mobius

maybe this has been discussed before, but this glaringly obvious enigma just occurred to me why is there such a large market for unusable alien technology (assuming only X-Com has learned the uses of plasma weaponry, UFO navigational units, etc. as of yet, with its own private army of elite specialist xenoresearchers), mutilated, rotting alien corpses, and psychedelic alien recreation pods, et al? seemingly insatiable in fact, as the inhuman tech/corpse market can never be saturated, and appears to have virtually infinite supply of cash to what I would think is a relatively limited market, considering the nature of the goods further, this would seem to have a few side-effects. one, I thought X-Com was a secretive project. thousands of plasma weapons, metals not of this earth, and actual alien bodies would surely be discovered at some point. no conspiracy could be widespread and disciplined enough to conceal alien invasion from the panicking masses [*]. do these countless millions of dollars of profit come from the member governments? less upstanding states? that would be a lot of budgetary pork to add to normal government projects, and become hard to conceal from audits and the like second, with all this armament in the hands of non-X-Com entities, X-Com's demise would surely not be the end of humanity. in all likelihood, with the possible exception of advanced craft, fuel, and large scale weaponry, whatever external entities purchase X-Com surplus have many more times over anything X-Com ever possessed .. small arms, advanced explosives, alloys and armors more advanced than anything developed by man, anti-gravity propulsion systems, live aliens to interrogate, etc. if they did their own research, they could certainly learn how to use a good deal of it, and could begin detecting/recovering their own UFOs in time, leading to the salvation of the planet something just doesn't add up .. I'm not one for conspiracies, but what if the aliens themselves are posing as legitimate buyers through rogue countries? indeed, X-Com could just be caught in a vicious and ironic circle, resupplying the very aliens they vow to destroy with their choice weaponry and craft components. the aliens may examine the deceased brethren and filter out their inferior DNA from their cloning control systems to improve upon the designs (sort of a consciously enforced Darwin). do you really think any group on earth has a use for hundreds of alien corpses, and be willing to pay USD20,000 each for them? food for thought .. [*] this also made me think of terrorist missions. are the surviving civilians red-flashy-thinged at the end of the mission, or are they imprisoned? what about the unexplainable and sometimes extensive property damage?

yeah, for now, just playing around with the files a bit. I know there are editors out there (in fact I just DL'd CWE), but I'd rather reinvent the wheel for programming practice and my own amusement Pumpkinhead, thanks for that link! that should get me started

I browsed all the mod forum pages and searched, but couldn't find anything I'm interested in playing around with the files a bit, but don't really feel like reverse engineering soldier stats and crap with a hex editor like I did 10 years ago .. heh. has anyone compiled a comprehensive (or not) layout of various files data structures (like soldiers.dat, obdata.dat, etc.)? or if not, does anyone some notes on what they've discovered they could share? also, is there a FAQ/guide to what all the .dat files map to, game-wise? ie, soldiers.dat controls soldier data .. that sort of thing thanks in advance

okay, reading the posts made me think of a couple more questions .. 1) if you have 2+ grav shields, does their effect stack? ie, 3 fusion defenses, 2 grav shields, do you get 9 blasts? 2) if you do set up virtually impregnable defenses, and the attacks come continously, does this positively effect your favorability with nearby countries for all the downed battleships (which presumably would not have come to Earth otherwise)? at any rate, I actually like manual base defense since my bases are laid out in the recommended fashion and you can get some loot, and have no defenses even at my main base. I may actually skip out on the shields and just set up a few squads of expendable rookies with laser rifles and personal armor it's early July 1999 and I've only been attacked once (I am on beginner mode though, as it's been a long time since I've played and I'm a wuss). I think I can beat the game with one more captured leader (I have Alien Origins ready to reseach, and a commander ready to be tortured .. er .. questioned) .. so it seems like the aliens have been quite lax in their retaliation duties

anyone ever experience this? after I build a craft that requires E115, it has 0 fuel. if I transfer it to a base with no E115 before leaving the base screen, it goes to READY intercept status when it reaches the new base, even though its tanks are empty with dual plasma, I can send it out on missions, and have it patrol/move indefinitely (until it's damaged I presume). you have to abort its base return and give it new orders after a battle. since it always shows fuel at 0%, I assume the devs look for fuel == 50 instead of fuel <= 50 for the forced base return check. once it returns to base, the game realizes what's happened and it's stuck in refuel mode until you get some Elerium to it tried this with an Interceptor, and it automatically began fueling after purchase (probably because traditional fuel is always on-hand) for reference, I'm using the CE version with xcomutil 9.5 running (including f0dder's loader thanks to the game's graphics being screwed on my XP laptop's ATI card)

yeah, I was actually thinking that after what just happened a few minutes ago. a small scout flew -directly- over one of my satellite bases before I was able to shoot it down (no intercepters at that base atm). better throw up a mindshield and hire a few rookies

so I have 2 bases set up with hyperwave decoders I use to keep an eye on other corners of the earth. they're quite bare, couple hangars, hyperwave, stores and empty living quarters assuming I don't shoot down ships nearby, can these bases be instantly destroyed by the aliens (having no automated defense/soldiers). should I waste the money to build defenses? the logic being, since it seems the aliens rely on telepathy (or nearby take-downs) to find bases, if there are no minds to detect, the base should be invisible technically, there are souls there .. base support, interceptor pilots, cooks, etc., but I doubt these actually count thoughts?

set the goescape timer to 1-day granularity, and ignore all ufos/terror sites for 2-3 months. then you will soon see what the aliens came for ..