magic9mushroom

Old, but still accurate.
UFOs/Alien Subs generate -1 point every half hour, or -2 if they're landed/touched down. That's -48 a day per ship, or -2976 for two of them for the 31-day month of December (assuming they count as in flight rather than touched down on land; double it if they're touched down). I think this is, in fact, the culprit; you presumably had a slow couple of months (particularly since ACTS.DAT would have run dry near the middle of 2042) and weren't able to overcome that giant malus.
EDIT: If you want to continue (though aren't you getting a bit bored?), you'll probably want to delete those subs so they don't keep scoring for the aliens. Go into LOC.DAT with a hex editor, set width to 20, and zero out all the rows that start with a "01", then go into CRAFT.DAT with width 22 (so each record takes up 5 rows) and set all the records that start with something between "05" and "0c" to start with "ff" and have the rest zeroes. This should delete all Alien Subs currently on the globe. Back up your game files first; I haven't tested this.

Old, but still accurate.
UFOs/Alien Subs generate -1 point every half hour, or -2 if they're landed/touched down. That's -48 a day per ship, or -2976 for two of them for the 31-day month of December (assuming they count as in flight rather than touched down on land; double it if they're touched down). I think this is, in fact, the culprit; you presumably had a slow couple of months (particularly since ACTS.DAT would have run dry near the middle of 2042) and weren't able to overcome that giant malus.
EDIT: If you want to continue (though aren't you getting a bit bored?), you'll probably want to delete those subs so they don't keep scoring for the aliens. Go into LOC.DAT with a hex editor, set width to 20, and zero out all the rows that start with a "01", then go into CRAFT.DAT with width 22 (so each record takes up 5 rows) and set all the records that start with something between "05" and "0c" to start with "ff" and have the rest zeroes. This should delete all Alien Subs currently on the globe. Back up your game files first; I haven't tested this.

https://ufopedia.csignal.org/usopedia/077.png
 
While Lobster Men aren't entirely robotic, they have a lot of synthetic components. Eating them might not be the best of ideas.

I do have to ask, Zombie; with all the stuff you know and have and some of it not publicised (like the annotated source code of TFTD), have you thought through what happens to safeguard it if you were to die? This sort of thing has a nasty tendency to slip between the cracks, since relatives won't have your passwords to get into things and frequently won't even know that they're supposed to be looking, never mind what for.
 
Very morbid, I know, but I just want to be sure we don't lose some of this stuff.

I mentioned it further up. Aliens in phase 2 of colonies always seem to spawn in the North, apart from the commanders (who have dedicated spawn points in the command module). I believe it's a result of there being too many spawn points for the engine to correctly roll among all of them - those maps are FAR more complicated than anything from UFO*.
 
They can move southward as the mission progresses, but generally you're going to find most of them in the North.
 
(I think this is also why there's the long stretch of nothing in T'leth L2/L3, as the usually-abandoned section is in the South. It's not nearly as striking as the colonies, though, probably because the map isn't 3D.)
 
*Remember, the Gollops made UFO's engine and all the data was designed around it; TFTD was made by a MicroProse team in a year, and they didn't understand the (shared) engine anywhere near as deeply. This is why they made rookie mistakes like changing the UFOpaedia-displayed values for craft-weapon fire rates without changing the real ones, or removing the limit on how many Engineers you can put on a project without twigging to the fact that the limit was there to mask an underlying engine limit on manufacturing rate. And then there are the various ways TFTD expands on UFO, whether that be more aliens, bigger maps, aliens with carried melee weapons or two-part missions, which often run into hidden engine limits (the obvious stuff they noticed and could kludge, but a lot of the subtler stuff got missed).

After all these years, I finally know that it's real and I finally know why it's so elusive.
 
The Apocalypse mission, in which all UFOs swarm into Mega-Primus and start tearing down the city, is triggered when you destroy the Control Chamber and cut off the stream of UFOs. It's the aliens' last act of spite.
 
The reason it's elusive is because usually you've wiped out the UFO fleet by then, leaving the aliens nothing to execute it with. It'll only occur if you start doing the Alien Dimension missions while there are still UFOs flying around to fight you.

More or less done, although there are a couple of things I still need to alpha-test (alien tech levels might need to be slowed down given the somewhat-increased amount of UFOs, and I need to make sure the Battleship and Mothership loadout fixes actually work). Once I've done those and done my own playthrough test it'll be beta-test time.

I'm partway through making a mod of Apocalypse with Apoc'd. It is partially a balance mod, like karadoc's, but it comes at a lot of things from a different direction. About the only thing that's really the same in both is that Toxin A and Toxin B don't ignore shields. It also addresses the issue of some UFOs being literally worthless to research besides points, while others are completely required; the quantum physics tech tree has been massively revamped so that several different UFOs are capable of unlocking a given tech (the Mothership does have a couple of unique techs associated with it, but they're not necessary for victory).
 
One thing is bugging me, though: is there anyone besides me to play it? I don't see a lot of people posting in this board, and I don't really know any other boards where there's an active Apocalypse community. It feels kinda silly to keep making tweaks if no-one's going to enjoy it.
 
So, uh, post here if you actually want a magic9mushroom-flavour mod. Or know somewhere where I might find more people.

In TB mode, given that a turn lasts 11 seconds, the given rate of fire of a weapon is attained in Auto mode.
 
However, in RT mode, the given rate of fire of a weapon is attained in Snap mode i.e. all weapons fire twice as fast.
 
Anyone else noticed this? Am I going nuts? (OK, yes, I'm going nuts. But more specifically am I imagining this?)

This is in relation to the infamous "why don't the Psimorph in Battleships and the Micronoids in Battleships and Motherships spawn" issue.
 
I have some testing data, but while I can grasp the general shape of it ("aliens are in squads, some aliens can go together in squads while others can't, and there's a maximum of 6 squads and 6 aliens per squad"), the exact details don't make a lot of sense to me.
 
So, I figured I'd post some of the data I have and see if anyone else can make sense of this, because I sure can't.
 
If a line starts off with "+", then whatever's after the + is in addition to the previous line.
 
3 Multi 1 Anthro 1 Skele 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
+ 1 Egg = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
3 Multi 1 Anthro 1 Skele 6 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
+ 1 Spit = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
4 Multi 1 Anthro 1 Skele 6 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
+ 1 Spit = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
4 Multi 1 Anthro 1 Skele 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
3 Multi 6 Anthro 6 Skele 6 Pop 6 Mega 6 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorphs appear
3 Multi 7 Anthro 1 Skele 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 5 Spit 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 3 Spit 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 6 Spit 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 6 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
6 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 6 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
5 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 6 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
7 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 4 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
6 Anthro 1 Skele 1 Spit 5 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
24 Anthro 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
20 Multi 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
21 Multi 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
22 Multi 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
24 Multi 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
25 Multi 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Psimorph but Megaspawn appears
20 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
21 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears
24 Pop 1 Mega 1 Psi 1 Micro = no squads for Micronoid but Psimorph appears

After all these years, I finally know that it's real and I finally know why it's so elusive.
 
The Apocalypse mission, in which all UFOs swarm into Mega-Primus and start tearing down the city, is triggered when you destroy the Control Chamber and cut off the stream of UFOs. It's the aliens' last act of spite.
 
The reason it's elusive is because usually you've wiped out the UFO fleet by then, leaving the aliens nothing to execute it with. It'll only occur if you start doing the Alien Dimension missions while there are still UFOs flying around to fight you.

After all these years, I finally know that it's real and I finally know why it's so elusive.
 
The Apocalypse mission, in which all UFOs swarm into Mega-Primus and start tearing down the city, is triggered when you destroy the Control Chamber and cut off the stream of UFOs. It's the aliens' last act of spite.
 
The reason it's elusive is because usually you've wiped out the UFO fleet by then, leaving the aliens nothing to execute it with. It'll only occur if you start doing the Alien Dimension missions while there are still UFOs flying around to fight you.

Hooray, I can post threads again!

Some of that is due to democratic backsliding. I wouldn't say all of it; Tony Abbott ran on a platform of undoing a carbon tax, so that one's on the Aussie public. But in a lot of the modern West, democracy is choosing which head of the hydra eats your leg; in the US, for instance, there are only two major parties (no hope of starting a challenger because of spoilers) and both are bought out by roughly the same interests on most issues, so unless an issue is one of the few on which the parties choose to distance themselves, the public has no power to decide it.

I edited the UFOpaedia with all of them at the time, but:
 
- UFO's Battleship gun has a power of 140, not 148
- UFO's Battleship has 3,000 HP on DOS (not 3,200)
- TFTD's Battleship has a gun power of 140, and the Dreadnought 120 - the opposite way around from UFO, which has 120 for the Terror Ship (equivalent to TFTD Battleship) and 140 for the Battleship (equivalent to TFTD Dreadnought).
 
(Of course, the Dreadnought is still a fiercer foe than the TFTD Battleship due to its huge health and greater range.)

I can confirm that there is always exactly one Magnetic Navigation in an Artefact Site - the Synomium Device itself. Unlike the one in a Colony or UFO's Alien Bases, it does not explode if you win the mission by killing all the aliens. There is also guaranteed to be at least one Alien Sub Construction, since there's one on the bottom floor of the module containing the Synomium (there may be more, depending on what random modules spawn, but that particular one is guaranteed).

Booted up Apoc'd and took a look through the UFO loadouts, and was very surprised by what I discovered.
 
The Psimorph is supposed to be on Battleships (albeit only one), and the Micronoid Aggregate is supposed to be on Battleships and Motherships (3 each).
 
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this is because Megaspawn and Psimorphs take up four unit slots and the aliens run into the 36-soldier limit (this would also imply that the game does the alien types in order, and that if there's not enough spawn slots left for an alien type it completely skips them rather than doing as many as possible).
 
Now I know why Wong's guide lists aliens that don't appear; they're supposed to.

I'm partway through making a mod of Apocalypse with Apoc'd. It is partially a balance mod, like karadoc's, but it comes at a lot of things from a different direction. About the only thing that's really the same in both is that Toxin A and Toxin B don't ignore shields. It also addresses the issue of some UFOs being literally worthless to research besides points, while others are completely required; the quantum physics tech tree has been massively revamped so that several different UFOs are capable of unlocking a given tech (the Mothership does have a couple of unique techs associated with it, but they're not necessary for victory).
 
One thing is bugging me, though: is there anyone besides me to play it? I don't see a lot of people posting in this board, and I don't really know any other boards where there's an active Apocalypse community. It feels kinda silly to keep making tweaks if no-one's going to enjoy it.
 
So, uh, post here if you actually want a magic9mushroom-flavour mod. Or know somewhere where I might find more people.

I'm interested in putting them up on the wiki, as they're relevant in a few cases (the toxins clearly make heavy use of them, for instance). Unfortunately, I do not know them and do not know how to extract them.
 
Does anyone know these numbers?
 
EDIT: Um. They're already up. I just hadn't found them for some reason. Probably needs a few more links in "see also" sections. :-/
 
EDIT2: One thing I am still interested in, though, is the armour stat on security station turrets.
 
EDIT3: Found it with Apoc'd. It's 35.

Clearly, the Russians are in league with alien forces.

There are two basic forms of "intelligence" - there's the actual AI code, and there's the "Intelligence" stat.
 
The "intelligence" stat is how many turns an alien "remembers" a unit's position.
 
The AI code is kinda weird. Especially because the TFTD team had no fucking clue what they were doing (the TFTD designers were given the binaries of UFO but not the source code). Xarquid do tend to camp, and often other aliens end up doing it as well. I suspect this is due to bad pathing algorithms rather than intentional; the alien literally can't figure out how to get from A to B, so it stays at A.
 
Regarding the Bio-Drone... you seem to be forgetting that these are AIs that are a few lines of code. The code says "if melee range then use melee attack". So the Bio-Drone does that. The code doesn't account for the Bio-Drone having an accuracy of 0 because the code wasn't written with that in mind. So it keeps using the melee attack. This is normal behaviour for a simple AI put in a situation it's not designed for.
 
I skimmed your post because it's a 2,400-word incoherent stream of consciousness, so I probably missed something. Try rereading and trimming your posts before submitting them if you want me to pay more attention.

There are two basic forms of "intelligence" - there's the actual AI code, and there's the "Intelligence" stat.
 
The "intelligence" stat is how many turns an alien "remembers" a unit's position.
 
The AI code is kinda weird. Especially because the TFTD team had no fucking clue what they were doing (the TFTD designers were given the binaries of UFO but not the source code). Xarquid do tend to camp, and often other aliens end up doing it as well. I suspect this is due to bad pathing algorithms rather than intentional; the alien literally can't figure out how to get from A to B, so it stays at A.
 
Regarding the Bio-Drone... you seem to be forgetting that these are AIs that are a few lines of code. The code says "if melee range then use melee attack". So the Bio-Drone does that. The code doesn't account for the Bio-Drone having an accuracy of 0 because the code wasn't written with that in mind. So it keeps using the melee attack. This is normal behaviour for a simple AI put in a situation it's not designed for.
 
I skimmed your post because it's a 2,400-word incoherent stream of consciousness, so I probably missed something. Try rereading and trimming your posts before submitting them if you want me to pay more attention.

What you're describing is the top level of an artefact site, one of the new kinds of terror mission in TFTD.
 
I think the answer to essentially all these questions you keep asking is going to be "your copy of TFTD is corrupted". There's no point asking the same question 50 times, you're just going to get the same answer 50 times over. Your game is borked. Nobody can tell you what's safe or unsafe because you aren't playing the same game that we are. Strange things are probably going to keep happening forever, and we aren't going to be able to explain them because we don't have your corrupted copy of TFTD to test with.

Well, here's what I understand of it.
 
- Every month, the aliens start one Alien Terror mission and one "non-Terror" mission from the set {Alien Research, Alien Abduction, Alien Harvest, Alien Base, Alien Infiltration} (chosen at random, with weights depending on what zone it's being attempted in). Alien Retaliation missions are spawned by X-Com shooting down UFOs, and Alien Supply missions are randomly spawned by existing bases.
- Alien Base missions, unsurprisingly, build an alien base. Then they terminate. Alien Infiltration missions also build an alien base when a country is infiltrated, and they do not then terminate; they start over, and repeat until every country in that region has been infiltrated (spawning a base for each one).
 
I'm guessing that what happened was some combination of the following:
- a couple of alien bases that had already been built, but which you hadn't found
- the alien-mission die rolling Infiltration several times in a row, with the earlier Infiltrations continuing and spawning more bases even while the later ones were going on

I see. Well, I'm sorry about that, but I didn't know.
 
(I play an absolutely vanilla DOS version of UFO: Enemy Unknown 1.4. Only change is that I hacked out the difficulty bug. Myself, with a hex editor, not with a utility like UFO Extender or XcomUtil, because most of the utilities "fix" stuff I don't want "fixed" with no way to opt out.)