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Strange things in X-COM


Zombie

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I have seen crash landed Terror Ships completely intact before. Though rare (0.3^4 = 0.81%), it can happen.

 

See, for all of the UFO's (except the Battleship and Abductor) the power sources are contained within an "engineering section", a room dedicated to propulsion. All the power sources are clustered together in these rooms increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic power source chain-reaction detonation happening. In laymans terms: if one goes, they all go.

 

For the Battleship and Abductors, the power sources are set apart from each other, with either alien alloy walls or hulls providing "shielding" to keep the power units from taking each other out. For the heck of it, here is a table showing the stats for each UFO in regards to exploding power sources:

 

UFO          # of PS's     Shielding?     % chance all PS's are intact
Small Scout     0              No                      0%
Medium Scout    1              No                     30%
Large Scout     1              No                     30%
Harvester       2              No                      9% (0.3^2)
Abductor        2              Yes                   7.5% (30%/1 in 4 chance)
Terror Ship     4              No                   0.81% (0.3^4)
Supply Ship     3              No                    2.7% (0.3^3)
Battleship      4              Yes                 1.875% (30%/1 in 16 chance)

So Jman4117, you are correct. As an example, see the stats for the Harvester and Abductor. Both have 2 power sources, but only the Abductor has shielding. It therefore should have the greater chance of both it's PS to remain intact. (It does not due to the calculations involved). The same goes for the Battleship vs. the Terror Ship (1.875% vs. 0.81%). Zombie to the rescue once again, this time with statistics (big shock)! ;)

 

- Zombie

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I had another strange thing lately:

A chryssalid was attacking one of my soldiers. After a lot of hits I got this message:

"Patrick Blake has become unconscious". Then the chryssalid (it must have been a rookie ;) ) finally managed to turn him into a zombie.

Does that happen often? I had never seen it before.

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just to drag up a bit of ancient history, I had the 'invisible stealth aliens' bug too.

 

but it was chryssalids (ouch!)

 

I only realised when one of my guys started reaction firing like mad, and then this body sprung out of nowhere...

 

then 4 zombies appeared! I ended up having to saturate the whole section with high explosives to get em all

 

any others had this?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Gah! I have it!

 

A proper boxed copy of UFO, with - at last!- a printed manual!

 

And some other stuff too, such as a floppy disc which apparently has some game editors and text files filled with stats/hints. Haven't had time to trawl through it all yet.

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Blehm it's like what BB mentioned. If a UFO has power sources clustered together, then if one goes, they all go. Therefore, the only way that one will survive is if they all survive. Use my previous table for these numbers in the case of unshielded Power Sources.

 

For shielded power sources, the odds are significantly better that at least one will survive since the blast is contained. The only two ships that fit this description are the Abductor (2 PS's) and the Battleship (4 PS's). Both ships have power sources separated far enough away from one another to prevent a catastrophic chain-reaction from happening. Here are the odds:

Abductor:

At least 1 PS surviving: 22.5%

At least 2 PS surviving: 15% (neglecting the case where both PS's remain intact)

All PS surviving: 7.5%

 

Battleship:

At least 1 PS surviving: 28.125%%

At least 2 PS surviving: 20.625%

At least 3 PS surviving: 7.5%

All PS surviving: 1.875%

 

As you can see the odds are much better that at least one power source will survive in a shielded blast. :confused:

 

- Zombie

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I don't get it. If 2 abductor PS's survive, wouldn't that have the same odds as if all PS's survive, given that the abductor has two PS's?  :confused:

You are correct. Sorry about that one.

I was trying to make the point that there is another scenario involved which could possibly change the probabilities I list. Just for giggles, let me list the possibilities which could happen for the Abductor:

 

               PS1          PS2
Exploded?      N            N
               N            Y
               Y            N
               Y            Y

As you can see there are three different ways (the last three in my list) that at least one power source can remain intact. But there are only two ways that only one power source can remain intact (the middle two). It's how you phrase the question that matters.

 

So, for at least one, the probability would be 22.5%.

For only one, the probability would be 15%.

See what I mean? :mad:

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Kriptor; probably an error.. Unless you shot down a helluva lot of UFOs and won lots of tactical missions. :confused:

 

That isn't that much of a funding increase though (even though it is near a million), as I recently got a (legal) boost of about 680,000 shiny things. ($_$)

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Each country can only give a maximum boost of 10% of it's current funding, I believe. So, you'll never get a funding increase of more then 10% of your previous total funding.

Well, I think it's more like 20%. *Looks for this info in OSG and verifies it*. Yep, 20% it is.

 

The nice thing is that you only need to exceed the alien's score by 1 point in a month to see the potential 20% increase. It's not like you have to gain 20% more points to get it, that would be a little more difficult. :confused:

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