Alien stats on wiki and in XcomUtil

[Catwalk]

In the wiki I get a range for most stats. In the XcomUtil cfg file I get a single value for all. Is it correctly understood that the wiki covers differences due to both rank and difficulty?

 

I'd like to update the alien stats on the wiki (most terror units from TFTD missing) and am considering revising the format a little:

1) Only display Veteran values and link to a page which contains the difficulty multipliers

2) Display rank differences in () after the base value, eg. "Reactions: 60 (T: 70, N: 70, C: 80)" for Soldier value of 60, Technician and Navigator values of 70 and Commander value of 80.

 

Additionally, I'd like to add armour values for all units. Can I safely assume that the XcomUtil values are correct? Lastly, I'm working on a page listing all differences between EU and TFTD as explained in this thread. Please comment on both, thanks in advance.

[Zombie]

In the wiki I get a range for most stats. In the XcomUtil cfg file I get a single value for all. Is it correctly understood that the wiki covers differences due to both rank and difficulty?

In order to explain this, a little background. Alien stats are found in the executable but there is only 1 set of "core" values. These are the numbers XComUtil shows in it's config file. When you pick a difficulty level and start a campaign, the game takes these core values and adjusts them up or down (depending on the level you chose) to arrive at the stats you see on a mission. For more info, just visit my EU Alien Stats page.

 

I'd like to update the alien stats on the wiki (most terror units from TFTD missing) and am considering revising the format a little:

1) Only display Veteran values and link to a page which contains the difficulty multipliers

2) Display rank differences in () after the base value, eg. "Reactions: 60 (T: 70, N: 70, C: 80)" for Soldier value of 60, Technician and Navigator values of 70 and Commander value of 80.

Why just Veteran? It seems like an arbitrary choice and really doesn't give a player an idea of either a worst case (or best case) scenario. I can understand that Veteran is right in the middle of the skill levels, but it certainly isn't an average between Beginner and Superhuman due to the skill level multiplier changes. (Forgot to mention this in the other thread: Superhuman on TFTD is 1.5 times harder than Superhuman on EU... big change). NKF was working on creating a "scorecard" for alien stats for the wiki at one time. I think that's why we stopped adding stats to the rest of the aliens. The scorecard never got finished though.

 

Additionally, I'd like to add armour values for all units. Can I safely assume that the XcomUtil values are correct?

I'd never assume XComUtil is correct. It makes so many changes to the game that nothing it says can be trusted (though I assume that if your executable hasn't been modified before that the config file should be listing the proper core values). I'd hope you would use the values found in my TFTD Alien Stats page on our old site as I verified them all, by hand, with a pen and paper in an unmodified game (CE version). All the stats in those tables were double checked and triple checked as well. Anyway, there is a little more information found in this topic.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Why just Veteran? It seems like an arbitrary choice and really doesn't give a player an idea of either a worst case (or best case) scenario. I can understand that Veteran is right in the middle of the skill levels, but it certainly isn't an average between Beginner and Superhuman due to the skill level multiplier changes. (Forgot to mention this in the other thread: Superhuman on TFTD is 1.5 times harder than Superhuman on EU... big change). NKF was working on creating a "scorecard" for alien stats for the wiki at one time. I think that's why we stopped adding stats to the rest of the aliens. The scorecard never got finished though.

 

Oh I was too. Plumb forgot about that. The wiki's become so large that concentrating on completing one task becomes impossible when your primary means of keeping on top of things is to watch the recent updates page or by way of casual browsing.

 

I'll scrap what I've done and restart from scratch - I want to make it both simple to use and appear elegant. It was becoming rather cumbersome.

 

As for the stats, I think the consensus was to have the main articles for each of the races have the baseline stats, and then to have separate spreadsheet page that lists all the possible values for each difficulty level.

 

- NKF

[Catwalk]

Excellent info Zombie, when I last looked I could only find EU stats. Thanks a bunch, I'll make sure to use this. On a side note, how much is known about Aggression and Intelligence stats? I read that Intelligence stats determine how long an alien remembers your location. Does that mean it'll be able to keep knowing your location after you move? And how does this knowledge affect its actions?

 

Glad to hear that NKF, if you're on it then I'll butt out. But if you need help with any manual labour I'm game, I really like the wiki.

[Zombie]

On a side note, how much is known about Aggression and Intelligence stats? I read that Intelligence stats determine how long an alien remembers your location. Does that mean it'll be able to keep knowing your location after you move? And how does this knowledge affect its actions?

Aye, intelligence determines how long an alien will remember where you are. Here's the thing though: the aliens initially (from turn 1) start by knowing where everyone on your team is located and their stats. If you manage to stay out of their way for a while they will forget where you are. How long they remember is of course dependent on their Intelligence rating (a value of 2 means it will remember you for 2 turns, a value of 8 will allow it to remember for 8 turns after it lost contact, etc). Doesn't matter where you run, as long as an alien is slated to remember it'll still find you.

 

Say you manage to hide until an alien forgets, what happens then? Well, the aliens have another "free look" encoded to take place at turn 20 (or when only two or less of their crew are alive). They will then remember you again up till their intelligence stat. After this second free look there are no more chances encoded so the aliens can only wander randomly along the routes until they spot one of your troops again.

 

The aggression stat is just that, it determines how aggressive an alien will be in combat. High values are usually for the grunts like soldiers which makes them want to advance to you and fight. A low value is found in the higher ranks and makes them want to stay put and only fight when they have to. Aliens in TFTD have slightly higher aggression numbers than in EU, but I think the code has been tweaked a little for use in the sequel.

 

- Zombie

[Azure]

Zombie, in post #2 of this thread, you linked to the TFTD stats page from the old site, and that works great...but on that page (from the old site), there is a link to a spreadsheet that has the stats for each difficulty, which would be wonderful, except that it links to info for EU, not TFTD. I also found the EU spreadsheet in the download section under "guides and FAQs" for EU...but there is no such section for TFTD, nor does the file appear to exist anywhere on the TFTD download pages. Any chance that you could upload the TFTD stats speadsheet somewhere (assuming here you still have it...if not, just let me know and I'll copy/paste from the old stats page)

 

Thanks in advance,

Azure

[Zombie]

That page was just a work in progress and the spreadsheet link was just a placeholder.

 

Yes, I have the TFTD alien stats spreadsheet and I'll upload it whenever I can dig it out of my old hard drive. It's not as complete as the spreadsheet for EU because I haven't found an equation to calculate some of the stats from the core, and thus those numbers will have to be hard-coded. Also I need to add the Psi values for the aliens in the original, unmodified version of the game because those differ from the Gold/CE version. Basically, a ton of work which is why I haven't uploaded it yet.

 

- Zombie