XCOM: One Does Not Simply "Shoot" a Cryssalid...

[Impnemo]

Also, if youre up for playing around with the exe a bit, you can make the ufos sent for missions viewable. You need a utility that can edit exe files, the freeware "resource hacker" for instance, and under rcdata/1020/1033 find showUfosOnMission=0 and make it =1. Next issue is you are capped at 2 ufos per month, you can up that a bit there as well four lines down at UFO_LIMIT = 2. Of course, make a backup of the exe before you change things in case you blow something up.


I wonder what made firaxis back off from the ufo defense portion of the game, because there is back end supporting much more depth to that play.

[BRC]

Also, if youre up for playing around with the exe a bit, you can make the ufos sent for missions viewable. You need a utility that can edit exe files, the freeware "resource hacker" for instance, and under rcdata/1020/1033 find showUfosOnMission=0 and make it =1. Next issue is you are capped at 2 ufos per month, you can up that a bit there as well four lines down at UFO_LIMIT = 2. Of course, make a backup of the exe before you change things in case you blow something up.


I wonder what made firaxis back off from the ufo defense portion of the game, because there is back end supporting much more depth to that play.

Probably more focus on the decision-making aspect of abduction missions. Right now Abduction missions, and choosing which one to answer, are a core game mechanic. It's a big part of the whole "You are fighting something you can't beat" feel. For every attack you repel, there are two that you can't stop.

Now, imagine if you could just shoot down two UFO's, then answer the third call in order to scoop up the reward.
It's not quite the same feel, now is it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I wonder what made firaxis back off from the ufo defense portion of the game, because there is back end supporting much more depth to that play.

Three letters: DLC.

Why package it with the original game when you can charge some poor sucker an extra $15 to have the finished product?

[Impnemo]

Probably more focus on the decision-making aspect of abduction missions. Right now Abduction missions, and choosing which one to answer, are a core game mechanic. It's a big part of the whole "You are fighting something you can't beat" feel. For every attack you repel, there are two that you can't stop.

Now, imagine if you could just shoot down two UFO's, then answer the third call in order to scoop up the reward.
It's not quite the same feel, now is it.

As it stands theres not much choice in which to answer because of how badly you need engineers or lacking that, money, when the choice actually matters, early game. During that period you wont have the capacity, either in sat coverage or interceptors, to fully interdict in the way you describe. It would only be a late game issue. Late game with the current 2 ufo limit, what purpose is served by having a full hangar? What does the NA continent bonus do for you? You can get by with a single plasma armed interceptor on each continent. Having to intercept more ufos would mean you would have to purchase and equip more interceptors which adds more mid to late game strategic choices and does not affect the early game "choice" of abduction missions.


I'm almost inclined to agree with shneeky, a few tweaks to the panic system, update the tactical minigame for interception, allow mission interception, package it in a dlc, receive $5.

[Anarion]

Probably more focus on the decision-making aspect of abduction missions. Right now Abduction missions, and choosing which one to answer, are a core game mechanic. It's a big part of the whole "You are fighting something you can't beat" feel. For every attack you repel, there are two that you can't stop.

Now, imagine if you could just shoot down two UFO's, then answer the third call in order to scoop up the reward.
It's not quite the same feel, now is it.

Actually, if the UFOs for abductions appeared, especially early, you'd probably lose the game almost every time. Early on you don't have many satellites or interceptors and every failed shoot down adds 1 panic to the region, while failing to answer a UFO at all adds 2. Combine that with the fact that failing to shoot them down leads to the abdjuction missions, and a good bet is that you'd consistently lose 4-5 countries in the first month and be in dire circumstances.

Three letters: DLC.

Why package it with the original game when you can charge some poor sucker an extra $15 to have the finished product?

Or that, but at least if they do it as DLC, they'll balance it.

[KillianHawkeye]

There are five generic UFOs in the game:
Small Scout
Large Scout
Abductor
Supply Barge
Battleship

In addition, there are two plot UFOs:
The Overseer Ship
The Temple Ship

However, you can't shoot down the Temple Ship, so there are six UFOs that can be shot down.

It's more or less impossible that you haven't shot down the scouts, due to how prolific they are, and I know you've shot down the Battleship and Overseer Ship. So what you're probably missing is either an Abductor or Supply Barge. I'd say it's most likely the Abductor you're missing, since Supply Barges get pretty common later in the game.

You might be right. I've gone after a couple abductors, but I feel like they were already on the ground, not in flight.

Also, if youre up for playing around with the exe a bit, you can make the ufos sent for missions viewable. You need a utility that can edit exe files, the freeware "resource hacker" for instance, and under rcdata/1020/1033 find showUfosOnMission=0 and make it =1. Next issue is you are capped at 2 ufos per month, you can up that a bit there as well four lines down at UFO_LIMIT = 2. Of course, make a backup of the exe before you change things in case you blow something up.

Yeah, there's no way for me to do this. I'm playing the XBox version.

[Krade]

We got the patch today, and with it, mixed joy and sadness (due to now unexploitable glitches)

Ghost Armor in multiplayer is now 4200 points making it completely incompatable with the Psionic Assault soldier. Just the soldier with the psionics is 5550, so you'd be left at 9750 before you even give him weapons. This makes me happy.

I haven't thoroughly tested it, but it appears that reaction shots can't go through walls regardless of LoS any more when the aliens activate (this made Snipers really awesome).

These are only the things that I've found on my own without looking or reading patch notes. I'm sure there's plenty more, though.

[Anarion]

Here's the forum topic on the patch.

Besides the multiplayer they did a few major changes.
1. Abductor roof visibility fixed (hooray!)
2. SHIV bugs fixed so you can actually use them (double yay, especially for Zevox, who had this happen to multiple SHIVs)
3. No snapshot penalty if you overwatch without moving makes impossible ironman significantly easier. (either yay or boo if you're a masochist)

[Impnemo]

Actually, if the UFOs for abductions appeared, especially early, you'd probably lose the game almost every time. Early on you don't have many satellites or interceptors and every failed shoot down adds 1 panic to the region, while failing to answer a UFO at all adds 2. Combine that with the fact that failing to shoot them down leads to the abdjuction missions, and a good bet is that you'd consistently lose 4-5 countries in the first month and be in dire circumstances.



Or that, but at least if they do it as DLC, they'll balance it.

I expect you only get the penalty if you actually see the ufo, and you wont see it without a sat. I only started tweaking this stuff yesterday and haven't really had a chance to play test it yet, I wound up with the too many saves issue and cleaned house.

Of interest, from the exe:

PANIC_UFO_IGNORED=2
PANIC_UFO_ESCAPED=1

So even if you cant do anything to it, just going up and aborting helps.

[Zevox]

2. SHIV bugs fixed so you can actually use them (double yay, especially for Zevox, who had this happen to multiple SHIVs)

Yay indeed . Now if only they had done that before I moved on to other games. Eh, will be nice to know it's there next time I come back to this one, though.

Zevox

[Luzahn]

They've fixed my robot buddies? Hooray!

Is it wrong that I like the SHIVs more than my human troops? SHIVs don't whimper and shoot their allies just because they've been "heavily injured."

Cowards.

[Krade]

Well, I was ranked 24 in the leaderboards, but everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked my stat's reset at some point and erased my 80+ wins. Now I have to start back at the bottom. I'm already in the 800s. Movin' on up.

Edit: Made it to the 100s in rank. Wish I knew the exact formula they calculated your rank with. I've seen people with less wins, more losses AND more disconnects than me be ranked higher. I guess there's some other measurement that it doesn't show because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from what I can see.

[Badgerish]

I can definitely confirm that satellites can be shot down.

A small scout appeared in Russia, but I had no craft to shoot it down and it escaped.

about 3 days later, a "very large" UFO appeared. I attacked and aborted with my new missile-armed interceptor, and later on the satellite was destroyed.

So now I have 1 satellite to launch before end of the month, and 4 countries at panic 5. Oh hey, losing is fun :D

[Hiro Protagonest]

I can definitely confirm that satellites can be shot down.

A small scout appeared in Russia, but I had no craft to shoot it down and it escaped.

about 3 days later, a "very large" UFO appeared. I attacked and aborted with my new missile-armed interceptor, and later on the satellite was destroyed.

So now I have 1 satellite to launch before end of the month, and 4 countries at panic 5. Oh hey, losing is fun :D

Yes. That is what the Battleship does unless you have Firestorms or Stealth Satellites.

[Saph]

So I've been playing plenty of X-Com, and enjoying it (finished it on Classic a while back and again on Classic Ironman today). But oh god the bugs are annoying! Here's the ones I've found so far – anyone else run into the same ones?

• Enemies that leave your line of sight have a chance of suddenly teleporting to bizarre locations. I first found this out when a Sectopod walked off the edge of my visibility range and appeared right behind my entire squad, 20 spaces away from where it disappeared, with enough movement left over to open fire.
• Line of sight is very weird. Sometimes an enemy will shoot through two boxes and a wall to hit you, sometimes they can't see you despite a clear visual line. Slopes seem especially bad – I've had cases where troops had no LOS to enemies that were adjacent to them.
• You can't move over the very high 'humpback bridges' over the doors in the larger UFOs – the blue indicator says you can, but so far I haven't managed to get the cursor to land on the space.
• Mindfray attacks will sometimes connect (and consume your soldier's action) but have no animation and do no damage. This seems to be a map-long bug because once it happens it'll keep on happening until next mission.
• Sometimes rocket attacks are impossible on the first turn (you can use them later, just not on turn 1).
• Firing overwatch shots at an enemy running in and out of view sometimes causes them to disappear/teleport. The shots are still spent and the enemy will turn up again later.
• Enemies will occasionally miss their entire turn. I've had turns where multiple Mutons and Floaters just sit there and do nothing. Can't tell if it's intentional or not.
• New soldiers recruited to the Barracks beyond your initial set all have Easy-level HP (6 points each). Does make Impossible runs a lot easier.
• Putting a rocket into a group of enemies will occasionally crash the game. Doesn't happen often but when it happens it'll happen every time you try to reload and do it again (very annoying when a rocket's the only good option).
• Save files get jumbled after you have a certain number of saves, rearranging themselves into a bizarre order that requires you to go through every save one by one until you find the right one.

And so on. Just as well the game's so much fun or I'd have been driven off in frustration by now.

[Hiro Protagonest]

• New soldiers recruited to the Barracks beyond your initial set all have Easy-level HP (6 points each). Does make Impossible runs a lot easier.

Did you get the patch that fixes the bug that automatically sets the difficulty to Easy after the first mission?

[Saph]

Did you get the patch that fixes the bug that automatically sets the difficulty to Easy after the first mission?

Haven't run into that bug, this is a separate one. The difficulty level stays where you set it (you can tell because enemy HP doesn't change) but new recruits have more HP.

[Avilan the Grey]

Okay...
Plasma sniper rifles: I. Love. This. Gun.

I just (finally) stormed the alien base. It is mighty nice of the developers to put in ideal places to put your snipers every 100 yards.
Also, I love that you can really pretend you truly caught them off guard. Two heavy floaters that were retreating and came right in line of my two snipers. Oops

[Krade]

Did you get the patch that fixes the bug that automatically sets the difficulty to Easy after the first mission?

Isn't that a bug from the original?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Isn't that a bug from the original?

Well, considering it was called X-COM (which in the shortened version is the only way to differentiate the two), and there was a complaint about a lot of bugs, I thought it was about the original.

[Anarion]

So I've been playing plenty of X-Com, and enjoying it (finished it on Classic a while back and again on Classic Ironman today). But oh god the bugs are annoying! Here's the ones I've found so far – anyone else run into the same ones?

• Enemies that leave your line of sight have a chance of suddenly teleporting to bizarre locations. I first found this out when a Sectopod walked off the edge of my visibility range and appeared right behind my entire squad, 20 spaces away from where it disappeared, with enough movement left over to open fire.
• Line of sight is very weird. Sometimes an enemy will shoot through two boxes and a wall to hit you, sometimes they can't see you despite a clear visual line. Slopes seem especially bad – I've had cases where troops had no LOS to enemies that were adjacent to them.
• You can't move over the very high 'humpback bridges' over the doors in the larger UFOs – the blue indicator says you can, but so far I haven't managed to get the cursor to land on the space.
• Mindfray attacks will sometimes connect (and consume your soldier's action) but have no animation and do no damage. This seems to be a map-long bug because once it happens it'll keep on happening until next mission.
• Sometimes rocket attacks are impossible on the first turn (you can use them later, just not on turn 1).
• Firing overwatch shots at an enemy running in and out of view sometimes causes them to disappear/teleport. The shots are still spent and the enemy will turn up again later.
• Enemies will occasionally miss their entire turn. I've had turns where multiple Mutons and Floaters just sit there and do nothing. Can't tell if it's intentional or not.
• New soldiers recruited to the Barracks beyond your initial set all have Easy-level HP (6 points each). Does make Impossible runs a lot easier.
• Putting a rocket into a group of enemies will occasionally crash the game. Doesn't happen often but when it happens it'll happen every time you try to reload and do it again (very annoying when a rocket's the only good option).
• Save files get jumbled after you have a certain number of saves, rearranging themselves into a bizarre order that requires you to go through every save one by one until you find the right one.

And so on. Just as well the game's so much fun or I'd have been driven off in frustration by now.

In order

1. Teleporting sectopods are the most notorious. I've actually never seen any other alien type do that, although blood call mutons will move around a lot outside your line of sight.
2. Line of sight is weird, but after several playthroughs, I have determined that it's consistent. Slopes are a notable problem, you have to get to the flat piece of ground at the top to see the top. This is actually an advantage as it allows you to advance troops safely without triggering aliens. Firing through boxes and windows and such is just a graphical thing, the issue is the presence of hard cover to your left and right or not.
3. I think they fixed the movement problems for the big UFOs with the most recent patch. Are you still having that issue?
4. I've never had the mindfray, rocket, or overwatch bugs you describe.
5. Enemies missing their turn is intentional. It usually happens when they don't like the odds on their shot and don't want to leave their cover. It's most frequent if you have one or more guys on overwatch. Floaters specifically also have animalistic ai behavior where they get scared sometimes and will move away instead of taking a shot.
6. The extra hp bug is still around afaik, and I have no problem with it, those difficulties are plenty hard and you're sacrificing precious money for an advantage.
7. I've heard about the save file bug. What I do for non-ironman runs is usually a rotating set of 4-5 save files that I overwrite.

[RagingKrikkit]

5. Enemies missing their turn is intentional. It usually happens when they don't like the odds on their shot and don't want to leave their cover. It's most frequent if you have one or more guys on overwatch. Floaters specifically also have animalistic ai behavior where they get scared sometimes and will move away instead of taking a shot.

I think what it is is that panic applies to all the aliens (hence the "They're falling back!"), but it works slightly differently, in that they get two saving throws, and each one failed results in them loosing an action.

[Saph]

3. I think they fixed the movement problems for the big UFOs with the most recent patch. Are you still having that issue?

It's an aspect of the user interface, I think – same reason it's very hard to get your troops to run to the right spot when you have multiple storeys in line with your mouse cursor. If you get the chance, give it a try – have a soldier with Ghost or Skeleton armour grapple up to one side of the bridge and see if you can figure out a way to make them run over the top (I tried for about three minutes before giving up).

I've also seen the teleporting thing work with muton packs (not sure if it's only blood called ones). Lost my first Classic Ironman game when I tried to assault a supply barge, ran into two muton spawns inside the ship, pulled back, and had the mutons reappear on the high ground behind me.

The AI thing for movement makes sense – it did seem too consistent to be a random bug. Might be helpful if you're trying to succeed on Impossible.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Line of sight issues -

It ain't a bug. That clear line of sight where the enemy can't actually see you and your soldier can't see it? The map could be a completely flat, featureless area and you couldn't see all the enemies. Fog of War. Even if a soldier clears it by going up farther ahead, it's still only clear for that soldier. The only way to use another trooper's eyes is Squadsight.

Shooting straight through boxes and barrels to get at enemies? Just an animation problem. The designers didn't decide to take the time to have an alien peek around their cover very few seconds to try and gauge your position, and vice versa, so we get shots through solid objects. It's nothing big.

[Saph]

It ain't a bug. That clear line of sight where the enemy can't actually see you and your soldier can't see it? The map could be a completely flat, featureless area and you couldn't see all the enemies. Fog of War. Even if a soldier clears it by going up farther ahead, it's still only clear for that soldier. The only way to use another trooper's eyes is Squadsight.

I've had a soldier standing on a slope, adjacent to an alien on the same slope, on the sloping square one square above the alien's sloping square (the same place you'd be if you and the alien were two steps apart on the same staircase), still unable to see the alien. Yes, it's a bug.

Another annoying one is sloping roofs – they seem to throw off the line of sight model big time. If you put a soldier up on them the soldier often can't see off the edge, even when they're looking down onto empty ground.

I've also had bizarre cases where destroying an alien's cover makes your troops lose LOS to the alien (when they had it before). No idea what's up with that one. Sometimes cycling between your soldiers makes them regain LOS again, so I think it's an updating issue.

[Anarion]

I've had a soldier standing on a slope, adjacent to an alien on the same slope, on the sloping square one square above the alien's sloping square (the same place you'd be if you and the alien were two steps apart on the same staircase), still unable to see the alien. Yes, it's a bug.

I don't think it's a bug, exactly. It's more like aberrant behavior in the engine, but the engine is performing as programmed and consistently. I did the exact thing you're talking about during the alien base mission, when I went up the slope and couldn't see the mutons right next to my guys until I moved the soldier onto the flat ground. As I mentioned, that's also useful to you because earlier on it allows you to advance soldiers safely without triggering a bunch of spawns that might be on the other side of the slope.

Another annoying one is sloping roofs – they seem to throw off the line of sight model big time. If you put a soldier up on them the soldier often can't see off the edge, even when they're looking down onto empty ground.

Yep, same problem. Some spots that seem like they'd be great just aren't that great. Issues like these are reasons to not do ironman impossible on your first run through the game as it definitely has these quirks that just have to be learned by messing up a few times.

I've also had bizarre cases where destroying an alien's cover makes your troops lose LOS to the alien (when they had it before). No idea what's up with that one. Sometimes cycling between your soldiers makes them regain LOS again, so I think it's an updating issue.

That one isn't a bug, it's caused by smoke and the game engine correcting for the changed alien. You don't need to cycle troops, you just need to wait. When the smoke from your grenade or rocket clears after a few seconds, the target will come back in.

[BRC]

I don't think it's a bug, exactly. It's more like aberrant behavior in the engine, but the engine is performing as programmed and consistently. I did the exact thing you're talking about during the alien base mission, when I went up the slope and couldn't see the mutons right next to my guys until I moved the soldier onto the flat ground. As I mentioned, that's also useful to you because earlier on it allows you to advance soldiers safely without triggering a bunch of spawns that might be on the other side of the slope.

I'm pretty sure "Abberant behavior in the engine" counts as a "bug". Programs always perform as they are programmed to. It's possible, with a sufficiently complex program, to have it seem like it's behaving on it's own, but in the end it is always just executing code as written. When they perform as they are programmed to, but not as they are intended to, that is a bug.
Unless they Intended for a soldier on a ramp being unable to see an alien on the same ramp, it's a bug.

[Anarion]

I'm pretty sure "Abberant behavior in the engine" counts as a "bug". Programs always perform as they are programmed to. It's possible, with a sufficiently complex program, to have it seem like it's behaving on it's own, but in the end it is always just executing code as written. When they perform as they are programmed to, but not as they are intended to, that is a bug.
Unless they Intended for a soldier on a ramp being unable to see an alien on the same ramp, it's a bug.

Yes, that's true. I was trying to distinguish it from some of the other issues in this game, like the crashes that can happen when you mind control near fog of war, or sometimes not being able to see a SHIV (which they fixed). The inability to see up ramps is consistent and is both advantageous and disadvantageous in different situations. It's a behavior of the game engine that is inconsistent with player expectations, but I'm not sure if it's a bug or just an unusual quirk of the vision system that's working as intended despite being surprising to most players the first time it's noticed.

[Saph]

That one isn't a bug, it's caused by smoke and the game engine correcting for the changed alien. You don't need to cycle troops, you just need to wait. When the smoke from your grenade or rocket clears after a few seconds, the target will come back in.

Ah, that explains it.

I'm trying to decide if I want to give Impossible a go. The video series Beaglerush did was hilarious, but I've got the feeling it might be more entertaining to watch than play.

[Hiro Protagonest]

So, most of you have already seen this, right?

Well, it was even worse than the comic. I'm watching Iskandar's playthrough of original XCOM, and in one mission, his tank was blocked... by a hedge. And a trooper has to take it out.

So for some reason, shooting three bullets from a standard assault rifle can demolish a section of a hedge, but it's sturdy enough to block a tank.

Xenonauts already mentioned that you're able to knock down stuff by rolling a tank through it. Thank god, that makes way more sense than shooting it with non-explosive rifle rounds. I think I'll pre-order/buy Xenonauts when I get a new rig and enough cash.