passes through high cover that briefly conceals it from enemy sight. This is not something that you (or the aliens) can control (at least easily) to use but that can have quite an effect.

 

Oh, and just one tip - if you want to enjoy EU2012, don't compare with the original. It was not designed to replicate the original game's mechanics, and what you know about the original will not help you in any way. It's a different approach to a familiar story - you may like the choices or not and compare general parts like the strategic section (which it's much better than the original) or the soldier attachment (works better in EU2012, IMHO), but if you keep comparing and expecting it to be like the original, you'll be disappointed.

[sp1ke]

Naw I love it - it's a great take on the original, and the differences and surprises keep me guessing and keep me entertained. So far I have not encountered any deliberate design choice or any deliberate difference with the original that I disagree with. They just seem to have improved it all round. I am really loving it. :-)

[Hobbes]

They just seem to have improved it all round. I am really loving it. :-)

 

Enjoy it while it lasts... I eventually got tired of it, although I don't want to look right now at how many hours I've played it before that happened.

 

Did you go immediately to EW or did are you playing vanilla EU?

[sp1ke]

If your assault team is wiped out, the Skyranger evacuates and returns to base empty of soldiers ("Code Black"), which is not unreasonable. However all the weapons and gear that you left on the field appears back at base. This did not happen in Original XCom. In a mission Abort, only the equipment that made it on people's bodies (walking bodies or carried bodies) returned to base stores.

 

The same thing happens when you Abort in 2012 as when the mission fails - you get all your team's equipment back, not just the equipment of the people who make it to the evac zone.

 

I suppose we could say that the aliens don't care about the human equipment and they leave it on the site, and the site is secured by local authorities and policed up by XCom operatives in a hasty after-action process.

Edited September 23, 2015 by sp1ke

[sp1ke]

Enjoy it while it lasts... I eventually got tired of it, although I don't want to look right now at how many hours I've played it before that happened.

 

Did you go immediately to EW or did are you playing vanilla EU?

I am playing EU I think, and not Second Wave whatever that is. EW is a different option at the startup screen. But I've been playing Ironman since my second game. I really like that feature.

[Hobbes]

I am playing EU I think, and not Second Wave whatever that is. EW is a different option at the startup screen. But I've been playing Ironman since my second game. I really like that feature.

 

Ah nice, EW has some great additions/changes (and others I don't care much) but it's great to start with EU. Second Wave consists of several options that randomize things like stat progression, damage, and others. There's also an option that you lose all the equipment of dead or MIA soldiers.

[NKF]

And now a word on baddies teleporting / spawning in the middle of your group. It's worth bearing in mind that we can do this to the baddies so maybe the game is just being fair and even handed. You can walk one or two or all of your guys into the middle of the baddie pack and they just stand there like lemons, not reacting, because it's not their turn". So though it seems to break the laws of physics when they do it to us, it's only in the same way that we break the laws of physics when we do it to them.

 

If they were to physically ran up to you and gun your face off, that's fine. But it's quite another story to start a mission, take a turn or so to move up behind the nearby digger and start peering ahead to see if there are any Mutons around the ditch just ahead, then suddenly a full squad of Mutons are standing amongst your soldiers, do their heroic sprints and blow half your squad away. No initial movement involved - they just appeared out of thin air.

 

Very late-game X-Com Apocalypse-ish, but experiencing it from the other side. If there were personal teleporters, I'd perhaps be less critical about it.

 

For me, it was such a game breaker for Ironman that I gave up playing that mode.

 

 

This is with the unpatched copy of the game. I understand the later releases make the experience a lot less severe.

 

- NKF

[sp1ke]

For me, it was such a game breaker for Ironman that I gave up playing that mode.

 

 

This is with the unpatched copy of the game. I understand the later releases make the experience a lot less severe.

 

- NKF

 

Yes that does sound pretty severely unpleasant. I guess as a "late adopter" I have the benefit of playing with a patched and fixed version of the game. So far I have not seen this behaviour (except as a plausible consequence of enemy hidden movement on their turn, same as I can do to them), so perhaps they have fixed it. I see the cinematic teleporting which is actually supposed to be teleporting, and I see spawning in response to my movement / detecting me, which is supposed to be units already present who I couldn't have seen previously. Nothing that appears to break (alien) physics.

 

However, even in regards the spawning, it has begun to affect my tactics. I never push forward until I have cleared the current area, fully reloaded, regrouped, got into position to repel an attack. Only then will I allow any agent to move forward of our current line of furthest progress - thus triggering the next spawn. OK I suppose you could argue that's not unrealistic. But on the other side of the argument, a special forces team, once engaged, would try to move forward with maximum pace, to deny the enemy time to organise and focus, rather than making a very slow deliberate advance. In XCom 2012 the slow deliberate advance is the only sensible option.

 

A good fix for this in the game would be to have units spawn over time, regardless of whether you move into them. Once spawned, they could make an AI decision whether to wait in ambush, or attack - or wait until they have overwhelming numbers and rush you. This would assume that the aliens had radios or telepathy or ears or something, and were thus aware that there was an XCom attack in progress. :-)