I'd just like to mention that the floorplans for the Survey Ship and the Escort are actually swapped in the game. Because of this, I put together a little patch found here which swaps them back to the way they were supposed to be.

The real Survey Ship:


The real Escort:


By the way, does anyone have a problem with the alien not coming out of the real Survey Ship? While looking at the routes in MapView, I noticed there are a couple spawn points at the NW and SW part of the USO which aren't connected to the exit. (It's the only USO with orphaned nodes which leads me to believe it was an oversight by the programmers/map builders). This little problem can be fixed easily, so speak up if it annoys you.

- Zombie

Or perhaps the usopaedia entries are swapped?

Seriously though, I agree that the small ship should be the real survey ship.

The alien that stays inside the ship is incredibly annoying. I don't know how many times it go me to go into the Lemmings effect and throw aquanaut after hapless aquanaut into harms way. In a way it's there for a learning experience.



- NKF

Well, let's look at the facts. The way the USO maps are arranged, the "old" Survey Ship had more recoverable components than the Escort. In addition, the old Escort had only 3 internal USO spawn points while the Survey Ship had 6. I think it's safe to say the maps were switched by accident (they look close after all). This may be funny, but the OSG for TFTD has the wrong pics shown for the ships as well. That doesn't really surprise me much if the information Mr. Ellis received was incorrect.

You know with the USO maps now switched, I noticed it is far easier to complete a "true" Survey Ship mission since there is only 1 alien which shows up. The probability of it spawning in one of those orphaned nodes is actually quite low. The way it was before you could have 6-9 aliens showing up on superhuman and with that quantity on such a small map, all the spawn points in the USO would be filled (including the 2 orphaned nodes). It's hard to say whether those nodes are intentional or not (the programmers may have been trying to play a cruel joke: "So you think this mission is going to be a cake-walk? Welcome to TFTD be-atch")! Joking aside, all the other USO's (as well as the UFO's from the first game in the series) never had dead-end nodes. I might just fix this issue and provide that as a secondary fix if people want it.

- Zombie

This is *awesome* Z!

I always wondered why the 'survey' ship was bigger and more complicated than the 'escort'
*Installs immediately*

Thanks Tifi.

Ok, I added a routes patch for the Survey Ship along with the USO swap for those of you who don't want to worry about the alien not exiting the craft. You can find it in our files section here. Note: I can't guarantee that the alien will leave, but at least the routes exist for it to follow. I suspect either of these patches are going to be very popular since we've been playing with the wrong USO maps for years now.

- Zombie

The ship which has ion beam accelerator, is actually the escort. It has higher max speed then the other ship without ion beam accelerator.

It might be just swapped ufopaedia, just like swapped picture of battleship and colony ship. (you can chack this by looking at the ship in interception screen.)

 

The usopaedia articles are fine, it's the actual map files which are swapped. What this means is basically everything is fine in the geoscape but once the game starts to draw a USO in a tactical map it picks the wrong one. My patch fixes this.

- Zombie

that is probably no joke NKF. thoes spawn points were orphaned to make the game harder just like the sniper balcony over the entrance on one of the othe subs.

do you know the way point on the top of the triton was originaly a spawn point? In beta testing it was decited it made the game to hard. you would loose you hole squad before the alian ran out of reaction shots.

-Bladefirelight

It's still a bit too difficult for me. Those pesky Biodrones are a nightmare. Seriously, I have more trouble with them than with Lobster men. The worst thing is I never know which direction they're looking at, so I can't even tell when I can and can't shoot.

I read in another interview that the Hallucinoid was going to have a ranged attack as well.

I don't agree. The other alien subs don't have orphaned nodes. Just the real Survey Ship. What would make that ship so different? If the map programmers wanted to make the game harder, they could have left orphaned nodes on all the ships. I looked long and hard at all the other sub maps before deciding on linking the spawn points up. If I ever hear differently from someone who worked on the game (specifically on maps), I'll switch it back.


Even with cranking the spawn priority for that node to the maximum of 10, it still doesn't guarantee an alien will ever show up there in the first place. The alien also has to be facing the door of the Triton to initiate reaction fire. It also has to be a "flying" alien too. It also has to have a ranged weapon to reaction fire (excludes the Tentaculat from the mix). There are a lot of "if's" which have to take place before you encounter a perfect scenario. Of course, I really wouldn't like it if an alien was perched on top of my ship's roof and sniping my guys as they depart.

Last resort would be to use another transport besides the Triton ASAP, or only use it on smaller maps/USO's where there is a 0% chance a flying alien would spawn there (the only aliens which can fly are Hallucinoids, Xarquids, Tentaculats and Bio-Drones and they only show up on Battleships, Dreadnoughts and Terror Sites). Since the spawn point is directly above your ship, I wonder if you could shove a Magna-Pack explosive through the roof to kill it before leaving the craft? That would quickly diffuse the situation too.

- Zombie