Downed USO turning to island mission?

[Tsathoggua]

Just had to reload from a save, because I'd just finished sending a barracuda out armed with twinlinked DUP head torpedoes, and plonked a couple of those into said sub.

 

Disabled it, attended the crash site, which was coastal, armed to the teeth. Yet the mission was on land and almost all the weapons could not be used, for the transport was armed for sub-aqua combat at the time.

 

In all my time playing TFTD, I have NEVER seen a sub give a land mission. Background sound is the same waves pounding that plays on a ship hijack. Is this a glitch or is it a feature (or knowing TFTD...both:D)

 

Edit-yup, its both! I see a free heavy gauss cannon spawned in the grass. It looks like an island attack mission, but isn't, exactly.

 

Are there going to be civillians present? and how will the game mechanics treat this? as undersea with associated units if races packing specialists are around? or what?

[Bomb Bloke]

That doesn't sound right... are there any ship parts around the place, or even a hole where the ship should be? To my memory the island terrain set is too large to load alongside that of a USO...

 

Normally when you go to start a mission, the game dumps a temporary save of sorts into its MissDat folder, then loads that data up again as it transitions to tactical combat mode. If the game happens to crash just before writing that save (as it sometimes is wont to do), the tactical engine will find the save from the previous battle you played and end up loading that. Ring any bells?

 

Then there's whatever XcomUtil might be doing, though unless you've activated "random terrain" or somesuch I wouldn't expect that to be involved here.

 

I could tell you more with access to a mid-mission save accompanied by whatever's in the MissDat directory.

[Tsathoggua]

I am just getting into the mission. Damn bunch of rookies for a large part, because my elite troops, many of them have come own with unfortunate....feeling under the weather. Such as xarquid-blast-in-face fever. For which the base dr is treating them. rx=take an empty bowl several times a day. Keep your face in it.

 

Various other cannon fire accidents, stray torpedoes once in a while, gas and hydrojet shells going in unfortunate places. Will save and then provide a copy. Where should it be uploaded to?

 

Haven't seen a USO yet, but I AM responding to a downed USO right on the coast. Not seen any civilians yet, just a lobsterman. Sniping away at the bastard critter right now:P

 

And weird shit already happening. A heavy gauss random spawn located already.

[Bomb Bloke]

Where should it be uploaded to?

 

Where ever you're comfortable.

[Tsathoggua]

https://s000.tinyuplo...077828468656110

 

Haven't spotted one yet but there MUST be a USO on land there. Because there is zrbite spawned, along with a gas cannon and a heavy gauss (the heavy gauss is no longer around, I kinda blew it up, lol.

[Tsathoggua]

Well that has to be one of the strangest missions I've ever fought.

 

Downed an alien sub. Engaged on LAND, no civillians, island territory. No sub present, random spawn of one zrbite, one heavy gauss and one, maybe two gas cannon.

 

All lobstermen, engaged them, some taken down from long range by heavy sonic fire courtesy of the sniper teams after taking control of a building, tank scouted and spotted targets for the troops to engage, engaged. Slaughtered the lot. Lost one man.

 

What do you make of that savegame? btw theres a lobsterman in one of the NE bunkers, second one from the top, around the left half but not too far. Near the water on the upper north end. Armed with a blasta, hiding right inside the spiral passageway, although not as far in as it could go, one tile behind the route in going eastwards, down south, then one tile at the corner to the west.

[Bomb Bloke]

Yes, that's an XcomUtil map.

[NKF]

Xcomutil doesn't generate them naturally, but you can get it to generate other such gems as underwater port or island resort maps, or even play a normal alien sub recovery mission in part of a ship mission that has been submerged. Conversely, underwater maps at ground elevation and their eerie monochromatic sand.

 

The underwater land maps are quite nice actually, and suggest ports or island resorts that have sunken under the sea. However, you do have to excuse the edges of the maps and the underwater 'waves'. Pretend they are oil waves, like those glass rectangles curios that are filled with dyed water and oil to emulate a wave motion effect when shaken.

 

- NKF

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Xcomutil doesn't generate them naturally, but you can get it to generate other such gems as underwater port or island resort maps, or even play a normal alien sub recovery mission in part of a ship mission that has been submerged. Conversely, underwater maps at ground elevation and their eerie monochromatic sand.

 

The underwater land maps are quite nice actually, and suggest ports or island resorts that have sunken under the sea. However, you do have to excuse the edges of the maps and the underwater 'waves'. Pretend they are oil waves, like those glass rectangles curios that are filled with dyed water and oil to emulate a wave motion effect when shaken.

 

- NKF

 

That's damn near poetic, NKF.

[Tsathoggua]

Do you mean it is possible to play part-subsurface, part terrestrial missions?

 

Now if thats the case it would be a great idea to add variety to TFTD, part sunken USOs would make for some interesting equipment management decisions etc and some interesting fights.

 

Something else that I think might be neat, a ship hijack, where they manage to sink it after the first phase is in any way ended, meaning not being able to just weasel out of it, but that you then have to search for pockets of civilians in air-filled sections here and there, whilst taking a sub-aqua fight to the aliens as the ship goes down.

 

Is this possible and if so how? also a TIMED mission like that would be a good add-on, Civillians being lost after so many turns as the vessel sinks.

[magic9mushroom]

Do you mean it is possible to play part-subsurface, part terrestrial missions?

 

Now if thats the case it would be a great idea to add variety to TFTD, part sunken USOs would make for some interesting equipment management decisions etc and some interesting fights.

 

Something else that I think might be neat, a ship hijack, where they manage to sink it after the first phase is in any way ended, meaning not being able to just weasel out of it, but that you then have to search for pockets of civilians in air-filled sections here and there, whilst taking a sub-aqua fight to the aliens as the ship goes down.

 

Is this possible and if so how? also a TIMED mission like that would be a good add-on, Civillians being lost after so many turns as the vessel sinks.

 

No, partially-submerged missions aren't possible TTBOMK. There's a flag for "is this mission underwater, Y/N?". If N, underwater-only weapons won't work. (Most people don't bother using the underwater-only weapons at all, outside of the Disrupter Pulse Launcher; you can just use the Gas Cannon instead of the HJC, and the Torpedo Launcher sucks anyway.)

 

What they're discussing is how it's possible to use maps meant for above-water use as underwater maps, or vice versa. NKF's mention of oil ripples refers to how there's a patch of water visible on the (land) "port attack" map. You can't actually go into it, though.

[Tsathoggua]

ZI mean, using tilesets but having the ruleset check set to aquatic. The only other alteration, would be cosmetic. Agents obviously would still have their diving gear on them. Perhaps a specific check could be made at geoscape level if anyone was going to tinker (I lack coding skills) similar to how it looks for whether a stationary craft is so because of its own decisions, or if X-com made the decision for them)

 

Anyhow the diving helmets wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, because the agents would not IRL be constantly taking them on and off in a heavy firefight, counterterrorism situation where there is not time, possibly anyway. Enough excuse for TFTD certainly considering SOME of the..anomalies....that it throws out from time to time.

 

The specific implementation would be where I lack skills. Procedural logic is kinda my world outlook and

how I process things, in asquishilysquelchy juicy (and taasssssssssstttttyyyyymoannmoawnwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwashamblemmmmmmweeeetttwwaarrreeshambleshamblemoan) wetware kind of sense, though. Something otherwise useless in the way of checking, that would make little impact on the game itself if if were subjected to the equivalent of a genetic knockdown (but not out, so it could be reversed if required without having to rewrite the code from scratch) as the UFO is intercepted (either by transport or by assault subs)

 

Set the ruleset to aquatic and use land tiles. Torpedo launcher? rocket launcher. Easy enough suspension of disbelief. HJC? just an autocannon using HE or IC shells. And have a mixture of aliens present. Most aliens that don't typically appear on land can still move in nonaquatic missions, such as tentaculat in bases

 

I think a two-part cruise ship mission with pockets of land but using aquatic ruleset would be perfect. Civilians set to spawn only in cut-off land, such as crowding together in little cut off rooms such as those small supply rooms with the fuel drums near the starting tiles and the cargo hold.

 

The civilians would of course be unable to escape, whilst x-com and the aliens could do what they like. And pack that second stage of the ship with masses of civilians and aliens both. So the player would really face a challenge if they want to avoid a massacre, and of course since exit would be difficult in a real combat diving mission of that nature, from the sub-surface part, then cutting and running to get a better score by simply avoiding ignoring it totally wouldn't work. Especially if the bulk of the civilians were not on the surface portion of the ship but on the lower deck.

[Tsathoggua]

Also what does 'TTBOMK' mean?

 

 

And I use the underwater weapons, each tool has a place in the box, so to speak. Well most of them do. Even the lowly drinking straw packed with wads of wet toilet paper to inaccurately gently blow at walls...ahem...the dart pistol, I mean, sorry. IMO the only weapons or items that have zero use are the harpoon rifle and the magna blast grenade. The grenade would be useful in certain situations where an area-effect weapon is needed at close range but there are civilians (well this is a starting weapon not an underwater one but you get where I'm coming from) and a miss cannot be afforded but at the same time, its way too close to say, blast the oncoming mostrosity right in the face with a flurry of high explosive bolts from the gas cannon and DEFINITELY too close to let off a pulse grenade or demolitions charge.

[NKF]

The Dart Gun has its uses so it's not 'useless' as such. But I still consider it the worst weapon in the X-Com canon.

 

The Magna-Blast is a great early game anti-aquatoid weapon, and a much easier weapon to handle for low accuracy rookies to help train up their Firing Accuracy and Strength attributes. Late game, not so much, but it should be able to deal a crippling blow to a Triscene if you just so happen to have run out of sonic pulsers or can't get a direct GC-HE shot in.

 

Also what does 'TTBOMK' mean?

 

To the best of my knowledge, it's pronounced Tim-Bomk.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

The game uses paletted graphics; every pixel in a sprite has a number attached to it that points to a colour in the current palette set. When you're on land, these colours tend to be brighter; a slightly darkened and tinted set is used when performing an underwater mission, and gets it darker still if you're somewhere in the deep sea. Night missions also shift things around a bit, but they don't switch the game to an entirely different palette as the different depths do.

 

So making the hull of a cruise ship appear to be underwater would typically just be a matter of changing the map's depth setting from "land" to "sea", and hey presto, everything's blue-ish. Catch is that this is another "per map" flag - you can't make pockets appear using the land shading, it's another whole-map-or-nothing deal.

 

To my mind, the way to go would be to simply make it an above-water map with random "wave" tiles placed throughout it (their positions could even be randomised on the fly, cutting off select passages each time such a mission starts). It's possible to make some tiles passable to some units but not others, so civilians could be kept in check.

 

I think it'd look a bit odd, though. To my mind, once any decent amount of water starts coming in, I'd expect the boat to sink nearly immediately - and really the "wave" art pre-existing in the game might look a bit out of place.

[NKF]

For drowning civilians, you could kludge (highly technical term) it together by populating an underwater map with civilians, assigning 1 critical wound to them, and setting their health to the number of turns they will live until they 'suffocate'. As long as you don't go up to them and use a medikit or an MC Reader, it should maintain the illusion and produce the desired effect.

 

- NKF

[Tsathoggua]

Thats a fantastic idea NKF. Would be a thought to have some injured far, far worse than others. That your either not going to save, or only by sheer, dumb luck. Plenty room to play with critical wounds, medkits and drowning. That way rather than just clearing up a rat infestation, in a manner of speaking (only the rats doing the infesting are much bigger, nastier and, packing advanced ultrasound-based weaponry, they squeak back and the traps need to be baited with something a lot worse than cheese...

 

(I have no idea if rats like the taste of high explosives. Although I've never smelled it after purification, you should have smelled TNT whilst it still had a mixture of nitrobenzene and mono-nitrotoluene/ortho- and meta-nitrotoluene. para-nitrotoluene doesn't smell much, and meta-nitrotoluene has a weak but similar scent to nitrobenzene, ortho-nitrotoluene or benzaldehyde (the latter used in artificial almond essence)

 

my entire lab for a long time after was absolutely...well I don't know what to call it, but bugger ME, it was ffilled with this dense, overwhelming sweetish bitter almond-like powerful odour of marzipan. Didn't stick around to keep sniffing, as whilst I'm not sure about nitrotoluene isomers and their toxicity, nitrobenzene is pretty toxic. Before cleaning up the TNT, got the hoped for crystals, saturated with this yellow oil, presumably nitrobenzene and mononitrotoluenes/dinitrated product as a mixture, and blue frosty frozen christicles on a cocktail stick, even with the lab door open (and a big door at that since at the time I'd coverted a garage, so the door was meters accross) you just couln't go anywhere near the rxn vessel without thinking of xmas cake and slobbering:D Hell I'd go for a boobytrap baited with that, maybe:P

 

 

And MC reader? whats the difference between diagnostics using an MC reader and doing them with a medkit? hostages are likely going to get injured and killed during an alien attack when they first show up on scene. Think anyone but a typical horror movieesque is going to stand there screaming and moaning 'this just isn't happening to me this just isn't happening to me this jus*SHRRIIKKthump*' instead of say, going for those explosive fuel barrels (rather strangely) in the freezers over at the kitchen, getting stabby with kitchen knives, or (possibly/probably suicidally) charging an aquatoid and going berserkirgang with a meat cleaver, hacking the aquatoid up into sushi for the survivors, maybe start toting around whatever weapons they could loot from the corpse? hehe and then potentially, promptly starting to examine those pulse grenades and reducing a hall packed full of civilians and/or some x-com troops after accidentally triggering the arming mechanism.