Terrible Monthly Rating..

[Aphex]

hi there, i've got a serious problem... after a year of playing (game time) i founded that it wouldn't be such a good idea to save only in two slots.. i am about two days before the end of the month, and then i'll get kicked from the game for terrible ratings.. anyway to hex-edit those values? or some other methods? i am really desperate, i truly don't want to play the whole thing again.. thx

[Bomb Bloke]

You might be able to do it without cheating, but with a bit of saving and loading, maybe.

 

Get your Interceptors to patrol around various areas of the globe, until you find a UFO base. Once done, reload, then send your SkyRanger to that area. As soon as it spots the base again, land, and trash the place.

 

An extra thousand points or so solves most problems.

[Aphex]

oh, and you are sure that there will be the base somwhere? i didn't even know for what i've obtained so many negative points..

[NKF]

The only way you can lose a country (or the game) with a massive amount of negative points - while you're playing fairly well - would be missing a terror site. Each one nets you about 1000 or so points if ignored - a lot less if you visit it and abort.

 

Alien bases only produce 5 area points or so a day, which isn't enough to beat a few well done missions. Of course, you'd need the earth to be polka-dotted with alien bases, each with the occasional visiting supply ship, to accumulate a serious amount of activity points.

 

Of course, there's always the occasional glitch in data and you end up with unusual amounts - this can be fixed with a hex editor if you know what to edit, or use X-ComUtil to modify global relations.

 

Oh, you could check your area activity chart to see where the activity's come from. You should be able to get a rough idea from it where the points are coming from.

 

- NKF

[Aphex]

thanks for the advise, it'll help me in future, surely i just want to once hex-edit those values, then i'll watch my back.. but in fact, i truly don't know what exactly should i edit.. which file, which line?

[Bomb Bloke]

A year in and you're not sure if there's an alien base on the map?

 

Unless you've gone to town and wiped them all out, there'll be one. Of course, if you'd already done that, you wouldn't be having this score problem now, would you?

 

If you must cheat, I'm pretty sure the info you're looking for should be on the Wiki by now (check under "Game Files").

[Aphex]

i thought that bases show up on start of month.. about a few months back i wiped one out.. and one mone thing - more sonars mean more ships that my base will detect? or only one is enough?

[Crus8r]

Only one of each sonar type will have any effect...2 small sonars is no better than 1. But different types of sonar stack...so you can have one small and one wide array sonar working together. Small sonar gives 10% short range detection, wide array sonar gives 20% short and 20% long range detection, both together gives 30% short, 20% long range detection...Transmission Resolver trumps them both with 100% detection, longer range, and Race/Mission info...once you have Transmission Resolvers, you no longer need the sonars.

 

Alien Bases get set up not at any specific time of the month, but rather whenever there is an alien base mission carried out by a small flotilla of USOs...in my experience, if you see the flotilla appear, the base is built (even if you stop all the USOs)...to stop new bases, you have to kill the scouts on Colony missions that appear earlier.

 

One way to tell if a colony is present is to use the graphs...if an area had little/no USO traffic, but still shows consistent alien activity, there is probably a colony (or several) there somewhere...send a Triton to patrol the area.

 

Crus8r

[Zombie]

hi there, i've got a serious problem... after a year of playing (game time) i founded that it wouldn't be such a good idea to save only in two slots.. i am about two days before the end of the month, and then i'll get kicked from the game for terrible ratings.. anyway to hex-edit those values? or some other methods? i am really desperate, i truly don't want to play the whole thing again.. thx

Here's your fix Aphex. Start a new game, save it, then go into your saved game folder and copy alien.dat. Paste that into your game which you are having score problems. Since everything starts at 0, the aliens have no score and your end of month rating will be "OK" or above. If you had at least a little positive activity you might even get a higher score. At least this gives you a couple months more of breathing room.

 

I've enclosed a zipped alien.dat in case you are interested. Just unzip it into your saved game folder. Good luck!

 

alien.zip

- Zombie

[Aphex]

thank you all, guys, you helped me much

[rupertuz]

Hi everyone!

 

Found this site yesterday and simply needed to sign up after reading this and another thread. Perhaps what is causing the ratings on behalf of the threadstarter have something to do with what I'm about to mention as well. Because I too am getting a 'terrible' rating (two months in a row now -thus game over), not due to incompetence though but because I've run into a bug. Thankfully that file above avoided game termination but it doesn't entirely solve my problem. The bug I encountered is the same as on page two of this forum aka 'subs hovering north pole'.

 

Around three or four months ago -game time- a sub (#38) began hovering over the pole. Obviously it was bugged since it stayed on the same position for all this time and according to the info screen is netherless doing some 1500kph. Since it's over land I can't shoot it down, thus I was forced to accept it's presence. Sadly it didn't remain the only one and in the meantime three more subs have joined in. The result was that I got a 'terrible' rating last month even though I destroyed a colony, shot down and captured several alien subs, but it was no good. My last save is on the 27th June, after applying the alien.dat file my operations weren't terminated but the aliens still managed to get some 1k (!) points for a mere four days in that zone (NA)! Thus there's simply no way to keep up with them spanning over an entire month, not mentioning should even more join in.

 

Suppose I could always reuse the alien.dat for every month but that would render the graphs more or less useless and falsify the game. Also my funding goes up substantially with the file (+1 million) due to outscoring the aliens quite a bit and lastly their hovering is annoying and takes some of the fun.

So my question is, can those subs maybe be ordered to proceed on mission somehow, is there some sort of fix or lastly if nothing else helps is it possible to delete these subs? Perhaps with them gone others won't be so likely to join in and while I still have some activity in other areas it seems the aliens are at quite a disadvantage due to the bug. All four subs are classified 'large' so they must have had an important mission. Can't say what they were up to exactly since I've only recently built up TM facilities but while they are scoring (which I'd have to remedy with the file) it might hamper their expansion or other plans, all in all not good.

[Bomb Bloke]

A few problems with craft on the map have been coming up over the last little while. A fix could be written, but I'd need some faulty save games (such as your own) to examine.

 

My current guess is that, in your case, they've had their destinations set to a land zone, so they never touch down and hence they never leave. The reason more subs keep coming is because a mission is set there, and until it gets disrupted or completed, the aliens will continue sending in ships...

 

Hence the mission needs to be removed as well.

 

I've got a vague memory that one of the editers in our files section can handle that, but I don't think we have anything to do with craft yet.