Help! Is there a way to modify the committee's decision?

[Pala]

Hi there!

I've been playing Terror from the Deep (under DOSBox) for a very long time, but it seems that some bug prevents me to continue after the committee meeting of December 2042. I get this message:

Quote

You have not succeeded in dealing with the Alien invasion and the committee of funding organisations has regrettably decided to terminate funding X-Com. Each organisation shall deal with the problem as they see fit. We can only hope that we can come to some accommodation with these ancient forces, and that the general population will come to terms with the aquatic visitors.

I received the same message two years prior, but loading a game solved the problem. Now it does not work.

The reason is unknown for me. Aliens are in a hopeless situation, they lose one or two dreadnoughts per week during failed base attacks. No alien terrors remained unresponded. No alien bases are there in the oceans. My bank account holds 150 million bucks. And I get the message that I have failed. (I tried selling my huge stocks as well, making a total sum of 220 million, but it did not work either.)

Maybe is it because of the bad monthly rating? The rating is -2238 in December 2042, though the funding would increase by $248,000, if I was allowed to continue.

Is there any means to increase monthy rating with a hex editor?

I have played this game for lots and lots of hours till I reached to this point, I don't want to lose the invested time. I'd be grateful for any help.

[Zombie]

Welcome to the forums!

There are multiple conditions which can cause you to fail the game, a bad monthly rating is one of them. I think you have to do that multiple months in a row before it triggers though. What have you been doing to get into negative score for that long?

I think score is saved in UIGLOB.DAT, so you may be able to hex edit the last offsets to be positive instead.

- Zombie

[Pala]

Thanks for your reply! Maybe the huge negative score comes from a couple of alien ships that are over North Pole. They have been stuck there for years, and since they are airborne, I cannot deal with them. However I catch so many other ships, aliens and equipment that (I think) should be more than enough to counterbalance these 'Robert Peary epigones'.

[magic9mushroom]

  

On 8/20/2024 at 6:16 AM, Pala said:

Is there any means to increase monthy rating with a hex editor?

On 12/1/2016 at 11:03 PM, magic9mushroom said:

Edit bytes 65-68 of XCOM.DAT (offsets 0x40-0x43) to FF FF 00 00. That will give you 65,536 points for the month in North America, which should avoid a loss from poor performance.

Old, but still accurate.

8 hours ago, Pala said:

However I catch so many other ships, aliens and equipment that (I think) should be more than enough to counterbalance these 'Robert Peary epigones'.

UFOs/Alien Subs generate -1 point every half hour, or -2 if they're landed/touched down. That's -48 a day per ship, or -2976 for two of them for the 31-day month of December (assuming they count as in flight rather than touched down on land; double it if they're touched down). I think this is, in fact, the culprit; you presumably had a slow couple of months (particularly since ACTS.DAT would have run dry near the middle of 2042) and weren't able to overcome that giant malus.

EDIT: If you want to continue (though aren't you getting a bit bored?), you'll probably want to delete those subs so they don't keep scoring for the aliens. Go into LOC.DAT with a hex editor, set width to 20, and zero out all the rows that start with a "01", then go into CRAFT.DAT with width 22 (so each record takes up 5 rows) and set all the records that start with something between "05" and "0c" to start with "ff" and have the rest zeroes. This should delete all Alien Subs currently on the globe. Back up your game files first; I haven't tested this.

[magic9mushroom]

Oh, and for the record here's the full set of ways you can lose:

1) Get a score below X for two months in a row, where X is -900/-800/-700/-500/-300 for Beginner/Experienced/Veteran/Genius/Superhuman respectively;

2) Get a balance after funding/expenses that's below zero for two months ever (there's a bug where this flag is global instead of local to savegames, so it can happen the first time under certain circumstances);

3) Get a base destroyed by aliens when you have no other bases (NB: dismantling your only base doesn't cause game loss);

4) Attempt T'leth and fail.

[Pala]

Thanks a lot, magic9mushroom, I will try what you've written.

[Pala]

I'm glad to convey the gratitude of several billion earthlings to Zombie and magic9mushroom!

Finally I had time to try what you wrote. I deleted the three or four ships stuck over North Pole in a hex editor, and started over the game from a save file from early December 2041. I collected every possible point, and now the committee was quite generous: I closed the month with a score of 3324, so planet Earth is saved!

Thanks again!