Sarariman

I wonder if this is the same problem I posted about in December: I was doing wonderfully and was told I was doing an "excellent" job, but XCOM was shut down. Turned out I was too heavily in debt. $14 million is not that much. Maintenance costs and salaries are deducted at the end of the year and can easily exceed that amount. If you don't believe me, use a utility like TFTD HACK to change the amount of money you have.

That was interesting. I never, ever use motion detectors or smoke grenades. I thought the former were useless, while I think I used the equivalent in Enemy Unknown. If it's a motion detector, does that mean aliens don't show if they stay still? Which they often do? I've spent an eternity playing TFTD and can only remember one occasion when I wished I'd had smoke grenades. Any change of some more detail on the use you make of these things?

OK, improving the scores of a trooper by putting them with more experienced soldiers is good, but I really can't be bothered. But using different teams for different kinds of aliens is horrifying. The name of the game is to reduce the amount of work you do, and also keep the number of teams at a minimum. I have one team to do alien bases and two or three to do both craft assaults and ship missions. The first team has six disruptor pulse launchers, while the others have two. I don't have teams for different sizes of alien craft.

I've heard this one before. I don't do it because I feel it's against the spirit of the game, but I'll try it if selling Zrbite isn't enough. I've never been that desperate in the past.

By George, you've got it! I had $2 million at the end of the month, which I thought a healthy balance, but I think salary costs are deducted once a year at this time, whereas I previously assumed they were monthly. Usually, I never, ever sell Zrbite, but I had to do it to avoid extinction.

So I'm playing TFTD and doing very nicely. Absolutely every alien craft gets shot down or captured. At month end, it says the committee is very pleased with my excellent progress. The next paragraph says I haven't succeeded in dealing with the alien invasion, and that XCOM has been terminated. My monthly rating is 8,781, which it says is EXCELLENT! The funding change is +1,350,000. Why am I getting this message?

OK, so MC Generators have me intrigued. I've started TFTD again, and will have bases both with and without MC Generators. We'll shall see which gets attacked most. I will also try shooting down all USOs. Previously, I'd conserve kundalini (life force) by not bothering to intercept the small 'uns. I can't remember whether this preceded the perpetual base attacks, but it's worth a try. I destroy all bases as it is. I had one shot at sending Tritons out on patrol but found nothing.

Setting CRAFT.DAT to zeroes stopped the problems of hovering USOs and movement being awfully slow, although there was some weirdness going on with Barracudas not appearing after purchase. But alien activity stopped again. It might have been nice to make more precise changes to CRAFT.DAT. Offset 44 is the depth of the first vessel, but what about the other 49? It doesn't help that the data is mostly empty. I then started a new game and put that game's CRAFT.DAT file into the directory of my saved game. I was left with two Barracudas and a Triton - however one hoverer remained. A USO appeared, but I got the dreaded return-to-older-game bug when I tried to intercept it. I think I remember building PWT defences because base attacks were happening too often for comfort, but I will try leaving no defences next time I play. The mention of MC Generators was interesting because I didn't think they achieved anything. Do you think they actually work? I will be be letting aliens take bases. Two wasn't enough. How much should I do this?

I changed the last half of CRAFT.DAT to all zeroes, and the hovering aliens went. So, too, did half my Barracudas, but I used the TFTD Hack program to give me lots of money and purchased replacements. Another great benefit occurred - things had been running so very slowly for ages, makingg the game nigh-on unplayable, but this stopped after I changed CRAFT.DAT. Some weird stuff persists - Barracudas arrive but don't show up afterwards, but this problem will go when the base does. All I have to do is resolve the return-to-older-game bug and my pleasure will be complete.

I heard it said that the aliens stop attacking bases after 20 attempts, but this is most certainly not true. Manipulating the CRAFT.DAT file sounds like exactly what I was after. I could change the depth of the floaters so I could attack them. If depth is at offset 44-45, that should mean that I change offsets 44, b2, 120 and so forth, right? Problem is, my file is mostly zeroes, more so at the end. It doesn't look like 50 records of 110 bytes. Moments ago, I deleted the defences of the most-frequently attacked base, so we'll see if those eight hovering USOs remove themselves that way.

I'd like to flog a dead horse and keep playing TFTD long after it is possible to destroy T'Leth. The first time, I got to the stage where the only alien activity was small USOs, virtually a base attack a minute and terror missions. I began to replace all my bases so the aliens couldn't attack for a while. It started crashing, e.g. if a USO was in a region where I'd recently removed a base. So I tried again, but replacing my bases at a much earlier stage. So base attacks stopped ...but then too did the small USOs and terror missions, and with so little activity I got two rubbish monthly ratings, resulting in cancellation of the XCOM project. And so I tried once more, this time using sonic pistols, not cannon, as my main weapon. At first I thought sonic pistols were effete and didn't even research them, until I realised I needed to research them to get sonic oscillators, which are cool. Now I love 'em, because they require so few time units and can be fired one-handed. Now I get the problem of the game returning to the last battlescape scene (see elsewhere). I also have eight USOs hovering permanently at a depth too great for barracudas. This problem was discussed inconclusively in another thread. A twist to the situation is that game movement has slowed almost to a standstill. In these last two attempts, research never got to the advanced vessel stage or I could have shot down the hoverers. So I'm wondering what people do to keep getting those TFTD vibes unto perpetuity. Starting again would be a downer, but I'm contemplating it.

Thanks for the prompt replies. I would love to have my files looked at by another. I never previously used MediaFire, but the URL seems to be http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=87eae07...b20786b9a6e1ed0 I'd read that this was caused by a corrupt saved file. I was hoping the file could be changed manually. Restarting doesn't work. I've had this problem a loooooooooooong time and have often tried things after a clean start. When it happens, I go back to an older game, but I have another bug which slows everything to a trickle so this is quite painful. Restarting the game would be even more painful, but that may be my only option. Speaking of UFOs attacking a base that doesn't exist, I had that one but it isn't the cause here.

So I'm playing TFTD, and I get a bug: I'll be in the Geoscape, and then the game switches to the Battlescape, with the position being the last one in the MISSDAT directory. This problem was mentioned at the bottom of the page http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Saved_Game_Files Alas, no solution is suggested. I'm currently going back to an older saved game, but it just keeps happening. It happens with both TERROR and RUNXCOM.