How to clean-up a UFO without entering it...

[Bomb Bloke]

I wrote another program!

[Zombie]

I've found a large scout and saved just before landing, but my last few landings turned up with ships that did not have that alien that waits in the bridge for some odd reason. Maybe if I played the game properly for a few rounds.

Perhaps, you could Probe all of the aliens to see which one is the Engineer. Then Mind Control him and physically walk him to the engine room door. Then check to see if it behaves in the same manner when back under alien control. It's worth a look to save you from reloading the mission from the Geoscape screen again.

 

If you feel up to the task, I've had problems with Supply Ships too. You may not agree that aliens camp right outside the bridge room, but I've seen this soo often! Just visited a Sectoid Supply Ship today. 3 Sectoids congregated around the entrance: 2 outside, 1 inside the bridge. The leader just wouldn't budge after killing his buddies.

 

Is it possible to change the morale of the alien during a mission? I'd like to do some tests with the alien having different levels to see whether it plays a factor in behavior. Obviously, when morale is below 50 the alien may panic or go berzerk, but what happens when he has 51 for morale? I'd like to test this out too. Any easy way of changing the morale numbers for that alien myself?

[Bomb Bloke]

Each record in the unitref.dat file in your save game has 124 bytes of info, right? Offset 58 is the morale value.

 

If that went right over your head, just say so.

[NKF]

Easiest it to just open unitref.dat with 124 columns and then go roughly to column 59 (MS-Edit starts its rows from 1). Or easier still, at the very start of the mission, save the game and look at unitref.dat. It'll be the column consisting entirely of 'd's (note case), which is also the ascii symbol for 100.

 

To change these values, hold down alt and type in three numbers on the keypad. If you know the equivalents on the keyboard, like space = 32, @ = 64, d = 100, you can just type them in.

 

Numbers from 0 - 26 for some reason cannot be entered with the alt+3 number combination, so you'll need to use ctrl+p and then (while holding down ctrl) a to z for values 1 to 26 to insert the symbols. Values of 0 will need to be cut and pasted.

 

---

 

Unfortunately, mind controlling and moving any aliens might change the alien's instructions in such a way that it won't work the way we want it to. I also want to avoid changing the X, Y, Z coordinates manually too.

 

Anyway, there are apparently many variations when it comes to crew placement inside an intact large scouts. I've found one where the guard (I think it was a navigator at one time - all the engineers in my last few test runs started in the engineering room) was completely immune to being lured out by walking up the left passage. It started a few tiles away from where I was expecting it to be.

 

I'm going to save this one and put it up as well. Heh, I haven't had so much fun with high explosives in a while...

 

Most of the time I get a large scouts that can be wiped out without even entering the ship. They say a watched pot never boils. I guess that's applying here. I bump into that alien I can lure out many times without thinking about it, and when I actually want to find it, it won't show up. Typical. I wonder if it only happens in the early stages of the game? Or whether it's influenced by race? Hopefully not.

 

By the way: Grenades on the roof didn't even phase that alien I have in my savegame. You have to go in to get it (or blast away at the corners or north/western UFO walls)

 

- NKF

 

P.S: Bomb Bloke, blowing the wall/door away with a soldier facing the alien is a brilliant strategy! Only my implementation varied in that I blew away the engine room with a blaster bomb instead of doing it in front of a door. But as it worked there, it'll definitely work with doors! (any door/wall)

[Zombie]

Thanks NKF. That was the type of response I was looking for. I think I have an ascii table floating around somewhere. Just have to figure out if it applies to my machine, but that shouldn't be too hard seeing as you gave some conversions.

 

Humor me for a second. How do you open the unitref.dat file in 124 columns? Edit unitref.dat /14?

I don't have a keypad on my keyboard, so must I enter a number by using the ascii equivalent from the keyboard? I'm assuming a 0 value can be entered by the ascii value, without cutting and pasting, right?

 

I don't think the problem you are having getting a "static" alien is determined by race or how early you are into a game. They seem to happen on any Large Scout mission, regardless of race, though like you said not all the time.

[NKF]

No numeric keypad? Hmm, the regular numbers along the top of the keyboard swap between the open windows in an MS-Edit window, unfortunately. Does your keyboard have any alternate functions that can let you use the keys like a numeric keypad? I know my laptop has a FN button that swaps out some of the buttons so that they work like a keypad. Hmm, an interesting condunrum indeed. Ah well. Since this file is littered with all sorts of values, you can still use copy and paste. Not the best solution, but a solution nonetheless.

 

Interesting, I figured out how to get a 0. Hold down ctrl, p and then 2. I haven't a clue why, but it works.

 

You can open the file with 124 columns with /124 after 'edit' and then the filename, or you can use the 'open binary' checkbox in the file\open dialogue. Don't forget to set the 'line width' to 124.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Sure, my laptop has a fn key. Guess that's the only way then. When I enter the new morale numbers, why did you say "To change these values, hold down alt and type in three numbers on the keypad. " Why 3 numbers? If I want to edit a morale number from 100 to 51, can't I just type 2 numbers - 5 and 1 and delete the trailing 0 from the 100? What's the 3rd #?

 

Anyhow, thanks again for the extra info NKF!

[NKF]

It has to be three numbers. Just lead smaller numbers with 0's. For example, Alt+082 to enter a value of 82 (or a capital R, if you will).

 

R - see? No, wait, you can't. Never mind.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Interesting, I figured out how to get a 0. Hold down ctrl, p and then 2. I haven't a clue why, but it works.

How did you figure that out?

[NKF]

I was trying to see if I could use any other ctrl+p+key combinations other than a - z.

 

---

 

I almost forgot about this thread. I've uploaded the savegame to my test game page:

 

https://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/fun/testgames.html

 

While finding an apropriate UFO to test this on (it seems the floaters won't let me use my large scout bridge guard lure, but other races can. How odd indeed!), I made a connection with my thoughts in the AI thread about how the aliens will often turn towards the closest unit to it.

 

It seems to work. If you know an alien is in the bridge (preferably one that doesn't get lured out with the trick where you walk into one of the corners of the left passage), move two soldiers up as close to it as you can while being protected by the walls (it only seems to work for units on the same level - not on different levels - so you cannot make this easy by using flying suits). Have one soldier stand back a bit but get the other one as close as possible (but from a different direction as the other). On the next turn, have the soldier that was hanging back barge into the bridge. Hopefully the alien will be looking towards the closest soldier. You can then get a clear shot at the alien's back, or rush to the engineering room for a quick refill of TUs. This might make the alien turn towards this soldier instead, but that gives the other soldier a chance of advancing. It might take a bit of experimentation, but I'm pretty sure it can be used to your advantage.

 

Now if only I could find an Abducter to test this theory on. That one has a horrible alien camping in the brige as well.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Woah, if that's true, then that gives us a major boost in battle!

 

(I still don't understand the ctrl+p thing...)

[Zombie]

This has to do with the Large Scout and the guard which refuses to leave the bridge and the movement patterns of said guard. There were a couple discussions going on at the Xcomwiki so I decided to answer them here. First, a couple quotes:

 

This is debatable - When the AI is moving an alien it can happen that the next waypoint is already occupied by another alien unit and thus it will freeze on its location without moving. In those cases what will happen is that the alien will wait until the path is clear before moving.

 

Tests I'd like to see but am too lazy to do myself: 1. Test if the last alien will eventually wander, or if it will forever be holed up in it's corner. 2. Is there really a different behaviour for aliens who engage players? See if they ever leave the defined path. 3. Will aliens pass each other when walking between waypoints?

In the Large Scout there are 3 spawn points on the bridge lined up in a row from North to South with a space in between them. The outer spawn points are in turn linked to those leading out of the bridge in front of the doors. I figured that the easiest way of testing if the central guard would move around past the other guards blocking the next route would be to root them to one spot. If the central guard found his way out of the bridge, we can assume that routes cannot be blocked by other units (a "plugged" corridor is different subject as that deals with the spatial arrangement of units and terrain).

 

I wanted to make this test as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, trying to get all 3 of those spawn points filled is like playing Russian roulette: reload enough times and you may get lucky (or unlucky). I didn't want to edit the spawn priorities of those nodes as that might have an effect on the result. What I ended up doing was editing the crew compliment in the executable so that more aliens would show up (in this case those 3 spawn points are reserved for Navigators so I made the Large Scout hold 10 of them in addition to the other ranks). When I visited the first Large Scout mission, I had my men MC all of the aliens on the map and forced everything out of the UFO except those 3 Navigators. Now, the outer Navigators were edited so that they couldn't move. If the central Navigator couldn't find its way off the bridge we would know that a node has to be unoccupied in order for a unit to continue on to the next waypoint.

 

After waiting a bunch of rounds, I heard a door open. Low and behold, the central Sectoid Navigator found its way out of the bridge. It makes sense really. I'm sure the programmers thought of this scenario beforehand and designed it so that an alien will go around an occupied waypoint to get to the next node. Otherwise we would see bottlenecks and clogged exits all the time. Also, the aliens don't necessarily follow an exact line from waypoint to waypoint. See, sometimes the waypoints create a line which intersects with an inanimate object (such as a bulkhead of a ship or a wall of a building). The aliens have to be smart enough to recognize that if their path is blocked by something that they should go around it. Anyway, that's what I found out.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Looks like the nodes are just a "go in that general direction" marker. If they were absolutely insistent on going to particular nodes, you'd probably see that more often everywhere else.

 

Then there's the left door of the supply ship. I guess the node at the door causes the aliens to drift far enough from the other door so that the end up congesting the left door and fail to see the right door as a viable alternative.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Then there's the left door of the supply ship. I guess the node at the door causes the aliens to drift far enough from the other door so that the end up congesting the left door and fail to see the right door as a viable alternative.

No, the aliens only come out of the left door because there are a couple connected nodes which allows movement through it. The right door lacks the through-waypoint and therefore the aliens move to the other door to exit the ship. Aliens are only as smart as their waypoints and you must explicitly tell them where you want them to go.

 

I guess this has some other important implications. Say you blast a hole in a wall of a UFO. If there isn't a couple nodes there allowing movement through the hole, the aliens will ignore it and head to the normal exits. I have never seen aliens exit their ship in this manner so I guess the theory holds. Also, I don't think there is a way to link two levels of the battlescape together (exception: steps). So aliens which can float will probably get marooned there if they float up to get around an impassible barrier on the ground.

 

A good test to run sometime is to remove the through-waypoints of a single-exit UFO and then watch what happens. Aliens should never exit.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Well, today I decided to fix the routes of the Supply Ship so that the aliens will exit from both doors instead of just the left one. I doubt that the lack of a through-waypoint for the right door was an intentional map programming feature as all of the other UFOs with two doors have active exit nodes for both of them. You can find the fix in our files section here.

 

- Zombie

[Tepid tasoth]

I wonder why they programmed it that way in the first place.

[Bomb Bloke]

It could well be for the same reason the Mountain terrain is a mess, and the Lightening has massive invisible holes in it: By mistake.

[Tepid tasoth]

I'm afraid you're right. That was so obvious, I should have realized it's a bug.

[Zombie]

The whole game is practically riddled with errors. I mean, if you are picky enough (like me) there's always something which is wrong. Terror From the Deep isn't exempt from errors either and some are the exact same ones found in UFO. You would think that they would have learned from the first time around... well, they tried fixing the issue with the Mind Control bug in TFTD for large units and actually succeeded in making it worse than it was before IMHO.

 

- Zombie

[Tepid tasoth]

IMHO TFTD is far more buggy than EU. Especially that research tree bug is getting me on my nerves EVERY time. Still, a lot of "exploits" will work in TFTD, although not in such funny ways as in EU.

[Gimli]

Don't remind me. It seems I ran into one. Apparently I researched the Deep One (corpse) prior to having Aqua plastics in my base and now I can't even research that.

[Kret]

IIRC, you don't actually research the aqua plastics, but rather a 2nd Deep One corpse.

 

Anyway, here's the wiki about research glitches for TFTD

Just scroll down to the "The Good Bit" part

[Gimli]

Hmm? I don't think I could research another Deep One corpse. (It's the DOS version by the way)

 

Well it doesn't matter anyway, I'll have to start all over again, 10 months in with no Armor is not a very good idea.

[Kret]

I'm not so sure myself, I just vagely recall something like that. I should pick up the game again sometime.

[Bomb Bloke]

If it happens again, try this fixit Blade wrote up.