Alien mission time

[silencer_pl]

Ok, can anyone tell me, how much game time aliens have to finish a mission. For example, how long do they build base upon landing.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Do you mean when you first start a new game, how long will it take before the aliens build a base?

[silencer_pl]

No. A rng spawns large ufo with base mission. It is detected and lands. How long should it be on the ground before it takes off.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

I think it's random honestly. The only way to to find out specifically would be to start a new game (for test reasons) and go from there, if anyone else has more of a solid answer I too would like to know.

[Tycho]

if were talking about original EU: It depends on the flight plan randomly selected for the UFO and then the time on the ground will be determined based on a rng of the base time for that plan. I think it is the standard range of 50-150% of the base time. There is an array in the executable with 9 different tables that determine a UFO's speed and altitude. If the altitude and speed are zero (landed), each line in the table has a delay time until the UFO should proceed to the next waypoint. The CRAFT.DAT in ufopaedia.org calls the flight plan a trajectory which is broken down into segments.

[silencer_pl]

But do we know that base time?

[Tycho]

These are some rough guidelines. The flight plan data starts at 0x47010. Each entry in the data is 52 bytes long. The value for the time is the last two bytes in each entry, but the value is how many "ticks" for the update routine which occurs every 5 seconds of game time. All the values have been rounded to the nearest minute:

 

Entry Average time range

plan0 250m 125m-375m

plan1 333m 167m-500m

plan2 416m 208m-624m

plan3 500m 250m-750m

plan4 583m 292m-875m

plan5 333m

plan6 416m

plan7 750m 375m-1125m

plan8 166m 88m-254m

 

 

 

Base building and infiltration success are not determined by "time on the ground" of UFOs. Each mission has a list of UFOs to spawn, when the last UFO in the list has been spawned and the spawn timer completes one final time, the mission is deemed successful and a base is established or the country pact is complete.

[silencer_pl]

Thanks. Good to have you around Tycho.

[silencer_pl]

Another question. Can UFOs land more than once during the mission? For example during infiltration or abduction.

[Tycho]

I don't have any definite references but..

I think with infiltration they land only once. Base supply and the final terror UFOs only land once. I don't think retaliation, research, or initial terror "scouting" mission UFOs ever land.

Only Abduction and harvest missions can land multiple time, I believe.

[Hobbes]

OpenXCom has gotten the mission times figured out. The system is slightly different but it uses the same values found on the original files.

 

Essentially there are 10 UFO trajectories or flight plans as Tycho calls them. Each UFO will have a specific flight plan assigned, depending on the mission. 3 of those plans have multiple landings.