Proximity Grenade explosions and civilians...

[EclipseDog]

I just had some fun in a terror mission with eight cyberdisks. Suffice it to say that I finally got a use out of those 10 grenades, 10 high explosives, and 10 proximity grenades which I have always loaded onto my transports (and people once there) through paranoia.

 

It was kinda fun seeing all the warehouses and houses blow up and rubble flying everywhere... but that's a story for another time as it is not what is important at present.

 

Anyway, I had just blown off the corner of a warehouse behind which four cyberdisks were hiding, inside that warehouse were 2 incredibly incompetent civis which didn't have enough brains to get away from the wall where the disks were hiding behind and shooting at me through.

 

Anyway my guy at the far end of the warehouse had already used up both his reg gren and HE so I decided to lob the prox at the closest disk then scramble for the hills.

 

The disk went to chase me and went boom in a big way, causing the entire section of the two warehouses he was hiding between to be totally annihilated.

 

After the smoke cleared I cautiously trecked forward (straight into reinforcing disks but that's another story...) and came across the pitiful remains of those two headless chickens, who really were headless now, right next to the burned out husk of the disk I had killed with the prox along with two other dead disks (from prior explosions heh).

 

I'm thinking to myself, "Ah, (excrement)! I can't believe I'm gonna lose pts because that stupid AI wouldn't leave when it saw me lobbing bombs about" then consoled myself with the thought that maybe those two didn't die in the blast but rather get caught up in the backwash from the disk going ballistic.

 

So you can imagine my surprise when I finally ended the mission having only lost 4 civis and no troops (although one of my guys spent 32 days out of action from his wounds afterwards). And I rescued 4 civis... as for the other two (my guess is they were the two chickens) well they weren't even listed in the end mission debrief! It didn't say I killed them, it didn't say the enemy killed them, it didn't count them as living... they just poofed from everyone's memories somehow.

 

It was so weird seeing the mission end with only 8 civis being tallied considerring the big city it was located in. *grins*

 

So can anyone figure out why the heck those two headless, headless chickens disappearred from the end mission stats? I mean I know they died... I fought a pitched battle with reinforcement disks over their bodies trampling their flesh into a fine pasty goo. So where's the lost points..? :o

[NKF]

Interesting. Same thing happens with civilians who've turned over to the dark side (after a mind control session). These 'renegade' civilians, when killed or stunned, do not get counted in the end-mission tally (i.e. instead of -ve or +ve scores, you just get 0). They just 'vanish' like the renegade chryssalids who were originally civilians.

 

Can this effect be reproduced?

 

- NKF

[EclipseDog]

I'd certainly think it could, but that might take a while since those certain circumstances are kind of involved. I don't have any way of editing my game files so I can't force it to happen myself, and sadly while I can control where my guys go and my 'nade tossing, I can't control the disks nor the stuffed pigeons known as civis.

 

We'll either have to wait (possibly quite a while if unlucky) until those exact same circumstances happen again (ie people hiding right next to a disk with a wall in between, throwing a proxy one step diagonal from the corner of the building, disk following and blowing up taking the building with it and thus the civilians inside) or else we'd need someone who has one of those editors to intentionally set up those circumstances and rerun it.

 

I typically use nades on those disks in the early days rather than taking chances exchanging fire with those things since they can even blow my tanks up at times in one hit (scary) but this is the first time I've had civilians get caught in the blast radius so I'm not sure why exactly they went awol from the end score sheet.

[cyrus]

Even the civilians, who are stunned by the end of the mission (by aliens - thus they remain peaceful to you), do not score in either way.

[Jman4117]

Maybe it didn't score beause niether side was "directly" responsible for killing the civs. Your nade didn't kill them and the disk blew up because that's just what they do when they die. Or maybe they were killed by a "dead" cyber disk that didn't score the kill for the aliens but for the objects.........

[The Demi-Godly One]

Yes, I've had that happen too, it seems that civillians killed by cyberdisks exploding do not count towards the end of the mission.

 

Nor does it count when a civillian dies because an alien threw a grenade at him/her that you primed (Like when the mind control wears off but they still have a grenade that you primed). They just sort of disapear at the end of the mission.

[Bomb Bloke]

How does it score if you kill a civ under your control?

[M. Hoz]

It's obvious then-Cyberdisks explosions are counted as a "Neutral"

thing.The Reason is probably that it's not counted as a weapon-

the Cyberdisk's death rather "triggers" an explosion where the

CD was.Really think of it.

 

Civilians you control-interesting but still surprisingly obvious for

something that you ask (In my head you're part of the "Vet. Group" AKA the

CCS).They MUST be counted as your kill.But-another question comes up-

is there an "XCom Agents killed by XCom Agents" count? There is'nt.

And like your own men under Alien control are considered Aliens when they kill,"XCom Agents" when killed,Civilians\Aliens under your control are considered "XCom Agents" when they kill(as if),and are considered Civilians\Aliens when killed.Phew.

 

*Breathes*

 

EDIT: And it's all your fault too!

[NKF]

Civilians start off as a neutral group [1]. But when they are mind controlled by you, they become temporary X-Com units under mind control.

 

When the mind control ends, the game, because it never remembers the original owner of the units, automatically sets the ownership flag to the opposite team (i.e. the aliens - I think it's a boolean algebra thingy using the NOT operator). Assuming the aliens have instructions to mind control civilians, the civilians would, in the end, revert to X-Com units (this doesn't happen, by the way). I get the feeling the programmers, when they came to designing the mind control aspect, never quite expected the fact that the players may want to mind control the civilians.

 

You only get penalised for killing/letting the aliens kill or awarded for saving 'neutral' units. Though I cannot fathom how stunning a civilian can turn it into an alien unit.

 

But back to the original discussion re cyberdisc explosions:

 

If you detonate a cyberdisc by shooting it, then you do get penalised for killing the civilians. Got this several times.

 

I still haven't been able to test the proximity mine thingy - since in every test I've run, the cyberdiscs seem to 'know' it's there and won't move - eventually letting the pesky test-subject civilian get way.

 

- NKF

 

 

[1] well, they aren't that neutral. Arm them with a gun (and still keep them neutral) and they'll use opportunity fire at you and the aliens - rather a neat touch, when you come to think of it. I mean, you would too if some men in black suits and funky armour or a bunch of naked brown men with unusually large heads came around with guns in their hands.

[cyrus]

Well, I have some idea. Maybe the civilians that were killed by disk explosion or by mines weren't counted 'cause they were destroyed. ED said they became a pasty goo. I've noticed, that when you destroy the body of an alien, it's not added to the kill count of the soldier that actually killed it, neither it is added to the 'Aliens killed' count at the end of the mission. The same may very well be applied to civilians. I think it's a bug and it was fixed in TFTD.