Strange things in X-COM

[Zombie]

Here is something that threw me a loop. Recently, I was messing around with my saved game where there were 27 alien bases present. NKF claimed there is an item limit in the Geoscape, so I built 7 more X-COM bases (for a total of 8) and constructed about 9 Hangars at each base.

 

Now, the fastest way to fill up those hangars is to purchase craft, rather than build. So I went in to the purchase screen and plopped down a huge sum of cash to get some Skyrangers. But wait, only 9 of them actually showed up! The rest were lost for some reason. I tried this with Interceptors and got the same results: only 10 "normal" craft can be in the game at any one time.

 

Being curious, I tried to purchase some more craft. Result: the game would take my money, but wouldn't give me any more aircraft.

 

Manufacturing the hybrid craft is different. I could build as many of those as I wanted to.

 

Hmmm... maybe I didn't have enough cash in my kitty to purchase more than 9 Skyrangers at a clip? Nope, 400 million is plenty. It appears that you cannot own any more than 10 conventional craft at one time. Anyone else want to verify this? Crazy stuff.

 

- Zombie

[Crouching Squaddie]

when engaging the battleships, the odds of 1 or more power sources remaining intact seems to increase when multiple crafts are used instead of just 1 lone avenger. (i could be wrong, and these were all flukes)

 

noticed in 6 attempts so far on the same battleship

 

3 with lone avenger, 3 with 1 of each of the hybrid crafts

 

lone avenger left 1 or none of the power sources in all 3 attempts

2 'legs' completely blown away when i landed for the salvage operation in one of attempts

 

team effort left 2-3 intact in all three attempts.

-----

 

nifty trick to 'test' if the powersources are still intact while its still in the fog of war / unexplored area (if no smoke is present): (useful for those in dire need of E-115 and need to reload the interception)

 

glide the slector icon around the power source region, and you will see a sillhouette of either an intact PS or a crumpled one. one distinguishing feature is when the icon is right behind the PS - if the front edge of the box that is usally facing you is obstructed, its an intact PS, if you see the edge is a little broken, its a smoldering heap.

[Zombie]

Hmmm... maybe I didn't have enough cash in my kitty to purchase more than 9 Skyrangers at a clip? Nope, 400 million is plenty. It appears that you cannot own any more than 10 conventional craft at one time.

Well, it appears that I solved this little mystery with some testing. Apparently, I must have hit the item limit in the Geoscape screen after all.

 

I am still having a problem figuring out what gets applied to this limit. I know you mentioned some of the specifics before NKF, but could you please list everything which adds to the Geoscape limit? It would sure help. Thanks!

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Hmm, I only know of 5 Geoscape tokens so far. Being:

 

UFO

X-Com Craft

Alien Base

X-Com Base

Craft Waypoint

 

X-Com ships and UFOs are still counted even if they are not visible.

 

Tell you what, open up MS-Edit and open the loc.dat file in your savegame directory (assuming you aren't testing this with the PSX version). Open the file as a 20 row binary file. There should be 50 entries. The very first row contains the identifier of the Geoscape token. I know the following:

 

Nothing = 0

UFO = 1

X-Com Craft = 2

X-Com Base = 3

Alien Base = 4

Waypoint = 7

 

You could use this to count how many tokens are currently present on your Geoscape.

 

- NKF

[Crouching Squaddie]

Current End of month balance @2300 hrs = 41, 210, 252

Current Funding = 13, 419, 000

Current Total Maintenance cost for all bases = 11,020,000

 

At rollover = Funding Change = + 1,336,000, but, UK has been infiltrated (How, I don't know, all UFO's were intercepted. oh well)

 

New Funding = 14,755,000

Maintenance = 11,020,000

Theoretical Net = 3,735,000

BUT

 

Beginning Month Balance = 38, 876, 252

 

Nothing was purchased

Nothing is in my production queue.

Yet, I just lost ~2million.

Are there undocumented costs?

[Jasonred]

.... offhand, my guess would be... salaries?

 

Or did you include those in maintainence?

[Crouching Squaddie]

yeah, the maintenance figure included the saleries, the non-hybrid craft leases, base upkeep.

[Blehm 98]

its probably some invisible factor the game keeps, like it does for score. It always annoyed me when the game says something and then there's some invisible factor that completely messes it up

[Zombie]

Hmm, I only know of 5 Geoscape tokens so far. Being:

 

UFO

X-Com Craft

Alien Base

X-Com Base

Craft Waypoint

 

X-Com ships and UFOs are still counted even if they are not visible.

 

Tell you what, open up MS-Edit and open the loc.dat file in your savegame directory (assuming you aren't testing this with the PSX version). Open the file as a 20 row binary file. There should be 50 entries. The very first row contains the identifier of the Geoscape token. I know the following:

 

Nothing = 0

UFO = 1

X-Com Craft = 2

X-Com Base = 3

Alien Base = 4

Waypoint = 7

 

You could use this to count how many tokens are currently present on your Geoscape.

 

- NKF

Thanks for the reply NKF. I am testing the item limit for the Geoscape on the CE version (not my PSX), so I'll open loc.dat with MS-Edit and give that a go. It will certainly make things easier!

 

----------

 

As for the "undocumented" costs, what was the UK funding at the end of the last month? I'll wager to bet it came to that ~$2 million. There is where that drop comes from.

 

I did some research similar to yours in the Funding conflict, Help! topic a while back. Please read the posts near the end: specifically 12-18. In short, Bomb Bloke said it best:

 

It would seem that when the funding changes, the addition (or subtraction) applies to the FOLLOWING month - not the current one. That is to say, the countries determine what they will pay you at the start of each month, and actually pay it at the end.

When the UK stopped funding, you do not instantaneously see the loss of ~$2 million until the start of the next month when it gets applied.

 

- Zombie

[Crouching Squaddie]

UK's funding was 483,000

 

My cost of maintenance was still less than that of th Nations' income, even marginally.

If I'm paid at end of the month based on the last months report card, I should still gaining money.

 

it is silly to question 2 million lost when compared to the 20+ million from alien tech sold each month, but Xcom's inhouse accountant's are screaming...

 

 

 

Off topic, anyone ever salvage the weapons of a Firestorm thats 50% damaged and sell it off since it's faster to just build a new one. (assuming I do have a surplus of materials)?

[Zombie]

Hmmm... That is confusing. Your balance dropped by roughly $2 million?

 

Without having a comprehensive itemized list for the previous month, it is almost impossible to say where that cash went. If you have your game saved at the end of the month, email it to me and I shall endeavor to solve this mystery. Funds just don't disappear into thin air. They have to go somewhere.

 

- Zombie

[Crouching Squaddie]

I'm a little ashamed cuz I cheated in some areas. (only things that were not corrupted by my lazy/impatient/ cheating ass were the money, Research, Manufacturing, planes, weapons, PSI skills/ PSI training, Inventories.)

 

Why do i still recall the time my Commander got hit with a blaster shell, the last time I played the game Legitimately 3 years ago.

 

(yeah, its bad to start the game back up as a cheater)

 

 

by now you guys are prob cursing me...

[Jasonred]

... Gah! For a minute, I thought I could do something with the "pre-rollover funding" and "post rollover funding", but, even with that, you'd have 2 million gain...

 

Hmmm....

 

 

AH! I have an idea! you... made a mistake somewhere!

 

... no? Rechecked figures, they're all correct? It's not a wild goose chase?

 

mmm....

 

okay, what did you cheat in involving staff? Let's figure out if you didn't add some mystical plane dwelling scientists and engineers who are drawing paychecks from their alternate dimensions...

 

And it's not 2 million lost... it's 4 million lost. Possibly 5.3 million. (since you should have GAINED 2-3.3 million)

[Crouching Squaddie]

scientists/ engineers hired legit

research and manufacturing was untouched

 

only areas where i cheated:

 

base build times were quartered

soldier stats increased (except PSI skills/ Training, left that to come on its own. when they're superhuman already, psi-amps arent that essential)

soldier heal times were quartered

(reloaded when anyone died) - cheater or not, i hate to lose a soldier (maybe thats why i can't beat the starcraft campaign....i refrain from losing units, even the zergs...)

[Crouching Squaddie]

don't know if this was mentioned, but, while manufacturing fusion ball launchers as secondary income, i got a message in geoscape saying 'not enough special materials to produce fusion ball launcher' (well, not in those exact words, but that dreaded message when saying you're out of materials.

 

i wondered, what special materials? all it needs is money....right?

 

i checked my inventory at my only manufacturing base, and one thing i started wondering was 'where's that cache of 1000 alien alloys i had here?'

 

i checked the inventory of my storage base (stores and defenses) just to make sure i didnt accidently transfer the alloy.

0 alloy.

 

i reloaded a game from few in-game-months back, and started production, and it seems the fusion ball launcher uses alien alloys (even though in the production queue, it claims to only use $$)

 

all core game files are un-modified, no xcomutil was used, the hack util wasnt used, etc, etc....

 

guess there's a flaw in kasey changs faq about cost-effect for $...but not all his fault.

back to selling laser cannon's on the black market.

[NKF]

That has been discussed somewhere on this forum and the Xcomufo forums. And after a bit of number crunching, the laser cannon leaps back into being the most profitable item to build.

 

The fusion ball launcher has the better resale value, but it takes 100 hours more to build than the laser cannon, costs 1 alloy per launcher except for the very first in the batch, and you have to factor in the value of the alien alloys that you will not be getting by spending them on the launcher. That is to say, -$6500 each unit of alloys (except the first, as mentioned before), lessening the value of each launcher. Even if you got the alloys for free, that's what you would've obtained by selling the raw alloys.

 

---

 

There is a bug with the manufacture screen. See, every time you start a new production run and assign a batch size and some engineers to it, you immediately pay for the whole cost for the very first item in the batch. If you choose to cancel this, you will not get back what you initially paid. This is horrible if you're building something expensive like Avengers and you suddenly decide that what you really need is a Lightning or just a pair of plasma beam cannons.

 

There is another bug that is a good work around for the above bug, but also introduces a cheat side-effect. Start production, but begin with a batch size of 0. You pay nothing at all. Once you've begun the project, only then assign how many you want and the engineers who are to work on it. This, in effect, makes the very first item in the build free of charge. No money, no materials. All other items in the build will cost you money and material. But if you choose to cancel the batch immediately or in the middle of production, you'll not have lost anything. As I said, it's a bit of a cheat.

 

Conclusion:

 

- If you start production with more than 0 items and cancel it, you'll lose your downpayment for the first item, forever. So when deciding what to build, never start a project unless you are really sure of what you want.

- If you start prodction with 0 items, you don't pay anything. Cancelling will not lose you any money because the first item in the build will be free and won't use any materials.

 

Most of us probably won't even care about this 'feature', since it's so easy to get money (spring clean) and material (raid a UFO) for building items. But free Avengers can be rather tempting, eh?

 

- NKF

[Pete]

Hmm... I'd just assumed X-COM subcontracted and the first item's cost was like a deposit. That way I can live with this feature and avoid the temptation to get stuff for free

[Fishfins]

Ok, so it's not really a bug or an error of any kind, but...

 

On my previous campaign, the Esser family had four members in X-Com, the three Lefevre triplets performed admirably and I'm sure Mr and Mrs Reynolds were proud to have three sons fighting aliens.

 

Sorry, hate to double-post, but...

 

I deployed a few troopers from a Skyranger on a UFO Recovery mission, all three got zombified. Then I swear one of the zombies fired a rifle bullet at the other soldiers in the Skyranger.

[Bomb Bloke]

There is an 'edit' button, you know.

 

There have been reports of units being zombified, but not dropping their weapons. This is an interesting one, as I've actually had cases where the unit and the zombie both existed in play. Never both on their feet at once though, an unconcious unit item with a zombie standing over it.

 

Unfortunately I've never had time to revive a unit in this odd predicament.

[Fishfins]

Probably old hat you fellows, but I just had a guy go so beserk he had 214 Action Points. A snakeman threw a grenade, killing 3 soldiers and knocking out one, and this rookie's response was to fire off a whole 20 bullet clip in one round, killing a snakeman and a cluster of innocent trees.

 

It's amazing how utterly fun a bug-infested game can be.

[Pete]

Eh? NEVER seen that happen before.

 

Yeah, UFO's few bugs seem to make it so much more realistic (so long as you caan think of a logical reason to explain the bug).

[Bomb Bloke]

I'm not sure that's a bug; a guy going berserk will in reality act quickly and irrationally.

 

For example, I've seen that happen a few times, and I gotta tell ya, a unit berzerking with over 200TU is much more impressive when he's got a laser rifle.

 

The thing which gets me is that a berserking unit with really high TU can fire for ages, even though firing the gun is supposed to use a constant percentage of TU. Perhaps that just gets stuck to his original cost.

[NKF]

Weapon costs are based off your maximum amount of TUs, not your current TUs. Your current TUs can go well beyond the maximum. You only get filled up to maximum TUs at the start of each turn, but going berzerk can give you time units that are well beyond that (my guess, it's probably within 250 - 255 TUs).

 

So, let's say we have 80 maximum TUs. A laser rifle uses 25% for a snap shot. That's 20 TUs. So with 200 TUs with snaps costing 20 TUs we will get up to 10 snaps, not counting the TUs used for the continuous wiggling. 250 would give us 12 snapshots. That's 10 - 12 shots can seem like quite a lot!

 

Theoretically speaking, soldiers with even less maximum TUs, say 60, may even get to fire more! They'd get 15TUs per shot, or up to 16 shots.

 

I haven't even factored in the possibility that X-Com soldiers may indeed use autoshots when berzerking, and use snaps everywhere else. I personally think they're just using snaps, but you never know.

 

- NKF

[Pete]

Ah, that explains the occasion when a unit has fired off a lot of shots and I've been scratching my head thinking "hang on, they can only fire 2 rounds of autoshots maximum...". Useful bit of info that

[Bomb Bloke]

I'm pretty sure I've seen auto fires, one guy basically spun around while on the roof of a servo and made black marks everywhere, TUs dropping every three shots if memory serves...

 

Another fired 200TU worth of shots at an unfortunate civilian. The first half missed, but the poor guy only had to be unlucky once.