Two Quick Questions

[Stun Grenade]

Question 1: My guys that have the Flying Armour can never go down stairs. Do you know why?

 

Question 2: In a defending your base mission, where do your forces mainly come out of? Like which rooms?

 

Thanks,

~SG

[Slotty]

1: he will fly right out instead of going down.

 

2: the places i don't want them to be in :dead: ...

[Alitorious]

1) Well, if you put them over the top stair and descend the person manually, then they'll go down the rest of the stairs. It must be because the ai just lets the soldier fall down the first step, but flying suits can't fall.

(Which is rather interesting: A flying suit takes up slightly more TUs going down stairs than the other types of armour)

 

2) I think it's just random where they're placed. But the ones you want will never be where they need to be.

[Stewart]

1 ) The computer assumes that since you went through all that effort to make a flying suit, when it's forced to make a guess, of what you were thinking (between flying and not), it picks flying.

 

2 ) Most will show up in General stores and Quarters (never in lift and hangar, whew!) Next likely are radars and defenses. With the rest bring up the third group.

 

On the other hand, this is something that can be described with statistics so our good friend Zombie should be along sooner-or-later.

[Danial]

Question 2: In a defending your base mission, where do your forces mainly come out of? Like which rooms?

I've actually been wonder that myself. I'm don't fully understand the node system used in the maps, but I counted the ones marked with "X-COM" and the numbers were as follows:

 

10 - General Stores

8 - Living Quarters

7 - Laboratory

5 - Missile Defenses

4 - Workshop

2 - Large Radar

 

So I think that's where they'll show up. Though I'm not sure what occurs if you have more than 36 soldiers. Perhaps they group together around the nodes or something I'm sure Zombie or NKF or someone can help you out more accurately!

[BladeFireLight]

Your list looks correct.

but just to check. The nodes have to be both x-com and spawn points. If they show up as light green in mapview they are a spawn point.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Stun Grenade]

Where's Zombie when you want him?? And that wise sir named NKF hehe...

 

I was asking the second question coz i wanted to group the Hangers and Access Lift close to each other and sourround them with the facilities that the troops come out of...

[Danial]

Well from the looks of it, the Stores have the most spawn points, so if you surround them in Stores, you should be fine.

[NKF]

That's what happens when you live in different time zones.... anyway:

 

I'm going to go with that list. Stores and living quarters, having the most spawn points, have the best chance of spawning X-com units. Surround your hangars/lift with them if you want.

 

While a good idea in theory, it relies entirely on luck as you never know how your soldiers will be distributed throughout the base, unless it's a very small base. I can say this works because I often like to use one-hangar bases as intercept/radar bases (my philosphy with them is: the smaller the base, the easier to defend. I should add "Explosives solve everything" on the end of that as well...)

 

The radars almost never generate anyone, unless there's no more spawn points, so they make good no-unit buffer zones. That'd probably only happen if you have so few X-Com spawn points that you end up using some of the alien spawn points as well (usually happens at a base attack right after a major portion of the base was collapsed due to professional negligence during a previous defence mission...).

 

Come to think of it, if you make it so that the lift is connected to a hangar but not to the rest of the base, you'll only need to deal with the aliens that march through the hangar. I find the lift much harder to deal than the hangar because of the main doors. But if you take away the need to fight around those doors...

 

- NKF

[Stewart]

Setup for base defense, well why din't you say so .....

 

<stewart draws air in for a few minutes >

 

please consult the following thread over at XcomUFO (nifty diagrams too).

[Bomb Bloke]

(Which is rather interesting: A flying suit takes up slightly more TUs going down stairs than the other types of armour)

Oooh! That's new!

[Stun Grenade]

i cant access those forums, could you please send me the diagram?

[Jman4117]

I tend to prefer the lift on my side of the hangers as it keeps some aliens out of sight so there won't be as many out in the open to reaction fire on my troops. It also makes for decent cover after I thin the enemy out a little and start to advance into the hangers.

[Zombie]

Where's Zombie when you want him?? And that wise sir named NKF hehe...

Sorry bout the delay, but I was doing some serious testing today! Hmm... Your second question about where soldiers are found on a base defense mission got me thinking to my tests a while back. For me, most of the soldiers seemed to spawn within the Living Quarters and the General Stores. The Hyperwave Decoder had a soldier inside there, so all radars probably spawn a soldier or two. Defensive systems act in roughly the same manner.

 

In my base I had all the LQ's at the top of my base with the Access Lift and Hangers at the bottom. In between were General Stores modules. To the right were Workshops and Psi Labs. I never saw a soldier spawn inside a Workshop or Psi-Lab. It may be that soldiers will spawn in any module connected to a Living Quarters (obvious exceptions are the Access Lift and Hangers).

 

You caught me at a good time. Right now, I have one of my bases being attacked by the aliens. At that base is 80 soldiers. All I have to do is change some structures around and build a couple more to see what happens. After that, I'll let the aliens in (by dismantling the majority of the base defenses), and count how many soldiers spawn where.

 

All 80 soldiers should show up right? I think the limit is 80 X-COM units. In any case, whatever the total is, it will be more than 36 soldiers like in Danials case. That should shed some light on the subject!

[NKF]

The limit's 80 units total in the battlescape, which means if you split that down, each side should has a potential of 40 units each. But, each side doesn't use the full 40 slots, even in a base defense mission where you can have lots of soldiers.

 

As usual, large units take up 4 slots.

 

- NKF

[Stewart]

i cant access those forums, could you please send me the diagram?

you may need an account there. It's free account as it is here. The site is a fan run site as it is here. They dont bite.

[Zombie]

I did some testing this past week on where your soldiers could potentially start at the beginning of an X-COM base defense mission. 40 X-COM soldiers is the max like NKF mentioned.

 

I started out with a base having 4 Living Quarters and 4 General Stores, plus a variety of other structures (like a Hyperwave, Missile Defense, Psi-Lab, Grav Shield and Fusion Ball defenses to name a few). Soldiers usually spawn within the Living Quarters/General Stores modules, and when there is an overabundance of these structures at a base all your soldiers will start within them. That's a fact.

 

Usually a LQ's or a GS's will be able to contain 8-10 soldiers. Multiply this by 8 (4 LQ's + 4 GS's) and you have a potential capacity of 64-100 soldiers. Since you can only have 40, they always reside in those structures when there are that many built.

 

Since I remember having soldiers within other structures, I concluded that this would happen when the number of LQ's/GS's are low. So I started to dismantle all my LQ's until only one remained. Did the same for the General Stores. One of each would hold 16-20 soldiers. All I had left at this base was a LQ's, a GS's, 2 Fusion Ball Defenses, a Missile Defenses and a Psi-Lab (not including the Access Lift and 3 Hangars). Viola! Now the soldiers were dispersed throughout the base structures. I'll list how many were found in each structure:

 

Structure     Level 0     Level 1     Total
LivingQtr        7           1          8
GeneralSt        6           4         10
FusionD 1        3           0          3
FusionD 2        4           0          4
MissileD         4           5          9
Psi-Lab          4           2          6

Now, I modified my base somewhat to include some other structures, but I took out the General Stores to see what would happen:

 

Structure     Level 0     Level 1     Total
LivingQtr        7           1          8
Hyperwave        5           1          6
Workshop         5           1          6
Psi-Lab          6           2          8
MissileD         2           5          7
GravShld         4           1          5

I will modify my test base even further to see what will happen with fewer structures. I am guessing that as the number of structures is decreased, the greater the number of soldiers will be found in each remaining structure (besides the Hangars and Access Lift). Stay tuned!

[Stun Grenade]

it would be interesting to see what would happen if u had no living quaters (no soliders, no scientists, etc.) but then again, can u do the mission with just a HWP!?

[NKF]

I cannot give you a tried and true answer for your question about no soldiers but just one HWP (different players seem to have different experiences with this), however, I can speculate that the HWP will appear whereever a HWP normally appears (mainly the HWP closets), or in locations an ordinary soldier will normally appear (like in the middle of the corridors of the base).

 

You can have a base with 40 soldiers and no living quarters.

 

Easy. In a base defence mission, destroy the living quarters by repeatedly shelling the living quarters with high explosives until it's in such a state that it disappears from the base build screen. It'll also wipe out any other facilities if they get separated from the lift.

 

I accidentally did this at one time and literally wiped out a good deal of my base when I destroyed the connecting module (leaving only stores, a radar, the lift and a hangar). I did not lose all my ships, my loot or my staff. Research projects and manufacturing projects stopped immediately. Right after this, a second batch of aliens attacked (I had two retaliation teams targeting my base at the time). Since I had so few facilities left, my soldiers had to share the spawn locations that the aliens use. Interesting, but not very nice when you find yourself surrounded by aliens.

 

The reverse is true as well if you have more aliens than entry points.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

The reverse is true as well if you have more aliens than entry points.

What do you mean by this?

 

I assume that aliens only spawn within a Hangar or Access Lift. So if I were to say, oh, dismantle all three of my Hangars and just have the Access Lift present, would that mean there are not enough points for the aliens to spawn within the structure? Therefore, the aliens would "share the spawn locations" your soldiers use, right? If this is the case, you could find them dispersed throught your base with a majority (8-10) in the Access Lift.

 

Interesting. I'll have to try this out, in addition to a base defense with 40 soldiers and no Living Quarters.

[Zombie]

After some more testing, I found out some interesting things pertaining to X-COM base defense missions.

 

Ok, the first test I did was on the Playstation. I removed all of my base structures except for the Access Lift, a Living Quarters and a General Stores. Then I let the aliens land unhindered. After equipping my 40 soldiers with weapons, I clicked "OK". The game quickly showed my soldiers standing at the ready, but then quit to the end of mission report. Result: Score was 0 and the base was saved!!! I never got to fight the aliens! If you think this is odd, just wait, it gets better!

 

Now I went into my Sell/Sack screen for that base. It showed 9 more Heavy Plasmas, 18 more Heavy Plasma Clips and 9 Alien Grenades. It also showed 3 extra Blaster Launchers and 12 Blaster Bombs. That means there were 12 aliens for that "base defense mission". Since I was playing on beginner that means there were probably 2 Terror Units also. However, no alien bodies were found in the Sell/Sack screen. It's as if the aliens just said "Here you go, take our weapons. But we gotta go, see ya"! The aliens never did come back after I won the mission.

 

Hmmm. Maybe the Playstation handles things differently. Since I crowded the base with my soldiers, it's possible the alien's usual spawn points were taken by my soldiers. Therefore, they never showed up, but their weapons did! Pretty cool, huh? I won by default!!!

 

Now I tried the same scenario with the computer version, except I had a hangar and a Alien Containment module too. Things were a little different. The majority of the Ethereals spawned within the Hangar and a few were found in the Access Lift. What surprised me the most was that one Sectopod spawned partially within my General Stores. By partially, I mean half inside the General Stores, and half inside the dirt! Other than that instance, no aliens could be found within any of my other modules. :lol:

[Bomb Bloke]

It seems the larger units default to certain spawn points (where they will fit). If these points are already taken up, they might have to go where they don't fit. In the dirt, for instance.

 

You mentioned there were no corpses to be found in the first trail. What if you try it again, but have an alien containment module in the base instead of the store. Your troops will be unarmed, but since you won't be fighting, that's not a problem.

 

After the aliens attack, see if you captured any of them.

[Zombie]

Hmmm. Interesting observation there, Bomb Bloke. I'll have to try that to see what happens. I have my doubts though. Most likely, the aliens are never even able to spawn within my Playstation base since my 40 soldiers apparently occupied all the nodes. If there are no aliens present when the mission begins, you cannot "capture" any if you win by default.

 

----------

 

I modified my base layout somewhat so that I only had an Access Lift, a Living Quarters, two General Stores and a Hangar. That's it, no fancy structures, just your run-of-the-mill average start-up base. Now I let the Sectoids land and recorded where my soldiers spawned:

Structure 

[Zombie]

More test results to post. I took Bomb Blokes advise and built an Alien Containment module (in addition to the Access Lift and Living Quarters), to see if I could capture those aliens which didn't show up. After briefly showing my soldiers standing at the ready, the game went to the mission over screen to show the results. Same as before. Now I went into my base and tried to "transfer" those aliens to a different base with an Alien Containment module. Nope, just as I suspected, the aliens were not there.

 

There was one strange thing that happened though. I had 40 soldiers stationed at that base initially. When I was browsing through the base info screen after the mission, I noticed that I only had 28 soldiers stationed there, instead of the 40! Where did 12 of my soldiers go? Can anyone help me here? I seem to be at an impasse.

 

I started to think about this problem a little, and decided that maybe the number of aliens had something to do with those 12 soldiers going AWOL. But how can I determine how many aliens visited, when I didn't have a General Stores to show how many weapons the aliens had? I got a little creative and clicked the base information tab. Then, I clicked on the stores tab. Viola! It listed I had weapons in inventory, even though I didn't have a place to store the stuff anymore!

 

It showed 10 Heavy Plasma guns, 20 Heavy Plasma Clips and 10 Alien Grenades. That indicates 10 aliens. It also showed 3 Blaster Launchers and 12 Blaster Bombs. That is an additional 3 aliens, for a total of 13. Since I was on Beginner skill level, there could be anywhere from 0 to 2 terror units also. That indicates a total alien count of anywhere from 13 to 15. If the game takes those 2x2 terror units as 4 aliens, the total could be 13, 17, or 21, depending on the # of terror units.

 

Here's where I'm lost. I need to determine how the game "lost" those 12 solders. The numbers we are dealing with is this:

1) 80 units max on the mission

2) 40 units were X-COM soldiers

3) 13, 14, 15 or 13, 17, 21 units were aliens

4) 28 of my soldiers remained

5) 12 of my soldiers were unaccounted for

6) I had nothing in inventory at the start of the mission (no General Stores built)

7) the aliens showed up with 55 units out of a total of 80 for their inventory.

Can anyone get to a loss of 12 soldiers by using the numbers above? Help!

[Kret]

Did all 40 soldiers spawn onto the map? Could it be that the were no more spawn points and those soldiers where gone the same way the aliens were gone?