Tifi

15th June 1996 Manchester Been there, done that. I would like to apologise if you interpreted my ranting as some kind of anti-US thing as it was nothing of the sort. The reasoning behind it is that its being used as an 'excuse' for everything - whenever something happens that we don't like its dutifully trotted out and pointed at, and quite honestly we're sick of it. Hell, this whole flying aeroplanes into buildings thing was used to make me redundant for fecks sake =P OH NOES! WE CAN'T BUILD ANY MORE AS THEY'RE HORRIBLE INSTRUMENTS OF DOOM NOW!

Perhaps it was intended to be 'Seedy Graphics'?

The thing about the thing is this: Various nutter groups have been doing stuff like this for decades all over the world, but the second it happens in the US everyone goes INSANE and uses it as an excuse ^H^H^H reason for numerous crappy things - such as the whole Iraq/Afghanistan waste, and the general stupidity of stamping on freedom for the sake of faux safety. Yes, its a horrible thing to have happen to anyone, but it no different to, for example what the UK went through with IRA for countless years, or Spain with ETA, or the whole crapstorm in the 'holy' land. The list could go on... There really is no delicate way of saying this, so I'm just gonna throw you in... The US is not that much of a big deal. Get over yourselves. The rest of the world is sick of hearing about the whole US BAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWing about stuff we've been through and just got on with it like they're some kind of specially priveledged 'untouchable' group. http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/7/7e/Lol_terrorism.gif

How to clean-up a UFO without entering it... Wander up to UFO, and knock on the door. *knock* *knock* *knock* *door opens* Oh, hai there Mr. Red Riding Hood. I don't mean to be a nuisance or anything but would you mind awfully tossing that cute little purple sphere out of the door? You know, the one over there sitting on your glowy engine thing? *points* Why you ask? Just as an aside its kinda rude to poke into people heads uninvited, but I digress. I just want it mmm-kay? Its my precious and I wants it. Besides, once you've thrown it out here I can fill you full of holes and drag your ship and your many charred corpses back home and then put my feet up for a bit - its not a huge demand now is it? *door shuts* Guys.... You said it would work!

Gauss Weapons At the beginning of the second alien incursion of the 40's our troops once again had to resort to fairly basic 'stock' weaponry as the two major weapons of the previous war had somewhat adverse reactions to an aquatic environment. Laser weapons whilst being sealed units in themselves, thier control and power transfer mechanisms are not and are susceptible to shorting when flooded. Also it is incredibly difficult to form a stable beam in water as the dense liquid environment scatters any emissions very quickly. Plasma weapons remain functional in water but have similar dispersion problems to the lasers, but far more critically both the alien alloys AND Elerium degrade rapidly in salt water rendering them little more than fragile paperweights with as little as a few hours of exposure. Clearly we were back to square one... An 'interesting' possibility however was something that bored engineers and physics students the world over have recreated countless hundreds of times over for little else than thier own amusement and sense of achievement. A simple device called an Asynchronous linear induction motor. In its most basic terms an ALIM (or more colloquially a Coil Gun) is a series of solenoids, a power source and something to act as a core - or in this context 'ammunition'. The power source was easily modified from the previous laser weapons and could provide a more than adequate peak output for the fraction of a second it would be required to energise the coil. The coils themselves were custom made specifically for the project - although the prototype coil was ripped out of the turret of a Coelacanth SWS. The first trails of these newly dubbed 'Gauss' weapons (after the mathematician whose principals form the basis of thier operation) were sucessful after only a handful of trails with no appriciable delays or setbacks - something of a fluke in any scientific endeavour. However, these new weapons were little better than the already prevalant Gas Cannons as they were little more than glorified slug throwers - albeit rather powerful ones... Originally it was intended to produce different varieties of 'shells' in much the same vein as the Gas Cannons with HE and Phosphor rounds in addition to the solid bolts thus supplanting the whole Gas family with one weapon. However, with the ever advancing field of materials science a new previously unattainable goal was *just* within reach: Antimatter. Prior to 2040 the only way to produce anitmatter was to accelerate tiny particles a few at a time through massive miles across magnetic rings to near relatavistic speeds in opposite directions and literally crash them into each other and collect the resulting anti-particles one at a time. With the new materials processes a new means of creating antimatter was theorised, hundreds of micron thick Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) wafers are arranged one on top of the other as close as possible without touching thier neighbours and the tiny spaces are then filled with Tritium (conveniently used in the construction of the BV cells). When this construct is compressed violently along its major axis the H3 reacts and merges with the GaAs which through some process even our brightest engineers cannot fully explain, reverses its 'spin' and 'charge' then subsequently annihilates itself and its immediate surrounding area. The standard Gauss 'shells' are composed of off-the-shelf Tool Steel and are just slightly less than 1 inch long with a diameter of roughly 3/8 inch with a traditional bullet shaped profile. The foremost 1/4 inch is then bored out and filled with the pre-assembled GaAs substrate and then capped with a protective plastic fairing. Although quite time intensive to produce the resulting shells are quite cheap (especially now that GaAs can be mass produced fairly easily - previously it was rarer than Gold...) and the resulting antimatter event, although very crude and unrefined is able to reliably destroy golf ball sized chunks of matter - tests have indicated that this can vary upto as much as fist sized. None of our current materials or armour technologies can offer any significant resistance to this kind of weapon so we can only hope the aliens are similarly constrained.

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

Well, it is done. My Flying Suits now take 20 each alloy & E115 + a UFO power source, while having armour ratings of 135/110/100/125. Not exactly what I was after, but close enough

Yea, that's the one. I had my only access route down the right hand side of the base, and all of them I had to dig out to free the units.

Done. It makes a bit more sense now although the wiki is a bit sparse on info. For example: Bytes 8-10 the pre-req. items have no information to refer to regarding which value correspond to which materials. From digging around I've found the following: 88 = Alloys 60 = E115 80 = Power Source 81 = Navigation I have no idea about anything else though as nothing else is represented in the tables. Also, how the seven hells do you input single figure values in MSEdit? =/

Heck... That wasn't a frontal assault, it was a mining operation. I could have gone looking for gems or something, I felt like I was playing Dwarf Fortress not fighting alien hordes =P

It would have helped if I did'nt have to dig through a wall to get into the hangars, I had to use all my men to bore though the dirt by passing round the 2 hv. lasers I had =/ The turn after I broke down the final wall my guys saw a group of floaters doing floaty things just outside the hole, so I did the decent thing and flung a large rocket at them bagging 5 floaters and a reaper in one hit The next turn saw a purple blur come sailing through the hole which killed 9 of my 10 men and 2 of the HWPs. That last guy then died due to a fatal wound leaving a rocket tank and a laser tank to get trashed as soon as they tried to climb out of the debris. Never played UFO on superhuman before

Tbh, I'd be quite content with just changing the build requirements =) Had a peek in product.dat, and it doesn't seem to have a great deal in it - just 2 lines of values (100 page width) Have I broke it? =P

*********************** * FLASH TRANSMISSION * *********************** DATE: 17 JUL 1999 ORIG: US Oupost [LocRef - Topeka] DEST: XCMD EUR *** NOTE - ORIGIN TRANSMISSION DISRUPTED *** MESSAGE READS --------------------------------- We a_e under a_ta_k. Flo__r _aide_s us_ng str_ng_ miss_les, en_ire squa_ lost. Engi_e_rs are atte_pt_ng to s_uttl_ the _ase, b_t we ha_e lit_le t......... *** NOTE - ORIGIN TRASMISSION TERMINATED *** *** NOTE - CARRIER SIGNAL TERMINATED *** ---------------------------------------------------------------- Lol My first encounter this game with blasters, and it was an ignominious defeat Lost: 10 men 4 tanks 2 craft Ah well...

Indeed. Theres a LOT of crossover where English evolved from French. Eg: Fusil tranlates to Rifle - which in turn gives us the English military title of Fusilier, which would equate to Rifleman or Marksman. Languages are weird, but oddly fun Anyway... Plasma Weapons After extensive study by our technicians we have gained enough understanding about the theoretical and practical functioning of these weapons to enable us to adequately duplicate them in workshop conditions. All the Plasma weapons function in the same manner. Firstly the weapon itself is completly inert being composed entirely of the aliens alloy material, however built into the barrel is an array of ridged vanes connected directly to the loading port which seats the power/ammunition clip. All the energy required to operate the weapon is contained in the compact clips which are composed of two major components: An equal number each of solid alloy pellets of approximately 2mm length and 1mm dia. and tiny 50mg ball of Elerium held in magnetic suspension, both of which are contained within a thick alloy casing all of which in turn are contained within the clip housing in a sealed rotary track arrangment. This eliminates the need to eject spent casings as in our conventional AP weapons, but it also makes each clip a one-use item. When the clip is installed into the weapons loading port, the first casing is moved into position with the alloy pellet being inserted into a tiny vacuum tube which is connected to the barrel, while the Elerium lines up with a pair of conducting rings connected the vanes in the barrel. This arrangement is 100% stable (nothing we've tried so far has been able to provoke any reaction whatsoever) and will only be released when the trigger button is activated. Upon activation the conductor rings are pushed into the Elerium pellet disrupting the magnetic field and producing a standing current which 'excites' the Elerium, this in turn simultaneously vapourises the alloy pellet and energises the rifling mechanism which then uses the resulting microgravity wave to draw the contents of the vacuum tube into the barrel where it is accelerated along the vanes and onwards to its target. This whole process occurs in a matter of milliseconds, and so far we have been unable to induce the mechanism to jam or misfire in any way. It is a remarkably simple and elegant system and one must admire the ingenuity that went into its design, reagardless of the uses it has been put to. Due to the nature of Plasma it makes a devastatingly powerful weapon, being able to burn through almost anything instantaneously, and anything it can't burn through is significantly weakened by the heat and electrical stresses. That being said, these weapons seem to have an appreiciable weakness: They have a much reduced range and power when used in an atmospheric environment, as the plasma 'burns' the air/gas as it passes thus wasting energy and dissipating the bolt. From all appearances this family of weapons were designed to be operated in vacuum or near-vacuum conditions, however this does not detract noticably from its lethality. I suppose we can be thankful at least that we don't have to face these weapons in its preferred environment.

Well, 'revolver' is French for 'gun'. So 'Rayon Revolver' is simply 'Laser Gun'. Although the revolving barrel idea could be rather fun, insomuch as modifying an Auto-cannon with multiple laser tubes, even if you probably would have to mount it on a HWP to carry the weight. Not that you'd really need to do that for rapid fire of a laser as they already cycle at the picosecond scale, which is I think adequately fast I'll start piecing together my bits on Plasma ,Gauss and Sonic weapons soon(ish).

Thought I'd share this little story even thought it'll probably be infinately less fun reading it than actually playing it... Anyway. It's July of 1999 and things are looking dicey for X-COM. Despite having four bases providing decent global coverage, enough alien troublemakers have slipped through with the result of both the US and Canada withdrawing from the project taking with them a large chunk of our funding. The cause of this unfortunate turn of events was an unlikely fluke: Only now (July) have we managed to recover an intact power source or alien fuel, meaning that we simply haven't been able to field anything more advanced than our laser weapons, so the larger UFOs can fly with impunity wherever they like. And as our technicians are still stumped by these funny alien guns, we've recently been struggling to keep on top of recovery and terror missions as these green armoured hulk-things seem to be largely resistant to our weapons, much to the frustration of our commanders. So far we've detected seven enemy bases, but due to one aborted (and chaos strewn) attempt at an incursion we daren't try again until we have at least some clue how they seem to be able to turn our soldiers against themselves. Again our scientists have drawn a blank on the matter, while the aliens make good on thier advantage with constant raids which we can only repel with some difficulty thus further depleting our already dwindling resources. The (remaining) funding nations however remain adamant with thier continued policy of reducing funding until they see an improvment in our performance. ---------------------- This has to be the funnest game I've had yet. I've deliberately not researched the Plasma weapons just for giggles, however the not getting Elerium for the first six months was unexpected (and somewhat unlucky) and has made things interesting to say the least... Also, I've not seen a psi capable alien since my first base defence where I had to kill them all as the only units I could control reliably were the HWPs. And having to 'gang up' on UFOs with missile armed interceptors is expensive - its a shame your science guys can't come up with some way of armouring fighters with funky alloys

This has probably been covered many times already, but I'm at a bit of a loose end.... Laser Weapons Lasers have seen widespread use since the latter portion of the 20th century for just about every concievable use *except* weapons. Most notable were the industrial lasers based on gaseous amplifier materials which could cut through just about anything, although they were usually resticted to almost zero range to achieve maximum cutting power by minimising atmospheric dispersal. This was the first, and greatest stumbling block to creating a useful laser weapon. This hurdle was overcome (to a certain extent) at the turn of the 21st century as advances in semiconductor materials made the theory of Magnetic Lensing a practical reality. These first semiconductor lasers used the same CO2 exciter medium as the industrial lasers they were base on, and they could be used to reliably damage a target several metres away, there were however 2 further problems to solve. Firstly these devices were incredibly power-hungy and rerquired enough energy to run a small building in order to reach useful ranges with any degree of damage potential, obviously a more efficient exciter medium would be required. And secondly, a CO2 laser is invisible to the naked eye and it thus incredibly difficult to aim without a large amount of time and effort spent aiming it. An inspiration to the project came when one of the scientists (a native of England) made a chance remark during a random conversation mentioning that he remembered how the old street lighting made him feel ill with its sickly yellow glow which never seemed to die. On a hunch, the scientists dug up information reagrding the ancient lighting apparatus described as Sodium Arc Lamps and found at least a partial answer to the efficiency problem, as atomised sodium has a low base energy state it takes far less energy to excite it to produce useable emissions. But this low-energy light cannot be lased easily on its own, so silicon (which can) was added to produce the desired results. This also solved the aiming problem as the sodium/silicon exciter produced a vivid yellow beam, however it had slightly less damage potential than the original CO2 laser, but required a tiny fraction of the energy to operate. The power problem was solved when the development team managed to fabricate a lightweight betavoltaic cell small enough to be held easily in the hand, yet provide enough power to operate the new laser, even if only for short bursts. Betavoltaics uses a small beta radioactive source (usually Tritium) to bombard specially designed plates which then convert the energy from atomic to electrical. This process gradually damages the cell over the period of a decade or so, during which time its output gradually decreases. The pistol incorporates a single exciter tube of approximately 12" with one power cell built into the handgrip, this makes it rather bulky for a sidearm but the lack of ammunition concerns and recoil make it far more useful than its conventional counterparts. The rifle has and extended tube of 22" and is powered by a pair of cells mounted in the rear of the one-piece body/stock. The heavy model uses the same 22" tube as the rifle but has an additional magnetic lens on its barrel with its own power cell, while the laser itself is powered by 3 cells making the weapon somewhat of a handful. Note: Because the laser must pass through 2 mag. lenses its firing time is increased to allow for proper aiming, however this severly limits the ability of the weapon to fire rapidly due to overheating issues. The craft and HWP adapted versions use a twin 36" tube arrangement, each being powered by 10 cells. Talk about tl;dr

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...

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?

I had a thought about making flying suits/mag. ion armour more of a specialised high-investment item rather than the current standard issue. Current build requirement: 5 alloy + 15 E115 Desired build requirement: 1 power suit + 1 navigation + 10 E115 Or maybe you could replace the nav. with a power source, although that could warrant a decent buff to its stats, and I'd be dissapointed if it didn't explode when it got shot to bits Might make things interesting. Stay with power suits, or upgrade to flyers which are *much* tougher and more flexible but run the risk of making a crater if they fail. Possible?

*Brain Dump* Assuming Rainbow Six style squad action, wether you can control the other guys or not... Psi Attacks - Sectoids & Ethereals Mind Control: Short-Mid range, very slow fire rate, long buildup time, does not require LOS but target needs to have been 'seen' recently (within a few seconds). Results in the targetted guy turning on his own team for a few seconds. His movement could be all jerky and slow as if he's fighting for control of his own mind but ultimately losing. Bonus points if you can make him say something amusing like "Guys, you better move!" or "I can't stop it!" or some such Panic: Mid range, slowish fire rate, short buildup, no LOS (same as above) Pretty much the same as UFO - the guys either freezes, drops his stuff and bolts, or goes nuts with respectively decreasing chances for each effect. "We're all gonna die!" "Get me out of here!" "They're not gonna get me!" *BLAM*BLAM*BLAM* This way the psi aliens would hardly ever be out in the open exchanging fire, they'd lurk in shadowy corners near but not in the action poking thier heads out occasionally to get a position on your guys before messing with thier minds.

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.

This is *awesome* Z! I always wondered why the 'survey' ship was bigger and more complicated than the 'escort' *Installs immediately*

Thanks for your help S *hugs* =D Managed to get 2 shots worth anything. (Exactly *what* they're worth is left as an exercise for the reader ;-) ) http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a224/Tifi78/int-system.png http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a224/Tifi78/int-res.png

TinyMod What Changes: The Heavy Laser has been 'altered' into an energy sucking behemoth of a weapon - The High Energy Plasma Thrower. It requires research into Advanced Lasers and Plasma Weapons, is *much* bulkier and expensive than the original. The high energy consumption per shot requires a more refined approach to fighting than even the Phase Cannon, and although quite it is quite possible to mount 4 cannons on type 2 & 3 interceptors the batteries I think would not apprecicate the 'work out' High Energy Plasma Thrower Cannon Size: 20csu Cost: 575000/unit (400000/base turret) Energy Use: 50 Output: 125 Range: 2 Production Time: 1750 Minor Tweaks: All the engines have been made slower. ie: thier thrust ratings have been lowered by roughly 20-ish% Some science 'flavour' text has been changed to suit the HEPT above. Some names and callsigns have been altered to not make me cringe (so much...) Star system and corporation names have also been altered - can you spot some 'new' familiar systems? And probably the best weapon noise in all of creation has been included, a cookie goes to the first person to remember where it comes from... Installation: Make copies of your gamesettings.ini, and everything in the /text folder. Then just drop the zipped files into the matching folders tagged in the zip. In the unlikely event of anyone actually trying this out..... Be gentle! tinymod.zip