Arming troops with the desired weapons in Base Attacks

[Smiffy]

Hello All!

 

I've been enjoying the original X-Com (1994) for about three years now. Pardon me for not logging on and participating before, but thanks to both the old .txt based Unoffical Strategy guide and the sterling work that some of you guys have put into making a gaming-Wiki; whenever I couldn't solve something, there was a salty old veteran sharing his advice on the problem. Thanks everyone for that!

 

As Steam put out TFTD for £1.50 in a Xmas-Sale, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

Now, I know that when TFTD was in development, everyone thought X-Com1 was too easy due to the "reset to Easy-mode" bug in v1.0, so TFTD was made V.hard. So, I was perpared to get taken back to school.

 

Now here's my prob....

 

It's April.

I've got Sonic rifles and Pulsers, but no M.C., melee weapons or advanced armour, much less the stun or super-duper launchers.

 

I've got Lobster-men making a base-assault at me. It's my main base with labs & workshops, my other two are essentially listening stations with sub-docks on.

 

First time, I tried to fight 'em off, I got offered a lot of naff weapons (the harpoon/dart guns) as well as enough sonic rifles for my ten men and a few grenades & med-kits.

 

I managed to fight them off, with only 2 survivors (out of 10) only to find a second wave of Lobsters inbound before I can recruit any more rookies. I'm going to need a better arsenal to fight the first wave off with enought guys left over to take on the second assault!

 

The only thing I find that kills lobsters at this tech level is "double grenading them" with Sonic-pulser, which fortunately I have 37 of in the store.

 

When I go back to my pre-first-Assault savegame (I know, I know, dirty cheat) I sell everything extra to try and force the game to give each of my guys (10 of them) the following:

1x sonic rifle

1x clip for above

1x Prox-mine

3x Sonic-grenades pulsers

and 1 med-kit per 2 guys

 

That's only 65 items.

 

But when I try to re-fight the attack at the troop load-up screen, the guys still only get one grenade each! And a few medkits go missing too! That's less than 50 items! Where do the extra 20 much needed grenades go?

 

They don't seem to be stashed in hidey-holes on the map, either!

 

And, stuff out there in the web say that TFTD lets you have 110 items if it's a base assault!

 

What's going on? Where Are my grenades?

 

Has anyone else had this prob?

Anyone know how to fix it?

 

(Yes, I have had a quick looky around the forum but didn;t find anything yet)

[NKF]

Are any other tools like Xcomutil or Tftd extender in play?

 

- NKF

[Smiffy]

Are any other tools like Xcomutil or Tftd extender in play?

 

- NKF

 

No. I play it as Steam delivered it.

[Zombie]

Can you post a screencap of your base inventory pre-mission? Or attach a saved game? It's kinda hard to tell you what is going on without some more info.

 

- Zombie

[Smiffy]

The screen-cap below is entirely typical of the 6 or 8 attempts I made to clear my inventory to give my boys the tools they need.

 

https://www.flickr.co.../in/photostream

 

I've arbitrarily decided that it's simpler to post the "equip sub" page than to post several shots of me scrolling down the base inventory page.

 

I haven't tried mucking about with the files inside of Xcom1 before - I just play the game as it is - And, i've only had my hands on TFTD for about 10-12 days now.

 

As keen as I am to get to the bottom of this - and as grateful as I am for the offers of help already - I won't try extracting savegames until tomorrow, it's 4:30am on this side fo the pond just now.

 

Edited to add: I have also tried getting rid of the sonic-cannons(&ammo) and the terrestrial grenades, too, so that there's only the pulsers and sonic cannons

I've also tried various combos of all-the-troops / all-the-ammo being on/off the triton (and also transfering the Triton to another base)

[Tycho]

The 110 limit is the max for ALL items (including alien items), the human side has a max of 50 items. To prevent the old problem in base defense (getting a bunch of useless items like flares), the programmers set a maximum spawn number for each item in the base. In the case of sonic pulsars the maximum is 10.

[Smiffy]

Aw Man!

 

That's actually so much worse than the old way?

 

Seriously? You get to take 80 things on a mission, but only get 50 when you're in your own lair? That sucks!

[Smiffy]

Well, thanks for your help everyone. Maybe I'll replay from the start so I can get MC earlier.

[Tycho]

I am wondering if this might be a bug...since the hex value for 80 is 50h. I wonder if the original programmer saw the value in his notes an thought this was 50 decimal instead.

 

If you know how to hex edit, I could give you the offset (assuming your using the CE version) and you could try changing the cap value....

[Smiffy]

That's very kind of you Tycho, but I'm afraid STEAM hides the game files from me and I'm not much of a programmer.

 

Edited to add: I have now found where STEAM puts the files. But I'm not sure I want to hack it yet.