Mind control

[Rosstoid]

I remember I had a very bad childhood. I played X-Com using a program that allowed me to max out my soldier's stats, so I had super soldiers more powerful than lobstermen. I was also able to access the inventory of anything I MC'ed (and I could MC anything). I forgot how to access the inventory. How do you access the inventory? I'm dying to try things out, like equipping Crysallids with lasers or turning civilians into homicidal gunmen.

[Jman4117]

This only works in UFO:

 

Click the last guy in your line-up. In inventory click right arrow. Should now be cycling through the aliens.

[Rosstoid]

Thanks!

[The Demi-Godly One]

I try not to do that, I find it cheating since you are not supposed to be able to check the inventory.

[Fox]

Heh, interesting viewpoint.

 

I find that the things I think are cheating, are the things that I deem unrealistic. I think to myself, "If X-COM really existed, and it had troops that could mind-control aliens, would they be able to make the aliens drop weapons and equip new ones?" My answer to that is yes. So I tend to access alien inventory quite a bit.

 

Posted by Jman4117 on Jul 15 2003, 12:01 PM

This only works in UFO:

 

Really? I thought I had done it in TFTD before...

[Jman4117]

I honestly don't see why they took it out of TFTD. Now you have to worry about "disarmed" aquatiods and gillmen attacking you with nades.

[NKF]

Well, you can always disarm a TFTD alien by stunning it. It's surprising how effective TFTD's shok cannon is.

 

Of course, that knocks out the alien, for quite a long time, but you can always revive it if you really want to get the 'successful hit' points for the experience bonus.

 

- NKF

[Jman4117]

Amazing! You can take out a cluster of lobstermen with one shot!

As for experience: Do you get it for each stunned alien or for just the one shot?

[BladeFireLight]

The "feature" is not in the fully patched version of UFO IIRC

[NKF]

Hmm, I can still access the alien inventories in UFO 1.4 for MSDos. Haven't checked UFO CE yet. Haven't really use the psi-amp much these days.

 

Jman4117: Yes, each alien caught in the blast radius is counted as one successful hit. So if you hit five aliens at the same time with an area effect weapon, that's five successful 'hits'. You get one point for every time you hit an enemy unit with a bullet or if they get caught in the blast radius of an explosion. Missing, or hitting friendly or neutral units don't count.

 

I'm not sure how much the 'successful hit' score influences the soldier's stat improvements at the end of the mission except that as long as it's greater than 0, you'll get some gains. The actual improvements appear to be random, meaning that even a soldier who only got off one successful shot can get comparible if not more improvements than one who got off a few hundred shots (like shooting a sectopod with a pistol over and over again). So it's a good idea to at least let some of your soldiers have a chance at hitting a few enemies, even if you are using a few core soldiers to take out the bulk of the enemy troops.

 

Good old rand()...

 

- NKF

[The Demi-Godly One]

Hmm, does using a hand-to-hand weapon count as a hit?

[NKF]

There's a separate counter that counts the number of successful hits with the stun-rod. Not sure why it's separate, but it's there.

 

edit:

 

Wow, you learn new things every day. I think I've got a rather rough list of all experience scores a soldier has, and what they offer in return:

 

# of kills: No improvements, but your kill count is incremented

# of times reaction fire was used: TUs, Stamina, Health, Strength and reactions

# of times hitting an enemy with bullet or explosive(i.e. grenades, stun bombs, rockets, etc): Tus, Stamina, Health, Strength and Firing Accuracy

# of times hitting an enemy with a h2h weapon: Tus, Stamina, Health, Strength

# of times items were thrown: Throwing

# of successful psi attacks: TUs, Stamina, Health, Strength and Psi skill

# of times panicked: TUs, Stamina, Health, Strength and +10 bravery

 

This doesn't mean they will improve the listed stats. It just means that these stats have a chance at getting an improvement. If they were cumulative you'd have super-soldiers after only a few missions.

 

The number of hits, psi attacks and the number of times a soldier panics seem to effect promotions. The more a soldier has, the better chance that soldier will earn a promotion (if available). Panics, of course, have a negative effect on your chances at getting a promotion.

 

- NKF

 

P. S: Sorry, I realise this is a bit off-topic.

 

P. P. S: I tested this by incrementing the various 'scores' for different soldiers and aborted the mission just to see what scores improved what stats.