Strange things in X-COM

[Veki]

Well, did some testing yesterday and here are the results :

 

1. I was unable to revive my soldier with "Chryssalid" name. I tried healing, but with no effect. I also tried stimulation, but also with no effect.

2. No matter what I do, my Chryssalid soldier dies the next turn.

3. I placed him in my hands and next turn he died. BUT he could still be seen in my hands, BUT he could not be seen in my inventor screen. If I try to access the body, the game crashes (no wonder ).

4. If I let the zombie (the one that was created when my soldier became unconscious) move, the body of my Chryssalid soldier disappears. If I kill it on the spot, the body stays.

 

By the way, was the soldier standing in smoke by perchance when the chryssalid attacked?

No, I don't think so (will check this when I come home).

My soldiers were not standing in the smoke. It appears my soldier got stunned by Chryssalid attack.

[Tifi]

Not really anything to do with bugs and such, just general weirdness but still got either a giggle or wtf?

 

Abductor Assault

 

Send a ranger with a lasertank and 10 powersuits after a floater abductor, its landed in amongst a small farm and is fairly easy to clear up any wanderers from the surroundings.

Go to the ship and set up ready to kick down the doors and raise hell, with one man either side of the doors and the rest sat back facing them.

End turn expecting nothing much, but a floater decides to stumble out of the right-hand door triggering the one guy who had a hv. laser to react, only he misses the floater and pegs the guy stood next to the door square in the head who dies instantly.

The floater went back through the door and round the corner.

 

Brave Reapers

 

Terror mission in sunny Moscow, floaters and reapers having a giggle making a mess of the local shops.

One of my guys with his trusty autocannon wanders into the 'mall' area and finds not one, but FOUR reapers milling around in the cramped passageway.

Naturally he does the only decent thing and flings a volley of auto-fire IN rounds at them then ducks back round the corner and waits for everyone else to finish the turn.

During the alien turn I get 4 messages stating "Reaper has paniced" follwed by one of the fluffy darlings running past the autocannon guy on fire and out onto the street where it promptly dies.

 

Indecicive Chyrssie

 

Snake terror mission in New York, everything going swimmingly until a few turns in I make a stupid stupid mistake - I march one of my guys round a corner with not enough TUs to duck back again.

He can see a chryssie a few metres away. Uh oh.

Alien turn and the chryssie marches right up to that guy, does absolutely nothing, then runs the opposite direction and round the nearest corner

Very odd.

[Zombie]

The Floater issue is actually a very common occurrence when dealing with reaction shots. If an alien doesn't have enough Time Units (and thus, initiative) to react itself, it will normally go back into hiding until the next round.

 

Don't know what happened with the Reapers all panicking at the same time, but they all could have been teetering on the brink from the previous turn. I can't even begin to explain why one Reaper just ran into the street and died on the spot. Although, if it was on fire anything could happen.

 

The Chryssalid (and in fact any HTH aliens) running off after making a beeline to your trooper happens more than we'd often like to admit. Reapers are known for this. It may have to do with their HTH combat skills. Since it takes a fair amount of Time Units to initiate a HTH attack, the alien might just realize that it doesn't have enough time to attack and runs into hiding instead.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Chryss's often turn tail if someone reaction fires on them. It's kinda sorta thought that perhaps they randomly choose a new target to run after, but I dunno how plausible that theory is.

 

Got a vague memory Reapers aren't supposed to like fire much, though I've never really tried it on them. Who knows, maybe it lowers their morale?

[Tifi]

Now this one *is* buggy

 

New game & Terror Site #1 in scenic Chicago vs. our best chums the Sectoids and thier mechanical minions.

Its a 'large' warehouse map with a road right down the middle.

Everything is going okay, not brilliant but okay when my rocket tank (which has been beaten into a lumpy shape already) edges down the side of the road and spots a disc down at the far end of the map.

I bring the tank back a couple of spaces then fling a snap shot at it which hits - its still standing.

Okay, my autocannon guy is not far behind so I'll take a chance and see what happens - he fires off 2 bursts of auto-fire HE rounds, five of which hit the disc with the one stray flying off the edge with no effect (pretty damn lucky really but...)

This is the weird bit.

The disc makes its crumple sound as it falls to the floor, but it doesn't explode although there definately was a large exploding sound, along with a civilian death scream. Okay *still* not 100% weird.

 

After a few seconds scanning the map to see what happend & I see a massive crater inside the big warehouse, and right at GZ theres a civilian corpse.

The civilain exploded when the disc died.

Now *thats* 100% weird.

 

LOL WUT?

[Kret]

I doubt that civilian was killed by the explosion. This is because nothing remains after a cyberdisc's detonation, not even it's shell. Even if the game chocked and shifted the X,Y,Z coordinates of the explosion to antoher unit, no corpse would remain, or at least not at or near GZ.

 

As for the cyberdisc dropping and not going off, this is quite common. Explosive damage will cause some stun damage, if this is enough to drop the cyberdisc unconcious, then it won't detonate. This is why one of the recommended safe methods of neutralizig cyberdiscs is the use of stun bombs.

[Tifi]

Strange things in X-COM, The madness continues

 

Don't fight it... :-P

Theres also the logical conundrum of how a disc could share the same co-ords as another unit, not to mention remaining completely invisible to all the troops as well.

Hehe, disc gets shot. Disc goes down and makes explode noise, but doesn't explode. Something else halfway across the map explodes at the exact same time with the exact same blast radius. Fishy to say the least.

Thinking on, I should have screen capped it. Ah well...

[Kret]

Who said I'm fighting it? I'm just giving you the clear cut explanation to what happened there, that situation isn't that strange. Strange would be having a unit get psi-panicked and run through the wall of the back side of the western wing of a terror ship or through a wooden fence, in both cases moving southwards.

[Knan]

Ooo. I envision that with Daffy Duck cartoon graphics.

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, hang on, part of the reason why Cyberdisc shells typically don't survive the blast is because they're created before the explosion occurs. Whether or not a live creature caught in the blast would leave a body is a different story.

 

For example, if a Cyberdisc in the air is destroyed, first the remains will fall to the ground then the blast will go off harmlessly overhead.

 

On the other hand, certain weaker critters (such as Sectoids) can be entirely vaporised by larger explosions (such as those created by blaster bombs).

 

The test would be to stick a civilian on the same tile as a disc, fire in a few shots, and see what happens. It's interesting in that sometime Cyberdiscs do fail to explode (and not just when stunned); it could be that hidden explosions have always been the answer...

[Kret]

It is irrelevant how "strong" a unit is when the explosion goes off if it dies, since the check is done against the explosive resistance of the corpse, not the unit. The sequence of checks an explosion seems to place units before objects (I think tiles are the first thing that it checks). If during the unit check the explosion kills or otherwise incapacitates the unit then a corpse object would be created and the object check would then destroy the corpse if the damage resistance of the corpse is equal or lower than the damage rating of the exposion in that tile, thus a corpse could never remain intact at GZ of a cyberdisc explosion. That civilian had to been killed at a later turn after it felt curious about the newly created crater.

 

I'm also fully aware that the cyberdisc explosion only occurs at the level the cyberdisc was flying at and that it's not performed right after it's death, but queued after the last unit's action. In this case, if a unit fired in autoshot mode against a cyberdisc and the 1st hit kills it, the corpse would be created and the explosion queued at the end of the autoshot, so two more shots would still be fired and then the explosion would go off. I've never seen cyberdiscs fail to explode aside from becoming stunned (from stun or explosives).

[zaimoni]

On the other hand, certain weaker critters (such as Sectoids) can be entirely vaporised by larger explosions (such as those created by blaster bombs).

Sectoids can even be vaporized by lowly Terran grenades.

[Bomb Bloke]

It's true that corpses can be wiped out by explosions with ease, but there are different rules in play if the unit was alive prior to the blast.

 

Here's a save game as an example. There's a Cyberdisc directly in front of the drop ship with a civilian sitting right on it. Shoot the disc until it blows - I tried it about five times, the civilian corpse always remained.

GAME_10.zip

[Kret]

Very interesting and truly bizarre. This would mean that cyberdisc explosions follow their own set of rules.

[Bomb Bloke]

I often kill Sectoids by making them drop their own armed grenades. That leaves corpses, too.

 

Truth be told I've never personally seen a unit get entirely vapourised in one blast, hence why I figured it'd only happen in the case of weaker units getting hit by massive explosions.

[zaimoni]

Truth be told I've never personally seen a unit get entirely vapourised in one blast, hence why I figured it'd only happen in the case of weaker units getting hit by massive explosions.

For XCOM CE, I generally vaporize sectoids with Terran grenades that land 0 or 1 squares away; it takes distance 2 before they have a decent chance of leaving behind a body.

 

Other aliens are more substantial.

 

On the receiving end, GZ of an alien grenade will generally vaporize an XCOM unit in personal armor; I haven't carefully measured the corresponding range for the kevlar jumpsuit.

[Tifi]

Another bit of weirdness.

 

During a base defence, the last alien left alive - a muton with a blaster launcher looked like he had a bit of a panic and did a little spinning dance while firing off 3 blaster bombs in a single round

 

I didn't think bezerk-ing units could reload thier weapons...

At least any time its happened to my guys and they've shot off all the ammo, when they run out the 'no ammo loaded' message flashes in the stat bar.

 

On the funny side, this guy killed 9 of the defenders and the last guy left alive went nuts and shot the 2 surviving HWPs to bits with his laser cannon

[Zombie]

Here's something a little bit strange: I was screwing around on a Sectoid Terror Mission just now and trying to corral some aliens together into a group. Four Sectoids were moved around a fully MC'd Cyberdisc. The next round my soldier shot at the Cyberdisc hoping it would auto-detonate and kill the 4 other aliens (kill 5 birds with one stone scenario). Well, the Cyberdisc exploded and of course killed the Sectoids too. Strange thing was that my soldier still saw 4 aliens even though there was nobody alive. (Star Trek Flashback... Picard: I see 4 lights)! When I moved him 1 tile closer, the alien status indicators disappeared. Must be some sort of "ghosting" going on, no?

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

I think it's more a case of the game just not updating the spotted unit indicators, which updates properly while walking, but perhaps not as well (sequencing problem again?) for things like explosion kills, etc. I guess we see it so often that we just take it for granted.

 

I can't remember, but does the game still centre on the tile when you click on the site alien button (assuming it's dead)?

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Autoshot, snap shot, or aimed shot?

[Zombie]

I can't remember, but does the game still centre on the tile when you click on the site alien button (assuming it's dead)?

Yep, the centering still works fine. Strange that the overhead mapview gets it right and the soldier doesn't.

 

Autoshot, snap shot, or aimed shot?

Autoshot, naturally. I haven't tried it with the other types yet.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure we talked about how X-COM's collision detection system is a little bit "screwy". You know the deal: leading 2x2 tanks up a single width stairwell, having your men peek through to the floor above by standing on hay bales, chucking grenades through ceilings, or even walking through certain diagonal UFO walls. But I was recently doing some testing (what's new) and got the shock of my life

 

What the... ? Huh? The darn guy actually is standing on the landing strut of the Avenger! I know how it happened: I was trying to move the first guy (standing on the equipment pile) down the ramp, but placed the destination indicator on Level 1 instead. When I clicked, the guy made a bee-line and then headed straight for the leg of the Avenger. Before reloading the game to try and duplicate the results, I got smart and took a screenshot. After reloading and trying again and again, I was unable to get it to happen. Darn it.

 

Actually, standing on a strut could be a life saver. If an alien shoots and misses your trooper, the bullet hits the strut instead. Pity I didn't save the game too. I would have liked to experiment a bit with this rare (?) scenario.

Remember this post from me a while back dealing with collision detection? Today I encountered a base defense mission and was trying to duplicate a bug NKF mentioned. Anyway, I was trying to move a guy standing on the upper portion of the LQ's steps down to L0 and out the door. Instead of going down the steps, he went up and got stuck in a bed. (Base Commander to soldier: "Sleeping on the job again, eh"?) Here's a screenie:

 

 

This time, I immediately saved the game in case you guys would like to check out the issue or do testing on it:

 

Collision_Det.zip

 

So it appears that the bug happens when you are between levels (like on ramps or stairs) and decide to move the unit up or down. Interesting. I wish I could have a look at the path-finding subroutine used by the game.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

I'm guessing that the game only checks for wall objects as obstacles ( on the same elevation) before giving the okay for the soldier to start walking. Once the soldier is walking, any wall objects encountered due to an unexpected change in elevation aren't taken into account, although real walls will halt travel.

 

This is basically how we can get soldiers to walk through UFO hulls or right into the Lightning's reactor core.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

This is kind of odd. Those big 2x2 vats in an alien base can't be destroyed with explosives having a yield less than 120. However, shoot them with incendiary (even the weakest variety) and they will incinerate in 4 rounds. Fairly effective if you ask me as you can save those Blaster Bombs and HWP Fusion Bombs for more important things. Of course, you still have to wait 4 turns.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Does it just happen with the vats? I'm wondering if fire damage would do the same to other wall objects. I've never attempted to set fire to wall objects on purpose before.

 

On a less related note, I was playing a TFTD ship mission the other day, and was noticing something about the ship walls that I was blowing up with the biodrones (man, the TFTD designers wanted to make indoor fighting a very flashy experience, didn't they?), but then I spotted that some of the control panels on the walls that were destroyed were floating by themselves in mid-air. Now, I know a tile consists of four elements. Two real walls, floor and object space. As far as I know, in UFO any details on the walls were on separate wall sprites. This indicates that TFTD layered several tiles down to create the panel on the wall. Either TFTD introduces layering walls on the same spot (highly unlikely), or the panel was just a wall object drawn to look like it's hugging the wall, but its tile info isn't set up properly, so it's indestructible. Has the same visual effect (if not exactly the same thing) as the free floating barn tops in UFO.

 

- NKF