Alienated

I discovered an odd thing in the PSX version. It happens that another infiltration mission may be generated after one is completed in the same area. Therefore one month may have a terror mission, two missions of some kind, some retaliation missions AND the repeated infiltration mission. Usually the missions are introduced by small scouts early in the month but the small scout of a repeated infiltration mission may appear any time in the month.

Now this makes more sense. Now this is the point where the hacker would step in and identify the variables in the save files corresponding to log your interceptions of UFOs on infiltration missions. Fortunately I can test this on the PSX version because I have a save with eight bases and twenty or so Avengers. I won't promise anything but I will report the outcome in case I have tested.

My problem is the work isn't a DOS application but Java. I would be interested otherwise.

What you say may be true. But do I have to prevent all infiltration UFOs of reaching target country? I am sure one or two of them (for example the first one, small scout) isn't enough because I have already tried that. Nevertheless, I know alien missions can be slowed down depending on which flight phase the scouts are intercepted. For example you shoot the small scout down from very high in 11th of May, the next scout, a medium scout may even come in the next month. So it may happen the writer of the article believed he defeated the entire mission because he didn't wait until June. Such things happen, you know.

One solution is play the PSX version in whcih aliens and soldiers restore stun damage only when somebody is standing above them. Another solution is take the stunned body in a corner and move a tank (or soldiers) above it. It can not be waken up because the walls and the tank is in the way.

Alien missions are sceduled by regions, not countries. Russia is both in Siberia and Europe. The developers probably forgot to decide which one should have been set. What you, silencer, stated is inaccurate. An infiltration mission is always successful, entirely independent of X-COM score. You can see how it is in the Barracuda Lunch AAR. My barracudas ate every USO but pacts were done, though. If there is any option to count in to infiltrate, then it has got to be the funding score. Usually USA pays the best so USA is the most likely target, and by my experience, USA is in the first five countries signing a pact.

Heck! Is it then actually a bug? I can confirm the PSX version is free of it because I remember my laboratory or workshop blastered without crashing the program. Another example how the coders could not realise the game design. It is a poor thing when you have to play this and that way not to let the game crash.

I guess the game crashes because it can't erase your base facility in the Geoscape as you just hacked the tiles in the terrain. I believe the game immediately does the modifications in your base, even before it kills the alien who shot.

I also watch this topic. I make no remarks because I've already posted my opinions elsewhere. Well alright. I believe this Pistol Rule can't make your AAR exciting enough. I would very much like to read an AAR with a No Sniper Scout Rule.

Kyrub, your interpretation may be wrong because the artifact mission counter may be an ordinary type. The first mission is 0 and the 12th one is 11. That means you are supposed to get no more artifact site after 12. And the aship may mean ancient ship. Here the ancient means several million years old space ship (65) used for interstellar travel. I suppose they land like a meteor because they just can not slow down. The pyramids above the "shipwreck" are meteor prisms but of course a real meteor prism looks not like that. So the second stage of the artifact mission is actually the inside of one of the twelve space ships accompanying the mother ship called T'leth.

"Deep in the oceans there lie ancient sites used by the Aliens to contact their stellar cousins. Each of these twelve sites contains a synomium device, a powerful Alien technology. Now with their war machine on the march the Aliens are re-activating these sites to widen their Molecular Control net, we must destoy these sties at all costs." This quote is part of the Alien Origins research report.

That is supposed to mean aliens attack shipping route, that is terror site on a liner. Oh, wait a minute. I guess the poster means after you destroy eleven synomium devices, you no longer get artefact sites because T'leth is supposed to be the 12th target as the UFOpaedia says there are 12 special objectives. But as far as I have been told, the artefact sites are infinite in practice. In this meaning, Artefact / Alien ship means the pyramid site and the base with the synomium device that is not a ship unless it is a huge ship in the seabed.

I vote for action. The farm terrain at night isn't as bad as a desert terrain at night. You can camp in the farmhouses. That means close combat. A captured intact UFO nets you fine money, which is very healthy early in the game. If you wouldn't want to miss an UFO, then it is early in the game.

Yes, the reason why certain players have one Triton/Skyranger per campaign is this. But there are lots of reasons not to do that. You mentioned the Zrbite/Elerium problem. And there is the fact the transport craft can do the longest term flights. They can patrol for about a day. In the beginning, meaning the first few months, when you have one base, the patrolling transports are the only way to deal with faraway alien activity. Yes, you indeed save 600K per month by not buying an extra transport but you may lose several million bucks because you miss a lot of USO flights without the extra craft patrolling. Well, I reload game if things don't go well, so I can afford the risk to build my new hangar(s) around 6th or 7th of January and they are completed in 1st of February at 0:00 a.m. Then I order the 2nd Triton. But even then I have two Tritons by February. And when the aliens start to build bases (that can easily be in April), I usually have four or more Tritons in order I could assault four or more landed USOs at the same time (within few hours). This is how the game works. You probably have no idea how many USOs you don't even detect. I know there are uneventful days, especially in January, but no one can tell if two or more USOs happen to show up in the same hour. If you shoot one down and catch the other on land (seabed), then you risk a floating base attack. The floating base attack is another reason to keep two Tritons, one at the base always in case a Dreadnought drops in.

Ignore one of the terror sites. I guess the shipping route gives you more negative scores if ignored, so send troops there even if you hate two-stage missions. Your scores can be better than on a mere island/port attack. I guess you are at least at 1st of February. This means you just made an error in geoscape operations. Experienced players, especially ironman players, immediately build a hangar on the 1st day. That completes by 26th of January. They order a Triton that arrives before 1st of February. And you say you have an MC Lab (so you are even later than February) and STILL ONE transport craft... You obviously have not learnt to play this game. Now you have two terror alerts on the map and one transport. It seems you ARE learning now.

I guess you should contact the legal distributors with your idea as a proposal. I know what difficulty "to contact" means nowadays but it still seems the solution. If they don't even give bleep, then you have some right to give bleep too and post your patch. Just give it a look of legality, I mean you give proper credits and links here and there, this guy and that guy. Then chances are they will leave you and your post alone. It seems to me lot of people do so on the web. And I agree, emulators can be better environment for "alien" applications than ports of them though business isn't to make an emulator for many applications but to make many ports of an application for many systems. That's why so many systems exist. You basically just bloody well insult software-hardware business policies. You may become a hero someday.

They are not more regular on superhuman than on beginner. But there are some things that can increase regularity. The probability of a retaliation mission after a shot-down USO is higher on superhuman. A retaliation mission (floating base attack) includes eight USO flights which increases the activity in number by about 30%. It can increase the activity in score even more as the seeker USOs wander to and from a lot. And I agree, superhuman mode can be the easiest one to beat the game the sooner-soonest. But I believe the game can be so hard for a beginner that the difference between superhuman and beginner modes isn't significant.

This can't be measured by the number of reloads. Gaming hours could be a better measure but I didn't watch that either. I mass-kill time. Still, playing a game-year only on the geoscape takes less real time. And destroying an alien colony with Solo takes some minutes with or without reloads. How long can commanding about twelve turns for one operative take? Since I don't use the Craft Gauss Cannon, I don't have to reload half as many times. I guess you can do a perfect interception by no more than ten reloads average. If you want to do it without reloads and perfection, you need twice as many D.U.P. Head Torpedoes. And I guess a Battleship can be downed by four Barracudas and a Dreadnought by eight. You get -200 victory points for losing an interceptor so downing these subs does not pay well still it's better than an ignored or terrible terror site or a destroyed base. Aliens don't get victory points for destroying an undefended X-COM base but they score very much if you lose the defensive fight on a base with several Barracudas/Tritons. Aliens tend to hit your base by surprise if you have just sonars and you can't evacuate the base to be undefended. Base defense missions aren't so tough as in EU but lobster men can easily beat you if you have nothing better than gauss weapons (or even worse). Therefore having Barracudas attack big game alien subs can be a proper choice. And it is great fun if you don't risk anything besides some minutes of loading when you reload.

They fixed the difficulty bug. They changed the text fonts too. A lot of bugs still exist however. It seems to me the game becomes pretty constant within a year. You may not find a plasma pistol by then so you can't research it afterwards. Yes, muton and ethereal missions become frequent but not exclusive. There are other things too that determine how rare a race may be. Ethereals and mutons never do abduction missions and when an abduction mission is randomized, it has got to be sectoid or floater. Aliens initiate maximum four missions per month: 1 terror, 1 retaliation, 2 others (base, infiltration, harvest, abduction). Then additional missions may be sparked any day if a base is present (base supply) or X-COM destroys or crashes an UFO (retaliation). Areas also determine the missions. For example a base mission may happen at any area whereas terror and abduction may not happen on Antarctica or Arctic. Battleships are quite rare. The most common UFO is the Large Scout. Read the last post in the Guest Remarks in the UFOpaedia.org section. There I list the alien missions for Terror from the Deep. I don't know how much you know that game though I suppose you know Large Scout is Cruiser in that. The two games are quite similar. Every alien mission has an exact series of UFO types. That does not change through the months (or years). Optimally the wiki folks have already put the info on the wikipage. I may present detailed data for Enemy Unknown too in the future.

This reminds me of self-lashing. A really mazochistic game!

Of course and I explained the reason why it is a cool rule, you even quoted it. I remember a tool to transfer data from PSX to PC still there is no way I can do that. I have learned about your map collection in another topic and I have also seen your request was just ignored. Maybe the guy also plays the PSX version or the aliens have abducted him to stay... However, I still can do something. I am planning to redo this campaign with some changes in rules. Now I know the funding is sufficient to keep X-COM alive and successful, I can exlude this part. I will do the colony, terror, and artefact missions (i.e. the two stage missions), and of course the base defenses. I sell the loot and research everything (that will be a campaign objective). I won't do crash recoveries and USO assaults. I will keep about 30 aquanauts (I may probably do one or two battles per month after all). All of that means I can do several artefact missions in a relatively short time and I may get several walled in aliens too. I will keep track of their locations and report you. But who knows? I may happen to play TftD never again.

Then it seems monsters in POWDER aren't a bit more merciful than the monsters in NetHack. Do you mean those red dragons in the tutorial can't be beaten? By the way I died again. I zapped a flaming staff at a rat. The missile killed the rat and it still had enough power to bounce off the wall behind the corpse and hit me back. The good news is I can then burn several monsters lined up in a corridor. I like it when staves have power. I read the game help, the skills/spells and gods, and the class change during the exploration. Such flexibility greatly increases the survival ratio unless the game designer invented things that greatly decrease it. The barbarian class seems a good plan, however, I try to choose my class according to what items I find in the dungeon. I dig the class system of POWDER all in all. I don't think I can ever beat the game but I see some funny dungeon clawls in the future. Sometimes NetHack also can be enjoyable. It is when I find several valuable items and several shops on the first few floors. I usually play an elven ranger, and when he can shoot three arrows per turn, I am getting to see the light in the end of the tunnel.

I mean the dreadnoughts seeking the base and not attacking it. If you make the seekers (survey ship, escorts, cruisers, and dreadnoughts) crash, the base doesn't get attacked by a good chance. I guess this is the first phase of base defense. The next phase is only for Leviathans, charging the attacker dreadnought. The third phase is the sonic/PWT defences. The last phase is the personal randezvous in the access lift and the sub pens. And the phase before the first phase is leaving moving alien subs alone. NKF, I don't suspect reloads and such tricks still I believe they are possible. Well, suspect means something like that anyway... I just hardly believe there could be any fun in such a campaign if the players cheat. I for one prefer reading about the dramatic missions to smooth ones. Maybe it was Bomb Bloke who DPLed the tank in the lobster dreadnought assault just to have a good story to tell. I could forgive that. However, something surely happened in the case of the survey ship and I was curious what because survey ships are good indicators for alien missions. You get almost as many survey ships as many missions. An extra survey ship in the picture means several missing (not detected) subs. It is really hard to estimate the efficiency of an iron man campaign with ghost subs. Unfortunately I can't join such a multiplayer game because my home machine isn't connected directly to the WWW (it has several advantages). I could upload save files, maybe a few screenshots too; the problem is the game itself. It is too sizey to be portable. And I am a quite console man, I play a lot and sitting before a PC all day long instead of laying in the bed all day long isn't my wish.

Solo AAR I have already written a lot about this campaign on the forums and I just thought why not post the whole story? So here it is. The rules: 1. I must intercept every alien sub. 2. I must not use alien technology. 3. I must not exploit the loot (from battles) and must not produce items for profit. 4. I must employ one aquanaut who must not die. 5. I may reload game anytime I see fit. 6. I may choose what the aliens do on the geoscape. Notes on the rules: 1. My first X-COM games were almost iron man walkthroughs because I did not care if an UFO outran my interceptor and was lost. In this aspect the geoscape game has challenge close to zero. Now that I know how many UFOs do a mission and how they do it, I can tell whether I have failed to eliminate any of them. This is a basic conduct now everytime I play an X-COM campaign. It is not hard at all to down occasionally a UFO/USO and get a positive monthly score but to catch them all takes a lot of planning and care even if you reload game. 2. Clearing the sky of battleships and fleet supply cruisers isn't hard by a sonic oscillator (and I mean a sonic oscillator) even if you equip it on a mere BARRACUDA. It doesn't even need Zrbite to rearm. Not to mention a Leviathan that practically renders the alien sub speed thing ineffective. 3. The funding system is almost unneccessary when you sell alien stuff at fat prices. Money was my last concern in my previous campaigns so I have made it more interesting. As I can't simply throw away items and I neither want to build extra general stores just to keep them, I have to abort every mission not to get any alien stuff. Therefore terror sites are excluded. I don't visit crash sites because (1) what's the use if I don't get anything from that?; (2) when can I say a crash site is completed, what can be the mission objective?; (3) the campaign could have been incredibly long (and boring) if I had visited every crash site. The 100th Escort or Cruiser mission could have probably told me to quit and play an entirely different game. However, the two-stage missions (colony and artefact site) are basically created for an abort. There is a certain mission objective that can be done even with one aquanaut. Therefore the geoscape only game is given. Anytime the random generator gives me a ship terror, I just reload to get an artefact site instead. 4. I long planned a solo X-COM game. There is two good things about the solo one in this campaign: (1) I pay less for personnel; (2) sneak tactics can be interesting. I compensated the alien odds by creating a super hero. Solo (his name) had all maximum attributes a recruit can have from the very start (i.e. Time Units 60, Stamina 70, Health 40, Bravery 60, Reactions 60, Firing Accuracy 70, Throwing Accuracy 80, Strength 40, Melee Skill 40, M.C. Strength 100). I already considered some sort of attribute edit because random aquanauts may make huge differences so the super hero was just a choice. I guess creating such a super Seaman isn't a great cheat because aliens in average are far stronger fighters than Solo. 5. This rule may seem to iron man gamers quite soft. I just want a perfect game. I do everything possible. They are often not the probable but what belongs to my part if I take chances? For I am just lucky if I shoot down a battleship without a loss of craft and I am unlucky if I can't shoot it down with at least two barracudas with a pair of DUP on each. I just exclude the luck part when I reload game and leave the strategy part in: you can't shoot down a battleship with one barracuda or can't shoot it down with Gas Cannons. Therefore the proper strategy is you have to ready two barracudas with DUP when and where the sub comes. This isn't always granted. For example you just can't intercept one in the South China Sea from a base in the North Atlantic. 6. This rule comes from the reload rule because you can't be a chooser without reloads. For example I can/may do that the alien sub took its random path a little bit closer to my pack of barracudas. But if the mission area of the sub is entirely out of the reach of the barracudas on the interception base, I can't do anything about it because the sub just won't leave the area randomly. The strategic requirement is to create a network of bases soon which isn't easy with the rule #3. I planned to cut my expenses by researching and producing Gauss Cannon and its ammo against the many small subs. It turned out that the craft weapon fires too slowly and too inaccurately and shooting down an escort perfectly (i.e. no escape, no stupid misses, no stupid craft damage) takes more reloads than a dreadnought combat! The perfect shot should be one crack from a double weapon: 2x90 damage, but I started to rejoice when two cracks downed a small sub. I regret the whole thing. I spent a lot of money on the research to get an almost useless stuff. The weapon is still pretty good against medium sized subs but they are also pretty rare and it isn't worth the store space on the long run. So it happened I stuck to DUP weapons as soon as I used up the default Ajax-Gas Cannon stock. I managed to use Gauss Cannon successfully against fleet supply cruisers but the possibility thing and the probability thing were somewhat distant from each other if you know what I mean... The Gauss Cannon even managed to down survey ships (i.e. not destroying them) often enough (and this is not a praise). The DUP torpedo too may do that but very rarely. I don't need to mention (but I do) downing a survey ship by DUP isn't a perfect interception in this campaign. The early months weren't much different from any player's any game because aliens were active near my first base (and if you help that a little;) and the alien subs weren't above the one pair of barracudas "fleet" food ration. The parallel alien colony expansions in April made the X-COM forces quite busy, for sure. As soon as my X-COM base expansion was near finished, the aliens' activity wasn't challenging any longer. The things got really exciting in November when they started floating base attack missions and infiltrations (kind of let them do that), and that was the point when I was considering to redouble my barracuda fleet because it meant they had four parallel missions per month extending through months therefore eight parallel missions going on. No single day without alien sub. And dreadnoughts were just a coming too often... However, I gave it a try and solved the swarm in February by having only 11 barracudas. It just couldn't have got much worse (as far as I know) so I decided to declare this campaign successful and worthy for a report. Maybe I will resume the game but I have already eight completely built-in bases (eight hangars in each) and about eighty million bucks in the bank even after USA (and Africa Corp.) quit funding me. I have some nations with about three million and the poorest ones are reaching the one million of funding. I mean I may not get broke soon as it seems. I have discovered the program forgets the number of artefact sites completed. If I do Artefact Site-1 and switch off the machine or reload from the main menu, then the next artefact site is Artefact Site-1 again. In the other hand, it remembers how many it generated otherwise even if I never touch them. For example I get an Artefact Site-1 in August 1 1:00 and I reload game to July 31 23:59, then it generates an Artefact Site-2 in August 1 1:00 (if it is not a ship terror or surface attack mission) the second time. This is how I managed to attack Artefact Site-6 by several reloads. It says "Alien activity continues" and "Base still intact" instead of "Aliens defeated" though my sneaky missions are clear anyway. It seems the registration of these artefact missions are bugged somehow. I guess it sets the counter properly if you kill all aliens on stage two. The geoscape variable is a secondary value. It is set by the "strong" value. As my strong value is always zero because of the abort, the secondary value is initialised accordingly but it gets falsely updated by reloads in geoscape. The UFOpaedia says there are twelve such sites to eliminate and I wonder which variable is checked for this, the strong one (anywhere it may be) or the geoscape one (or none of them...). There is usually a monster or two stuck in the wall on second stage of artefact sites. Then the mission can't be completed normally (i.e. without digging up the whole map). I wonder whether there is somebody who completed twelve artefact sites to the last aliens and had his artefact site counter working properly. And what happened. Some words about the battle scape missions. I didn't have to create a super hero because the missions were easier than I expected. Some of them were pretty quick. For example alien colony 5 and 6 took 4+5 turns and without a reload! A simple walk in the park indeed. Actually colony missions are much easier now when alien guards outside use DPL instead of sonic and I just can pass by the guards. It seems the program doesn't give a bleep if I dance before the aliens as long as reaction shots aren't involved and I don't stay in their sights in alien turn. Now that's the thing you can't do in Enemy Unknown. The command center is some kind of fortress within the base with the 50% of guards crammed in the location. However, the sneaky idea came from Enemy Unknown, the Cydonia site. The Avenger happened to land nearby the pyramid with the entry area and the guys closest to the ramp could just walk down the ramp and got inside the pyramid without a hiss of plasma shot. Just in the doomly Martian darkness. Now the artefact sites are very similar. If the certain pyramid is close to the Triton, Solo is almost granted to survive otherwise he is almost granted to die no matter how many times I reload. The only difference is TftD always puts an alien in the pyramid and sometimes the ticket inside the base is an auto-shot from the gauss rifle. The inside job is a lot easier but still not as easy as an alien colony inside job. The inside job of a colony is almost granted to succeed. The last time I killed a Tentaculat just because (it were there... not exactly) I wanted to build some muscles on Solo (i.e. some more strength than 40) for the future when I will add a magna pack explosive to his equipment to spare the dangerously dwindling gauss ammo (I use the gauss rifle to destroy the synomium device mostly, what a bloody pacifism!). I guess the abbreviations in the log attached are self-explanatory for veteran players though I explain them anyway. There are a few types of events. I log the alien sub's first detection with date, time, location, registration number, type, mission, destination, depth, and the detector (base or craft). The locations are North Atlantic NAt, South Atlantic SAt, North Pacific NPc, South Pacific SPc, Indian Ocean InO, North Sea NS, Sea of Japan SoJ, South China Sea SCS, Arctic Arc, Antarctic Ant, Mediterranean Med, Caribbean Car, and some rare locations: Alaska Ala, Japan Jap, North America NAm, South America SAm, Africa Afr, Europe Eur, Eurasia Eua, Central Asia CAs. The subs are survey ship S, escort E, cruiser C, heavy cruiser H, hunter R, battleship B, fleet supply cruiser F, dreadnought D. The missions are probe P, surface attacks aka terror S, resource raid R, interdiction D, infiltration I, colony expansion E, floating base attack F, colony supply C (not in this campaign because that can't be intercepted). Depths are very deep V, deep D, normal N, shallow S, airborn A, touched down T. The detectors are (e.g) SIREN 1 S1, (e.g.) BARRACUDA-1 B1, TRITON-1 T1. As I can't tell which of the many within range detected the sub, I just pick the lowest serial or closest item, and craft has priority because I noticed they more accurately spot subs than sonars of bases. I log the combat with the sub that may mean alien sub hit H, alien sub downed X (from the crash site indicator), alien sub destroyed D with the interceptors that can't be other than BARRACUDAs (e.g. B1). The craft weapons are craft gas cannon C, gauss cannon G, ajax torpedo A, D.U.P. head torpedo D. The number of shots usually means the number of hits. However, I can't tell how many D.U.P. head torpedoes of B1 3D3D actually hit the target. At least 3. It may happen (not the perfect one of course) only 3D3D downs a small sub. This means 3 torpedoes very probably hit only fish-piss while 3 torpedoes managed to knock at the hull of the sub. Fortunately large subs are easier to hit, so a 3D3D usually means six hits on the sub. I log the transfers, the builds, the shoppings with date and time again but without the location because the base is more important. And the quantity is also noted. (You probably will notice I shopped ajax torpedoes accidentally deep in the war. I let it happen because I didn't want to redo several interceptions (I actually hate to reload)). Some of these events are contracted in one, and the bases and quantity are listed. Research and production are similar. I log of course the manned X-COM activity too, namely the colony assaults e.g. AC-1 and artefact missions e.g. AS-1. The missions are listed by serial and the killed aliens (k) and destroyed objects (colony control c and synomium device s) are listed too with the total score t. It happened a tasoth DPL guy stood on the exit area when I aborted the outside stage and four artefacts (a) were recovered somehow but fortunately the items didn't become loot. The monthly scores are indicated in the end of month. solo_aar.txt

I started this topic because I didn't want to mix up my diablo topic any more. If you have any thoughts and questions about POWDER, feel free to drop a post here. All I want to say right now about POWDER is I was able to run the program on my Linux op. system. I downloaded the executable for Windows and ran it under influence of wine (WINdows Emulator). I tried to install the POWDER package and the neccessary libraries on my PC but the dependency messages just told me not to do that. By the way, I play NetHack for Windows too under wine when I play NetHack at all. Linux is just like that. What, POWDER has a tutorial. It's nice when you don't have to read several additional FAQs to know how the game works at all. The info boxes also have useful hints. NetHack just gives you a quote from the Lord of the Rings for example. In other aspect POWDER is much like NetHack. I died two times in the turorial already. There was a room with some water and there was another with red dragons in the way. I tried to ford the water and drowned. I tried to pass the dragons and they killed me. But I guess I can beat the tutorial somehow in my life time so POWDER definitely is worth playing. I have already learned some things. For example the magic missile (not the particular spell) ricochets from walls just like the missile from a freeze thrower in Duke Nukem 3d. This brings more complexity in the picture... Now I just wonder when the enemies start to fell me from behind corners and the other end of the dungeon. Sooner or later, I bet.