Orange tile in Battleship?

[Dalerian]

Hi,

 

I was reading a posting on here by someone who referred to an orange tile in a battleship - one which creates an instant win condition.

 

I became curious to try it out.

 

My next landing, coincidentally, was a sectoid battleship!

So I sent a squad of psi-defensive soldiers. They were lucky enough to land next to the battleship (which fortunately had left its air-to-air weaponry at home from this mission, to save fuel).

One brick of HE and the troops are swarming up the 'leg', murdering any unfortunate who came to see what the knocking was. I madly raced to find this orange tile on the floor somewhere ...

... and accidentally killed all the aliens before I'd explored all of the craft. *sigh*

 

While -do- I like the $3,000K of scavenging, I -don't- like the unsatisfied curiousity.

 

Is there such a tile? If so, does it work? Where is it? Is it actually a floor tile? (Or is it one of that swathe of orange wall tiles, that I forgot about until the mission ended?)

 

As this battle shows, knowing the tile wouldn't have made much impact - I won the mission before exploring the entire craft to find it. However, I -am- curious about the tile.

 

Can anyone help?

 

Dalerian.

P.S. I seem to have caught verbosity from one of the Gurus on here. Is it fatal?

[NKF]

Could you point us in the direction of this comment? I'm going to hit myself if it was one of mine, because, as far as I know, apart from the psychedelic blue/orange disco walls in the rec room, there are no such orange tiles in the whole UFO floor tile set.

 

- NKF

 

P.S: There's many of us with the verbose bug. I'm sorry, unfortunately it's fatal. Eventually. First its needlessly long and wordy sentences. Then it's ongoing run-on sentences. Then you start talking about yourself in the third person. Then it just continues to snowball from there - which is to say, it gets worse. NKF thinks that is how it goes, but the symptoms vary from person to person. Zombie for example gets extra thorough and posts statistics. Vast and endlessly long statistics that may some day develop its own gravitational pull and have a few orbiting satelites. As for myself, I think my writing has gone through several ice ages and still has not discovered slood.

[FullAuto]

Just don't mention maths and everything will be ok.

 

Orange tile? Hmm. I don't recall any, on any of the ships. Is it a floor tile or what? Details please.

[Dalerian]

Orange tile?  Hmm.  I don't recall any, on any of the ships.  Is it a floor tile or what?  Details please.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Unfortunately, I'm seeking details, rather than having them.

 

I found the post again, though. It's old. Here:

https://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=533

 

About half way down the thread. Rexx refers to it in his second post, and NFK & Hobbes follow up ...

[FullAuto]

Hmm. So it's a position somewhere in a battleship that, when occupied by you, ensures you can clean up easily?

[Dalerian]

... I'm going to hit myself if it was one of mine, ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Please don't hit yourself. I've just taken out 2 landed battleships and a landed harvester with my semi-skilled soldiers. No losses, no wounds. Barely any risky moves.

 

Before I found this forum, I'd have taken at least one wound per battle, and probably fallen back on save-load magic another time (min).

 

Sending me *twitch* insane with misleading advice is only a minor blemish by comparison. (My partner & work colleagues probably won't even notice the difference. *twitch*)

[FullAuto]

Perhaps they just mean control of the central lift shaft? I know if you put yourself there you can kill most of the crew before they get out.

[Dalerian]

Hmm.  So it's a position somewhere in a battleship that, when occupied by you, ensures you can clean up easily?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's probably a more accurate interpretation than the one I took. Mind you, I don't get how that fits in the original context (how knowledge of the code behind the maps makes the game too easy).

 

Taking your (probably correct) interpretation - any thoughts on what that tile may be?

 

I struggle to see it as being any of the ones lined by the orange wall tiles, somehow.

[FullAuto]

As I said, only place I can think of is the bottom of the central lift shaft. You can stay there and kill about 70-80% of the crew before moving up to mop up the rest.

[NKF]

Could it perhaps be a reference to Daishiva's map editor? I haven't used it in a while, but there seems to be several points along the central shaft where most of the nodes inside the ship converge.

 

- NKF

[Dalerian]

I've avoided that spot on the grounds that the Aliens would be smart enough to simply toss a grenade (etc) down there every other round or so. Am I crediting them overly talented tactical skills?

[FullAuto]

What usually works for me is to blockade the doors at the bottom, and send a man through each one to take a look every turn. If he sees an alien, he can shoot it and move back outside, and the door will shut behind him at the end of the turn, so no one will shoot him.

Don't actually leave them INSIDE the lift shaft as they have a tendency to drop a Blaster Bomb down there.

[Jasonred]

Lies lies (regarding that lift and Blaster Bomb thing)

 

As far as I know, there is no working version of X-com where the blaster bombs told to go DOWN actually go DOWN instead of SOUTH.

Yeah, the main problem regarding the code is that the aliens have poor AI. They have problems shooting up or down the lifts. Plus they have the tendency to rush certain positions.

 

The lifts are really bad though. The aliens will be able to SEE you by glancing down the lift but will be too dumb to shoot you... and more and more aliens will gather around that position since they know where you are. ..

[FullAuto]

No, I have been blasted before. There's usually two or three aliens in the top level of the battleship with blaster launchers, and they quite gleefully enter the room at the top of the lift (or another alien opens one of the doors) and actually manage to shoot down with it. Odd, I know, considering they can't do it with plasma weapons.

[Blehm 98]

if you stack multiple blaster launcher points on top of each other the blaster bomb goes south. If it goes off the edge of the map that is to the bottom left of the screen, and there is another waypoint for the bomb it will appear there out of thin air. but the AI can't fix that. Which sucks. Just coming in and stating the obvious but not-so-obvious

 

actually, i have been nuked before by the aliens, as has my dad, it is worse when you have an expensive tank(Hover plasma or fusion launcher) and the blaster bomb either kills or severely damages it. that really sucks. Or if you have most of your elite flying suit armored troops near or. Or both, as what happened with my dad

[NKF]

The blaster bomb vertical waypoint bug only happens in the Collectors edition, which is to say, the version that was made so that it could run in Windows, and being only one version ever made to work with windows, the collectors version is also more commonly known as the Gold Edition, but I prefer to refer to it as the Collectors Edition as it saves confusion with all the other previous releases of the dos version under various editions with metals in their titles. In the original dos version(s) of the game, and indeed the playstation version, the blaster bomb works the way it should.

 

Speaking of aliens firing blaster bombs down the lift - the aliens can still fire down at an angle, and I know I've been hampered by blaster bombs in the CE when dealing with any aliens that leave the ship. Or it may just be that the alien was behind the scapegoats that left the ship.

 

- NKF

[Blehm 98]

the aliens almost never fire at angles, i think if they get it down it is only because the first waypoint was at the bottom, and second was to go somewhere else

also, i know soldiers can react with blaster launchers, but can aliens? because i wouldn't want to have an alien react with his blaster launcher wrongly

[Zombie]

also, i know soldiers can react with blaster launchers, but can aliens?  because i wouldn't want to have an alien react with his blaster launcher wrongly

From my tests long ago, aliens will not utilize reaction fire with a Blaster Launcher. Lemme double-check for you though (my memory is not what it used to be).

 

As for the instant win orange wall tile on a battleship, I've never witnessed it. Sure, there are the psychedelic wall tiles on level 1 (second floor) of the Battleship, but none of those guarantee a win by standing next to it. Nowhere else are there colored wall tiles. Just so we are on the same page, here are the pics of the Battleship (courtesy of xcomufo.com):

 

 

Pic 2 is the one of interest. Directly to the right of the lift is the rec room (as NKF calls it). The inner chamber contains the Alien Entertainment (not the spheres, AE is actually the psychedelic blue wall tiles). Surrounding this is the outer sanctum. 10 of those wall tiles are orange.

 

In the course of playing the game numerous times, I have placed my soldiers on almost every one of those orange wall tiles and nothing happened. Clicking the "next round" button doesn't win the mission. Maybe the "abort" (or dust-off) button does? It seems stupid why the programmers would make a special tile to win a Battleship mission. Why not all the other craft too? Or even an alien base? I'll test this out more thoroughly but I suspect there is no insta-win tile.

 

- Zombie

[Dalerian]

In the course of playing the game numerous times, I have placed my soldiers on almost every one of those orange wall tiles and nothing happened. Clicking the "next round" button doesn't win the mission. Maybe the "abort" (or dust-off) button does?

[FullAuto]

I think we're barking up the wrong tree with this instant win tile thing. Although that does seem to be what the thread suggests, I've played X-Com pretty much constantly since it came out, and I've never had an instant win happen to me.

If they meant 'excellent strategic position' then it's sort of understandable, but that doesn't match with the location of the orange tiles on the Battleship.

[Zombie]

(Personally, I wouldn't put my "quick win" trigger as a tile half-way up the craft.  By the time I'm holding that area solid, I've almost completed the mission anyway.)

Very good point, Dalerian.

 

Anyhow, I'd like to continue our discussion on this a bit further. I tested every segment on that orange wall today and no insta-wins happen when you click on the next round button. I even brought a bunch of soldiers upstairs and tested the psychedelic blue AE wall surrounding the inner chamber for the rare chance that those were the tiles intended to be the instant win. Nope. I haven't checked the abort mission button, but I'm guessing another "no" is the answer. :mad:

 

----------

 

P.s. Aliens cannot reaction fire with the Blaster Launcher. That's what my research shows again. At least I'm not losing my mind quite yet... *babbles*

 

- Zombie

[Blehm 98]

Zombie, try shooting each of those tiles too, one at a time, and then blow them all up with a well placed high explosive or two, we have to prove this right or wrong(i'm not far enough in my game to test much right now)

[Jasonred]

WHY is everyone misreading one comment? It's the circle of confusion all over again! Also known as Chinese whisper. (The game where you whisper something softly once in the clockwise persons ear... when the message traverses the circle it has invariably turned into utter babel)

 

The ORIGINAL quote was something to the effect of "heh heh, there's a tile that if you control it guarantees you victory" ... it never said "there's a tile which if you stand on you win automatically". ... I'm pretty sure that those two sentences have different meanings, and were MEANT to mean different things.

 

FUrther, the tentative reply to that quote was "is it orange? " ... so we're not even sure if we're talking about an orange tile in the first place.

 

... as I said. Too much urge to collect and present data and evidence, too little logical thought and deliberation.

 

 

On another note,

I think that you were blocking the 4 square lift with your tank or something, were you? Maybe that was the problem. The alien was aiming at a certain part of the tank, and hence fired at an angle instead of straight down! ... overall, I have never had an alien fire plasama or throw grenades down. So, you only have to worry about Blaster Bombs. The solution to this is in fact counter intuitive! ... do not shoot the aliens. What will happen is many of them will gather and bunch up around the lift. This will in fact make them into a superb meat shield which will prevent BBs from even getting near the lift, much less fired down it.

 

To you guys then, what is the best strategic position to hold for each alien craft? For me:

 

Medium Scout: guard the doorway!

Large scout: again, cover the doorways, and when storming the command room, come from both sides so at least one person will be able to sneak up on the aliens from BEHIND.

Supply Ship: My favourite, easiest and most common. Stand on the bottom tile of each of the lifts. It has NEVER failed. Failing being able to reach them, guard the ships exits, and reaction fire them all to death.

Terror Ship: for this and battleship, you're likely to be dealing with Ethereals, sectoid commanders, or Chrysallids... so camping might not be the wisest choice...

Battleship: Seriously, what's wrong with 4 men standing on the bottom of the elevator? If they're all psi titans. Which they should be! ... though at this point I just use psi and slaughter everyone.

[FullAuto]

The ORIGINAL quote was something to the effect of "heh heh, there's a tile that if you control it guarantees you victory" ... it never said "there's a tile which if you stand on you win automatically". ... I'm pretty sure that those two sentences have different meanings, and were MEANT to mean different things.

 

That's what I said.

[NKF]

Personally, I blame it on literal thinking. If they tell me it talks like a duck, looks like a duck and walks like a duck, I think it's a duck. Of course it's most definitely a hen, but that's not the point.

 

---

 

People go inside UFOs?

 

The large scout will generally be clear of all its crew if you wait long enough, with the exception of the one unit waiting in the bridge. There's a trick you can perform to lure it out. That is to walk up the southern (or left passage -relative to your soldier on entry) passage and wait in one of the corners. The alien tends to walk right towards you. It'll be out of TUs on the next turn, making it a sitting duck. Works with every alien species so far.

 

For the battleship, I generally have up to 6 or 9 soldiers in groups of 2 or 3 between each of the legs and facing the door - with the exception of the north west passage. As long as the aliens don't get the jump on you and get to launch a blaster bomb that actually hits something, then you can defeat the whole battleship this way. I also have some soldiers creep up from the north west section so that they can quickly leap out and use a few short range bursts whenever necessary.

 

I've actually had aliens shoot up a 2x2 lift - and I plugged each section with a soldier, not a tank. I was doing a base assault and wanted to see what they'd do if I blocked the entry lifts after seeing them struggling with the 1x1 lifts. Didn't exactly work too well.

 

- NKF