Cyberdisc explosions and civilians.

[GazChap]

On terror missions, if I take down a Cyberdisc and a couple of civilians get killed in the resulting explosion, who gets the blame?

 

Is it classed as an alien kill or an X-COM kill?

[Neorapsta]

probably yours as it took place during your turn.

[Jman4117]

Your's.

 

P.S. - Ever tried taking one down with a snapshot? They tend not to blow if the kill shot is snap.

[Accounting Troll]

It doesn't matter because when the aliens kill civilians you get the blame because you failed in your duty to protect them.

[Zombie]

I'm pretty sure that X-COM gets the blame if your soldiers caused the explosion. I recall NKF mentioning something that if the Sectoids take out their own Cyberdisc via bad shooting, any civilians killed from that explosion don't get counted towards either side (it's a wash-out). Let's just wait for NKF to stop in. He's around here somewhere.

[Kret]

If I'm not mistaken, civis you kill gets you a higher penalty rather than if they were killed by the aliens. Don't know who gets the blame in that situation tho.

[Zombie]

If X-COM soldiers kill a civilian, that's -50 points against your mission score. You are to blame.

 

If the aliens kill a civilian, it's -30 points against your total mission score. Guess what? You still are to blame cause the civilian wasn't saved.

[NKF]

Ooh, I seem to recall mentioning something about this ages ago, but I can't remember any of that now. NKF hates that.

 

Hmm, this calls for a really bad shooting scenario. A couple of civilians, one 'declawed' cyberdisc near the brink of death and one sectoid with really bad aim.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Do I hear another test game in the making? Ooooh, ooooh, me, me! *Zombie raises his hand* Let us know when you set it up!

[Bomb Bloke]

BTW, if you stun a Cyberdisc, it won't get back up, and will count as a dead unit at the end of the game. It won't explode.

 

I actually used my hexeditor to take psionic control of a Cyberdisc (as the amps didn't seem to work). An alien hit it with a stun bomb, at whihc point I was told the unit was unconcious. I emptied a medkit of stimulants into it, and waited a whole bunch of turns, but it never got up again. (The unit was alive during the game, or else I wouldn't have been able to use the medkit).

[NKF]

I'm wondering if stun damage has anything to do with safely taking down cyberdiscs?

 

I've set up the scenario I wanted, however, I've hit a rather odd snag. A few rather odd ones, actually.

 

- The sectoid refuses to attack with anything but reaction shots. This won't do - see next point.

 

- The cyberdiscs don't seem to want to detonate from any of the sectoid's attacks. Not even mine, blast it! (I'm using pistols) I even swapped the sectoid's weapon from laser pistols to laser rifles and back to the heavy plasma to no avail. They just refuse to blow up.

 

- When I attack on my own round, I can't blow up the cyberdisc. But with reaction shots, they blow up just nicely.

 

I get the feeling I must've done something wrong while editing the file. I killed off the other sectoids with spontaneous 100 point critical wounds, and then reset the last sectoid's morale back to 100. Fiddling with the rank doesn't do anything. I wonder if there's any AI controlling flags anywhere in unitref.dat or unitpos.dat that are not set properly? I'm sure someone's mentioned that aliens have settings for patrolling and attacking.

 

Isn't this perplexing? When you're playing a serious game, they blow up on the slightest touch. But when you want to actually get them to blow up, they refuse to do it. Sod's law or whatever.

 

- NKF

 

P. S: Is it just me, or do sectoid soldiers have pitifully low accuracy? I think this one had somewhere around 24 or so accuracy. Unbeknowest to me, but beknowest to the computer, this might have been a beginner campaign - or perhap I just forgot that I'd edited it.

[Danial]

P. S: Is it just me, or do sectoid soldiers have pitifully low accuracy? I think this one had somewhere around 24 or so accuracy. Unbeknowest to me, but beknowest to the computer, this might have been a beginner campaign - or perhap I just forgot that I'd edited it.

Sectoid soldiers on 'Beginner' have a firing accuracy of 26...

[NKF]

And still people complain about how lethal sectoids can be on beginner.

 

Curious, all my other games I've made are on superhuman. Why is this on beginner I wonder? But no matter.

 

Maybe I'll try the good old cut and paste and see if that has any effect.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

BTW, if you stun a Cyberdisc, it won't get back up, and will count as a dead unit at the end of the game. It won't explode.

 

I actually used my hexeditor to take psionic control of a Cyberdisc (as the amps didn't seem to work). An alien hit it with a stun bomb, at whihc point I was told the unit was unconcious. I emptied a medkit of stimulants into it, and waited a whole bunch of turns, but it never got up again. (The unit was alive during the game, or else I wouldn't have been able to use the medkit).

 

A while back I was mucking around with Stun Rods on a Sectoid terror mission. Since my troops had Psi, I took control of the Cyberdisc and surrounded it with my guys carrying Stun Rods. Next round, my troops stunned it. Took about 2-3 pokes, but it was really effective cause no explosion.

 

Just so everyone knows, you cannot revive any 2x2 aliens with the Medi-Kit. I stunned a Reaper once and tried reviving it with 4 guys carrying 5 Medi-Kits apiece. 20 medkits * 10 stimulant injections per kit = 200 stim shots. Nothing doing. Now I waited 100 rounds to see if it would revive on it's own. No luck. Once a 2x2 alien goes down, it won't get back up again!

 

The reason that you cannot successfully capture a live Cyberdisc by stunning it is because your Scientists use a jackhammer to open the thing up. Geez guys, take it easy around that alien. It's very sensitive to shock and.... BOOM! Too late!

[Bomb Bloke]

I got a theory on what makes Cyberdiscs blow. It's half formed, but here goes.

 

The units don't blow up. They die, and either drop two corpses, or a single corpse. That is, item(s). THESE blow up.

 

That is, when they die, a grenade object of some sort gets placed on the map. This might explain why stunned discs don't blow; they don't drop the normal item type.

 

Where the randomness comes in, I dunno. Check obpos.dat and see if there's something in there?

[FullAuto]

They die, and either drop two corpses, or a single corpse. That is, item(s). THESE blow up.

 

I doubt it works like that, reason being, when you kill a Cyberdisc that's hovering, say, up on level 3, the corpse drops to the ground down on level one but the explosion happens up on level 3. Kill a Cyberdisc in the air, that's where the explosion happens, AFTER the corpse drops.

That's why you don't get a corpse if the cyberdisc blows up on ground level. The corpse hits the deck, THEN you get an explosion where the Cyberdisc was.

[NKF]

I'm not sure Bomb Bloke. First of all, the detonation is instantaneous, so there'd be no instance in the game where the explosive item is stored in memory for more than a moment nor will it be in the data files once the game is saved (kind of like proximity mines). So it probably won't be stored in obpos. But that's not to say it's not a good idea to have a look.

 

(curses, a few minutes too late... ) Secondly, if it was an item, the explosion would drop with the corpse of the cyberdisc. When you attack a cyberdisc in flight, you'll often see it drop its corpse before the explosion (explains why the body is vaporised - if it was the other way around, the body would remain). The explosion will always be on the same level that it was shot. If it was an item, the explosion would follow it. I'd have gone with this solution personally, as having the explosion on a different elevation from the body of the cyberdisc just looks odd.

 

I guess it's more of an immediate weapon effect. Safely taking the cyberdiscs down is probably just a sequence error (or maybe the game is built to allow a greater chance of safely taking down a cyberdisc with certain actions/damage types. I know autoshots almost always blow them up them when used for the killing blow, while snapshots seem to frequently, but not always, skip the explosion)

 

- NKF

[FullAuto]

Good idea though, BB.

[Bomb Bloke]

Heh, never hurts to guess, I guess.

 

Still, there needs to be some explantion why NKF managed to create a 'difused' Cyberdisc (even if it did blow up via reaction fire).