Stygian

Dropped in on an Ethereal Terror Site the other day with my non-psi team and had more trouble with the Sectopods than the Ethereals by far. My Laser-Rifle equipped squad--over the course of four rounds--hit one Sectopod with -- I'm not making this up -- 16 to 18 laser blasts before it finally went down. The random number generator must have been rolling some low damage for my units. I'm starting to be a big believer in the Blaster Bomb approach to Terror Sites--(my BB troup was continously panic/mind control attacked and would not get off of Blaster Launcher and pile of BBs, so I could not get an unaffected unit to grab the Launcher and go to town...) Oh well.

Maybe I should frame two thoughts regarding this issue: 1) "Be patient! One day in the near future gaming wise, your PSI-enabled troops will start making mincemeat of your opponent to the point where you will remember--with great fondness--the good old days of fighting Ethereals without reaction shots (move unit, drop weapon {alien turn} pick up weapon, move unit, drop weapon {alien turn}, repeat...) So don't be in such a rush to get PSI. Swallow that month's maintenance cost x 2 for two unused PSI labs. It is such a small price to pay for a greater HOLY CRAP feeling obtained when winning a battle by the skin of your teeth. 2) Your job is to quickly eliminate the enemy. Getting Psi-enabled units to the field in 16 days versus 46 days is a no-brainer. But why stop at 16 days? Use Xcomutil to hack all troops to "1" in skill and skip the PSY Lab stuff altogther. ========== I don't like the patient route, but I screwed the game experience back in '96 when I first played XCOM by hacking and too much XCOMutil use, so I think I'm going to do the waiting thing. Maybe someone should hint in Base-building tips for builders to not add the PSI Lab after the 1st week of the month; I wouldn't have two idle buildings and 20 idle soldier units if I'd read that one.

Say construction is completed on a PSI Lab on August 15th. What logic prevents assignment of trainees to the PSI Lab on this date, rather than being forced to wait another 16 days? Is this just "programmer convenience logic"? Is it more foolish from my perspective to hack the 64th bit to "1" of each one of my soldier units that I've designated to go to Psy training (to set the Psy training flag equal to true) and get said unit into Psy training 16 days earlier or rather more foolish to pay another month's maintenance charges for an unused PSY Lab and salaries of idle soldiers units that I've designated to go into Psy training when the lab became available, just because of lunatic programmer convenience logic? If I go with patiently waiting, at the end of August do I pay a prorated maintenance fee on the unused PSY Lab (my bean counters insist that it has not been available the entire month, thus want to only pay for (Maintenance cost / 31) * 16 days, or do I pay a flat rate?

Should I bother listing the values for Supply Ship, Large Scout, and Battleship and other alien ships from the same file, or -- again -- has that already been done?

Probably has been mentioned before, but the speed of craft is found in the Craft.dat file, at the 14th (low bit) and 15th (high bit) locations. No, I have not experimented with increasing the speed of the Skyranger by making this 70 17 respectively (= 6000), or in slowing down those supply ships from 3200 (80, C) to 200 (C8 low bit, 0 high) That's what you guys are here for.

UfoPaedia states that offsets 02, 03, 04, and 05 are starting positions while 06, 07, 08, 09 are destination positions. How can an item like a base have a destination? Does anyone know how to decipher these numbers? When I run them through the hex conversion, highbit/lowbit CLng("&H" & highbit & lowbit) I end up with something like this: File position/object-----------------HzSt-------VtSt--------HzDt-------VtDt 0: X-COM Base_______________67_______65172____ 20_______ 24260 1: X-COM Ship_______________ 605______ 65112____ 5________120 2: X-COM Ship_______________ 67_______65172____0________1140 3: X-COM Ship_______________ 67_______ 65172____0________360 4: X-COM Base_______________2088_____65173____1________840 5: Terror Site________________ 662______ 65096____3________120 6: X-COM Ship_______________ 2088_____ 65173____0________480 7: X-COM Ship_______________ 2088_____65173____0________1500 8: X-COM Base______________ 789______65184____1________4560 9: Alien Base________________ 1148_____67_______1________3960 11: Alien Base_______________ 1146_____68_______3654_____18313 16: Alien Base_______________ 346______65380____36870____59406 Where: Hz/VtSt = horizontal/Vertical start pos. Hz/VtDt = horizontal/Vertical dest pos. These obviously do not refer to traditional lat/long. How does XCOM global positions work? From the above, you can tell that item 2, 3 are associated with XCOM base item 0, as is item 6 and 7 to XCOM base item 4, but I can't look at these numbers and say, "XCOM base item 4 is located in North America." XCOM ship item 1 is bound for Terror Site item 5, but you can't figure that out by it's desitination. Shouldn't the destination of XCOM ship item 1 be the starting coordinates of the terror site item 5?

Thanks NFK; By the Way, I used this vbscript to peek at the Psy Strength values of my units and was surprised to see that two of the three units killed in the last mission had Psy Strength values of 100 and 99 (third was 40). Was this coincidence, or are these high PST units targeted specifically for death by aliens? This is prior to Psy training or Psy Research of any kind, so yes, I am jumping the gun, but the values are in soldier.dat; I normally have an "if psy skill = 0 then psy str = 0" statement (so zero displays properly and I remain uninformed), but I rem'd it out just out of curiousity.

I've created a vbscript that uses MS Debug run against Soldier.dat to create an Excel file of the list of my soldier units Rank, Name TUs, etc. Currently, it simply puts the slot name of the save in the Excel file as a description, but--in a effort to have to think even less--I'd like to use the actual save file name, for example, "Scape 9" or "Terror site 4" as the descriptor. Does one know what file/where the player's save game descriptions are kept? I can't seem to find them using standard text searching. (moderator, please move this if it belongs in another sub forum)

Thanks for the input, all. I reloaded my AC + no medikit scenario and deployed defensively on the safe side of the Access Lift. Lost a soldier early to a Chrysalid press, but took them down with sniper and directed fire without too much problem. Several more instances of FF doomed a couple. In one instance my rocketeer hit someone in a hallway that was practically perpendicular to his direction of fire. After the rocket carnage, I tried to get the rocketeer to intentionally hit the spot where the FF victim was standing, and of course got "no line of fire" warning. Odd how a "stray round" can hit a odd spot yet an intentional shot fails... Back to my story. Fared mostly successfully with the popout and sniper fire method, until a background snakeman--who was clever enough to not stay in the line of sight at the end of its turn--had a chance to unleash a BB. Needless to say, I was down to 4 units after this, and two of the 4 remaining went bezerk and killed a unit across the hallway. With at least 3 snakemen remaining and only 3 shaky units left, I closed the game out. There appears to be an advantage to charging BB-equipped enemy units.

I had a heroic (?) base defense stand this morning with Snakemen and their terror units, and I lost 9 out of 17 soldiers. At least two units were killed by friendly fire; I'm not quite used to fighting in close quarters, and my deployment soon looked like a crowded dance floor. My enhanced base design was just recently completed, so I had the enemy approaching from only one direction. Due to the 80-item limit, I was stuck with loads of autocannon and clips, but not one plasma rifle or Medikit. Any injury was going to be fatal; in one instance, the no medikit issue caused me to charge one unarmoured unit--unfortunate to get caught in the explosion range of friendly-fire HC HE rounds to the tune of 6 fatal injuries--kamikazi-like at the snakemen. Ironically, the unit was killed by FF the next round rather than by a snakeman. Besides the obvious yardsale/transfer of extra junk prior to a Base Defense mission, does anyone have great base defense tactics for base raids that occur before all the goodies are researched? I don't have any BB, SB, or PSI stuff researched, nor Heavy Plasma. Nor do I have any tanks of any kind on base. I was toying with the idea of hunkering down of the 'safe' side of the Access Lift and waiting for reaction shots and prox grenade reports, but felt compelled to get to the hanger side of the lift--the three directions of entry that the lift affords was bugging me. I guessing that I may have fared better if I had just waited it out and deployed to an inter-connecting crossfire arrangement on the safe side of the lift. Another question: can the part of the exe/dat file that controls the plasma rifle and clip object be edited to force it to appear alphabetically higher on the list so it is one of the first items available--and thus not an issue for the 80-item limit?

Argh. Xcomutil reports I indeed am running as a beginner. I am filled with shame. I though I was doing OK strategically at the "Veteran" level, but to discover I was doing OK as merely a beginner is annoying--Like I haven't been tested yet for real. I plan on increasing the difficulty via XComUtil, once I figure out the command line. Is there any problem with doing this to a save game file that is in battlescape mode? Will my Snakeman crashsite suddenly get "interesting"? As far as using the mind probe, my research tree is not progressing hugely fast, so I am a bit away from research on one.

3 of my last 4 rookies I got from headquarters had 10 Bravery! I sacked them all immediatedly! What gives? Each recruit's screening sheet from basic training clearly has this information available, yet some clown at headquarters continuously sends me low-bravery units. I do not command a social-service agency. I do not hold classes and touchy-feely grope-fests to help units get over their parent's divorce, overcome a fainting spell at the sight of blood, stop the nightmares of their squadmate's painful dismemberment, or shut out the sound of the sergent's screaming death. My money doesn't grow on trees! I can keep them and use UGE to hack them up to--say 30 Bravery, but I think this is cheating. Still, if my goal is to not have any unit go out on the field with less than 30 Bravery, and I'm not hacking FA, TU, STR, or RE, would the purist consider this to be a horrible infraction? I'm just trying to save some money. (The first time I played this game 10 years ago or so I ruined the gaming experience by using UGE to hack my money to the point where I didn't have to practice economics; it made it unchallenging very quickly; I don't want to do the same)

Hello, I'm new to the board, and have recently picked up X-Com--one of my top ten favorite games of all time again. It is odd how a game that has been around for more than 10 years still can be so good. Tactic suggestion: Made this mistake this morning while at a terror site (I waited until daylight before landing): My scout MOVED after contact with an alien (face to face). My move was to go to a crouch, but that was enough to set off the reaction fire of the floater, who nailed him at long range. The ironic thing about this was that the scout was one of only 4 that had (personal) armour. The more ironic thing was my scout was under and behind the landing gear of the Skyranger. The most ironic thing about this was that the scout's position under and behind the Skyranger meant that he was unable to throw the primed grenade he had in his hand (hence the reason I tried to crouch), so when he was dropped by the floater, the grenade rolled out of his hand then blew up what was left at the end of the turn. No corpse, no equipment. Not even a juicy smudge left of my scout. Lesson learned. When scouting and contact is made, freeze, and let your fire support shoot from behind! Now a difficulty question: Can I tell in-game the setting of difficulty? I am in March, and have seen a lot of floaters, primarily, which makes me believe that I have it set to 'beginner', but I swear I'd set it to veteran at the beginning of the game.