Strange things in X-COM

[Zombie]

Ok, I probably should have mentioned that I was using the PSX version for running these tests, as my CE is dedicated strictly for gathering damage modifier values. I just thought of something. I could install X-COM into a different folder and use that for "normal" testing such as this! Can't believe I never thought of that before.

 

You could also let the aliens take over your undefended base if you don't have the firepower to shoot down the Battleship or enough time to eliminate your base. If I remember correctly, you don't lose any points if the aliens destroy a base themselves. Might just be easier to let the aliens do the hard work of dismantling all the structures, while the only thing you did was transfer/sell some personnel and equipment and get rid of the defenses.

 

I did some more testing to see if/when that hovering retaliation Battleship would leave. It always starts to move right after another UFO is detected. So the detection of a UFO plays some part in what will happen next.

 

The funny thing throughout the time the battleship was hovering was it's stats. It always stayed at a constant 5000 knots and hovered "Very High". Usually when X-COM craft are patrolling, their speed is cut in half and the altitude is "Very Low". Most likely, the retaliation battleship only has one setting: high and fast!

[Zombie]

Just today, I was playing X-COM for fun instead of testing. Yep, that's a rare event for me lately, but I got the urge.

 

Anyhow, one of my heavily-fortified bases was being constantly attacked by Snakeman retaliation battleships. I'm not sure if multiple groups were attacking, or just one at a greater frequency. Me thinks more than one.

 

In any event, my base detects two battleships heading in my direction. I set the time to 5 second intervals and waited. My 7 Fusion Ball Defenses (plus the traditional Grav Shield) were able to easily blow that ship to smithereens with only 3 hits. I clicked the "OK" button, and the game didn't go back to the Geoscape screen. Instead, the second battleship tried to land. Alas, my defensive net was too strong for this secondary attack also.

 

What surprised me was that the two battleships arrived at the same time! That never happened to me before. I know, it has more to do with the probabilities of the game spawning battleships, but it still was a strange event! :lol:

[Bomb Bloke]

Just wondering, was that on the PSX, or the PC? If the PC, then what speed is the CPU clock?

[Zombie]

This happened on the Playstation, and it was during August 2000 when the PSX normally slows down naturally (not the game time, the actual time).

 

And 2 battleships attacking at the same time is not just limited to only one base. I just had a battleship attack one base, and at the same time another battleship attacked a different base. In both instances, the time increment was set to 5 sec, and the game never went back to the Geoscape between attacks.

[Ki-tat Chung]

any one here ever had conntinuous barrage of attacks before you have decoders, and yet have enough base defense to blow any ship to smitherines? and you're on 1 day increments? i have. its annoying. you can't slow down the time, or save. well, it was on TFTD, but you know what i mean.

[Zombie]

Yep, it sure is annoying.

 

Usually, if I speed time forwards in increments of 1 hour or more, I keep the pointer directly over that time button. If things start to happen too fast, press the left mouse button on the time. That should slow things down a bit so you can reposition the cursor over the 5 Sec button.

 

Or, after you click the 1 Hour or 1 Day button, immediately position the pointer over the 5 Sec button. That way, it is possible to click it after an attack.

 

A better way is to always have detection capabilities in-place and running at your first base. See, every time a UFO is detected, you can click on the "CENTER ON UFO-TIME=5 Secs" button. This is probably the easiest fix to impliment in this situation, since you should always have a radar running before a new system is constructed. When two or more bases have detection capabilities and you want to dismantle an existing radar you don't have to worry much because any of those bases can potentially pick up UFO movement and allow you to slow down time in the UFO detected screen.

[Bomb Bloke]

I gave up on defences a long time ago... Just let 'em through, kill 'em off, and sell the loot.

 

By the by, do you get score for base defences shooting down craft?

 

---

 

Anyways, about the smoke...

 

While hunting through the data files, I found three smoke animations, with a different thickness. I set to work to try and work out which was used where, but gave up very quickly to do other things.

 

So when I wrote smoke into my mapviewer, I just told it to use the thickest smoke all the time.

 

The other day I sat down to work out the proper implementation, and found that UFO only ever uses the small smoke animation! Even after loosing a blaster bomb, the game just used the one type.

 

I set my viewer to do the same, so that's all fine... But it seems strange that I can't find where those other two animations are used in the game...

[Zombie]

I gave up on defences a long time ago... Just let 'em through, kill 'em off, and sell the loot.

 

By the by, do you get score for base defences shooting down craft?

 

Nope. Sorry to say that if your base defenses destroy a Battleship, those points aren't added to your activity points, or end of month progress report. That sucks.

 

----------

 

Smoke, huh?

 

Well, I did notice different levels of smoke intensity in my Smoke Grenades Revisited trials. Me thinks that explosions do not form intense smoke clouds, only thin ones. I noticed that fire also produces smoke - either at the perimeter of the fire, or right above the blaze. It seems to get thicker the longer the fire burns.

 

Smoke Grenades have a medium intensity when detonated. In the next couple of rounds, the smoke intensifies to heavy, especially near ground-zero. As the rounds go by, the smoke reverts back to medium, then to light and finally nothing. I don't know if this helps any.

[Bomb Bloke]

Smoke grenades, eh? I tried those first, but wasn't paying much attention. I'll run some more trails with them.

[Zombie]

Wanna play a little word association game right now? When I say Laser Pistol, the first word that comes to mind is "weapon". Let's go to X-COM's production screen to continue. Here are some interesting ones:

 

Item                Description

Heavy Plasma         Equipment
Heavy Plasma Clip     Weapon
Plasma Rifle          Weapon
Plasma Rifle Clip     Weapon
Plasma Pistol        Equipment
Plasma Pistol Clip   Equipment
Blaster Launcher      Weapon
Blaster Bomb         Ammunition
Alien Grenade         Weapon

Huh? Heavy Plasma is considered "Equipment" while it's clip is a "Weapon"???

But wait. The Plasma Rifle is a Weapon, and so is it's clip. Hold on, it gets better. The Plasma Pistol is "Equipment" and so is the clip!

 

Seems like the game got the Blaster Launcher (Weapon) and Blaster Bomb (Ammunition) right. How come the Plasma clips are Equipment or Weapons? Why aren't clips considered Ammunition? Stupid game!

[NKF]

Zombie, if you ever get the chance, have a look at TFTD's equipment descriptions. There's an extremely expensive piece of ammunition (WAY to expensive for the amount you'd normally want to build) that is supposedly some sort of ammo for a Gauss weapon, but doesn't get armed in anything. It's described as a 'Solid Harpoon Bolt' (or similar). All other ammo isn't described that way.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Maybe you could help me here NKF.

 

I researched the whole line of Gauss technology - from pistol to defenses. Then I went into the production screen at my base, but "Solid Harpoon Bolt" was not mentioned anywhere. Looked in the games UFOpaedia and came up empty-handed too. Hmmm... Finally, I searched the English.dat file in the GEODATA folder. By golly, there it was! Here is a short excerpt:

 

Sub Weapon, Sub Ammunition, Heavy Weapons System, Weapon Ammunition, Equipment, Alien Corpse, ALIEN SUB component, Plastic Aqua Armour, Raw Materials, Solid Harpoon Bolts

 

Well, I found it, but had to dive into the game folders to do so. Is it possible to view the phrase "Solid Harpoon Bolts" in the game itself somewhere? Specifically, Where? and How? are the questions I need answered. This is starting to get very interesting, so any help is appreciated!

[NKF]

I've seen it in the production screen. I think it normally becomes available once you've built the gauss coelacanth.

 

Check right at the end of the item list rather than at the top. I'll see if I can give a more accurate description.

 

- NKF

 

edit:

 

I loaded up my savegame that I use to do research on practically everything, but I've not been able to bring it back up. On top of that I've just discovered that all you need is the Manta to get the new tanks... wonder why I could only get them with the Hammerhead before? Oh well, we learn something new all the time. (incidentally, they refer to the tanks as Heavy Weapon Systems in the production screen as opposed to SWS)

 

Sorry Zombie, this looks like it might have just been a one-off thing. I know I've seen it at the end of the production list before in several campaigns. I guess it might have been only something available prior to the v2 patch. I can't verify this, so someone else may have to have a look. I know it exists though, as I do recall seeing the production cost and was very surprised indeed. It was something like 10k or so.

[Zombie]

Sorry Zombie, this looks like it might have just been a one-off thing. I know I've seen it at the end of the production list before in several campaigns. I guess it might have been only something available prior to the v2 patch. I can't verify this, so someone else may have to have a look. I know it exists though, as I do recall seeing the production cost and was very surprised indeed. It was something like 10k or so.

 

Thanks anyhow, NKF. After a long hiatus, I am starting to muddle around with TFTD again. It's a nice game, but the research tree really sucks. Your "TFTD Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide" helps tremendously to avoid certain pitfalls which do not exist in UFO Defense.

 

----------

 

Back to the strange things in X-COM.

 

I think by now, we all know about the "X-COM Chryssalid". Mind Control a Zombie, then kill the Zombie so that it turns into a Chryssalid. The next round, that Chryssalid is under permanent X-COM control. Neat stuff. I use these all the time for scouts in Snakeman bases!

 

A long time ago I noticed a strange phenomenon, but could never explain the reasons behind it. What happened was this:

 

I was at a Battleship mission and spotted a Snakeman Solder. I Mind Controlled him, had him throw down his weapons, then used him as an "advance scout" near one of the Battleship's doors on Level 0. During the aliens turn, a Snakeman poked his head out from the central lift and was met by Incendiary rounds fired from an Auto-Cannon Soldier. My Snakeman "advance scout" was therefore standing in the blaze for about three turns.

 

After this time, the "advance scout" dropped to the ground, stunned. (Probably from the fire damage and smoke stun damage). I forgot about him and went about trying to kill the rest of the aliens. It must have been about 10 rounds later, when I noticed that the Snakeman "advance scout" revived on his own. That's not all that strange, because aliens can revive on their own, just like X-COM soldiers. What was strange was that the Snakeman "advance scout" was under permanent X-COM control! At the time I couldn't figure out how this happened. The "advance scout" mission was lost to time in my mind.

 

Fast-forward about 6 years later. After learning about the X-COM Chryssalid through a thread in the xcomufo.com forums, I began to understand the mechanics behind such a thing. NKF later helped me to fully comprehend it.

 

Then, one day last week, I was trying to stun a group of aliens with another alien under X-COM control and carrying a Small Launcher. He completed his objective, but unfortunately stunned himself in the process. Since I needed him badly, I revived him via stim shots from a few Medi-Kits. Well, what do you know. Not only was he was still under Mind Control, but he stayed that way permanently! Then I remembered the circumstances behind my "advance scout" mission.

 

After a little bit of research and testing, I determined how this happens.

Step 1: Mind Control any alien.

Step 2: Stun him.

Step 3: Revive him.

- NOTE - It doesn't matter how many rounds this takes, or how the alien is revived.

Step 4: Alien is under permanent X-COM control.

 

See, after you MC the alien, his ownership flag is set to X-COM. When you stun that alien, his flag remains set to X-COM. Obviously; the game must forget to reset the ownership flags after reviving, so you effectively gain a new member to your team. Cool!

 

Anyone else ever heard of this? I never saw any mention of it before, but that's not to say that someone observed this spectacle but forgot about it like myself. So, try this out on your versions everyone. I'd like to hear if it works for you too!

[Zombie]

Come on, people. Hasn't anybody tried this?

 

Seriously, I have been messing around with X-COM aliens on and off for the past couple of days, and it is really interesting. I implore everyone to try this out:

 

1) Mind Control a 1x1 alien.

2) Stun it via Stun Bombs.

3) Revive the alien with stimulant shots from the medi-kit.

It doesn't seem to matter how many rounds pass between when the alien was stunned and revived. When revived, that alien will be considered "hostile" until the start of your following turn (it won't attack or anything).

4) Alien is now under permanent X-COM control.

 

You can do anything with a X-COM alien as you would with a normal soldier. Re-arm it with a Heavy Plasma and send it in an alien craft to draw reaction shots away from your valuable soldiers. Give Ethereals a Psi-Amp and let em loose against the other Ethereals on a mission. Use them as expendable scouts. The possibilities are limitless.

 

You always wanted to play the aliens side. Now you can: X-COM "Zombie" style!

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Useful indeed - but I see it being more useful in TFTD, especially with its two-parter shipping lane missions: Can we say 'lobsterman army'? Yes we can!

 

You could just use a stun rod and just wait for the alien to recover if you're running low on stun bombs. No, no, wait, I meant stun the aliens with the stun rod, wait till it wakes up, mind control it and then use a very weak weapon against it to knock it out. Then pull a medikit out just in case. Needs more effort than using stun bombs, I'll grant you that.

 

Speaking of large terror units, it's a pity it can't be done with them. Would love to have a sectopod. It would be great to have a semi-legal way of getting those brutes on your side without the aid of a game editor.

 

The only real problem with having aliens on your side is that it can sometimes get confusing if you're standing amongst a crowd of identical aliens. Scanning the overhead map and using the cursor to highlight/select the units generally helps.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Useful indeed - but I see it being more useful in TFTD, especially with its two-parter shipping lane missions: Can we say 'lobsterman army'? Yes we can!

Ooooooo! Yeah, that would be an interesting mission, especially with the lobstermans massive resistance to most ammo types. An "unkillable army" would be a better description!

 

I was messing around with X-COM aliens the other day and noticed a most curious phenomenon. After gaining total control of a Snakeman Commander, I clicked on his stats screen. Well, what do you know, it's name was not Snakeman Commander, but SQUADDIE Snakeman Commander! Whoa, a "dual rank" Snakeman! I also checked an Ethereal Leaders stat screen. He's not a Squaddie, but a SERGEANT Ethereal Leader!

 

What threw me a loop was that some of my troops were getting promotions after the mission, even though they never killed anything or engaged in combat with an alien. After a little bit of research, I noticed that the soldiers getting promoted were the ones doing the mind controlling! That, in addition to the new ranks which the aliens provided, must have given those psi troopers an extra stripe!

 

I cannot guarantee that this works with every version of X-COM, but it is surely the most interesting discovery I have made about this game to-date on my Playstation version!

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Each unit has a name and a rank. When you select a unit, you see it's name. Select an alien unit, you see it's name and rank - Sectoid Engineer, for example.

 

The ranks for aliens don't match the ranks for troopers in value. So, an alien leader has the same rank value for a trooper squadie, and vice versa.

 

When you go to the stats screen, the game appends the unit's rank to the name - John Smith becomes Squddie John Smith for example. I'm fairly certain the PC version doesn't do this for aliens, however.

 

NKF wrote a list of stuff that can get a unit promoted. Certain actions can increase soldier stats, and count towards promotions. Usually, kills seems to be the main stat which comes into play - he who kills most and does the most missions gets promoted first - but as you've found, there are other ways to get ahead.

[NKF]

Well, aliens get a rank stat, as usual, but they don't use the rank icon and the rank title as X-Com units do. Same goes for civilians. Non X-Com units generally just have their rank built into their name field.

 

What you're getting is a bit of memory garbage - or rather the string that the rank title is being pointed to is invalid. I seem to recall that I once got a rank title that was a whole ufopaedia entry! Shock horror indeed! Luckily it was a weapon, so it was a short one. Then how about the snakeman soldier with the rank of 'sectoid commander'? Fun stuff.

 

 

--

 

As for experience, for the benefit of those that do not know:

 

Hitting enemy units with bullets or explosives (this includes stun bombs) gets you:

Firing accuracy, health, time units, strength, stamina

 

Oh, for area effect weapons, 1 point per enemy unit that is hit by the blast.

 

Using opportunity fire:

Reactions, health, time units, strength, stamina (plus you get a hit if the bullet hits)

 

Using a melee attack (like stun rods or TFTD drills)

Health, time units, strength, stamina

 

Panicking (I think this includes going berserk)

Health, time units, stamina, strength, a possible +10 bravery increment

 

Successful psi attack: (only for the psi-amp)

Psi Skill, health, time units, stamina, strength

 

Killing something

Nothing - but a kill is synonymous with a hit, so use that instead. (Note the kill stat doesn't count towards deciding promotion - it counts all kills made by the soldier so far)

 

Throwing something (anything)

Throwing accuracy (simplest of them all! Oh and grenade explosions count as a hit - for every unit caught in the blast)

 

Right, I was typing from memory, so I think that list is correct.

 

Of the above, I don't know where incendiary effects fall into. Both damage from impact damage and continuous fire damage (I don't think this is logged).

 

Bomb Bloke: Is there space in your logging program to display a listing of experience stats for X-Com owned units? (Alien and civilian units just get filled with rubbish - so it would be pointless to log these) I get the feeling that some day, in Zombies never ending quest for number perfection, it might come in handy to be able to log the mission experience data.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Yes, please. Those experience stats would be a welcomed addition to your logger, BB!

 

Oh, for area effect weapons, 1 point per enemy unit that is hit by the blast.

What do you mean by '1 point'? Is that a 1 point increase to a certain stat for each alien caught in the blast radius? Which stat though? Enlighten us, sir NKF!

[NKF]

Oh it's nothing like that. It's just that you get one hit point if one enemy unit is hit by a bullet, so it stands to reason that you'll get 1 hit for every enemy unit that is hit by an area effect weapon.

 

The effort you put in (in each action category that contribute to the same skill), and your total how much skill you have to go to get to the maximum skill level ( (max - current) / max, if I'm not mistaken)determine the range of possible points you get.

 

Otherwise I think a skill bonus is just a plain number between 0 - 8 (or maybe even 10), then it gets adjusted by effort and how much skill you already have.

 

- NKF

 

P. S: I think you could have a ball of a time logging stat information for experience if you ever come to it. All you'd need is get full transport of identical clones that have performed identical actions (editing the 'effort' for all soldiers would have to be done with a third party utility, or with cutting and pasting of stats in unitref.dat - unless you can get them all to do the same things - but whatever works best for you). Then all you'd need to do is repeatedly end the mission and get a log of all the differences between the original stats and the new stats for all your soldier clones. This would certainly eliminate the need for a 1000 reloads just to check the one soldier.

[Bomb Bloke]

Adding experiance loggers would only be of use for logging entire missions. Zombie doesn't play the game that way when he's testing things, so anybody could run that version of the logger... Once I write it. I'll need to script up some new batch files for it too.

[Jasonred]

Yes, please. Those experience stats would be a welcomed addition to your logger, BB!

What do you mean by '1 point'? Is that a 1 point increase to a certain stat for each alien caught in the blast radius? Which stat though? Enlighten us, sir NKF! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think he means 1 point of experience towards that stat.

Which would be strength, throwing, etc for grenades,

Accuracy for a rocket launcher...

Accuracy, reactions, etc for a reaction fired rocket launcher...

 

In my own experience, how much you actually gain is a bit random, but is decided by how many of these "experience points" you've racked up in a mission.

[NKF]

It would be easy just to say, you hit one alien, you get 1 point on your hit counter. (There has got to be a better name for this score counter...) You hit 4 aliens with a stun bomb, and your hit count is incremented by 4.

 

The stat bonuses are indeed random. All stats will have something like 0 - 8 possible points or 0 - 6 points (firing accuracy gets this range) that they can give you. I'm told it even goes to 10, but for the purpose of this discussion, it doesn't really matter where it goes.

 

Now, when you increase, say, the 'hit' counter, this allows you to get a bonus for firing accuracy, health, stamina, strength and time units.

 

But we don't always get 0 - 8 or 0 - 6 points for the stats, right? This is where percentages step in to influence the stat increases. By far the biggest influence that controls much you can possibly earn is the percentage of points remaining before you hit the maximum . Or more to the point: 1 - (current/max) , so if you had 20 of 60, you'd get a multiplier of 0.666666.., which you then apply to the random number after it has been rolled.

 

Using the same example of 20 of 60: Let's say you rolled an 7 for a stat. As you currently have 33.33..% of the stat's possible range of values, your bonus is immediately reduced to 66.66..%, so what you end up getting in the end is 4.6 points. As the game only uses integers, you only get a 4 point bonus.

 

This way, the closer you get to the maximum level, the smaller the range of bonus stats that you can earn. At least this is true for stats like psi skill and stats that occasionally gets 1 point more than the maximum.

 

The one difference is firing accuracy (and perhaps one or wto others, like throwing accuracy)- you can still get the full bonus range (0 - 6 points). The cut-off point for accuracy is 120, but soldiers have been known to reach 125. This is done by getting 119 accuracy after one battle, and then building up a lot of combat experience in the next to get the 0 - 6 bonus, and then actually getting a 6. But read on, as there's yet another percentage multiplier to muddle things up a bit, which influences all stats.

 

The next multiplier I'm not 100% sure about. This multiplier controls how much effort you have to do in order to get the full range of possible bonus values. This also uses the remaining percentage of the stat. But now, the closer you are to the maximum, the more effort you need to put in just to get the full range.

 

I don't know the upper limit of actions you need to perform, but 20 seems to be close enough. Say you're close to 100% of your firing accuracy. 20 (or more) tries seems to give you the 0 - 6 bonus. I seem to remember 10 only gave 0 - 3. But if you had a 0 in this stat, you'd only need to perform one action that influences this stat to get the full 0 - 6.

 

I guess you could say all of your stats have a random bonus of 0 - 6, 0 - 8 or maybe even 0 - 10. It's just that they all start with a 0 multiplier, thus you get 0 improvement points. By performing various actions in the field, you can increase these multipliers up to but not exceeding 100%.

 

Confused? Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just remember that the less experienced you are, you have a chance of learning a lot faster. The more experienced you are, your ability to learn slows down, so you have to put more effort in just to get the same results. This is why completely hopeless rookies get really good after actively participating in only a few battles, while veterans take a bit longer to max their stats. Unless of course the veterans get all the kills and glory - in which case you wouldn't really notice the drop in improvements.

 

- NKF

 

P. S: Did that make any sense? I ran several tests by adjusting effort and base stats to differing levels to see how this affected the improvements and come to this conclusion - well, it made sense at the time.

 

P. P. S: I forgot to mention, earning psi-skill from the lab earns you double the range - but it's still multiplied by 1 - (current psi-skill/100).

 

P. P. P. S: Older versions of the game didn't have the cut-off values, so half of what I've mentioned here probably doesn't even apply.

[NKF]

Bomb Bloke:

 

I can see two ways of using the experience logger.

 

1. To log the stats whenever the game switches between Geoscape and Tactical after missions - not too useful unless you want to examine the improvements (or even promotions) based on the logs of all the experience earned by each soldier.

 

2. To log or just display the stats in savegames that are made periodically through a game - This second option would be easy to do by just saving the game from time to time during the battle, and alt-tabbing out of the game and then running the logger on the savegame.

 

It might be an idea to just make this a separate program if it doesn't mesh too well with your existing logger.

 

- NKF