How explosions work in the battlescape

[Bomb Bloke]

No, there were no stumps around the eges of the blast. The entire area was reduced to burnt ground.

 

And the entire area caught fire, too.

 

These particular tiles don't explode, so they don't cause any extra damage when they are destroyed (as gas servos do). They do burn for a turn, though, and I'm willing to bet the fire damage plays a part.

 

The easiest way to see the ground turn into a stump is to shoot it with a gun.

[MikeTheRed]

Hobbes, I may have some time to test your new tiles now. Can't wait to see what it looks like. BTW I made a handy diagram for explosion patterns (in desert) which you can find here.

 

I would be interested in seeing those tiles if some also had initial armor of 10 and 0 HE Block, yes... this would also help confirm what blast patterns look like for them. Or maybe it's already clear... anyway, if you can set some to 0 Block, that'd be cool

[MikeTheRed]

No, there were no stumps around the eges of the blast. The entire area was reduced to burnt ground.

Hmm, ok... I guess it's possible that in their code, first they compute damage to ground and resolve that, before checking damage to objects and resolving that... which is to say that in this case where a ground tile erroneously produces an object, that object then gets the full e.g. 50 at the edge of the blast, and then gets wiped out too. So it might work differently than the usual "first hit initial tile, then hit death tile" (40+20=60) seen when things work that way they're supposed too... since object 76 isn't a tile, the usual process fails.

 

Conversely a shot weapon is probably "directed", hitting either floor or object or whatever, but not "everything" (like an explosion). So when you shoot the ground, it turns into the stump, without the stump then getting damage resolved, too (as for an explosion).

 

Does this make sense and sound reasonable? It's all I can figure. It's interesting to note that, if true, the code must've properly stuck the object into an object's "place" (so that it got hit right then, as damage was being resolved for that tile) instead of improperly sticking MCD id into the ground tile's "place" (which would've caused "armor stacking" and left a ring of stumps at blast edge) even though it was improperly coded in the MCD tables.

 

Thanks for pulling out a mountain map!!

[Bomb Bloke]

I've got archives of savegames. The mountain terrain is too difficult to arrange on demand.

 

HE block is the easy way to test out the order in which blast effects are calculated. It seemed that the HE block of the landing gear did not effect the blast dimensions, so it's safe to say that damage is first calculated for the ground, then for the object (as opposed to the armor being stacked, and it being calculated together).

 

So, yes, you're right, the game doesn't treat the stump as a 'death tile' getting destroyed by the same blast. I'll need to check if the stump has any HE block, because that would complicate matters as well.

 

The way to prove this would be to place a bunch of objects, then rig the MCD file so that when destroyed, they become weak ground tiles. Throw a blaster bomb at them, and the result should destroy the objects, but leave the flooring alone.

 

Another interesting test would be to create a tile with an armor of 1 or 0, and set it on fire using a hex editer. Then you let a turn pass, and see if the tile gets destroyed.

[MikeTheRed]

Yeah, that would be cool to test, BB - turning objects into floor. Plus it would only take one blast to see... no multiple reloads and data gathering.

 

The idea about armor=1 vs. flames is neat too. I have always found flames really weird. Did you know that as far as I can tell - ofI tested right - NOBODY gets any firing accuracy experience when shooting those flame weapons. Sigh. (Although they would still get Reaction experience if reacting.)

 

On thinking a little further, it occurs to me that, in the mountain terrain, the stump object must actually be (momentarily) replacing the ramp object (and then it gets blown away). Which makes me wonder whether, if you try to shoot the ground under the ramp, will that cause the ramp to turn into a stump? Can you give it a try? Although it's possible that the ramp object always absorbs the shot, which would mean, no effect. Something to try, though. If the ramp does seem to be blocking it, another thing you might try is to see if a missed shot from nearby might be able to hit just the ground, instead of ramp.

 

Nah, the stump has 0 HE Block.

[Bomb Bloke]

Yes, just as I said, the landing gear gets replaced by the stump. It doesn't get destroyed, it gets overwritten.

 

I also mentioned that aiming at your landing gear didn't often hit the ground. No matter what the distance involved, it'd be a lucky shot.

 

If such a shot does find its target, the ramp will just become a stump.

[MikeTheRed]

If such a shot does find its target, the ramp will just become a stump.

Ah, very cool. Sorry I missed that.

 

So it looks 100% proven. Thanks to you and your savegame library! I have a haphazard collection zipped up, but nothing fancy.

 

I re-read your messages and picked up another thing I slid over before...

 

All the ground catches on fire? How about that! Very few common ground tiles have flammability (except some with e.g. weeds). However, the stump has Flame=14, and 3 turns to burn.

 

But it's burning even though it got destroyed? Hmm. Like I say, I know very little about XCOM fires. But just for one turn you say, eh? So I guess it's just the stump's last gasp as it got destroyed.

 

Cool stuff, thanks again for testing that. Another question answered.

 

If you do any of those other tests, let us know!

 

Hobbes, I wound up taking time putting recent findings into the Explosion part of the wiki. Maybe today I can get to your test game. We would love to see simply various tile armor values, like I first talked about. That would include a 10 armor tile, of course. Zombie is testing "perceived distance from GZ" with various explosives using a lot of reloads. But it looks like we may be able to cut to the chase; we may have found a simple equation that governs it. Z's work is still important though because it has to be confirmed (or not!). Still, blast patterns are a very sensitive indicator of blast strength at the edges where they have either blown through the first tile, or both tiles (if there's a death tile).

 

I may go ahead with that second test terrain of yours. Darn I wish there was a way to go directly to testing without having to "manage" the aliens on site first every time

[NKF]

You know, I was going to ask a really stupid question and the answer hit me in the forehead. Good reason why you should always think twice before clicking on the 'submit' button.

 

I was going to ask - "So you mean the ground tile is turning into a hovertank corpse?". Then it hit me that you were talking about the 'object' space of the map tiles. That made much more sense - and it's a perfectly reasonable answer.

 

In my effort to curb my geekdom cravings - I've been focusing on collecting and building the entire Lego Dino Attack set and the two stat-pumper playing games I picked up over the last few months (Fable and Dungeon Seige II - tiresomely long games) - so I have been a bit out of the loop for the past few weeks - and it shows.

 

---

 

Can you attempt to hit the ground tile of the ramp, landing gear or a UFO outer hull wall section by shooting at it from an elevated position?

 

edit: Also, just how powerful or how much damage damage must the explosive provide to turn the tile into the stump? I seem to have a vague recollection that explosives that are about strong as the HWP rocket (or was it the standard grenade?) weren't able to damage the tiles, but alien grenades could.

 

- NKF

[Hobbes]

MikeTheRed, I can't get access to my site (or xcomufo's forums) to post the terrain with the HE blockage set to 0. I will do it later when access is restored.

 

Btw, do the different red colors on the explosion radius diagrams mean anything?

[MikeTheRed]

Good reason why you should always think twice before clicking on the 'submit' button.

Hehe! We've all Been There, Done That. I often submit dumb stuff even after having previewed it :mad:

 

In my effort to curb my geekdom cravings - I've been focusing on collecting and building the entire Lego Dino Attack set and the two stat-pumper playing games I picked up over the last few months (Fable and Dungeon Seige II

Whoa! Will you post a picture of the Legos somewhere? (How big do they get?)

 

Due to the fact that most "cool new" games need the latest tech to show off their great f/x, I have stopped being interested in them very much. If coding tech and infrastructure is supposedly getting better and better, why can't they make ones that look great on older machines? I have an Athlon 1700+. May move up some day soon. Kinda tired of the specs treadmill. And sticking to oldies for now.

 

Can you attempt to hit the ground tile of the ramp, landing gear or a UFO outer hull wall section by shooting at it from an elevated position?

Good question. BB, any chance you can attach a savegame in the mountains? With some explosives on hand, I trust?

 

just how powerful or how much damage damage must the explosive provide to turn the tile into the stump? I seem to have a vague recollection that explosives that are about strong as the HWP rocket (or was it the standard grenade?) weren't able to damage the tiles, but alien grenades could.

Mountain ground tile armor is 40. The stump is 20, but doesn't add in as death tiles are supposed to, as discussed above.

 

Damage to tiles (not units!) is fixed at half the average explosive damage, and decreases by 5 each tile outward (i.e., half the 10 that the average is decreased). So an explosive would have to be HE 80+ to bust through mountain terrain. The radius it busts through will be a count of however many 10s it is over 70. HE 80=only ground zero center tile, 90=GZ+1, 100=GZ+2, etc. Here's a handy table of explosive strengths. Look at the "minimum damage" column - that's equal to average/2, i.e., the fixed tile damage amount.

 

Thanks, Hobbes. If you already have it, you can email me directly at mikestar@speedfactory.net.

 

Yes, the darker tiles in center correspond to where (unhacked) desert terrain is totally busted through to raw earth. Desert has initial tile armor/constitution 5, death tile armor 25. Hi-Ex and Blaster ONLY leave raw earth.

 

FWIW, most explosions (except a couple small ones) appear to be "nipped" - they don't extend the full diameter expected given a decrease by 10 per tile. That's what the "D" number means - discrepancy 2 means it should've been 2 more tiles radius wide, if it hadn't been nipped. The Blaster would have been diameter 39 (vs. nipped 23) - four tilesets wide! Instead it ends abruptly at r=11, and average strength is 90 there. For a full table, see the link above. Also as you can see, projectile blast patterns appear to have been forced (by nipping) to have a different outline than thrown explosives, especially for the smaller HE ones like AC-HE and HC-HE.

 

- MTR

[Bomb Bloke]

Two saves games are in the zip file. There is one alien alive, but he's got no equipment. All units carry psi amps and laser rifles, except for one who has a blaster launcher.

 

I've positioned some units high up in position to fire at the ramp of the Avenger.

 

The second save game shows the ramp after being converted to a stump.

mountains.zip

[Hobbes]

Yes, just as I said, the landing gear gets replaced by the stump. It doesn't get destroyed, it gets overwritten.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I've just taken a look inside the .map file of the second saved game you posted right above with a hex editor and confirmed this. I never realized that the game would be smart to see that the 'death tile' type (wall, ground, etc.) would be different that the tile that it replaced and would fix it. Nice feature

 

MikeTheRed, I've already sent you the hacked terrain with no HE block. I didn't include the map files (just use the ones I already changed) but if you want something like a 20x20 terrain with only 10 armor just let me know.

[NKF]

Nothing to add for the moment, but I did want to briefly follow up on the following. Sorry, it's not X-Com related, but if you see the tank and if you're familiar with X-Com Apocalypse, you'll know why it immediately took my fancy. A very distant association, but close enough.

 

Whoa! Will you post a picture of the Legos somewhere? (How big do they get?)

 

https://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/fun/lego/datt_s.html

 

There you go - they're not all that great as I'm not a particularly good camera user, so the images will be blurry. In relation to the mini figures, they're mostly reasonable sized playsets, with the exception of the Typhoon (The Longbow looking thingy). That was unusually massive - and perhaps one of the only Lego sets I've ever seen in pretty much the last decade with so many blantantly obvious guns mounted on it (as opposed to vague looking things that could just be aerials or loud speakers). I was hard pressed to find anywhere to put it on display!

 

To avoid further disruption, any further discussion on this best be done via the PM system.

 

Cheers,

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

I think terrain/explosive discussions are already offtopic.

[MikeTheRed]

Thanks BB! I'll take a look soonest. Thanks for the before and after, too... I can play with that bug plus just have more terrain to experiment on. I had never actually seen it myself...

 

I guess that's one problem that no longer has us "stumped" eh? ooh, bad!

 

Thanks Hobbes, yes I got it. I actually spent yesterday testing Mars surface, a good mix of initial (armor 40) and death tile (30). All the tests came out as expected. Looks like we're really onto something solid as far as plain old armor goes. So very soon it's on to HE Block and your good hacked sets

 

I never realized that the game would be smart to see that the 'death tile' type (wall, ground, etc.) would be different that the tile that it replaced and would fix it.

You mean in regard to, how it still makes a ground tile regardless? If so, keep in mind that a number of ground tiles don't have any death tile. I figure it's just the normal code for "ok, ground tile is gone... no death tile here... substitute raw earth".

 

In truth I find it cool that there are little glitches that can make for more interesting games if you play with them... sort of like an unintentional easter egg

 

NKF, that's some serious stuff! I used to make lots of models. Thanks for the pix!

 

By the way, I was wrong with my statement (a few messages ago) that Hi-Ex only leaves raw earth in the desert. I had forgotten I had once very briefly tried XCOMUTIL and it had jacked up my Hi-Ex. Arg. So I had to fix a bunch of notes.

[MikeTheRed]

BB, I finally toured that mountain map... real interesting...

 

Did you send a blaster inside the UFO? Talked about wrecked!

 

You can make stumps all over, even on flat mountain tops. Also, everywhere exploded burns for those three turns... just like how the stump is set to burn for 3.

 

Danial and I recently detailed how objects on the ground (equipment etc.) get destroyed, depending on explosion strength. If anybody's interested, here it is. We made a wiki page for OBDATA.DAT too... if anybody's got notes, see if we got anything wrong pls!

[Bomb Bloke]

The UFO landed that way. I'm not sure even a blaster bomb could deal that sort of damage.

 

There were only two aliens alive when play began. You can find the second one in front of the avenger, I mind controlled him and made him to drop his grenade.

 

If mountains are new to you, you might like to check out NKF's screenshot. See that big formation on the right? It's a cave, and you can wander around inside.

[MikeTheRed]

The UFO landed that way.

Ah... its engine exploded, eh?

 

I fight scouts so little - anyone know if they are naturally so banged up after a crash, or could the mountain terrain have affected it? That's what I had figured - a blaster inside, combined with mtn. terrain, annihilated it.

 

Outer UFO walls are also weakened in mountains, just like XCOM ramps and gear, right? Would you know?

 

I can't remember anybody mentioning it, but I'm sure you must've noticed that even an alien grenade will take out craft ramps, in the mountains. Probably UFO hulls too. Anything that does tile damage of 40+ (=HE 80+) should work. AGs = 90.

 

Did you notice there was one lone UFO roof tile suspended in midair? Funky.

 

NKF, that's a really cool screenshot... how did you get it all in one shot? If you pieced screencaps together, it's an excellent job

[Bomb Bloke]

Hmm. Yes, there is a possiblity that the mountain terrain allowed the walls of the UFO to be wiped from memory.

 

Keep in mind that the bug doesn't 'weaken' things, it just overwrites them with tree stumps.

[NKF]

Yes, the screenshot was made from a lot of smaller screenshots. It's also a good indication of how the game would look at a higher resolution (i.e. the screen dimensions you're using now). Looks pretty small, doesn't it? Granted, this is just a 4x4 module map...

 

Take careful note of the screenshot. Notice how all the corners and the west and northern walls (partially hidden by the roof) are gone and there's a patch of fire on each wall section that's gone? That's because all of the walls in these tiles were originally objects, and they are also sitting on top of mountain terrain tiles rather than alien alloy tiles.

 

Note that medium scouts (with that level of blast damage from the power source) don't normally have all their corners and their entire west and northern walls blasted away as badly as that screenshot indicates!

 

So to answer your question: Yes, mountain maps definitely affect UFO walls - but only ground level walls that use the object space.

 

- NKF

[MikeTheRed]

Yes, mountain maps definitely affect UFO walls - but only ground level walls that use the object space.

Ok, cool... you should see the medium scout in BB's mountain savegame (above). It's utterly destroyed. There is only one wall segment left standing! And one roof tile floating in the air, lol. It was all just crash damage.

 

Working on Hobbes' latest hacked desert set now but won't be able to finish it til tomorrow -

 

M

[MikeTheRed]

Hobbes (and anyone else interested) -

 

Please see this message for something REAL cool to do with tiles. It opens a lot of possibilities and also makes testing damage done to tiles, easy as cake.

 

Thanks again for that tileset!!

[Bomb Bloke]

I was thinking of creating such a tileset myself, along with a graphical image set showing the MCD index of each tile. But I figured 100 different tiles, each 1 armor apart, would be more useful, so I've been too lazy to work on it yet.

 

I did some tests, and it seems no tileset loaded by the game is above 255 tiles. Hrm.

 

Just a note about the idea of circular tile transformations. Make sure that none of the tiles blow up when damaged! Otherwise, you potentially create a chain reaction that never ends!

 

In other news - Today I recieved a package from America. I finally have the OSG.

 

It's a lot bigger then I thought it would be.

 

Edit:

 

The diagram on page 225 of the OSG, detailing how explosive damage spreads, is clearing incorrect. Not only does it suggest it spreads out as a perfect square, it also suggests it's 3D.

 

Ok, I've built a new terrain, it's attached. It replaces the desert, so just extract it into your game folder (after making backups), and start a new tactical mission.

 

There are 100 different tiles in this set, each numbered for your counting convenience. The number written on the tile reflects the damage done. The tiles all glow, so it shouldn't much matter what time of the day you land - visibility will always be good.

 

Each tile has an armor of 1, and no HE block. If you drop a blaster bomb on a given area, the very center of the blast seems to take an exact 100 points of damage. (I've set things up so that when tile 99 is destroyed, it transforms back to the first tile. I 'disabled' this loop to ascertain the exact damage done by the blaster bomb, however, it is active in the attached file).

 

I haven't tested it out much. In one instance, it crashed the game instead of loading, and I can't work out why. I plan on upgrading the package later, so I guess I mess with it then. If you run into trouble, just try blasting a few other UFOs and see if you have better luck. Lemme know if you spot a pattern.

 

I'm planning on adding a micro-editor which allows you to change the HE block/armor of all the tiles in bulk, and perhaps a few other things.

[MikeTheRed]

OMG BB, that sounds fantastic! I can barely change MCD values, much less PCK or TAB, and forget about actual graphics!

 

An editor would be cool too, you bet!

 

Think I should get the OSG? Several times now I have found out things because I didn't have it, so didn't make the assumptions there. All in all it sounds like an incredibly good strat guide for a solo game, but the "perfect" strat guide is practically a physical impossibility... Not even sure I want to get it, since I like finding things out instead of "knowing"... anyway,

 

I'm rushing off to play with your map now... come on, battleship in the desert!!

 

For the future I want to study HE Block... if it were combined with your precise-damage tileset, it would make everything total cake. Not sure exactly how to set it up... A long thin strip, whose HEB I could edit at will? A square patterns? Something else? Anyway, for now, let me go play with yer glowing numerals and make sure it's all as we expect and hope

[Bomb Bloke]

The OSG seems to be simply incorrect in places. I guess that's why Zombie likes to spend so much time looking for holes in it. As far as actual strategy goes, I don't agree with all the tactics listed, either.

 

The reason I got it was because the more stats and stuff I know about, the easier it is to identify values in the data files. This in turn allows me to progress with my MapViewer program. But I'm not sure even the statistics listed are correct; it says it takes 6 TUs for a trooper to stand up, and I'm sure that's not right...