Shipping Lane Mission, SWS Disappears?

[Midgar]

I know this game is bug ridden but I wasn't aware of this one. I cleared out all the aliens in part one, even saved right before I killed the last one. I had 4 SWSs in part one and when I began part two, I only had 3. I've reloaded several times from part one but it's the same result, I even tried aborting with all my units in the correct area, figured I'd have my 4th SWS with me still after the mission. That wasn't the case however, it was completely gone. Any way to avoid losing it? It's not that big of a deal but still, Zrbite is hard to come by and I didn't want to build another one T_T

[NKF]

Can you upload the save somewhere? I'd like to have a look at it after work.

 

-NKF

[Midgar]

I can do that, except I'm not sure where the game saves are located. I have the steam version.

 

Edit: Found the game folder in the steam folder, I'm guessing the folder called "Game_#" are the save files.

[silencer_pl]

Yes - just zip it and upload it somewhere

[Midgar]

https://skydrive.liv...459A8CBBEEC!113

 

Also, the last Alien is the civilian, one of my guys is facing him. I might've MCed him to get him out of harms way, I wasn't aware that he turned hostile if you did *facepalm*

[NKF]

Yes, definitely looks like a bug. The designers might not have anticipated players wanting more than 3 tanks at a time, and while it's fine for the first map, the code handling the transfer to the next is skipping the placement of the 4th tank, effectively killing it by making it not exist anymore. I wonder if the same is true for tanks in T'Leth? Hmm.

 

The only thing I can recommend to save the Displacer is to hike everyone back to the Leviathan and dust off. You've racked up plenty of points on this first part that dusting off now with all your troops (and any artefacts you bring with you) will still net you a positive score with a Good score.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Maybe it counts the fields that are requried for troops to get to the safe zone. In tleth you are missing I think 1 field in the second part.

[Bomb Bloke]

Normally, your troopers are placed in your dropship before the battlescape engine starts, and aliens are scattered amongst the route nodes on the map.

 

Any map where your troops don't start in the dropship see all units placed on spawning route nodes, yours and the aliens. Some nodes are hence especially flagged to allow X-COM troops only, and out of those nodes, only some are flagged to allow large units to spawn on them.

 

In this case, some of the spawn nodes are disabled. There's nowhere to place the tanks and so they're simply lost. This is pretty much exactly what happens to the aliens when there aren't enough nodes to spawn them all inside your bases.

 

Extract this archive into your game folder and you should be all set.

 

ROUTES.rar

 

In T'Leth, I was able to get my tanks second-to-last stage of the mission, but not to the third and final stretch as I couldn't find the last alien and there weren't enough exit tiles to fit all four in addition to my ten troops. Not sure if there were enough nodes for them to spawn into that last stage.

 

Regarding MCd civilians, they don't count as a either "killed" nor "saved" civilian at the end of the mission, but rather as just another dead alien. The result is a positive score for them, though typically not as high as "saving" them normally would be.

[Midgar]

Thanks for the replies. Next time I'll make sure to bring only 3 SWSs on any two part missions, although I'm fairly sure I've brought 4 to an alien colony without losing any. Also, does that zip file only fix the bug with the current mission I'm in or for all future missions? I kind of went ahead and finished it because I got impatient XD, that and I raided a few ships with plenty of Zerbite to build another.

 

The developers seemed to have overlooked a lot in this game, now I'm wondering what will happen if I break the money barrier of 99 million.

 

Also, a random quesiton if anyone would care to reply. Usually I sell all my alien corpses except for one, I guess I must've accidentally sold my last Calcinite corpse and now I have none to research melee weapons. The problem being I haven't seen them for months in a mission, do they appear again sometime soon? Currently I mainly see Gilman, Tasoth, and Lobstermen missions. I haven't had a terror mission in a city in quite a long time and those are the places I remember seeing them.

[silencer_pl]

It should fix all future missions too.

 

About Calcinite - they are extremely rare as Aquatoid terror missions/base assaults are very rare - sometimes you will not meet them through entire game. Your only chance is later maybe when there will be mixed crew you can get tassoth + aquatoid - and you could find calcinite though I guess more chance for Tricene.

[Tsathoggua]

Damn thats rare! I've only ever seen one sub-surface. EVER. And I've been at it since the first time I ever found a demo release on a pc mag. When gauss weapons had the same ammo capacity as lasers (actually, found TFTD first, and its always been my favourite out of the first two games, interceptor and the foetid aberration known as..err, shite, can't even remember the name that crappy robot arcade game thing.

 

I always thought the calcinite exclusively marine.

[magic9mushroom]

Damn thats rare! I've only ever seen one sub-surface. EVER. And I've been at it since the first time I ever found a demo release on a pc mag. When gauss weapons had the same ammo capacity as lasers (actually, found TFTD first, and its always been my favourite out of the first two games, interceptor and the foetid aberration known as..err, shite, can't even remember the name that crappy robot arcade game thing.

 

I always thought the calcinite exclusively marine.

 

Calcinites are only supposed to show up on land missions. Specifically, Aquatoid ones.

[Tsathoggua]

Hm. Weird. Not that I'm terribly surprised.

 

Aren't they meant to show up on downed terror ships?

[magic9mushroom]

Hm. Weird. Not that I'm terribly surprised.

 

Aren't they meant to show up on downed terror ships?

 

You get Hallucinoids instead. TFTD aliens use different terrorists depending on whether it's a land or water mission.

 

Aquatoids use Calcinites on land and Hallucinoids underwater.

Gillmen use Deep Ones on land and Xarquid underwater.

Lobster Men use Bio-Drones on land and Tentaculats underwater.

Tasoths use Bio-Drones and Triscenes on land (there's a mixture, like for Mutons in UFO) and Tentaculats underwater.

[Tsathoggua]

Then how come I've ONLY seen calcinites under water? I actually did, until reading this thread, believe them to be entirely aquatic!

How do I find out what version/if its patched and if so with what? because the copy I've got now came from a torrent. I HAVE bought both UFO and TFTD, just A-no longer have the CDs, have gone through multiple copies of the CD and no longer have it. The last pc I played it on was stolen by the filth after my home got raided. plenty stuff, including anything in the CD/DVD drives just disappeared. Bastards ruined loads of stuff, stole a LOT of expensive glass and reagents, kit that took not just years but decades to put together, and thousands of pounds in financial expenditure. Have been replacing things, but its still not up to my previous standard, even years down the line. Was absolutely devastated, still am when I think about it.

 

And B-if I DID still have the CD, or a CD, it wouldn't be any use at the moment. Damn windows 7 that I never wanted to begin with is a royal PITA when it comes to drivers and my USB ports don't work, so I cannot, currently connect my CD drive to the laptop.

[NKF]

Ah vague memories. We're not the best of friends. It has tripped me up a lot of times in the past.

 

The only time you should see those green-goop-inna-rusty-diving-suit Calcinites are on land or ship terror missions and base attacks. There aren't that many places for them to appear naturally.

 

Most straight up installs from floppy disks or the original CD install the unpatched copy of the game. No matter which version you have, you can just install the v2 or v2.1 patch over it. You had best start a new game though as some things like research tree bugs you might have encountered in the unpatched game will stay with the save.

 

You can tell which version you have when you collect your first Ion Beam Accelerator from a landed alien sub. If you can research it right away, then you have v2 or v2.1. If you need a Lobsterman Navigator to get Ion Beam Accelerators, then you've got the unpatched game.

 

- NKF

[Tsathoggua]

Thanks mate.

 

And my memory isn't 'vague', its been fried. Either the seizures, or possibly excitotoxicity from some things I worked on in the past. Still trying to find out. Just wish I had my own MRI machine. Not on my income though, not a chance

 

And not to mention needing a constant supply of liquid helium for the superconducting magnets those things use. And for that matter, I sure as hell wouldn't want a several tesla magnetic field constantly on the go coming out of a magnet that size! its one thing building a faraday cage for big marx generators, handheld scale gauss guns (I don't mean the X-com fictional variety, but coil-weapons, and although I haven't ever (yet) build one, railguns. damned if I want my electronic stuff fried by my own hand, that would be way, way beyond embarassing. I'd never be able to show my face outside the house again:P)

 

Just spent way too much on the laptop too. Its got its issues alright, but better a few issues than extra-crispy.

 

But, thankfully, I have just the other day finally managed to get referred to a memory specialist team. Waiting for the appointment to come through at the moment.

The seizure stuff itself is mostly very well controlled courtesy of a rather crusty, antiquated, although absolutely excellent and side-effect-less drug to deal with it, smells funky, likes to dissolve plastic, including the bottles that pharmacies supply it in. Managed to burn a couple of holes in and partially weld some keys of my old desktop computer keyboard just by leaving the gelcaps out on there for later. I actually had to break the things off with a blade, got a couple of chunks of part-goop part-solid plastic with my chlormethiazole that day haha. Amusing enough, no harm done, the bits weren't sharp edged or pointy so presumably they went in one end and out at the other one:P

 

As for the memory itself, the frustrating thing, is that I KNOW what I can do about it, but I cannot afford to do it. Which means trying to get the medical profession to cooperate, as two out of three they have access to. Including the one I cannot possibly afford, (and cannot hope to grow sufficient of its natural source, the bulbs of those pretty little tiny white ornamental flowers known as snowdrops to make practical use of it that way. Way too complex for me to make it from scratch too. Might be able to manage it but I really am not at all confident, would be expensive, technically challenging as hell and take a long time (, the one I had in mind, and have tried in the past, was galantamine, but in nature its only present to about 0.1%, total synthesis is a bugger and then some, 19 steps, 5 stereocenters meaning chiral resolution that I don't even want to think about, let alone try, plus the use of a ruthenium based catalyst, a precious platinum group metal thats bloody expensive, and not one I wish to prepare either, involving the use of a diazomethane derivative. Evil stuff, lethally toxic and so hideously unstable that a tiny scratch on the glass used, or even ground glass joints will likely cause it to detonate. Its one of those things I just won't touch with a bargepole. Not going to do me much good even if I did succeed, if I ended up in a bodybag doing it. And ALL my glassware is ground glass jointed anyway, anything with joints at least, I don't have any ball and socket jointed stuff, never used that kind, so it'd mean buying an entirely new set. If I could afford that I could afford to buy the stuff from an indian pharmacy online or somewhere of the like)

 

Sucks, because I did try it, its sold as a supplement for people who play about with lucid dreaming, and it changed my life, for the short time I continued with it. But was so expensive that it bled me dry, I couldn't both buy food now and buy the galantamine itself.

 

The other pharm one, memantine is dirt cheap, but don't know where to find it.

 

I do have something in the pipeline though that shouldn't take too much effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunifiram

Could do it now in fact, the only reason I've been holding back, is because I've been looking for a better start point than piperazine, although I have plenty of it should I actually decide to go that way, as its sold in packs of 8g sachets for treating intestinal worms. I've been holding out, trying to find some 'BZP' as they call benzylpiperazine, because I could shortcut the thing and prevent the lowering of yield, and need to remove symmetrical dipropionyl and dibenzOylpiperazine using that. Only snag is, it got banned here a few years ago, because its a psychostimulant, albeit one nobody actually WANTED to take! its awful, crappy stuff, not worth considering as a stimulant, tried it once, and its absolutely vile stuff, and about as rewarding as caffeine, if even that. Less so IMO. Rougher than a romantic liason with a fire-ant infested porcupine.

 

So now, now I actually want any? its about as easy to lay hold of as unicorn manure, when it was completely and utterly worthless to me and dirt cheap it was all over the place, and nobody who took it internally once wanted to do it twice, there were a few attempts at simple piperazine-based stimulants and entactogens to serve as legal MDMA/MDA replacements, but now about all the latter are used for is to induce migraines in experimental volunteers to test new drugs for the treatment of that condition. Sounds like a fun night out clubbing or what?

 

Personally, I'll either have the real thing, or alternatives which actually serve a purpose to their simple mere existence, or have nothing at all. Not that I particularly like clubbing at all, not a dance music fan, unless its industrial. But I'll pass on giving myself a migraine. Have experienced one and its not one bit something I would wish to GIVE myself. Hell I am not all that enthusiastic about the bona-fide stuff, so damned if I'd actually put any BZP or its obnoxious family relations in my mouth if you were to park a tanker truck full of the stuff on my driveway. Yuck. About as tempting as a cup of cold sick. Never tried m-chlorophenylpiperazine or trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine, the two most common ones that did the rounds a few years ago but I don't think I have ever read so much as one single, lonely isolated positive report from anyone else. Don't plan to try them either, migraine inducing panicogens are, surprisingly enough, not really very appealing to me:D

 

Typical of my luck.

 

 

The patches, does v2 need installation before 2.1? and what are the benefits otherwise of them? difference between the two?