Nilex

Yeah me returning after 20 years, being clueless and right in the hornet nest didn't help. I just grind it out and got lucky. Read about the Toxin C before making this topic but situation didn't get desperate enough to switch from Devastators. And from quick glance I don't remember even having it available, only B. Would require some more investigating but I just wanted to get it over with ASAP! Remember, completing the objectives wasn't an issue, it was doing it without anyone getting injured (even loss of shields was unacceptable - looks too crappy in the UI ). Thank you both for advice!

LOL OK... Nevermind. After some tries I got lucky with the North spawn (safest in my experience) and Aliens arrived in manageable fashion. So I KILLED EM ALL! Time to finally watch my well deserved end animation for the first time ever. Who said patience doesn't pay off? Btw, seems getting hit by enemy fire lights your soldiers for Aliens from across the map. Then they fire and chain reaction starts... The trick was not getting spotted and quickly kill those that try come near. Move fast but in short intervals and wait. Stay further away from corner Alien spawn tubes so they can't instantly spot you. Case closed (after 22 years)

I basically stopped playing in 1998 just after entering Alien dimension. Returned in 2005 and made short work of the Aliens, until I quit again because the final mission was a bit too much to handle. So today at my third attempt (with same saves I've been carrying this whole time) all my wisdom accumulated of the years still proves insufficient to beat the last building. There is a catch though, I probably could beat it - I just don't want ANY injuries... Unacceptable. My soldiers (20) all have Disruptor Armor with Marsec torso (flying), Devastators, Cloak and 2x Shield. Four guys have Dimension Missile Launcher instead Devastator. Total cookie cutter, no brain cells required, killer squad - until this last mission. The problem is on the open fields Aliens eventually just spam Dimension Missiles beyond visual range (despite cloak) and I can go F myself. Getting mind controlled don't help either. Feel totally powerless. Turn based is even worse. Game is beaten in every other way, money is non-issue, everything is researched, etc. Is there a way to cheese through this? Specialized gear perhaps? Go wild, Thanks. SAVEGAME.zip

I'm not the one to quote own posts but... the unthinkable finally happened. Downed Aquatoid occupied Dreadnought, on a common Floating Base Attack mission - all spawned outside the damned USO. Praise the Lord, Alleluia. GAME_8.zip

I ended up 'killing' it using X-Com Hack. Simply a matter of selecting it from a list and changing its health value (can be used for capture too). Can also 'kill all' without XCU's side effect of destroying equipment. Pretty neat program that also works in Win7 without issues. Only found out about the feature because its "reveal map" function does only that but sadly leaves aliens hidden. Btw, the walls in the screeny were indestructible with the tools I had/found. So that also contributed to me digging deeper in hack features. Level above shown room has a metal grate as the floor (bow of the ship), but it too is indestructible, and opaque (contrary to visual appearance). Looks like a lift down to 2nd stage so it's funny it's inaccessible. Only 'legit' way in I guess would may be with Disruptors, hacked to work on land. It was my first Mixed Crew ship so I found both Calcinite (2nd stage) and Triscenes. And yet two more weird things happened. It's like the game never stops trowing surprises at me. Captured Triscene from 1st ship stage transferred over to 2nd stage, resulting in 2 live ones. Only I expected dead+live combo. Always thought all 1st stage (of any kind) captures convert to corpses by the end. Already researched Calcinite corpse earlier in playthrough (back in 2012... via infamous Medic) apparently permanently locking myself out of Vibro Blade tree. But when I came back to base I was able to research another one, brought from the ship. It may have been TFTDextender at work though, as it always allows duplicate live alien research (to avoid related bugs) with possible addition of Calcinite corpses. Oh and as soon as I bashed the AI in previous post, in the very next downed USO mission, a Tasoth used Disruptor with multiple waypoints on me for the first time ever. In over 200 battles I have not seen this... When they did use it, it was always like a regular single waypoint 'bullet'. Usually missing and/or suiciding themselves (and their comrades). Yeah safe to say, we had ups and downs this game and me. Thanks for being a pal throughout my adventures m9m. * * * XCU substantially expanded my beliefs about what could be done using BAT files. By far most complex install process of any similar I saw. Surprised I never once broke an install, lol. But anyway, it wasn't XCU's fault - only used it on a save folder because I knew it can reveal those pesky hidden aliens. I play using TFTDextender but it can't be at fault either. I write it up to plain 'ol bugs we all can't live without.

Starting to hate this game, what a mess lol. For now I'll finish the bugger with Sherlock's stuff but I'll never play vanilla again. Ever. One large hurdle stopping me before was giving up on original AI by playing with OpenXcom but it finally dawned on me OG AI sucks beyond repair. Just gonna make a note to my future self to prepare for possible gameplay shocks in OXC when game's internal systems start behaving as intended. Here is another gem: #11 Impossible Xarquid (revealed via XcomUtil using "vis" parametar) Spent probably 90 minutes searching him before giving up and re-learning how to use XCU again to reveal map. Took 5 installs with different setup each time before program stopped complaining about not wanting to execute reveal command. Writing this I see X-Com Hack, which I've been using all along, has the same damn feature. FML. Fingers crossed that salvaged alien grenades (only explosives on the map) will be able to tear down that wall. GAME_6.zip Also interesting fact: in both playthroughs and around 20 ships done, not one was of the "cargo" type (only recently I became aware it even existed). From what I've gathered it's the easier type. Of course it is.

Save shows module has been empty for the entire mission. Either its south placement overruled spawn rules or Sherlock's changes I've been using affected it indirectly, or a mix of both. Either way I ain't complaining - one less room to worry about!

Hm, you don't see the attachment or is something wrong with the the save itself? Looks normal on my end.

In my just completed colony mission, command module spawned just south of the magic line, completely vacant. Attached save shows my boys closing in from the north but killing that one last Lobbie in the far west ends the mission. I'm currently doing another abandoned TFTD playthrough but in my old one - 3rd T'leth stage, south section was too completely devoid of alien life. Went hand in hand with forbidden save feature (wtf lol, didn't expect that). * * * On another note, doing all this UFO/TFTD things lately somehow sparked desire to try out OCX with FMP/X-Files/Piratez mods. Not only have I avoided practically all kinds of community mods in all games my whole life, but instead of getting saturated and bored of classic XCOM gameplay (doing only that for last 2.5 months), I find myself somehow wanting even more... But not before wrapping up yet another abandoned playthrough, Apocalypse this time, played and quit all the way back in 1998. I see m9m is pretty active on that forum too. Too bad I only got a couple of alien buildings left to clear so I won't get to use all the juicy info. GAME_7.zip

When doing 8th Alien Colony I finally adapted and started using 2nd stage spawn error to my advantage simply by exploring only 3 northern-most rows. Cannot even begin to explain how much less headaches I got from then on. It's a feature as far I am concerned! Hope it remains like that in OpenXcom next time I get around to TFTD. As I'm doing last couple of T'leth levels it's time to show last few oddities from my travels: #7 Unconcious Tasoth in equip screen Pretty weird when I first saw it, didn't know what to expect when starting the mission. Happened only two times in just over 200 missions. Body was nowhere to be found after I started the mission (regular downed USO type). Dunno what to make of it. Directed by Ridley Scott perhaps? #8 11 simultaneous crash sites (result of Colony Expansion and Alien Infiltration posses, bottom ones are actually 3 X) #9 Alien Base in the Arctic (many miles from nearest sea, the real reason ice is melting) #10 Two Alien Bases off Scandinavia Sugar for last. #9 was their 12th base, but I never discovered 11th (nor was I aware of it). Not until I took a look at the "graphs" (after long time not looking) did I, horrified, realize my mistake. Scandinavia is set to seize funding but I'm about to destroy L'leth 12 hours before they dare to do so. Lol, just saw #8 again and made the connection... It sure was a rough month.

Nothing gets past you, good catches. Updated OP. I just got two observations. In countless landing attempts against my bases it only ever took 4 PWT hits to destroy any USO (always Dreadnought?) sometimes only 3 hits. Setup is 2 PWTs + Bombardment Shield. With 80% hit rate and easy re-loads it's essentially air tight and successful deterrent, if one let's it come to that of course. I normally obliterate everything except USOs that look like they may land on seabed, for Zrbite. In previous tests though when I rushed through whole months, many attacks came but at the worst the 4th PWT hit always resulted in USO destruction. Is maybe TFTDextender responsible for increased efficiency? It's weird seeing UFOpeadia too being so adamant, talking about a dozen PWTs being air tight. Well ok, perhaps save-scumming is not considered kosher. The other one is more general, about Superhuman. With increased enemy spawns and large units spawning last, don't that further decrease chances of seeing large units on battlefield? Despite them having increased spawns. Not that I intend ever playing on SH (hate cheap higher difficulty achieved via ever more bullet-sponges).

Okay, sharpened my scaplels and performed open-brain surgery on the OP. Hope the patient lives. Geez what a day. If you spot a mistake please don't shy away of letting me know.

Nearly there, just a few more. Starting to sound like inspector Columbo... Just means every Mixed Crew terror is worth exploring for Calcinite / Triscene because so called "Type II" with Lobsters only happen in T'leth, which is too late to be relevant for our topic. It spares the player from reloads if downed MC USO/terror site houses Lobsters because that can't happen? Aha so getting Aquatoids to attack your base ensures Calcinite encounter as well (behaves as Aquatoid Port/Island terror in terms of alien crew)? 3a. By "some maps" you mean MC Shipping lane map has multiple variations regarding large unit spawns? Dictated by where regular terrorist units get placed before "being converted" to Triscene if that makes sense. Bottom line is it reduces overall Triscene spawn chances, correct? If you can remember, tell me how many Triscenes on average have you encountered on Shipping lanes (with exclusively MC crew). If 2 or more per Ship, that's pretty good even for Superhuman. 3b. April regarding Ships yes, ups. Mixed Crew on land (Calc/Tris source) is what I think of every time I say MC so yeah. For Triscenes it's April at earliest. Excuse me if it appears I drag this on forever... I just hope to collect and dump all the needed info to the OP and edit the fker once and for all. So it awaits my return in 15-20 years when I'll probably play TFTD again, lol. Assuming the server still breathes (and me for that matter). Any stranglers happening to pass by and making use of it is just a cool bonus. I commend your contribution and patience!

You clearly know much more than I do, but let's try keeping it simple so I don't get lost. If I got it right: Yes. Yes for Port/Island terror, inspection required for Shipping lanes (low overall chance, high effort, more under 3.). Provoking Mixed Crew USO to attack your base may yield both Calcinite and/or Triscene. Low overall chance and only possible from July onward. So Mixed Crew do occur on Shipping lanes! 75% chance then applies to Triscene as well I presume. But multiplying with low chance of MC occurring in the first place (75% * 20%) and considerable effort needed to inspect the ship throws reliability outta window. Most annoying part seems to be discerning between Tasoth or MC alien composition. Only possible from July onward too or sooner? Or it simply uses July-Sep table even if it happens in Feb? Earliest possible Mixed Crew? Because no visible USO involved (happens outta thin air). Covered in 3. My battleship test confirmed shooting down 1st one only delayed 2nd, by roughly four days. I believe this applies even to two Escorts that appear earlier. So letting first three ships unharmed may significantly speed up appearance of the fourth one which initiates Port/Island terror. Likely reason I've seen widely different dates of such terror sites on various Let's Play videos.

Been a while since I played (7-8 years ago, still not as old as newest post before mine lol) but I recall being very pleasantly surprised. Bought the Gold version on Steam going just on a gut feeling and I can say today this game hit closest to home as for that original and fresh XCOM gameplay no game since Apocalypse offered (Xenonauts was a huge letdown for me). I used to frequent then active ufo-scene forum for advice and an occasional mod, which was a goldmine of good stuff. One thing I vividly remember from the game were personal shields. They enhanced combat so much because I always hated when solders died or spent time in recovery. Great game which I defo intend to play again.

Thanks for taking the time making detailed corrections but before editing OP I'll need some more clarifications. Mixed Crew USOs with Lobsters are impossible then? That means every (most?) Mixed Crew terror sites with have Calcinite or Triscene, or both. (unless extremely bad spawn luck?, or Shipping lane confusion in 3. & 4.) Appropriate race who drags Calcines to base assault is what? Aquatoids only? With Calcinites appearing always or sometimes? Reliability is crucial but I'll edit in possibles too. You said in Triscenes only Bio Drones accompany Tasoths in Shipping lanes. Have you found Triscenes there since then? Am I missing something, surely there can't be Mixed Crew on Shipping lanes (because no USO). Calcinite on Mixed Crew USO - that means Tasoths+Aquatoids with 50% chance Calcinite, right? But then you add Shipping lane variant increases that chance to 75%. It's confusing at to me it implies Mixed Crew do in fact happen on Ships and that they do count both as land & underwater regarding supporting alien spawns. Scanning open Port/Island areas for Calcinite/Triscene presence is far more straight forward and quicker than inspecting every compartment of a ship, especially with couple of hovering Displacers. Don't you agree? Unless 2x2 units spawn exclusively around starting open area I reckon. Yeah I think shooting down 1st battleship (3rd USO in Mixed Crew chain) only delays the 2nd one, not completely forfeiting eventual Terror site. In my 3 tests, shooting down 1st always made 2nd spill into following month, but at that time I still hadn't known about spillage being a thing and assumed the chain got broken when it didn't appear by the end of the month. Looks like there's gonna be a 4th test although I kinda already believe you.

@Space Voyager I'm late but how is the search going, have you heard of Live for Speed (not "Need" lol...)? Even though it released in 2003 (and in some minor parts it still looks that way) I got a feeling you may like it. And if you like it then you will love it and refuse to play any other racing game. I'd hate to spoil the first impressions for you so just grab the free demo and hop in. Very old school stuff, many intuitive customization options, low system reqs, all the good stuff. Multiplayer is where bread and butter is (from casual, beginner, to pro) but you can drive single player (alone or with bots). I'll just say to may knowledge, and many others, this is the most accurate commercially available simulation of driving a car. I heard Valtteri Bottas made his first steps there. Poor sucka should have stayed longer and he would be Champ already... It's still in active development but very slow progress due to one coder and one artist/modeler. Its peak was '07-'10 when it had a large active community. I stopped playing in '17 I think, after being addicted for over a decade, due to saturation. And I wasn't even a fan for racing games to begin with but stuck with it, so that's saying something. You lemme know, susjed Janez.

Yeah you got it, those dinos are Triscenes. Incredibly tough. I remember encountering Xarquid early in the playthrough, when I had mere Jet Harpoons, and it took two full clips to take down. So in expectance of Lobsters I rushed for Sonic stuff and managed to equip Pistols before encountering one. It was super tough but doable. Now lobsters are tough throughout, taking 2-3 Heavy Sonic hits, but Triscenes are another level with being able to survive full Heavy Sonic clip to the face (more if they turn damaged armor parts away from the shooter) and still laugh at you. To make them even more intimidating they got PWT canon (high-end sub weapon) graphic on sides of their back. It's honestly the first time I ever saw this enemy in TFTD, lol. It's funny but I also thought I needed a live Calcinite... but corpse is the one that opens Vibro Blade research. Thankfully there were so many on my terror site few met their maker right there on the Island. Hallucinoids and Xarquids become rarer as game goes on - especially when capturing live ones. This is because larger USOs with Aquatoids and Gillman respectively show up rarer. And they need to be large for maps to accommodate 2x2 enemy spawn points (or something like that). All unconscious 1st stage Colony (which are surprisingly more common) aliens automatically become corpses in 2nd stage so live Hallucinoids are impossible loot from a Colony. Similar with Xarquids and Gillman invaded Shipping lanes (also 2-stage). Couldn't even get a live Hallucinoid from 2nd stage Artefact site either. Would it surprise you I still haven't researched either of the two as live specimens as of Jan 2041? I'm currently on a mission trying to do that... Might not be possible however as I've read somewhere both are categorized as "mechs" and end up as corpses no matter what. At worst I'll have to get ufopedia entry outta Aqua Medic (didn't do it sooner in fear I'd get a Calcinite and possibly break Vibro research - ah the joys of avoiding minefields in buggy old games). Thanks for stopping by, nice to see there is still life in this ghost town! I kinda hope someone someday puts the info in the all-knowledgeable UFOpaedia. Me, I quickly got a bad headache thinking about best way to go about it (not even kidding, I very rarely do it but chugged Ibuprofen like it was vitamin last night). Until then search engines do a remarkably good job at returning right information, providing the question is right, so I have no fears about someone missing these two bad boys.

Having returned to TFTD after a long while and getting to December of my first year I still haven't encountered either of the two elusive aliens. I desperately seek to fill my ufopedia completely and finally get a chance to use Heavy Termic Lances by opening that research tree with a dead Calcinite. Only recently have I figured how to force encounters reliably. Also, having Heavy Lances early trivializes dealing with Lobsters in 2nd stage Alien Colonies, and in general. Here I break down the process using information scattered around UFOpaedia, this forum and from magic9mushroom's posts down bellow. Hopefully shedding enough light so people ending up here via search engine years from now find it useful. Both alien types appear predominately in Terror missions and ONLY on land. One exception is Base Defense, but I'll get to that. First let's deal with what Terror mission is. There are 4 types and which one it will be is determined at the start of a new month so save your game just before that so you can reload later. Port. Always occur during early-game (months 1-3), with chances dropping to 40% during months 4-5, and then to 20% onward. Mission appears typically near the end of the month, by allowing alien USO to land in a port city, usually outside your radar coverage. Island. Exactly the same as Port but USO decides to land on an island instead. It shares everything with Port (same chances, USOs, alien crew, date), only the Battlescape geography is different. With this one being more straight-forward (open but hilly area with far less buildings). Shipping Lane. Added to terror mission poll starting in months 4-5 with 60% chance and dropping to 30% onward. Mission is scripted to occur in exactly 1:00 AM on the 1st day of month, without physical alien sub. Artefact Site. Added to poll in month 6 onward with a high 50% chance (until after you destroy or ignore 12th Artefact Site). It also shares trigger with Shipping lane (1:00 AM on the 1st day). Even though this type of Terror mission is irrelevant because it never yields Calcinite or Triscene (not considered "land"), it halves the chance for other three missions to appear - practically until the end. Saving grace is by the time it starts interfering with mission poll you will have large radar coverage (ideally using Transmission Resolvers) so reacting by reloading the game will be instantaneous compared to radar-less early game. So what does "land" mean exactly? For the purposes of easy Calcinite and Triscene encounter "land" primarily applies to Port/Island terror sites, followed by Shipping lanes, and lastly Base Defense (not true "Terror" mission, only for player's psyche). So let's explain how to set them up properly: Calcinite (with Aquatoid) Port/Island will always start with a small alien "Escort" USO spawning exactly at 2:30 AM on the 1st day of month and only if 3 or 4 did not already occur (1:00 AM on same day). This is also a sure-fire way to know if such terror mission is in progress outside of radar coverage (always Jan-Mar, and later by absence of 3 or 4). However this 1st USO (in a chain of four) is not what starts the Terror mission, only the 4th does that if allowed. After Escort leaves or is shoot down a Cruiser will arrive in a few days, followed by a large Battleship few days after that, and finally a 4th USO (2nd Battleship) which flies seemingly randomly for several hours before landing to initiate a Terror site. Shooting down last one will also prevent Terror site, which you may want to do if you already researched the resulting alien. Shooting down any or all previous USO in the chain only delays the following one, by several days, possibly pushing the final Battleship appearance in the next month with an interesting consequence of having two Terror missions in a single month. The important part is to ensure that the first Escort is occupied by Aquatoids (20% chance in Feb-Jun, 10% Jul-Sep, 20% onward)! Resulting in final Battleship also having them with addition of the elusive Calcinites. With Transmission Resolvers and radar coverage this is a trivial check ("Alien Surface Attacks") so re-load in case it's not. Without TR simply shoot down 2:30 AM small USO to verify Aquatoid presence. Outside of radar coverage not much you can do but hope, try to get more radars by late Feb/Mar because Jan Post/Island terror will be occupied by Gill Man anyways (useful for very early live Deep One). Calcinites can also appear on Shipping lanes starting from April with 25% chance per ship (10%+20%*75%) with the added hassle of inspecting the Ship to verify Tasoth+Aquatoid (Mixed Crew) presence and then hoping to find a Calcinite in the depths of the megastructure. Compared with Port/Island 100% chance, once both are set up. Inherit chance of appropriate mission appearing is excluded from global chance because setting then up via re-loads is trivial (advancing couple of hours). Last place where they are found are Base Defense missions. Those must be triggered by attacking USOs with Aquatoid crew hoping to provoke (12% each on Veteran, varies by difficulty) "Floating Base Attack", aliens actually finding your base, and then keeping your base sufficiently free of Facility defenses so the attacking USO can land without being destroyed. Researching "The Ultimate Threat" schedules a sigle Floating Base Attack at the beginning of a month, slightly increasing the chance. Even so, process seems too RNG and is sooner likely to happen during normal gameplay rather than trying to set it up (with the constant downside of having your Base exposed, without Facility defense and forcing full completion of every unwanted attack or losing the Base unless you can ward off a Dreadnought with spare undamaged Barracudas). Only mentioning it because it's possible but highly suggest you ignore this approach. Triscene (with Mixed Crew) Port/Island follow same due process as Calcinite (with an additional step if you don't have Transmission Resolvers), starting from Jul-Sep (20%, 30% onward) when first Mixed Crew USO start appearing. With at least radar coverage being a reality now, reload to get Escort on 2:30 AM 1st day of month. Shoot it down to verify Tasoth presence. TR can save you the bother of inspection by confirming "Mixed Crew" right away. If you don't have it you will need to shoot down the Cruiser too to verify a single Aquatoid among Tasoths (even a dead corpse will suffice). This is the soonest you can verify Mixed Crew without TR, making re-loads more cumbersome. Consider Shipping Lane path in that case! Let four USO chain run to completion and in the resulting Terror site a couple of Triscenes will form a welcoming committee just for you. One to take home alive the other dead, completing research with just one mission. Bring explosives and Thermal Shoks with you because they are incredibly tough to take down! You were warned. Next are Shipping lanes starting from April too, same as Calcinites, and sooner than Port/Island. The chance of it being Mixed Crew (20%) is the same but Triscenes have largely increased spawn chance across the Ship, bringing the overall probability of about 1 Triscene per Ship. Due to weird logic how game determines spawn points inside the Ship it could increase that number or even decrease it. The annoying part is having to do manual inspection every time this particular Terror site appears to discern between full blown Tasoth race terrorizing the Ship or a Mixed Crew which consists mainly of Tasoths (both with 20% chance but only the latter may spawn Triscenes). Presence of Aquatoid or a Xarquid/Calcinite will assure Mixed Crew so keep on sailing. That said, unless in a hurry to finish ufopedia and have TR facilities, I suggest you take natural path and use this mission to research Bio Drones or Deep Ones (if you missed them early). Last are Base Defense missions, provoked by shooting down a Mixed Crew USO (only appear as 4-sub long chain culminating with Post/Island terror). However considering low initial chance, having low to no Facility defenses, and other I mentioned earlier... then comparing with benefits of just letting the USO chain run its course, it's a no-brainer to avoid even considering this. * * * There you have it. Might be common knowledge to some veterans here but to me, who first played TFDT in the '90s and thought I knew everything, this was a revelation (among many other weird intricate things, lol) even after spending considerable time on UFOpaedia. Biggest hurdle was realization Island/Port terror wasn't part of common Shipping/Artefact script that could be accessed via simple reloads. When nothing happened at 1:00 AM I just concluded my game bugged out (not a far fetched idea if you know what I mean) and went with Artefact after many fruitless reloads. Somehow I decided to go out of my way and check what these "Alien Surface Attacks" were all about. A month long alien USO chain duration where nothing spectacular is happening certainly didn't help. Now I know, and so do you. Can finally put my completionist soul to rest. My greetings to any future Aquanaut passing by.

Yep found the lift too. Glad no one got dumped there in isolation! Btw thanks for playing around with the save. Certainly didn't expect anything more than a courteous glance at most, if that. It's cool seeing a classic getting quality attention decades after release. Being a small part of it makes it that much more enjoyable. Of course my gratitude extends towards mentioned contributors as well. It's hard to imagine playing UFO/TFTD without consulting wiki nowadays. About waypoints & spawn nodes: I've applied Sherlock' route fixes, meant to be used on top of Zombie's fixes available in the files sections, before starting playing. They may very well be the source of oddities. I've put my faith in it solely going off author's meticulous documentation of changes and reasoning behind them. He may have missed something hehe. If you hadn't said anything I wouldn't have known any better so I plan sticking with it for the time being. In fact I've had two consecutive Fleet Supply Cruiser (or was it Hunter?) missions where both times all aliens were well outside the sub, sparing me the effort of going in full SWAT mode. If only this happened on Dreadnought too... Don't recall it happening before so I want to believe those route/spawn fixes are to thank! Damn dude, thanks so much for this! I might even finish this playthrough before 2020 runs its course (or scheduled comets hits, whichever comes first). No more endless salvage runs unless Zrbite shortage or getting some Rookies beefed up.

Hey man, I highly appreciate your UFOpedia contributions - practically my 2nd home. Super insightful hidden details you've managed to dig up. Of particular interest became "Alien Appearance Ratios" as I'm trying to unlock Vibro Blades research tree (dubiously requiring rarest specimens in the game, if they ever appear). Figured saving just before the month ends and reloading till surface Terror mission featuring an elusive Calcinite generates on the 1st next month @ 1:00 AM. Will make dealing with base Lobbies more bearable. I may have jumped the gun regarding #6. Prolly 2 lifts as you say. I'll get around to it in few hours and check (thought every atom in my body dreads of 2nd base stages in TFTD so I make up other activities just to delay the nightmare). Pretty neat they were dumped all in one place tho, near the corner no less, making line sweep easier to organize. I still believe it's rare having never encountered it before. I knew of 12 Atry sites (cleared 2 thus far) and loving how easily manageable they are compared to bases. Devs prolly threw us a bone with that one. Thought about doing all 12, for completionist sake, but don't think I have it in me. Maybe if they coded complete USO destruction like in UFO. Shooting USO over land gives reduced rewards while skipping tactical or something along that line. Having to practically fight every battle makes reaching 2042 too tedious for my liking. Zonal mission info is very interesting. Also read it before (might be last night actually lol). Your info rip too I presume. Pretty darn cool! If only there was a way to truly prevent alien base construction rather than just delay the inevitable. Kingston one was relatively easy to uncover, previous one in Antarctic was all manual labor using alien activity graphs and single Triton (defo could use another). Yeah screens got axed down into Mariana Trench, here's #1 Spot the Alien in all it's glory. Thanks for stopping by!

Btw, I've long wondered what is the longest UFO/TFTD game ever played (by in-game date). I'm aware there's little point or merit going off for much longer than necessary (after Cydonia / T'leth become reachable) but I cannot help but wonder... My hope is this community can at least partially quench my thirst for that piece of info (Google could't). My last UFO playthrough completed in 1st half of 2000 if I'm not mistaken, only because I wanted to max out all 8 bases and have experienced 80 TU soldiers in all of them (try not to lol). And the thing that started it all was this famous old Civ 2 reddit post. I ask you people - do we have an UFO/TFTD equivalent?

Not long ago I've returned to finish my ancient playthrough started in 2006 (I'm a savegame hoarder what can I say) and been taking screenshots of interesting situations as they came, when recently I saw Zombie's Strange things in X-COM topic. Thought to rectify a great injustice by creating one for TFTD and start off with some peculiarities I witnessed. Feel invited to join and contribute with your own. Here are some screenies that made the cut: #1 Spot the Alien (over the last 14 years my aliens developed some nasty skin camo) #2 Landed on broken wing wreckage (nothing similar ever happened to me before) #3 Lobbie welcoming committee (1 is a pain in itself but 3...) #4 Aftermath of #3 (damn little Cruise ship at that, on Veteran I think) #5 Rasta Man alien base (guess the country is leaking) #6 Only one access lift in #5 (full 14 aquanaut Triton, 6x6 base, 1st I seen this) EDIT: Welp, there was a 2nd lift on the other side of the map, but game clumping all 14 into just one is pretty neat still! PS Excuse the image quality. Forum uploader gutted them to 25% original quality for some reason even though I adhered to size limits. For fun I included saves of #5 & #6 too (only ones not overwritten yet). GAME_4&5.zip

Many thanks for the tool. Proved it usefulness even today. Somehow I encountered both bugs (MC & Sub Const) even though I'm playing using latest TFTDextender. All while paying close attention to avoid both. Even delayed research paths just to make sure, so I expect to have first MC trainees only in September, lol. No matter, I'm in it for the long haul anyway. One can never optimize enough. While I'm aware there are more methods to fix botched research this looks cleanest and simplest, just what I needed. As many will notice the OP is ancient and, understandably, links are long dead. BB's files section link has also ran astray in the meantime. I was able to find the updated .zip archive on russian forum. Hope link isn't breaking rules. Program itself must be run in DOS environment in case it wasn't obvious (DOSBox will do just fine).

Recently I came back to tie up loose ends of my 2 never completed TFTD playthroughs (one 8 years old now - started at the begging of this topic as witnessed by my cringe inducing posts, the other even older at 14...). Grabbed the latest extender for the first time but it has shown it some outstanding issues still, even with very conservative .ini setup. Manufacture crash when setting exact number of units to produce for example, and many battlescape related crashes occurring on alien turns (sometimes reload and end turn fixed it as they reacted differently). Always when last alien alive panics however. Mostly it's safe to play unless raiding alien colony (1st stage) where it crashes regularly. I carry around extender v1.05p4 and quickly shuffle files around to bypass rough crashes. Pretty playable as far I'm concerned. I'll forever stick to TFTDextender over OpenXcom only because 2 things: vanilla AI and save compatibility. Although I cheated once and loaded my save in OXC only to marvel at my perfect eyesight as I discovered I placed bases perfectly far away from each other! They sure poshed it up with many other QoL stuff, no question. @slickrcbd I like to think Tycho took a well deserved vacation. And then aliens probably abducted him as he was revealing all their secrets. Hope he's OK though. Whenever I revisit this forum I remember the excitement at the beginning and watching new extender develop before our eyes. Probably opposite for Tycho as the only thing he remembers is assembly code and endless stream of bug reports, lol. I too would like to see the project finished. At least squishing the few remaining bugs, but wouldn't object additional "Where is that last alien?" (and reveal alien bases on gescape) flag. Don't get me started on last alien base raid and one elusive mtf Tentaculat. In the end I resorted to learning XcomUtil just because I heard it can reveal map using VIS flag. The only program I found that managed to end that long misery of mine. Don't see it happening but extender's latest source code from 2013 (unpatched v1.07) is available in case some freak of nature is willing to continue Tycho's sacred work. Highly wishful thinking on my part, especially with OXC doing almost everything better. One can hope. Greetings from a fellow Aquanaut.