MikeTheRed

That is some really fine work there, Bomb Bloke! It's great to hear that you took it farther. I guess I must have moved on by then (and/or simply wasn't watching that page). I stuck in a mention... wow, what a lot of work! One of these decades, there will probably be AIs that will figure out all kinds of things. Running countless variations on testing, or just figuring it out directly from code. Then we can sit on the beach eating grapes and stuff all day, I imagine. Very interesting examples, Tsathoggua! It makes sense that experience pays off in chemistry. There are so many variables, even past the theory. Thank you for speaking up. Cheers everyone, it's great to talk with you again!

True, true. But if you want others (outside the community) to have some idea that you have been doing lots of real things over a long period of time, you need to show them. Most people here probably don't care enough to be able to show, and that is perfectly fine. But if you do... if you want to show a substantial foundation in data analysis for your new project, and you also don't want your past work lost to time... then you have to document it. If a guy says he likes long distance running but can't really say when or how much, you shrug. It might mean he runs a lot. Or it could mean he likes the idea but actually only runs marathons once a decade. However, if he gives you a link to dozens of long runs he's been in across the U.S. over the past 3 decades, it's solid and real. And easy to check. Other people are generally not actually interested in the details of what you or I did, and are not going to check the dozens of different websites and data collections to see what it could all mean. Especially not in this age of Facebook distraction. They just want one list of achievements page that makes sense of it all for them. And so you have to make one, if that's what you're trying to show. Thanks so much brother, it means a lot to me. I would love to stick around more here. But I feel very driven, like I have to be doing new stuff. Maybe I can find a way to translate that into sticking around here? Not sure how it would work on top of all the other stuff. Making your own website (and then company in a few years, maybe) is a never ending trove of challenges. On top of all the regular stuff of life. Maybe I am a little crazy. But I hope it's in a good way. Thanks, man! Good to see you after all this time! Nice hairdo to the rescue, as it were, on your avatar!

Yes, unfortunately, the reboot sort of closed that chapter for good, for me. I remember being concerned about how the new game was going to be put into Ufopaedia (or even if it should). When my suggestion for handling URL phrasing (new game pages vs old ones) got ignored, I sort of gave up on Ufopaedia. At least, as something I still felt I was an integral part of. I wish them well, and I wish the site well, but it's not the same. A big part of the appeal way back when, was how it was largely forgotten. It was just us handful of guys, figuring out how an old, beloved classic works. But now there are hundreds of new fans of the new game, on Ufopaedia. This touches on another topic, and why I ultimately made my own website: I've had a few serious problems over the years with wiki work disappearing... see my entries for Railroads!, whose entire wiki simply COMPLETELY disappeared a year after it was hot (Wayback to the rescue), and Sins of a Solar Empire, which got poorly grafted onto Wikia a couple years after it was hot, and almost all its original work was lost. And we've all seen our Wikipedia and other edits simply get wiped by someone who missed an important point or, worse, is anonymous (like on Wikia) and gives no reason at all. Another reason I made my site is because I have done SO much work over my life... but almost no one outside of each particular circle (here, Ufopaedia) knows any of the rest. Nor do any of my friends and family have any real idea whatsoever of its scale. Yeah, sure, you can say "I've done a lot of game wiki work" in a conversation. But you can't say you've written encyclopedias; it sounds like hyperbole in casual conversation. You have to show you've written encyclopedias. In the larger picture - within a few years - I hope to launch a larger service, for which this website foundation of game analysis and residential smart home and energy efficiency (soon to come) will be support for a commercial effort that also involves data analysis. But it is also true that I don't want all I have done to simply be lost to time. It's happened for two entire wikis so far. More is bound to happen. And I had plenty that never got published anyway. I would have loved to see if you guys had similar "achievement" pages of your work. I looked some and gave links to what I could find quick, but as is natural, I mainly remember what I did. And others closely involved with that. If I had had a place to look and see what others have done (like Zombie is now saying more details), then I could have said a lot more about them. But short of that, I don't have their perspective of their life and work, I only have my own. I hope you like what I added to the bit on you. Thanks so much for the reminders, Zombie! NKF really was important. Let me know if you think of other stuff I can add for you or anyone else! Ah yes, Stewart from XcomUfo! So many names from the past... Right, I think we all have our own particular style. It's truly amazing to see the depth of work you've done Zombie, including your commitment to detail. Like those Alien Stats. I imagine you have done that all over the place. I am more of a hit man... scoping out places I think I either really could use info, or that can easily give up their secrets. I will pore over it fairly exhaustively. But once I am done, I will move on. To other games entirely. In fact, XCOM is the game I spent the most time analyzing. A part of me wishes I was like you two. You've stayed here over a decade, and are surely good pals, and will be for life at this point. the same goes for many other long-timers here. Frankly my approach to games (and life) is kind of lonely. But what can I do? I am what I am. Part of me hopes that by making my website I might start a conversation with others or meet others more like me, and make close friends that way. I recently laid in a forum on my site, but am still trying to get it to work. Right now I am not receiving notification when someone new registered and is awaiting activation. I am tired of all the details, so I'm hiring someone from Upwork / India to help with MyBB. It's a ton of work, making a new site, a new wiki, and a new forum. Wonderful to talk with you two!

Hi you two! Great to talk again; great to see you're here, after all this time!! Right NKF... MS-Edit was a blast. There was someone just starting to tinker with decompiling the code toward the end of my serious time there (maybe 2009?). I remember in one Talk place he sort of said in-game testing was worthless; only decompiling mattered. I agree that decompiling can be very powerful, and if you had to choose one, that's probably the best choice. Assuming, of course, it was straightforward and easy for whatever the topic was. But in the best of worlds you want both decompiling and testing. And testing is always fine and should be encouraged, as long as it's feasible. Decompiling can miss some critical things, such as dynamic interactions between parts of the code, and it's even possible to decompile the wrong thing (or vestigial similar code), or misunderstand it. In-game testing ensures one has a complete picture of how something works. Plus it can provide practical tips you might not think of, just reading code. It's very much like "text book versus street smarts". Or science. You don't really know something works the way it's supposed to in theory until you actually see it happen. But I guess I'm preaching to the choir about this, eh? Zombie, sorry about missing that post of yours. I gave you a shout out... thanks for the link! I guess it's true for all the stuff I wrote up on the wiki, I was not saying no one else had looked into it. In fact, I rarely researched whether anyone had or not. (More precisely, I knew some other XCOM sites, and if I didn't see it there, I didn't look farther.) No, what I did was 1) mostly original research in the sense that I myself did it (which doesn't mean others didn't do it independently), and then 2) I was the one that posted it to Ufopaedia. Often quite nicely, I like to think. I couldn't find Kasey Chang listing actual recruit stats on that link. Did I miss it? Anyway... just saying... I just researched stuff and posted it. I didn't spend a lot of time seeing whether anybody else had done it (but not posted it to Ufopaedia). I think you and I are alike here... a lot of the joy is the research itself. So if we couldn't readily see that anybody else had researched something, we just did it ourselves. And sometimes we just did it again ourselves anyway, even if it did already exist, hehe NKF, I wanted to say more on what you did but I was a little fuzzy. If I recall correctly you weren't in the thick of the in-game testing I did with Zombie (and Danial and BombBloke's maps), but I do recall you doing MS Edit testing... anyway, I'm happy to make what i wrote for you more specific. What might I say? It's great to talk with everyone again. Great to see you're still around!

Hi everyone, I'm making a personal website that includes summaries of work I've done on games over the years. It would not be complete without mentioning Ufopaedia/XCOM. I worked on Ufopaedia with many others from 2005 to ~2009. Many of you have also been on StratCore. Let me know if I remember anything wrong (!). Tell me if you'd like to change or add anything there, or write it here. I'd also like to apologize to Zombie for being pigheaded sometimes. But wow we did some great work. It was a real pleasure working with you! Long live XCOM! What a cool game it was/is. MikeTheRed

Hi Pete, NKF, and others, it's great to see this subforum here... I'd like to get email notices for edits to some of the pages on my watchlist. I used to have it on but I guess I turned it off... anyway, I can't find the place to turn it back on. IIRC it used to be at Preferences / User profile / Email options, like it is for Wikipedia. Am I missing it? Thanks if you can help, Mike

Thanks Hobbes, will do!

Hi folks, This is the right place to ask about Ufopaedia these days, right? I'd like to get email notices for edits to some of the pages on my watchlist. I can't seem to find the place to turn this on. IIRC it used to be at Preferences / User profile / Email options, like it is for Wikipedia. Am I missing it? Thanks if you can help, Mike

Mentally I had ignored your scientists on the project, on the last day. But you're right, you get 70 workdays out of them (in 60 days), simple as that. Thanks for clarifying. And thanks for being on top of how research works.

Ok, I just added Minimum Alien Research, reply here or revise it if you want. I'll do Total Research Time shortly.

Thanks for your info, Zaimoni! I rewrote the Research Rollover bug - please take a look and revise if needed.

Thanks, this is great... now I think I understand. Correct me if wrong: 1) The order is always the same as in e.g. RESEARCH.DAT. So, we could take notes... or we could just consult something like that 2) You said "pre-existing works"... brand-new projects work too, right? So, ok. With your comments on the above, I will probably touch up the Research Rollover description on these points. But do you mind if I run this by you one more time: We looked at an example of a project with 51 days, and how you would switch it up so you could assign 10 scientists on the last day... but if I'm understanding right, your approach actually only got you one extra (exploit) hour versus my approach of just re-assigning the 9 on the last day? Look at it this way: When that final (sixth) midnight is done, I have had a total of 60 days applied to projects... you have had 61. (See what I mean?) So, as long as a person knows exactly how many days a project needs and they arrange things accordingly, the exploit essentially only lets them re-use the days that were used on the last day, not the days that were wasted. But in the more normal situation of a person not peeking at PROJECTS, then the exploit DOES get them the wasted hours (and the used hours), because they would not e.g. have switched 9 scientists on the last day. They would have just kept them all assigned, still. So, this exploit works best when you work least (i.e., don't check PROJECTS) 3) Does this make sense? (Am I fully understanding, finally?) 4) Wouldn't there be a corollary to the Research Rollover exploit that goes like this: IF you are deliberately using this exploit, then you should try your best to put newly-arrived scientists into lower-numbered projects (so they can be rolled up into higher ones later). Also, always try to roll them into the next-higher one (because you can't roll them into lower ones). In a nutshell, unless high priorities over-ride efficiency, you should always be cascading your scientists up through the order of (available) research projects. And if you ever reach the "end", then go back to the very beginning (top research project) and start all over again. Thanks again for all your advice!

Ok... as you said, this is the Research Rollover bug/exploit, eh? The description of that bug always left too much unanswered to me: If you just finished a project, it's gone from the list... so how can you know what was before or after it? (This caused the bug description to not make sense to me) It talks about assigning scientists to a "new" project, but doesn't specify if it means an existing one or a brand new one. I never worried about it because research is so easy anyway, shrug. But I think you're saying that 1) you have to keep track of where your project was, and 2) you have to put the scientists into a brand new project. Am I on target? I'm really glad you know Research well! So I can finish revising that wiki text MTR

Thanks folks, I thought it sounded fishy ... I didn't understand why it didn't effectively round up, given that it checked for completion each night. Zaimoni, is there a reason why you said "set the scientists to 1 when 11 was the number of scientist days, then reset to 10, to avoid wasting 9 scientist-days" instead of just saying "set it to 1 scientist on the last day". Is there something more complicated going on? I appreciate the input! Mike

In message #7 in another thread, I raised an issue about integer truncation that was mentioned on UFOpaedia some years ago. Specifically, if you assigned 10 people to a project for which 51 hours was rolled, you would finish in 5 days, not 6. Can anyone here confirm (or deny) that integer truncation does indeed work like this for X-COM research? It strikes me as an odd way for the game to work, as stated in that message. But if it is true, it is true. I am about to re-write that section and don't have time to test that concept. If someone can re-affirm it, I'll proceed. Thanks, MTR

Cool... we're on the same page here. Those are good points about the order and approach. As for "total research time", I guess I will rewrite the wiki citing the 20 aliens as said in my OP. And there isn't really any need to talk about more aliens than that, don't you think? A.k.a., a person is either paying close attention (and hoping to only use 2 medics at end of alien research), or they are probably not paying serious attention and just winging it. In which case, who cares. But before I re-do the Total Research Time (TRT) numbers: there was an integer truncation issue whose write-up seems to have been lost on the current TRT page, but the Efficiency results from that are still shown. Do you (or anyone else here) still think integer truncation is happening? I have a hard time visualizing it. Consider that the roll for Laser Weapons (average 50) comes up as 51. You assign your 10 scientists to it. The truncation principle says it will need 5 days. But what if, on the 5th day (40 hours done so far), you reduce the number of scientists to 1? See, I don't see how the tracking for projects can get around the idea of actually comparing the number assigned (every midnight) to how many are needed. Which is to say, I don't see how truncation can work. Essentially, I think it has to be rounded up, not rounded down... you have to, in fact, actually do at least the number that was rolled. And you will probably also do more than that, because you can't see exactly how many hours were rolled (and therefore, probably over-estimated. unless you only have 1 person assigned. ) What are your thoughts? MTR

Hmm, yes, the in-game timing issue can add a lot of complexity. But one way to keep it simple is to call it a minimum estimate of total research time (TRT). Seriously though, I'll have to think about it. There may be two total research times... the absolute minimum, and then a much more complex "realistic TRT" which may include some probabilities. But answer me this: When I said "are you sure medics research randomly", I meant, not dependent on anything. You replied that you're sure of it, then said a couple of things like "Edited a Sectoid Medic in AC and then researched it a bunch of times - always provided a random entry in alien research (depends on what is left on the list though" and "They also remove them from the list of available alien research topics, which increases the chances of getting the live Sectopod/Cyberdisc later on". Perhaps we're crossing wires over terms here, but the latter is not what I'd call random. Or at least, it's not what I meant... I assumed that that was the point you were making - that it's entirely random, and not dependent on what's been researched. If the available pool is dependent on what's not researched, then doesn't my OP calling for 2 medics (after all the other alien research) stand? Thanks - MTR

Hiya Z, Good point about having one of them be psi capable... it is a little helpful in a game. Just a little. There are some other (slight) constraints on how you'd have to research, to be most efficient. For example, 1 leader or commander would have to be ethereal (ignoring psi capability for the moment). Because we don't want soldiers, and that's all ethereals have besides soldiers. Et cetera. But it's not very complicated. I did not realize that medics only divulge random results. You're sure about that? There's nothing on the wiki about it, that I can see. That changes things... there isn't a fixed "total research time" any more; the medics invoke probability. But realistically, since those 2 aliens don't really matter, it becomes more like "all research except the two medic aliens [18 live aliens], plus probability distribution for medic aliens if you are interested". It looks like a favorite section title on a wiki page to me already! lol Actually, I guess it would be close enough, and true enough, to quote the number with 20 aliens as being the "absolute minimum (if you get entirely lucky with medics)". And the "average minimum" is more like 35 (8 eng, 8 nav, 2 cdr = 18, plus 17 medics). With random medic results, IF you want to get live sectopod and cyberdisk in minimum time, it's a good point to do them before doing any corpses or live terrorists... since the medics are sure to cough up some of that already. (That's an interesting wrinkle!) Now we have to compute how many terrorists and corpses are likely to have been done already, on average! (to subtract that from the total) But are you saying there's some reason to do leaders and commanders after engineers and navigators? You don't want to do 2 Sectoid CDRs. Because then, you haven't locked in an Ethereal. (But medics might reveal it already, depending on your approach.) MTR

Hi folks, I am revisiting Total Research Time to correct the totals listed there. But it occurs to me that "total" is a little tricky when it comes to aliens... The wiki list of all research topics includes a line that says "Live Aliens (except Terrorists and Sectoid Commander) (22 types)". But I think that this glosses over some details. Specifically, some aliens provide for more than one research topic. To me, it seems like the minimum number of aliens to research in order to get research info on all topics that can be gotten from aliens, is 20, as follows: 8 Navigators (for alien missions), 8 Engineers (for UFO types), 2 Medics (for "live" sectopod and cyberdisk), 1 LDR or CDR, and 1 CDR. This does not include the 11 corpses and 4 other live terrorists shown in the research list. (And you don't specifically have to do the Sectoid Commander.) You'd have to do the medics carefully, namely, research them after doing all the other corpses and races except the two shown for them. Otherwise, you can double-up and get research on alien races while doing the specialists, above. Does this make sense? Am I missing anything? Of course, in a real game, it's entirely likely that you will capture and/or research more live aliens than this minimum. But still... what's the minimum? MTR

Thanks, folks. Okay it looks like some or all of these statements conflict with what I thought I saw. So, back to the drawing board.

Hi folks, I will be combining three of the UFOpaedia's Craft subpages (Repair, Rearm, and Refuel) into one maintenance page. But I have a question, The Rearming page currently says "Re-arming is the final phase that an interception craft will go through after returning to base from an interception atttempt (regardless of whether any shots were fired)". But in my experience, you will not necessarily go through this phase. Certainly you don't if there aren't any weapons on the craft. And I'm pretty sure you also don't if you don't engage in a Interception (i.e., no actual interception window popup). This can happen if e.g. your Avenger has a weapon or two, but you just go straight to a downed UFO or base. The only question I would have is whether you can be in an interception, but not engage - would that trigger rearming, still? So: Do you folks agree; craft with weapons don't necessarily go through re-arming? And if so, what exactly is needed? Thanking you in advance, Mike

Hi Zombie, great to see you! Yes, I seem to be having a second wind. Or would that be third or fourth wind? You've been busy ... look at your message count! I couldn't resist contributing a pic of the DOS U.S. floppies... how could that extravagantly long set of rare boxes not have one of the most common things, at least for me? FWIW... the U.K. box sure does look different from the U.S. box! Quite surprisingly different; a bit of a shock to someone who only knew the U.S. box for 16 years. Mike

Hi folks, I took a pic of the floppies that came with the U.S. X-COM (appended). Would someone want to put it in the right place with your X-COM box art? You can delete this message after getting the pic if you want. I wasn't sure how to get it to the right place. Mike

Heya Azrael! How the heck have you been? Alas a bunch of other decent games have come out in the last half year. My style is to take a good game and beat it to death, laugh. All in solo. You'll find I've posted various insights, dating even back to System Shock (1), Compuserve (1200 baud?). What are you working on?

I don't know how many of you had the honors, but Danial shared with me a quite well done 3D rep of an X-COM Battleship. Very cool. But as we all know by now, it's one thing to construct a "fixed" 3D place. (Something I zero skills for!) I imagine the "latest greatest most coolest games" have a team of a dozen on every single one of the areas of: storyline, AI behavior, level design, unit design, armament/gadget design... yada yada... all the way up to, marketing/PR. So, you're Battleship is very cool Danial. I hope you can find a way to work with others and make the old great head rush, a new great head rush. You've always shown a ton of creativity. We have high hopes of you, brother