Strange things in X-COM

[Zombie]

Does it just happen with the vats? I'm wondering if fire damage would do the same to other wall objects. I've never attempted to set fire to wall objects on purpose before.

Well, no, not just the vats. Any object in the game with a flammability rating of less than 255 can catch fire and be consumed by it. But granted, I think all walls and wall objects have 255 in this instance so it wouldn't happen anyway.

 

As for TFTD, what type of ship are we talking about? Cargo, Cruise or USO? I don't recall any control panels in the Cargo or Cruise ships so it has to be a USO, correct? What does this control panel look like (a screenshot would be nice). Nothing should ever be floating in mid-air when destroyed so the object must have a screwed up death tile pointer.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Cargo ship, first map. There are a fair number of panels on the walls near doorways. The one I'm thinking about in particular is the bottom of the main stairway from the crew cabins (rather posh cabins for a cargo ship, now that I think about it!) that goes up to the ship's bridge. Middle to far end of the map from the helipad.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Ah, I see them now. Pretty small things and easily overlooked.

 

The control panel is an object which exists on a tile. The problem here is that the control panel has 255 armor so it can't be destroyed. Wall panels obviously can so that's why it floats in the air. All we need to do is change the armor value of the control panel to something like 40 (the armor of the wall) and it should be fixed. Realistically, the armor should be far less than that though.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Here's something strange I noticed today while testing on the Farm terrain:

 

 

A number of rounds before this screenshot was taken, there was a Sectoid standing on a hay bale on that tile. One of my men tossed a grenade at it which killed it, but the Plasma Pistol it was carrying remained hovering in mid-air once the hay bale disappeared to fire. I threw a normal rifle down next to it to compare the heights. However, when I threw the rifle into the tile with the Plasma Pistol, the PP dropped to the ground. Obviously, the game must only refresh tile contents info when something else happens. Still strange.

 

- Zombie

[Muton Commander]

I took a Blaster Bomb at ground zero. Now I was using the X-COM Hack to have 168 health, but my character survived with 7 health and NO Fatal Wounds!

[NKF]

With or without armour? BB's do 200 damage on average, so that means the game can roll damage between 100 and 300. Luckily with 162 health, your soldier might have been able to survive that blast without armour!

 

Best case scenario in an unedited game would be with a max health soldier in a power/flying suit getting hit with 100 damage. 60/70 is soaked up by armour, and that leaves us with 40/30 damage. Take that off health and you'd be left with 20 or 30 hit points left.

 

This means you can survive between 100-119 damage for the power suit, while 100-129 for the flying suit. You'd be left a near cripple even if you survive the attack, but that's still quite amazing.

 

- NKF

[Muton Commander]

With or without armour? BB's do 200 damage on average, so that means the game can roll damage between 100 and 300. Luckily with 162 health, your soldier might have been able to survive that blast without armour!

 

Best case scenario in an unedited game would be with a max health soldier in a power/flying suit getting hit with 100 damage. 60/70 is soaked up by armour, and that leaves us with 40/30 damage. Take that off health and you'd be left with 20 or 30 hit points left.

 

This means you can survive between 100-119 damage for the power suit, while 100-129 for the flying suit. You'd be left a near cripple even if you survive the attack, but that's still quite amazing.

 

- NKF

 

He did have flying armour on. If you remember, I posted this on my UFOPaedia page.

[Zombie]

If a unit has 168 health + Flying Suit armor and survives with 7 health but no fatals due to a single hit from a Blaster, something sounds fishy. Anytime a unit takes more than 10 points of damage it has a 33% chance of having 1, 2 or 3 fatal wounds. A zero fatal wound scenario with that health loss is impossible. Either the unit took multiple hits or there is an issue with cranking health that high.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

I think I may have figured out a "bug" I noticed in the PSX version a while back (don't remember if this applies to the PC versions of the game). Anyway, I was playing the cydonia mission this afternoon and on part 1 I had someone kneel down. He never moved so when the mission ended, he was still kneeling when the second part of the mission started. I also think that my guys who were flying at the end of part 1 were spawned hovering a little bit above the tile (they flew to get to adjacent tiles but after that they walked to get to subsequent tiles). Interesting. I didn't realize position/stance carried over between multi-part missions.

 

Edit: Man, the PSX version is really awesome. The sounds are incredible, the cut-scenes between the Cydonia missions is cool and all those bugs I'm used to in the PC version are missing here. Too bad it takes so long to load a mission, otherwise I'd probably switch to playing this version more often.

 

- Zombie

[SoulBrotherKab]

Yeah, the only downside to the PSX version is the controls (which isn't a big deal considering it's a turned based game) and the load time, but I'm not one of those that's obsessed with having a fast load time. Main advantages to the PSX version...no freakin' hassle to play. Also it has slightly updated graphics and pretty cool sound. And the cut scenes are cool.

 

Now, I've noticed a few things when playing the PSX version on a PS2. The smoke doesn't show up all the way, and occasionally has a few weird visual glitches.

[Zombie]

Controls? Haven't noticed a problem with them if I have it set on the point and click interface. They can be sluggish to respond at times (especially when a track ends and the CD is accessed) but slow is better than too fast.

 

Also I should mention that the PSX Cydonian underground base always has the exact same layout. This is probably done intentionally but it sure would be nice if there were some randomness like in the PC version. I can live with it though. Going to Cydonia isn't an everyday occurrence.

 

- Zombie

[SoulBrotherKab]

No crap, I've only made it there once in all of my X-COM playing days. Mind you, I first got X-COM when I bought my brand new PSX in 1996. And before that, had played it on my friend's PSX along with the first Resident Evil. So that's like 13 years and I've only gotten my ass to Mars once.

[Zombie]

Sadly, watching an Arnie movie doesn't qualify as getting to Mars in this game. Especially that one. Predator maybe.

 

- Zombie

[SoulBrotherKab]

Shiii....if watching Total Recall counted as getting my ass to Mars in X-COM, then I'd have gotten their like 30 times. But, it doesn't...so I'm only managed to do it once in-game, for real.

 

BTW, how dare you to dismiss Total Recall. It has a hot, three-boobed, mutant lady. And a psychic mutant baby that lives in someone's stomach with the awesome name Kuato. Not to mention it's got Michael Ironside. Michael IRONSIDE. If I had that name I would be dictator of Earth right now, because it's such a great warlord name. Added to that, he voices Sam Fisher, the most awesomest aging, bad ass, ex-Navy SEAL, super spy commando.

[Zombie]

Certainly not dismissing Total Recall. Has less to do about aliens than Predator did, that's all. Of course, Total Recall did have a Mars connection though.

 

Getting back on topic again, I ran another mars mission and indeed it looks like the position/stance of a soldier from the surface mission is applied to the underground base. Suppose this makes sense really. I just never noticed it until a few days ago.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Also I should mention that the PSX Cydonian underground base always has the exact same layout. This is probably done intentionally but it sure would be nice if there were some randomness like in the PC version. I can live with it though. Going to Cydonia isn't an everyday occurrence.

Thanks to NKF who patiently stitched together the entire Cydonian underground base for me, I just added it to the Cydonia page at the X-COM wiki (along with some other minor changes). There were issues with some floor tiles due to the stitching, but it was easily fixed by manually touching them up.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Simply beautiful work, guys. Congratulations are well in order!

 

::

 

[franconbean]

The wierdest thing i had was a soldier (in power armour, granted) who survived being shot 6 times in the same alien turn without one shot getting through the armour. That has never happened since (even in power armour, my guys usually die after 1-2 shots in a row)

[Civilian]

I was playing a campaign and tried to use 2 soldiers only. Surprisingly when doing base defense missions the aliens spawned all over the base and not only in the hangars like they usually do.

[NKF]

How large was the base? That tends to happen in really small bases when there aren't enough spawn points for the aliens. One example is a new base with just one access lift and no hangars.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

You need 2 Hangars to guarantee that the aliens will only spawn there and in the Access Lift. Anything less than this will result in the aliens filling up the Access Lift first and then spawning in any available unoccupied "shared" nodes (which are in most modules in a base). You can get around this by hiring more soldiers to block the aliens from showing up in those locations (X-COM tanks are spawned first, then X-COM soldiers and finally the aliens).

 

- Zombie

[Civilian]

You are both right, it was a tiny one-hangar only base and maybe I even messed around with the alien numbers, I do not remember anymore.

 

Still, it was quite a surprise when I started the mission: I opened a door (my very first move in that mission) and was shot by a Cyberdisc right away.

[Civilian]

One more strange thing happened to me in my recent "Last man on earth" campaign: I had about~20 sectoid corpses in my base. After returning from another mission with even more dead sectos and one live alien engineer I discovered that they had all disappeared!

 

I wonder if my excessive amounts of avalanche missiles and tank rockets had something to do with that?

 

That or the soldiers remaining in the base during the mission have been REALLY hungry

[Reprobate]

1.Indecisive Chrysalids.

 

Everyonce in awhile they have such a target rich enviroment it seems to overwhelm them".I'll go for that civilian 3 spaces away..No wait that X-com agent over there..though that one also looks nice...or how about tha civilian?There are just too many choices on the menu!".

 

2.Shooting through the seam of a ship.

 

I'm not sure if its just something goofy with the PSX version,but i believe it is the Abductor UFO,that if you posistion a soldier just right along one of the anglesof the exterior they will nail every alien coming down the grav lift..

 

3.A tank turned into a chrysalid.Nough said.

 

4.A new operative with a sub 50 accuracy hitting on every shot for several battles.On the flip side:A veteran agent who at the same time,with an above 70 rating,missing every shot for several battles.

 

5.The hand of God shot.

 

Your agent,during a called shot,misses so badly that they completly turn themselve's around to shoot..thereby killing an unseen alien somewhere off in the ether.

 

6.If your the battle ends during the aliens turn any unconciouss x-com agents will simply cease to exist.

[Tepid tasoth]

I've had it for numerous times, that moving my soldiers caused an Alien to reaction fire and kill the soldier. You hear the poor guy's death scream but he marches on to the point where he was supposed to go. On arrival he collapses dead - at the spot where he got killed in the first place.