Legend

[Civilian]

The plus of the many tac missions and the UFOs shot down is enough to give me an excellent rating each month. The failure to do terror missions does not have any measurable effect on the month's review. All that even with many tac missions being only OK and often not having recovered the UFO itself.

 

Easy as pie.

 

I do not know about the details, but I think NKF is right, somehow the terror missions are doing nothing to lower my score. I guess as the nations are all controlled by aliens there is simply nothing to lose anymore. Also the civilians are removed from the terror missions, not sure if this also has an effect.

 

p.s. Sorry I could not answer yesterday, the site would not let me log in.

[NKF]

I was mainly referring to the infiltration aspect of it. In the normal game, it adds a sense of urgency as you drop everything to attend to as many of them as you can to hopefully mitigate their effect. Without anyone to lose, the urgency to attend the fleet becomes as important as attending to a base construction fleet.

 

You still need to play the point juggling game to keep yourself open, and I think the requirement to stay out of the red for two months in a row is still there.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Ok, gotchyas.

[Civilian]

Possibly bad news: It seems the game became somewhat unstable, I guess it has to do with the removal of the civilians in terror Missions by simply doubling the number of alines onboard a Terror ship...

 

Mr. Heston shot down a Terror ship and landed with the usual crew: 3 tanks, Mr. Heston and a robot.

 

However the first tank looked somewhat odd:

https://i47.tinypic.com/2mnhxs5.jpg

 

To make it worse it did not make the tank tracks sound but one could hear footsteps!

And then it went completely invisible:

https://i49.tinypic.com/wvwor4.jpg

 

But the best...:

https://i47.tinypic.com/23wrv44.jpg

 

The high number of aliens was interesting, my tanks did miss several times, but their stray shots ALWAYS hit someone, I heard death screams no mattwer where the rocket hit.

 

As I was afraid to break something I ended the mission and reloaded, this time ignoring the downed ship. Gonna report later if the game is stable when doing non-terror-ship-missions...

[NKF]

Seen that happen a few times playing a plain vanilla game for a while. Shutting down the game entirely and reloading a previous save is generally a good start.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Locks like one of your save/missdat files might've gotten locked somehow.

 

You'll often see this sort of stuff happen if you've got game files open in, eg, a hex editor (or perhaps a dedicated UFO game editor), and then you try to play the game at the same time.

[Zombie]

You'll often see this sort of stuff happen if you've got game files open in, eg, a hex editor (or perhaps a dedicated UFO game editor), and then you try to play the game at the same time.

Never has happened to me before. I sometimes have a game folder open when I'm changing values with MS-

Edit and checking on the changes in-game. The game only cares whether a file is present and doesn't give a darn if it's open. As long as it has a saved file to work with, it's oblivious. I even have the executable open sometimes and nothing happens. Of course, this is with MS-Edit. I don't know what other programs do.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Some editors don't lock files.

 

Ever gone to delete a file, and Windows has told you "that's in use"? That's the sort of thing I'm on about.

 

The game also doesn't need to re-write the EXE at runtime. It does need to write a new unit table prior to combat, though.

[Civilian]

There were no other programs using the files. It was rather clear to me that my Terror ship changes were the cause to the game's problems. It was amazing to see such a huge number of sectoids and cyberdisks attacking, though.

 

p.s. Made me a cool new Avatar

[Civilian]

Hm, the game has become somewhat more stable but still is not entirely healthy. I had a tac mission with a downed small UFO and one of my soldiers started in mid-air.

 

Maybe the game tries to simulate paratroopers?

 

Interestingly the terrain (farmland) was without ANY buildings, there were only trees, fields and shrubbery. I haven't seen something like that in all the years of playing Xcom. Here two screenshots:

 

https://i45.tinypic.com/21erhpk.jpg

 

https://i47.tinypic.com/e99fmx.jpg

 

The mission itself felt strange, too. All the sectoids were equipped with the Heavy Plasma (usually there is one medic with a stun launcher or someone with a plasma rifle) and were formidable shooters, they destroyed 2 tanks easily. Also the tiny map had 9 sectoids in it, quite a big number for the second smallest (and crashed!) UFO after the 1x1 scout.

 

An interesting sideeffect: The small terrain change made the game feel totally different. It felt like an addon or something... cool!

[Zombie]

Interestingly the terrain (farmland) was without ANY buildings, there were only trees, fields and shrubbery. I haven't seen something like that in all the years of playing Xcom.

You haven't been playing long enough then. The game draws from the blocks which make up a terrain type and it's pseudo-random for the most part so eventually you'll see something different.

 

The mission itself felt strange, too. All the sectoids were equipped with the Heavy Plasma (usually there is one medic with a stun launcher or someone with a plasma rifle) and were formidable shooters, they destroyed 2 tanks easily. Also the tiny map had 9 sectoids in it, quite a big number for the second smallest (and crashed!) UFO after the 1x1 scout.

Medium Scouts do not spawn medics so therefore no Small Launchers. 9 is the max number of aliens possible on superhuman for this ship so congratulations, you've just seen the max.

 

- Zombie

[Civilian]

So this wasn't as unusal as I thought?

Ok, I'll trust you superior knowledge about this game.

 

Still, it was an unusal mission. A full crew, with an downed but undamaged ship on a completly buiding-free farmland terrain, how often do you see that combination?

And I knew about the random map tiles, but a completely building-free farmland terrain was new to me. It was much easier to fight on that map, I liked that very much.

 

...Hm, when did I play XCom for the very first time.... I don't remember exactly, but I know that it was on the Playstation 1. And that it took ETERNALLY to load... gosh.

[NKF]

I have had some battleship maps (they take up heaps of space) that consisted mainly of wheat, grass fields and cabbage patches. Sometimes the empty high hedges or with apple orchard, but they're no match for a well placed high explosive.

 

As Zombie said, it's fairly random. There are occasions for example where you get no civilians on a terror site.

 

- NKF

[Civilian]

Ok, I see that you all played Xcom WAY longer and more often than I did.

 

Oh and BombBloke, you were right about the Silacoids, tanks can target them. Not sure what caused me to think something different. Inn the last base mission everything worked fine. Maybe they simply missed too often in the first missions, the tanks' accuracy is lousy.

 

The campaign goes on, it's december already and the first research still hasn't been finished, despite the fact that I allowed the robots to help with the research.

 

Talkin about robots: Robot Catwalk and Robot BombBloke will be out of duty for a long time...

 

https://i45.tinypic.com/axgqj6.jpg

https://i48.tinypic.com/r1btle.jpg

 

The heavy damage on BombBloke was caused by the game still being unstable during the start of tac missions:

 

https://i50.tinypic.com/2dmb3ie.jpg

 

Something else happened that was new to me , albeit I'm sure you Xcom professionals surely have seen it before. I saw something unusal when starting a tac mission...

 

https://i48.tinypic.com/ip5x7o.jpg

 

It was Elerium115.

 

https://i48.tinypic.com/2cwjts.jpg

 

Apart from this, everything is business as usual. I tried a Terror mission but despite a lot of kills the outcome was lousy as I had lost almost 1.500.000 bucks in tanks...

 

https://i47.tinypic.com/2ujmseu.jpg

 

edit: I lost one of my radar bases. And I finally went on to edit the xcomutil.cfg so that the medikit research will (hopefully) be finished this game year. Also the tanks accuracy was raised from 60 to 70 as the base missions dragged on forever due to their disastrous accuracy...

 

Edit by BB: Please link if you must use large image sizes! These are 200kb a piece! Consider lowering the resolution of your screencaps, the game only uses 320x200!

[NKF]

Having more than a decade to fiddle with the game helps. But that said, we're constantly learning (and relearning) things about this game.

 

The elerium pods scattered around the field is a bit of a XComutil limitation with its map randomiser. It can do all sorts of neat things to the map (try the random ufo floorplans - they're fortresses!), but it doesn't move elerium pods from their original locations. So they'll be found where they were prior to the map being reshuffled.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Wait, Robot NKF is female? Now that's unusual!

 

- Zombie

[Civilian]

All the robots are that way, but that is a male asian. At least according to my game editor

 

And I am using the random floorplans. However as I am limited to smaller missions they are luckily not so difficult.

[Bomb Bloke]

Are you sure on the gender thing? That screen-cap of RobotMe looks suspiciously short-haired...

[Civilian]

Yep, I rechecked it (a third time) in the editor here: https://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Cheat...nown-t7853.html and those are the male Asian graphics. But I admit that the difference to the female Asian graphics are tiny: They only added some lipstick and edited the top of the body slightly.

[Civilian]

Sigh, the game is still unstable and every time now a tac mission starts one or two soldiers appear in mid-air our randomly outside the Skyranger. Robot Hobbes spawned in an house on the last mission and was shot right away by a muton that seemingly lived there...

 

https://i49.tinypic.com/2a6w57c.jpg

 

I did not save that mission and simply quit. I will try to copy the savegame into an unaltered Xcom folder, hopefully this will make the game stable again, if not.... well, I don't want to think about that too much, but it could mean the end for this campaign.

[Civilian]

Good news! Transplanting the savegames into a "virgin" UFO folder , saving and re-transplanting them into the old folder seems to have cured the problem!

 

And on top of that....:

 

https://i46.tinypic.com/s4uzyr.jpg

 

Many thanks for the Xcomutil.cfg tip, BombBloke!

 

Btw, can Celatids fire through base facility corners/walls?

[Civilian]

Just a quick update on the campaign:

 

The first (well, and only) laser pistol is in service! Mr. Heston is not a good shooter, though, but I guess that will change soon. But his other skills are finally good, thanks to a lot of action.

 

I changed back the scientist numbers to 1 as the last two researches were over amazingly fast (I had added the number of robots to the scientists).

 

As the aliens destroyed more radar bases I completely disassembled those left to save me some money. However this wasn't such a good idea. As a result my monthly rating dropped enormously. Due to the lower detection rate there are less UFOs shot down, I hadn't thought about the risk of the score dropping too much...

 

In the meantime I built 2 smaller bases close to the HQ base, one for storing unneeded artifacts and aliens, another will soon be my launch base for the interceptor. Hopefully that way I can lure away the aliens from my home base, as my fears became true and the alien base attacks have increased dramatically. Maybe I have to build another home base and disassemble the old one, the aliens already know where it is, so....

 

The two new bases will be defended by tanks only, supervised by a (pacifistic) robot

 

Well, at least that's the plan, not sure if everything will work as intended.

 

The two damaged robots are still not operational, but so far no other robot has been damaged. They will all carry a medikit soon, just in case.

 

p.s: the paratrooper-bug comes and goes, not sure what causes it....

[Bomb Bloke]

Btw, can Celatids fire through base facility corners/walls?

Their bullets should be subject to the same rules as any others, though the do follow arcs instead of bee-lines. I can't really think of any circumstances where this'd give them a unique advantage, as they only shoot at what they can see.

 

There are certain things that can be seen/shot through, despite what logic dictates. Such gaps exist all over the place. For example, it's possible to send bullets between where the roof of a building meets the walls, on the south and east sides of pretty much any building. This is why you can "see out" the "windows" of your dropships, despite the fact that they don't have any.

[Civilian]

Ok, that explains why one of my robots got damaged when hiding in a General Store facility without an alien in sight. When i searched for the source of the shot I discovered an Celatid outside the facility.

 

And guess what happened just as I finished writing "but so far no other robot has been damaged"?

A tank reaction-fired and wounded both Mr.Heston and one robot...

 

 

Here the stats of Mr. Heston (aka Legend) when not being wounded:

 

https://i45.tinypic.com/fay5xk.jpg

[Civilian]

I... I lost the campaign!

 

With Mr. Heston being wounded and unable to fight all I had to defend my new base (which i had hoped would not be found too fast ,as it had no radar or interceptors) were rocket tanks. Those are usually enough to subdue any troublemakers.

 

But not Sectopods!

 

This happened: The base defense mission started and I saw some Ethereals. I thought : Cool, those are easy meat for the tanks. And they were. They dropped like flies.

 

However the 2 sectopods they had with them were almost immune to the (HE?) damage of the tank rockets. I managed to bring one of them down (I guess it took 40 rockets or so) and lost 4 tanks, the remaining tanks were out of ammo and only one of them had two missiles left.

And to my surprise three more ethereals appeared after I had thought I had killed them all... They destroyed the last armed tank!

 

Well. The earth finally has been cleansed of any human beings, those aliens did obviously not show mercy to the unconscious and wounded earthling when they found him in his hospital bed.

 

Thanks for all your feedback and help, it was an awesome campaign. I can really recommend that kind of playing a game, make up a scenario and stick strictly to it, it's really intense.

 

+ Farewell Mr. Legend... + you will be missed...