How retarded.

My base in Paraguay just got attacked by secties. Now, I had 8 HWPs, and 30 rookiees guarding it.

For some strange and odd reason, Only 8 of my 30 rookiees appeared on the battlescape!!! I thought I was going mad, so I saved and reloaded into Geoscape the day before, and sure enough, there's 30 soldiers. I let the game keep playing and the sectoid assault force came again, assaulting.

Same thing. 8/30 soldiers present. What's the deal?

I eventually just said "screw it" and played it out. I greased the sectoids, but I was mad because I lost 3 guys and lost 5 HWPs. It sucked. I should have had more than enough guys to rip them a new bunghole, instead I had barely enough. What gives?

Just one question: Paraguay?
Did the government offered you tax breaks to install there your base in order to help the local economy or what?

But getting back to your question, I think the game has a set limit upon the number of soldiers/HWPs that are available for base defense missions, I've seen it also happening in a number of my games. That's why no all of the soldiers appear since you have so much HWPs (and it happens on Apocalypse as well, in case you built large numbers of defense stations).
To check this out, if you saved the game simply try to transfer some of those HWPs to another base before the aliens strike and see how many soldiers now you have available. I might be wrong though.

I put all my bases in real locations, the one in Paraguay is outside a city called "Resistencia". Fitting for a "resisitance" group. It has maximum coverage of South America and even a bit of Antarctica.

Thanks for the timely response!

Now I'm curious....where are all of your other bases located and what are their names?

Like the item table, your soldiers also have one. I'm guessing tanks use up 4 slots -- one slot for the tank and its stats, and three dummy units that reference the stats in the main quarter and make up the last three quarters of the tank. And if I'm right, your 8 tanks are using up 32 soldier slots.

Hobbes: in Apocalypse, don't forget that in a base defense mission, besides the 30 soldier limit (or thereabouts), your non-combat personnel use up quite a lot of the available unit slots.

- NKF

Right on that NKF. I was forgetting about those guys who like running into the alien fire

i've had similar problems but not with the troops. i had a military storage base attacked one time but guess what? i had plenty of rifles, lots and lots but no clips for them and i lost everything because i had no ammo for it. it would of been great if they allowed more than 80 objects in a mission

again I problem with the Item table.. their can only be a total of 255 objects in combat. that is why the 80 item limit. then add the posible dead unit bodies. 42 for the humans. that is 122 for you.. I have seen as many as 35 aliens. each with 1 gun 2 clips and 1 other item. about 80 items.. that is 140 for them.. a total of 162... the table over loads and the last units to die or get nocked out and you dont have a body on the ground.. this can suck if you are trying to caputer a comander of if it is one of your units.

Were you're men loaded into a skyranger? It may sound very simple but just in case this got by you guys, anyone that's loaded into a transport ship doesn't appear at the base. Just like the equipment. I've often had base defences when all of my men have had empty plasma rifles for defense! I still won though!
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it affects the people as well... Just a thought

Loaded in the skyranger? What do you think they sleep in that flying luchbox. I have never had the problem with my men being asigned to a craft causing them to not show up for combat (only the item table limit )

the weapons loaded onbard are not counted to the bases storage. but the men do bunk in the living quarters.

-Blade FireLight

Hmm, maybe I dreamed it...

Yeah, weapons in the troop transport don't count toward base storage, but during a base attack, they're temporarily unloaded for use in the base. This can sometimes push you over the item table limit.

On the other hand, going beyond the item table limit does have its advantage. Sometimes the aliens will spawn with no weapons in their hands.

- NKF

hmm last I checked the equipmnet on the skyranger was not availibl on base defence..
just the first 80 items in stores (in the order listed in the storage information screen)

I can describe two scenarios where this has happened:

1: I had a base with two rocket launchers. I kept one on the Skyranger and the other in storage for base defence. When the aliens attacked, I had both rocket launchers at my disposal.

2: I didn't have much in one base except 8 psi-amps and a few guns. On the Skyranger I loaded all the psi-amps and one heavy cannon. When the base was attacked, the psi-amps were distributed amongst my soldiers.

It's possible this might not happen if the Skyranger is out on a mission.

- NKF

I'll have to agree with Blade on the items on landing craft not being included in base attacks. The only thing I have ever seen that gets unloaded from landing craft are HWPs. Weapons and equipment don't. I have the CE version of the game, maybe it gets unloaded in DOS?

Hobbes - Right now I have 6 bases:

Location/Name and City it is near

Sicily/Catania
Yucatan/Merida
Indonesia/Kotabaru
Paraguay/Resistencia
Mid-Eastern Africa(I forget the country)/Kilwa Kivinje
N.E. Siberia(Yakutsk?)/Ambarchik

The bases give maximum coverage for the globe, I can track any UFO as it appears anywhere on the globe, except for on the South Pole. I'll have a base there soon, and another one possibly in Kazakhstan or in the Cook Islands. Yes, I am obsessed with this game.

Yeah, I don't know how you did it NKF but it must have been XComutil or something. I have the dos version and that doesn't let you use loaded items either.

arent we all?

Nope, no XComutil swiss army knife voodoo involved here. Just a plain old unenhanced copy of the game.

I just did it again with the rocket launchers. I cleared out my stores and left two rocket launchers. One on the Skyranger, one in storage. Both were available for combat.

In fact, all the laser pistols that were already on board the Skyranger were unloaded. Tested this out in both a fresh dos 1.4 install and my never-to-be-enhanced copy of UFO CE.

Do you know how hard it is to get the aliens to attack your base on purpose? When you don't want them to, they do, but when you want them to, they don't. Heh, I forget who's law that is.

- NKF

Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong, will.
Or something like that.

Veteran,

I remember seeing the same thing about loaded tanks and having all of your equipment available even if some is onboard the Skyranger before I installed XComutil. It's just one of those rules. Either way every time I detect that an UFO is heading for a base I usually load the planes with items to avoid that the 80 objects limit prevents me from having them on combat. Then I scramble them before the UFO lands....saves the trouble of having to transfer them to another base and them back if they are objects that most likely you'll need on other missions. This all on DOS, don't know if CE would be different but it's a matter of experimenting.

Fox,

I recognize some of the cities and I wonder what special reasons are before them. And don't worry being obsessed. I usually name my bases this way: Mother One, Area 51, Complex YY-18, Depot S-4, Ice Station Zebra. Behind each name there's an obscure relation to either UFO foklore or SciFi movies.