Tank Intelligence

[sluissi]

I think the skyranger has an AI autopilot, not a very smart one, but smart enough that it can take instructions from the CO of the soldiers and it won't crash into anything.

 

I can only come up with it has to be controlled directly from inside the skyranger, with sometype of password (which the tanks also know too) radio or any type of transmission would be to easy to fake which would make it easy for the aliens to command the skyranger once everyone got off, then they could ambush them with no chance for the soldiers to retreat.

 

The tanks also have a basic AI which are made to respond only to the highest ranking soldier's voice who's on that mission at that time, so that it can't be faked easily by an alien who recorded someone's voice giving commands to the tank.

 

the only reason I can come up with this instead of pilots for the skyranger and tank are that weight would be an issue, a computer to pilot something would be lighter than a full person, which would allow more equipment, and more soldiers to fly. also a human pilot would never be able to squeeze it into some of the positions that I've seen it in, such as only 1 square from buildings on either side with the ramp opening 2 squares away from the side of the ufo and the front only 2 squares from a tree

[Mouse Nightshirt]

There is a seperate pilot to the Skyranger.

 

I have the PSX version, with the mission successful/failure movies after every mission. On the mission failure one, the pilot goes to take off, but there is a Muton in the back which shoots the pilot dead.

[Blehm 98]

Maybe the plane is also remote controled?

[Jman4117]

If it were then you wouldn't lose it if you fail a mission.

[NKF]

Well, that circular blue silhouette thingy in the cockpit isn't going to be the autopilot (see battlescape image of Skyranger).

 

They must get incredibly small pilots, or maybe even contortionists! Actually, the Skyranger's not so bad. It's the pilot that flies the Avenger that worries me. Doesn't look like much space in there unless the pilot crawls into the cockpit, or flies it while lying down. An amazing thing, technology.

 

Am I right to guess that the Skyranger pilots are the ancestors of the very same pilots in the cargo ship map in Enforcer? Never mind that. It's a silly question.

 

- NKF

[Pumpkinhead]

Indeed, there is definitely a pilot in the UFOpaedia image:

 

https://ufopaedia.xcomufo.com/images/skyranger.gif

[Blehm 98]

mabye it is just a soldier though?

[Puasonen]

You draw that there by yourself cheater!

[FullAuto]

Why not both? Is there a reason why we can't run the tanks with an AI routine and swap to R/C if there's a problem?

[ValveJam]

On the subject of tanks, I had a tank panic the other day. To be fair though, the squad were being wiped out all around. I was relying on it to even the odds up a bit too. Needless to say, the mission was not the success I, or the good people of Lima, were hoping for.

[FullAuto]

Oh, those poor Limans. Peruvians. Whatever.

[Zombie]

On the subject of tanks, I had a tank panic the other day.  To be fair though, the squad were being wiped out all around.  I was relying on it to even the odds up a bit too.  Needless to say, the mission was not the success I, or the good people of Lima, were hoping for.

I tried getting a tank to panic by allowing my squad to be wiped out by the aliens with no luck.

 

I wonder... what would happen if the tank itself is responsible for killing a friendly? Ah, ha! A reduction in morale! Being a bit lazy, I MC'd all the aliens (except for one) on a landed UFO mission. Then I bunched them all up and fired a Fusion bomb into their midst from my Hovertank/Launcher. Since the aliens were considered "friendly" while under X-COM control, my hovertank lost almost all of its morale.

 

I didn't have to wait long because my HWP panicked! I reloaded the game and also got it to go berserk! (It fortunately didn't fire its weapon, though). Here are a couple of screen shots:

 

 

You won't see that happening every day, that's for sure!

 

- Zombie

[Blehm 98]

I have had sectoids attempt to mind control my cannon tank before. However, i think the game has an invisible value to control the psi strength of your tanks, which would explain how they are (as far as i know) immune to mind control, but can panic and be affected by psi panic

[The Veteran]

Wow what a ressurection, 13 months in the ground and now it's back again! I had a tank knocked unconscious once... Not sure how but I was convinced it was dead, what with it's mechanical guts splattered all over Cydonia and all... All of a sudden I switch to my next unit and the tank is back again floating in the spot where I'd left it all those turns ago!

[Zombie]

Wow what a [resurrection], 13 months in the ground and now it's back again! I had a tank knocked unconscious once... Not sure how but I was convinced it was dead, what with it's mechanical guts splattered all over Cydonia and all... All of a sudden I switch to my next unit and the tank is back again floating in the spot where I'd left it all those turns ago!

Well, I hated to start a new topic when this one would do just fine.

 

Cool! An unconscious hovertank? And it revived on its own? *Zombie scribbles something to himself to test this out*

 

Here is something interesting: I cannot reduce the morale of a tank to go below 11%. I'm assuming that since a tanks' bravery is 110%, the game restricts morale loss to 90% and no more. Even more likely, the anticipated lowest morale number for a HWP should be 10%. Why? Morale is a number between 0 and 100. But bravery goes to 110. You cannot lose more than 100% of your morale, so that extra 10% bravery actually adds to the final morale.

 

And don't worry; I tested this to the extreme (as always). I killed a whole slug of MC'd aliens in one round (anticipated morale loss was determined to be 128). Result: 11% morale. Then I killed some of my troops the next round with that tank (not an easy task considering that it has a 90% chance of panicking). Result: 11% morale. Instead of killing MC'd aliens, I tried killing my troops. Same morale drop. I even killed a bunch of my tanks (5) on a base defense mission. You guessed it: 11% morale was the number. Fascinating.

 

- Zombie

[JellyfishGreen]

Warning: Zombie is a trained professional. Do not attempt this or any other stunts you see here on your own base defense missions.

Notice: All soldiers killed for the sake of reducing tank AI to a pile of blubbering silicon were simulated and later reloaded without permanent harm.

[Jasonred]

Great! Then, may I suggest 3 more tests, involving modification?

 

Repeat experiment, with tank having bravery of 120, then 130, then ummm, on a soldier with 120 bravery. And compare numbers.

 

And in 3 tests, we will find out:

 

a) If that's the precise formula, min morale= bravery-99

 

b) If it works for non-tanks.

 

Oh, and maybe tank with 90 brave and 100 brave if you feel energetic.

 

 

Unconscious tank??? HOW??? What weapon adds stun damage to a tank? THAT is the key. Once we find that out, we can reproduce this condition indefiniitely, since we all know how to reduce a tank's health to that stun level...

 

 

Sectoids trying to mind control a tank? mmm... I don't see how that would occur, since sectoids can magically sense which of your team is the weakest psi-link, and target that person... your TANK had the worst psi defence in the squad? You must have had a squad of mutants! Or an all tank squad?

 

Ah. Another test for zombie then. See if a modified tank with 2 psi strength and skill can be mind controlled. Or, heck, just 2 psi strength will do...

[Zombie]

And, uh, yes. Tanks cannot be stunned. I tried with Stun Bombs (no luck) and smoke (via fire and grenade). Neither imparts stun on a tank. Darn it. I forgot about normal weapons. Lemme check.

 

Sectoids trying to mind control a tank? mmm... I don't see how that would occur, since sectoids can magically sense which of your team is the weakest psi-link, and target that person... your TANK had the worst psi defence in the squad? You must have had a squad of mutants! Or an all tank squad?

A tank has a Psi Strength of 100 and a Psi Skill of 0. So all I would need to do is crank my soldiers Strength and skill up to 100. The tank is now the lowest ranking psi unit that X-COM controls. Therefore, all the Psi attacks should go its way.

 

As for mutants, it is absolutely possible that your squad could contain all super-psi soldiers. It takes a lot of time to get this type of squad together (and even longer to train them naturally), but it could happen. Even so, all you would need to do is run 10000 soldiers through one month of training, and pick out the ones that have 100 for Psi Strength. From one month of training, your soldiers would get a skill from between 16 and 24 points. That's more than enough because you should only need a skill of 1.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Zombie, here's a very easy solution, which unfortunately requires MS-Edit or a hex editor. But, it involves editing unitref and weakening the tank's psi strength and skill to 0 and then seeing what happens.

 

From what I understand, real tanks in the game (As opposed to editing a tank in - like I did a while ago) are hardcoded so that the aliens just ignore them regardless of their psi abilities. At least, this is what they did with the androids in Apocalypse.

 

- NKF

[JellyfishGreen]

TALON robots keep on rolling...

https://www.foster-miller.com/projectexampl...alon_robots.htm

[Zombie]

Bumpity bump. >:]

 

I have been fooling around with tanks for a while now and researching some things in this thread. First, on the issue of a tank and MC from aliens, tanks are totally ignored like NKF mentioned. I ran some tests on this a while back with a squad full of MC resistant soldiers and a tank with 0 Psi Strength and Skill. The Sectoid Leader ignored the tank.

 

Second issue was tank bravery. Unfortunately, this stat is coded as an integer which is modified by the game to arrive at the listed bravery: Listed Bravery = 110 - (10 * Bravery Value). Therefore, listed bravery numbers of greater than 110 are impossible. I even verified this equation today by editing a tanks Bravery value to 100 and then checked the result. Indeed, listed bravery was -890 (110-(1000)). Units with a listed bravery in the negative range are very bad things as they automatically lose all of their morale after one friendly-fire kill. Not good.

 

Third issue is the min morale observation of 11%. I must have screwed up somewhere, but when I tried it now with normal run-of-the-mill rookies, my tank lost 10 points of morale per unit and went down to 0 morale. Perhaps using MC'd aliens screwed things up.

 

Fourth issue is unconscious tanks. Yes, they can fall unconscious, but not by any normal methods. Stun Bombs don't work and neither does smoke. They can't be MC'd so that rules out the Stun Rod. I ended up stunning via editing unitref.dat. Bingo! See below for the two pics showing the results. Pic#1 is the tank falling unconscious and Pic#2 is the view from inside the Avenger where it was stationed.

 

 

While I was at it, I decided to do some other tests on a stunned tank (heh, it's not everyday you run across this scenario). Tanks recover from stun at a rate of 4pts per turn (basically 1 point/section/turn). They will eventually shrug it off and end up at 0 points of stun. However, they will never awaken from their induced slumber even when all the unitref stats are reset to their pre-stun levels. Tried Medi-Kits on tanks too. Yup, they work the same as a soldier as they get a reduction of 4pts of stun per application. You can remove all the stun via stim shots but they never come to. I suspect this should hold for all 2x2 units which include alien terror units. Me thinks I need to fool around with unitpos.dat to see if I can force 2x2 to get up again. That's about everything I could think of to test on them. Any more ideas, just let me know.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

UnitPos[10] (bit 3) is used to indicate that a unit is large. Try unsetting it for your unconcious tank and then see if it gets up.

[Zombie]

Nope, doesn't work. But it is a great way of making the game go bonkers. All sorts of strange things happen when the tank recovers enough so that stun falls below health.

 

Bit 2 is the ticket though, as the tank is no worse for the wear and recovers stun at the normal rate of 4pts/turn once it awakens. Setting only one part as conscious is really funny. The tank "corpse" still exists (all 4 parts mind you) and you can wheel the tank around as normal. Though its not not really "normal" as only one part shows - the other parts remain "stunned". But when you move it around all 4 parts are visible.

 

Hmmm... all you have to do is subtract 2 from each section of a 2x2 unit in unitpos[010] and you should see it up and running again as soon as stun falls below health. That will come in handy for people who don't want to blow up a terror unit to kill it.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

I was going to add a "resurrection" feature to my editer, but I forgot about it. One of these days...

 

The other thing you might like to try is setting a normal unit as large. Try moving it around afterwards.

 

Another test is to change a small unit's type (UnitRef[0]) to equal that of a large unit. Stun it and see if that'll recover.

[Zombie]

The other thing you might like to try is setting a normal unit as large. Try moving it around afterwards.

Lol, can't really move the first guy around, but the next three soldiers in the list can move around. If one of those units faces a direction, the others follow suit.

 

Another test is to change a small unit's type (UnitRef[0]) to equal that of a large unit. Stun it and see if that'll recover.

Yup, that works. Though technically the unit is still a soldier so that doesn't surprise me much. Just for giggles I set the first unit as large (via unitpos.dat) and as a tank (via unitref.dat). My guy, um, guys all fell unconscious. Didn't wake up either, but they did recover stun points every round. But man, this situation was really strange. Very Small scout with one Sectoid Soldier - after waiting a round the 6th guy on the list suddenly became set to alien and waged psionic warfare against my troopers. Because that soldier was modified to have 100 psi strength/skill and had 200 TU, he, er it, was able to control everyone and end the mission. The other soldiers and sectoid were no longer found on the map.

 

- Zombie