Strange things in X-COM

[Zombie]

Thanks for the explanation, NKF. I understand now.

 

Well, I spent some time researching the extra "rank" which gets tagged on the front of certain X-COM aliens. I must note that the information I present here was gathered from the PlayStation which is different from the computer version on how stuff like this is handled. After a bunch of missions with various races, I compiled a table showing the rank added if an alien is switched to permanent X-COM control:

 

Alien Rank     X-COM Rank *
Soldier        
Navigator      Commander
Medic          Colonel
Engineer       Captain
Leader         Sergeant
Commander      Squaddie
Terrorist**    Checking memory cards... 

*  For the full name just add the Alien race and rank after the X-COM rank.
For instance, an X-COM Floater Navigator is known as "Commander Floater Navigator"

**  1x1 Terrorists don't really have a rank so this is just a place holder. This also excludes Zombies which cannot be converted to permanent X-COM status.

Aliens having a "normal" rank of Soldier never get an extra rank in front of their name after being converted to an X-COM alien. What is strange is that the rank of "Rookie" is not used anywhere. Even more strange is "Checking memory cards..." rank which gets tagged to the front of Chryssalids, Silacoids and Celatids! Interesting stuff, these X-COM aliens!

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Stop the presses, stop the presses! I have more new info!

 

Something was bothering me the other day while thinking about X-COM aliens: Why wasn't the rank of 'Rookie' used? All the other ranks were, so what is so special about that particular one?

 

After some more intense thinking, I came up with the bright idea that Civilians could be converted to permanent X-COM control also. So I went into the game and tested it out. Sure enough, my theory was correct - Civilians can be permanently controlled by X-COM forces. In addition, can you guess what rank a Civilian gets? Yep, that's right: 'Rookie'! Here is a revised table listing the new info:

 

"Alien" Rank     X-COM Rank *
Soldier        
Navigator        Commander
Medic            Colonel
Engineer         Captain
Leader           Sergeant
Commander        Squaddie
Civilian         Rookie
Terrorist**      Checking memory cards... 

*  For the full name just add the Alien race and rank after the X-COM rank.
For instance, an X-COM Floater Navigator is known as "Commander Floater Navigator"

**  1x1 Terrorists don't really have a rank so this is just a place holder. This also excludes Zombies which cannot be converted to permanent X-COM status.

Seriously, gathering this info was very rewarding. In fact, I haven't had this much fun researching this game in a really long time. Just fascinating!

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

There's a Civilian rank, eh? Never thought to check for that... Cool!

 

On a computer, that "Checking memory cards..." message would probably provide an 'unexpected exception' error message. That's the game looking for an area of a list that does not exist. It uses logic to work out where in memory it would be if it did exist, and just spits out what is there. 'Checking memory cards...', in this case.

 

NKF, getting my logger to do those things would be simple. Again, I'd just need to write up a couple of new batch files. Most likely I'll put it on my site after that, or even on THIS site, as it would then be useful to more people then Zombie.

[Zombie]

On a computer, that "Checking memory cards..." message would probably provide an 'unexpected exception' error message. That's the game looking for an area of a list that does not exist. It uses logic to work out where in memory it would be if it did exist, and just spits out what is there. 'Checking memory cards...', in this case.

Or maybe not a error message, but a UFOpaedia entry like NKF mentioned! I'll have to check this on my CE computer version to see what happens with my own two eyes.

 

Also, I have been checking what happens to civilians after they are MC'd and such in the after-mission report. For the most part, every time something happens to a civilian in terms of MC, that civie isn't counted as killed or lost. It's as if the civilian never existed in that mission. For instance, say 10 civies are at a terror site. If one of them is under X-COM Mind Control when the mission ends, the end report says you saved 9, not 10.

[Bomb Bloke]

The info at that location in memory could be anything. It gets weird when it's not text, but an image - the pixils that make up a Sectoid's left arm doesn't translate to well into a rank. It's random as to what ends up there, but when the game is shipped, it's pretty much static after that.

 

I know that if you mind control a civilian so it turns into an alien, then kill it, it counts as if you killed an alien, and the civilian simply 'never existed'.

[Zombie]

I know that if you mind control a civilian so it turns into an alien, then kill it, it counts as if you killed an alien, and the civilian simply 'never existed'.

Yep, if you kill an "alien" civilian it counts as an alien death. The good part is you prevented the aliens from killing the civie which would cost you -30 points. The bad part is if you would have been able to keep that civilian alive, you would have seen +30 points. Unfortunately, killing an "alien" civilian doesn't net you any points. You get nothing. That really blows!

[Jasonred]

As far as I can tell, similiar to Jagged Alliance 1&2, Apocalypse.... there are 3 sides on those maps. Your forces, Aliens, and civilians.

 

The flag for MC is pretty specific. At the end of this round, switch control to the opposing side. "Opposing". Not original. This flag is what messes up the stun + MC = free unit problem. I seem to recall jabbing my own psied team member with stun rods. Forgot if he woke up during the round, actually.

 

Anyhow... The civilians were basically under your control, so they're now under the alien's team. I'm guessing, this is unless you stun them or something, but I'm not sure.

 

Basically what happens is there's some "salvage"/"Spoils of war" tallying for points, and this is done purely using what used to belong to the Alien team. Which is why psiing a Commander and knocking him out while still under your command ain't gonna work.

 

Each enemy gives a certain amount of points for killed/stunned. Unfortunatly, for civilians, that a big fat 0. (unless they were on civilian team which would give -20 or something)

 

What's the points outcome for killing a soldier who is under alien control? Same as killing your own normal soldier? ... how about the points given for killing aliens under your control?

 

Of course, I'm not hacker enough to mess with the code, so this is all conjecture, but.... I think I'm right.

[Zombie]

Anyhow... The civilians were basically under your control, so they're now under the alien's team. I'm guessing, this is unless you stun them or something, but I'm not sure.

Once a civie turns alien in status, it remains that way. If you stun an alien civilian and it wakes up (either naturally or via stim shots), it is still considered alien.

 

Some people/guides claim that if you stun a civilian, it will come back as alien. This is wrong according to my tests. The point to remember in all of this is that unless you start Mind Controlling civilians, their ownership flag is permanent. Once MC comes into play, the flags will never revert back to civilian (from what I can tell). From that point forwards they can only be "alien" or "X-COM". I'm sure that NKF or Bomb Bloke can verify if this is the case.

[NKF]

At the risk of repeating what has already been said in this thread....

 

Each unit in the battlescape has two flags. I don't know the exact names for these flags, so I'll use my own. "Under Mind Control" and "Owner".

 

Owner has two normal settings, X-Com (1) and Alien (0). The third setting is for the civilians (2).

 

The Under Mind Control flag tells the game that the current unit is under the effects of mind control during this turn, and by the end of the turn, the game clears this flag and then flips the ownership flag to the other side with, I presume, a simple NOT function to flip a zero value into a non-zero value or vice versa.

 

For those unfamiliar with boolean algebra, a boolean variable can only take two values. Yes or no, true or false, 1 or 0. A NOT simply inverts a 1 to a 0, or a 0 to a 1. This translates well to computers as, at their very core, computers work entirely with 1's and 0's after all.

 

For the PC, more specifically, it's zero and non-zero. A zero value is just that, 0. A non-zero value can be any number but 0, though PC's normally use 1 to represent a non-zero, but it can in fact be anything.

 

When a unit is mind controlled, their "Under Mind Control" flag (0 by default) is set to 1 and their ownership flag is set to the controlling party's ownership number. Since the game doesn't remember who the unit originally belongs to, once a civilian's ownership is set to X-Com, there's no going back. When the Under Mind Control flag is reset, the allegience is inverted, you guessed it, from 1 to 0 - causing the civilian to start as an alien.

 

That explains that bit.

 

---

 

Jasonred mentioned that only civilian owned units add or subtract from the end mission tally follows my thoughts exactly. If the unit is dead or alive and is registered as being owned by the civlians, then you get awarded or penalised accoringly.

 

As for alien/stunned civilians not giving you any points, there's actually quite a simple explanation for this, which I only just figured out a few minutes ago.

 

Soldiers killed subtract their personal value score from the end-mission tally. Aliens killed add their personal values to the end-mission tally. Aliens and soldiers can have a personal value rating that goes up to 70 and perhaps a bit more. But this only makes up part of the mission score.

 

There are several other conditions that the game checks for to award or penalise points. MIA units for example get a fixed value (even if it's a tank). There are also a few other conditions that the game doesn't check for so you never get anything for them.

 

Now, since turned civilians are now counted as alien units, they no longer satisfy the condition for the game to give awards or penalties for them. And if you kill a turned civilian, you technically do get awarded their personal value points. Of course, being 0, it's not really much to talk about.

 

---

 

Zombie: Stunning a civilian does indeed seem to switch them to the aliens - but I really couldn't explain why. But I do remember a long time ago that I was trying to save civilians by using stun rods to halt them in their tracks rather than let them wander about like headless chickens. Later, when they woke up, they were marked as aliens.

 

I'm not sure how exactly, but I think it may come into play with your method of getting complete control of non X-Com units.

 

Hmm, I bet this is going to be yet another addition to Bomb Bloke's ever evolving stat viewer.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

A unit has an owner flag, and a mind control flag. As NKF says, this works great when there are two opposing forces, but htings go haywire when there are three. Initial settings for civilians work great, but if the game attempts to change them, it all goes fuzzy.

 

As for why a stunned civilian would turn alien (I assume you can't put them in containment, or it would be common knowledge - a stunned civilian doesn't tend to get up again), that goes under my hibernation theory. A unconcious unit gets removed from the map, then gets put back on when it wakes up. The game sees that the civilian was not an X-Com unit, so assumes it must be an alien.

 

Neither of these bugs is due to memory limitations. From what I can see, there are some stats for units stored that never change. To me, these bugs make it seem that the civilians were tacked on at the last minute, and the coding was never updated to fully support them. It would take a bit of coding, as the system the game uses is perfect for two sided battles, but not so great for anything else.

 

Anyway, my hunts through save game datafiles reveals that each time a unit is killed, a tally of points gets tweaked.

 

wglob[09] - Alien units killed.

wglob[10] - X-Com soldiers lost.

wglob[11] - X-Com tanks lost.

wglob[12] - Score for killing Aliens.

wglob[13] - Score for losing X-Com units. A negative value.

wglob[14] - Civilians killed by Aliens.

wglob[15] - Civilians killed by X-Com.

 

Since only aliens and soldiers have random (from the scoring code's point of view) values, those are the only scores that need to be calculated during gameplay. The other scores that add up to make your final score are based on the amount of stuff you capture, and some simple scores multiplied by the above totals.

 

So civilians always score the same thing. Which means if you turn them into aliens and kill them, the game checks to see it's individual value - I'll assume that it's always 0, no point in it being anything else - and adds that to the alien point score.

 

I think I'm over tired. I can't understand what I've just written. I'll assume it makes some sort of sense and post it.

[Zombie]

I understand your post fully, Bomb Bloke. And thank you both for providing a refresher course in civilian mechanics. Seriously, it was very informative.

 

Ok, just so I wasn't losing my mind, I retested what happens to a stunned normal civilian after it comes to. Yep, I was correct: It still shows up as civilian (as a double-check, the end of mission report claims no civilians missing also). Now, this is for the Playstation version. Since you guys maintain that a stunned civie wakes up as alien, the computer version must be different. I'll test to see what happens on my computer version to verify this.

 

Could someone check the flag value of a civilian which is stunned? If it changes to alien immediately, then everything is hunky-dory. However, if the flag only changes after the civilian wakes up, then something may be amiss with how the game handles those flags.

[Bomb Bloke]

Oh, I can tell you those flags are messed up right now. But I've never seen a stunned civilian get up as an alien. Of course, I don't think I've ever seen a stunned civilian get up, so...

[Zombie]

Did you try stimulant shots from a medi-kit? Those help to revive civies in a hurry.

 

If you try and wait for a civilian (or any other unit for that matter) to wake up naturally, you will be waiting a looooong time!

[sgt caedes]

I dont know whether this is common or not, but it sure is strange:

 

I attacked a crashed medium scout and when i got there the thing didn't have a scratch .

[Bomb Bloke]

Seems to depend on what you hit it with. Don't expect to see many intact craft when your weapons get upgraded.

[sgt caedes]

My interceptor was armed with two plasma cannons. I would classify those as upgraded weapons

[NKF]

The game loves to use random numbers in a lot of situations - damage to shot down UFOs being one of them. What weapons you use does not control how much damage the UFO receives.

 

For example, you could get horrible damage done to a ship with a sizeable chunk (if not all of it) blown away by a single cannon while you can sometimes receive next to no structural damage after shooting down a ship with dual fusion ball launchers.

 

It differs from game to game, and if you save before entering a mission, and keep replaying the mission on new maps, you'll notice how the UFO's damage isn't always the same.

 

- NKF

[Solitaire]

I don't think this really counts but does anyone else notice that whenever you shoot down a ship with floaters over farmland there always seems to be one sitting directly at the top of the stairs of a barn...?

[sgt caedes]

I recently had another strange thing on a snakemen terror mission. I was down to one soldier who was pinned down in the skyranger. He took out several chryssalids and zombies moving about near the ramp :devil: and i noticed they never moved up the ramp to attack me. Then i decided to try out what would happen if i positioned him on the ramp...

 

immidiately a chryssalid moved up to my soldier and turned him into a zombie

I wonder why they didnt attack earlier, because they could see me. (one zombie fired one of those weird reaction shots)

Maybe they are too scared to enter the skyranger

[Jman4117]

There's a spawn point there and they rarely move from that point without "help". :devil:

 

As for the intact craft, I believe it's just a random chance at about 20-30% per engine.

[Bomb Bloke]

I've always found that once I start using plasma cannons, intact craft become extremely rare, though I do know it's random and you can re-roll the dice, so to speak.

 

But, uh, I tend to go straight to plasma cannons, so...

[Zombie]

Power sources stand a 70% chance that they will be destroyed when the UFO crash lands. When power sources explode, the damage they inflict could be considerable. For the overall level of devastation, I tend to believe you have to add this on top of the damage range inflicted by the weapon used to shoot down a craft.

 

However, if the power source(s) pass the 30% survivability roll, no damage will be done to the craft, not even by the weapons used. This is backed up by observations I have made during "supposed" UFO crash sites: if the power sources are intact, then so is everything else on the UFO. If a power source explodes, it may or may not add additional damage to the potential level caused by the weapons systems used and/or crash landing. Some testing may be necessary...

[Jman4117]

Test away.....see if you about a .30x.30x.30x.30 on the Terror ship....I've NEVER seen one survive a shootdown in tact... O.o

[NKF]

I've often seen severely damaged terror ships as well - but then there's always the odd one out.

 

I guess another question to ask is: How many of the power units are set to explode? The battleship has 4 power units, yet not all of them blow when you compare them to supply ships and the terror ships.

 

- NKF

[Jman4117]

Maybe the explosion of one destroys all of them since they are clustered?