Strange things in X-COM

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, I know how to make this happen, but not without some work with a hex editer. The engine will render items, smoke, or even units wherever they are placed, even if there aren't any tiles at the given co-ordinates.

 

The question is how they got there. In a normal mission, all X-Com items spawn in one square, which I believe is specified by the geoscape engine. Alien items spawn at the original location of the aliens that carry them. Carried items, of course, don't appear on the ground, so their location doesn't really matter. The game only updates it if you happen to drop them somewhere.

 

In a base mission, there are multiple X-Com equipment piles, spread across the two lift shafts (in the case of an alien base), or throughout your general stores (in the case of an X-Com base). I dunno when these are specified.

 

I don't suppose you saved the game? I wouldn't mind taking a look at it.

[Zombie]

Sorry, forgot to save the game. But I am trying to replicate the results. If I achieve success I'll post the game here.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Here's something I encountered the other day which had me doubled over in laughter:

 

 

It's supposed to be a beginner level Sectoid Soldier, but editing alien stats in the executable have some strange effects. First screenie was from a Sectoid Soldier's race being edited to 0 (an illegitimate value for race I may add). Second screenie was again from a Sectoid Soldier, except this time I had edited rank to 0 (a legitimate value but only used for civilians). Seems the game just decided to pull a "name" out of English.dat instead. In this case it happened to be the Avenger's ufopaedia entry.

 

- Zombie

[seeker]

hi,

i want to share these tactic(exploit) which made use of a bug. i didnt see it posted else where, yet! (after this long time since release)

 

"merge with hull" trick intro:

used on UFOs, supply and battleship. and also (seldom useful) suitable on skyranger, avenger.

you can use this to go in UFOs thru some of the walls (without using blaster bomb to blow a hole) and more importantly you can give risk-free oppotunity fire without being seen(from the inside), without being fire upon.

 

direction:

navigate your flying-suited soldier(s) to the crafts NORTH or WEST edge.

basically they stand at level one and float to level two, where they stand at the same tile as the craft's hull !

they cannot see aliens in the craft during your turn, (though they can see the layout inside), but soldiers can see and fire at alien's turn. AND the alien cannot see them (from inside the craft)!

you can float to level three (on battleship only) to merge with hull there.

 

tip:

equip soldier with laser pistol (no ammo limit, low TU requirement) to gain reaction points quickly using this tactic

 

tip:

you can enter the craft this way too, but i would advise only after a few turns of free reaction-firing to soften the aliens you can creat choke points where you can reaction fire down the whole battleships long corridors on the craft's second level and third level this way, if you know where exactly to stand on level 1 before you fly to levels 2&3. going in: just walk inside to level2 and level 3. you can wait till all outside aliens are taken care of and storm the UFO from level 1&2&3 on the same turn.

 

you may need to try a few times to achieve this, after you succeed, you know where to stand exactly next time. u can use the craft's shadow to assist you.

 

this trick is not (as far as i know) suitable for alien base, terror sites( maybe possible here),cydonia, or other types of alien craft.(only battleship pose a chellenge anyway and i find this tactic extremely useful to gain reaction points for my soldiers for later use in cydonia)

 

 

apparently there is a "gap" between the floor plates and the wall plates in Xcom1. sometimes i can see a alien inside the craft when i am flying outside. u can see thru the ceiling plate and the floor plate(even an intact craft), but you seldom can see the layout of the craft inside. useful to mind control them this way.

(in XCOM2, u can spot alien thru wall plates too but merge with hull trick cannot be used in Xcom2, i think)

too bad you cannot shoot or enter the craft this way with hoverhank

 

 

 

 

Col Seeker From Singapore

[seeker]

skyranger stronger than UFO?

unable to break even the landing gear of skyranger with BlasterBomb.

 

hanging trees, floating second storey.

has any one saw a floating hill?

 

some tiles on UFO cause 0TU to walk pass. is silent when u "slide" thru.

notice some on large scout (near north navigator chair) and abductor (second level corridor).

any more that you notice?

 

can you stop alien from opening a outward swinging hinged door by stand outside?

 

empty blasterbomb casing found on launcher and on corpse.

once you "unload" it, does it count as expended ammo or unexpended ammo?

 

amour that stop protecting when you are unconscious

 

human able to breath on Mars

[Bomb Bloke]

can you stop alien from opening a outward swinging hinged door by stand outside?

 

Nope, the game doesn't care about the location of units when opening doors.

 

empty blasterbomb casing found on launcher and on corpse.

once you "unload" it, does it count as expended ammo or unexpended ammo?

 

This is a tricky one to rig up. To create an empty shell, you must have the Blaster Launcher used via reaction fire. To get the empty shell into a corpse, you must drop the launcher, destroy it, then kill something. With any luck the resulting corpse item will take the slot previously occupied by the launcher, and so the shell will appear inside it.

 

I believe the shell counts as expended. You certainly can't fire it.

 

amour that stop protecting when you are unconscious

 

This one really is a bug. People become items when they fall unconscious, and items each have their own damage limits. For some reason, bodies can't take in anywhere near as much as concious units.

 

On the other hand, if an explosion fails to wipe out an item, it doesn't damage it at all. So some compromise is required, I suppose.

[seeker]

another strange thing:

some tiles of UFO floor needs 0 TU to walk pass, produce no sound when you walk pass, cannot be stop upon. unless u have <3 TU and standing next to it.

 

one of such tile is in large scout near NE nav-console

another is level2 along the S part of winding corridor leading to bridge of abductor

there are others but i didnt record them as i dont think they are useful

[Zombie]

I was fooling around in loc.dat a while back to check some unknowns out. Well, today was the day I revisited it to have some fun. The first byte in loc.dat is what type of token will be placed on a map. Editing an airborne patrolling X-COM interceptor to have a value of 8 (Terror Mission) does some funny stuff. It creates a terror site directly underneath the interceptor. If you leave it be, it lasts forever (unlike a real terror mission which only lasts 4-10 hours, then disappears). I sent my Interceptor back to base, then decided to let my men in the Skyranger stretch their legs on an unknown mission. Can you say "auto-win mission"? Since no aliens were present, I won, but not only that, there were 12 civilians there too. That must've been one angry mob after X-COM agents tell them the terror site was only a training exercise for nabbing points.

 

Next I edited the fake terror site token to 6 (landed UFO). When my Skyranger went out to investigate, I clicked on the supposed landed ufo to view the stats:

 

 

As you can see, it's called "Landing Site-1" and has the stats of the Skyranger. Who would have thought the radar cross-section of a Skyranger would be "Small"? Funny stuff. My guys got to visit another fake site to stretch their legs some more.

 

Now I waited until an airborne UFO appeared. Then I edited the first byte to 8 again (a terror site). I never saw a flying Terror site before, so that was funny too. I sent my guys out again (who by this time were getting really annoyed I'd imagine with no combat) when the UFO/Terror Site settled down. Well, I guessed it was landed since it didn't move anymore.

 

 

When my guys arrived (with no weapons nonetheless, I guess I cried "wolf" one too many times) they found civilians and aliens on a normal looking city landscape. Only, this terror site was a very weak version of one since the UFO was a Medium Scout and there were fewer aliens.

 

Finally I edited the flying UFO to have a token of 9. (This is an undefined number mind you, so garbage in=garbage out). Take a look at the screenshot:

 

 

The token looks a lot different in real-time than it does with a screenie. Basically, it is a filled box with flashing pinkish pixels inside with a nipped corner to boot. Only problem is that you can't get rid of this "site". My men breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they wouldn't have to go out on another one of my testing missions.

 

Just on a whim, I edited a terror site into a waypoint. Big mistake. Since you can't target it with a transport, it stays on the map forever. How about editing it to be a landed UFO? My guys took a peek and determined that there weren't any civies present. They also observed the landed UFO to be a Terror Ship. Needless to say, I aborted hoping to avoid the griping my men would do. Unfortunately, the site didn't disappear after dusting off, so guess what? Yep, tomorrow they have to finish it properly. Then I may edit it to be an Alien Base. No rest for the wicked.

 

- Zombie

[Knan]

Landing Site-1, huh? Fancy.

 

*applauds Zombie's dedication in exploring the last dark corners of the data files*

[crwydryny]

the straingest thing i ever witnessed ever was this weekend. I was finishing off and attacking cydonia. so after landing and quickly wiping out the sectoids on the surface without a single casuilty (who would have guessed 2 hovertank launchers and 2 psi troopers could be so devistating to the enemy). anyway long story short i decend into the base. my troops quickly secured the lift and surrounding rooms while my psi troopers took control of of a most of the enemy encountered including a chryssalid almost as soon as the turn ended a seccond chryssalid popped up from around a corner and attacked my pet chryssalid it was kind of funny watching them fighting though it was intresting to learn that they can't zombifie each other

[Alitorious]

This was years ago, back when I first got the game, so it may be a bit sketchy.

 

Anyways, I was assaulting a sectoid scout. It was either a large or a medium - probably large. It was farm terrain.

 

My strategy back then was to wait just around the Skyranger and peck off any aliens that come near with reaction fire. I was young then, so I was really scared of the game. (Obviously I was playing on beginner.)

 

I noticed at one spot, at the farthest reaches of my guys' vision, it looked like a sectoid kept moving back and forth and back and forth - but I'd only see him moving one direction. He was in a rather open spot, around the outside corner of a barn. After a couple turns (none of my guys reaction fired) I sent someone up to check it out. Soon he spotted one sectoid, but didn't have the TUs to fire, so I used a rocket launcher guy back at base.

Shoot.

BIG alien death scream. I move the scout further up and see four sectoid corpses, all in a clump.

I think then another nearby sectoid shot my guy.

 

I don't remember why I reloaded that mission - perhaps to see if I could get that group earlier. I move my scout up, spot a sectoid, fire a rocket, big scream.

I check out the carnage, and there are five sectoid corpses.

 

I swear it. It might have been 10 or 12 years ago, but I'm positive I took out 5 sectoids in a clump with a single rocket.

 

 

In all my following years playing, I've never again seen the aliens group up like that, with the obvious exceptions of camping UFO doors. To this day, I don't know what it was that caused that many sectoids to group together like that. But this was practically out in the middle of a field!

[sgt caedes]

In the game I started recently I attacked a landed small scout. At the start of the mission I saw that two of my soldiers had spawned on top of trees some distance from the skyranger.

[Comrade_Red1918]

there's a bug in EU that when soldiers go uncounsious fomr a grenade hit there's no corpse present and you stillg et htem back at the end of the mission.

[Zombie]

there's a bug in EU that when soldiers go uncounsious fomr a grenade hit there's no corpse present and you stillg et htem back at the end of the mission.

Could be because the item table is filled. Once the number of items on a mission is maxxed out (dead bodies count) more items (like an unconscious soldiers) cannot be created. In the case of aliens, if you try to "kill" one when the item table is filled, the corpse "item" cannot be created and the alien is still alive (albeit invisible). The mission will not end unless you can kill it (usually by nuking items with high explosives). Haven't tried this with X-COM soldiers or civilians but it should be approximately the same idea.

 

Heres something I noticed while modifying weapon strengths in obdata.dat: sometimes when the strength is very high (like 255) a shot will vaporize the body and a corpse will not be created. I haven't really investigated this deeply, but I seem to remember that natural, unedited Blaster Bombs can also incinerate bodies. Kind of a bummer when you want to recover all the $20,000 corpses, but oh well.

 

- Zombie

[zaimoni]

Heres something I noticed while modifying weapon strengths in obdata.dat: sometimes when the strength is very high (like 255) a shot will vaporize the body and a corpse will not be created. I haven't really investigated this deeply, but I seem to remember that natural, unedited Blaster Bombs can also incinerate bodies. Kind of a bummer when you want to recover all the $20,000 corpses, but oh well.

Sectoid corpses do not reliably survive even at the ground zero of a normal grenade.

[Zombie]

I'm not talking about corpses. When weapon strengths are very high, you are sometimes able to kill an alien and incenerate the body all in one shot. So for instance, I crank the Laser Rifle's damage up to 255 then go on a mission. When I shoot an alien with the laser beam, it sometimes kills the alien but doesn't leave a corpse.

 

Now that I think about it little more, this probably has to do more with items. If you shoot say, a tree, your weapon first damages it. After it is damaged, the second shot can obliterate it (this can sometimes be accomplished with only one shot as well). So theoretically, aliens should function the same as items. As long as the damage is greater than the sum of the health + armor + "kill" tile (urm, corpse in this case), the body will disappear. At least, that's how I envision it right now.

 

- Zombie

[zaimoni]

I'm not talking about corpses.

Sorry for the obliqueness.

 

A live Sectoid soldier-rank, at ground zero of a standard grenade, does not reliably leave behind a corpse.

[Faustus]

Long time reader, first time poster.

 

So when the grenade kills the sectoid, there's no corpse?

 

I think i've seen that happen before, but not very often. Kind of moot now though, since i'm using HE packs like grenades now, even if i've got Alien Grenades (tried them out after reading about their usefulness from Bomb Bloke, officially hooked now).

 

My strange report would probably be a night mission of a sectoid supply ship (I use it for training, but not sure why. the survivors should probably be able to take it out eventually). In Forest terrain no less. So at least 50% rookies at all times. Veteran difficulty (checked with Mind Probe)

 

Standard HE + smoke gren deployment. Rookie moves out, gunfire erupts, they miss. Grenades are thrown.

 

2 bugs hiding just outside sight radius.

 

This happened 4 times. there were 2 in the ship, and 'squads' of sectoids milling around behind cover (a couple ran into cover after being seen and shot at, and started throwing grenades into the hill in front of them)

 

Does this happen often? similar situations in other battles, but mostly with sectoids. Did seem pretty cool.

 

And I seem to be missing alot of supply ships, but that would mean they're mostly flying in a very tiny entrance vector (got a navigator as first live, and sectoid leader as second)

[Bomb Bloke]

This has to have been mentioned by now, but I simply can't remember noticing or reading about it before...

 

Alien bodies held in the hand take on the appearance of weapons (the Sectoid corpse looks like a rifle, for example).

[Veki]

Hi guys. First time poster, long time player here.

 

Thanks to your forum I started playing UFO Enemy Unknown CE and XCOM TFTD CE (again).

 

Here are three strange things that happened in my games :

 

A Chryssalid attacked one of my men and I got the message :

"XXX XXX has become unconscious". What was strange was that in his place there was a zombie AND he was lying on the floor unconscious. When I killed the zombie and the emerging Chryssalid I walked to revive my soldier.

BUT I couldn't do that because even though the body was human it said "Chryssalid" when I picked it up (I have a savegame with this happening if someone wants it).

 

The second thing that happened was that a Chryssalid attacked one of my soldier that was flying (in a little alcove in a Terror ship). My soldier turned to a zombie, but the zombie was now hovering in the air (and the Chryssalid also after I killed the zombie).

 

The third strange thing was that one of my soldiers panicked and dropped his weapon. But he was flying and his weapon did not drop to the floor, but it was floating in the air.

[NKF]

The game did things in the wrong order there. It killed the unit first, then it checked to see if it was unconscious. This can be reproduced from time to time with bleeding unarmoured soldiers who have one last turn to live. If they end their last turn in smoke, there's a chance that they'll get killed, then stunned. Normally it's the other way around. This leaves a corpse and a corpse that is attached to an existing soldier record (i.e. it's a stunned unit).

 

The reason you found two bodies is again due to the game running the stunning and killing process in the wrong order. The killing process would remove the stunned body(if one exists) and then drop a dead body on the ground. Stunning only drops a stunned body and won't remove any existing bodies. So when the soldier died, a body was created. Then when the soldier got stunned, another body was created but the last one wasn't removed.

 

In regards to your case with the soldier being known as a chryssalid, all of the soldier's data will have been replaced with the stats of a chryssalid (basic stats - no difficulty level stat boosts). This includes the name as well. However if you revive the soldier and win the mission, your soldier will be back to normal back in the Geoscape.

 

By the way, was the soldier standing in smoke by perchance when the chryssalid attacked?

 

----

 

As for hovering dropped items - this is one of the game's oddities. They cut a few corners when developing the game. No, they cut a lot of corners in this game.

 

The game drops and item (while panicking) by placing it directly onto the ground of the tile it's on. The programmers probably didn't get the game to run any vertical collision detection at this point to see if there's a floor there. They did this for when you drop items from the inventory screen. It runs the second you leave the inventory screen, so the item will drop all the way down to the next solid surface.

 

If you're carrying a any stunned unit and fly into the air and wait until the stun wears off, the unit will wake up and hover in the air until it takes a step into another tile. If it's an alien and has a built-in melee attack, it will be in a perfect position to attack you.

 

This could've been a wonderful exploit to set up snipers who haven't got flying suits. However, you can't throw them equipment, so it cannot work. It can work if used in combination with a flying unit that panicked and left a hovering weapon. But all the effort involved to set this up would take too much time, that you'd probably have won the battle by then. I suppose there's doing it just for the sheer novelty.

 

-NKF

[Veki]

The game did things in the wrong order there. It killed the unit first, then it checked to see if it was unconscious. This can be reproduced from time to time with bleeding unarmoured soldiers who have one last turn to live. If they end their last turn in smoke, there's a chance that they'll get killed, then stunned. Normally it's the other way around. This leaves a corpse and a corpse that is attached to an existing soldier record (i.e. it's a stunned unit).

 

The reason you found two bodies is again due to the game running the stunning and killing process in the wrong order. The killing process would remove the stunned body(if one exists) and then drop a dead body on the ground. Stunning only drops a stunned body and won't remove any existing bodies. So when the soldier died, a body was created. Then when the soldier got stunned, another body was created but the last one wasn't removed.

 

In regards to your case with the soldier being known as a chryssalid, all of the soldier's data will have been replaced with the stats of a chryssalid (basic stats - no difficulty level stat boosts). This includes the name as well. However if you revive the soldier and win the mission, your soldier will be back to normal back in the Geoscape.

Interesting. Thanks for the explanation.

I'll try reviving him when I come home.

 

By the way, was the soldier standing in smoke by perchance when the chryssalid attacked?

No, I don't think so (will check this when I come home).

[Bomb Bloke]

In regards to your case with the soldier being known as a chryssalid, all of the soldier's data will have been replaced with the stats of a chryssalid (basic stats - no difficulty level stat boosts). This includes the name as well. However if you revive the soldier and win the mission, your soldier will be back to normal back in the Geoscape.

How does this work?

 

If you stood over the body and pulled out the medkit, you'd only be able to remove stun points from the (already concious) Chrys, wouldn't you? I get the impression the body shouldn't be able to wake up (unless, perhaps, you knock the Chrys out).

 

If the game really does think that the Chrys is your soldier, then it should count as MIA if you abort... Perhaps you could mind control it and walk it into your craft before taking off. Or perhaps just grab the body and bring that in?

 

Or... or... you could blow the body up! That should take out the alien, too.

[NKF]

You know, that's got me wondering. A unit cannot be concious and have a stunned body at the same time. But if it's possible, what would happen if the stunned body was revived? Probably the usual game crash I expect.

 

I guess it would depend on who ends up with the ownership flag. The good old mind controlled zombie trick is a good way to recover the unit if you can catch it in the zombie stage.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

If you think about it, a stunned body is just an item that points to a unit. Usually they only get created when a unit gets stunned (at which point that unit becomes "invisible"), and get removed when that unit awakens.

 

But say you have a body linked to a unit that's alive and well. You can't revive the body (it has no "stun" stat) - You can only revive the unit (which does). But the unit is already awake and hence can't be awoken, so the body should just stay there.