XcomUtil strangeness

[Meldinoor]

Hi guys, newbie here,

I recently came across an old dos copy of X-COM and I'm really enjoying it so far. After starting up a couple of times (and failing miserably) I discovered XcomUtil and installed it to fix the difficulty bug. However, despite enabling only a few XcomUtil features (mostly bug-fixes), the game feels very different now, and much easier (I play on 2-Experienced). Here are some of the things I've noticed:

 

Unlike all the other times I've started the game, I found very few UFOs (2-3 in the first month).

Enemies seem much less aggressive. Reapers are really stupid and sometimes just mill about in front of my soldiers, rather than trying to attack them.

I've only seen them once since I installed XcomUtil, but all the floaters in my last terror mission were on the ground. Not a single one was flying. Strange.

My rocket tank either became incredibly lucky, or invincible during this mission. It lost health down to 61, then was attacked by a reaper 4 times, and shot at close range by a floater about five or six times. Though the shots seemed to connect, no damage was done by either of them.

 

Are bugs like this typical of XcomUtil, or is this some kind of fluke? Anybody know?

 

Cheers,

-Meldinoor

[NKF]

It's mainly to blame on the random element this game so loves to use. If you restart, play through the first month, then restart and do it over again a few times, you'll likely have different outcomes.

 

The game will schedule a couple of UFOs early on, then how many more you see up for the first couple of weeks may be somewhat irregular. In fact, sometimes you might see hardly any UFOs through Jan or Feb. This is much more pronounced on the easier difficulty levels as difficulty will influence UFO appearance frequency.

 

Reapers - ah, hard to say. I've seen them quite effective, and yet at other times they just make big targets of themselves. One likely cause though is that they may have run out of energy. Happens with Chryssalids if you take it very slow and drag out the mission. Both creatures can spend more energy than they can recover each turn. These ones probably ran and ran until they found your soldiers, then keep running out of energy when they try to attack.

 

Floaters and their flight - they're not especially smart at using them. Sometimes they will float over obstacles, or just raise elevation at random. Those that are already up at elevations tend to stay there.

 

Your rocket tank was saved due to a few lucky rolls. Standard weapon attacks (that is, non-explosive types) deal between 0% to 200% their listed damage and throw in damage deduction from armour. This balances up those occasions where a single shot kills them instantly.

 

- NKF

[Meldinoor]

Thanks NKF,

 

I'll give the game another try today and see if these issues persist.