Weird X-com Stuff

[Lonevoinian]

What's the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on a mission?

 

Just recently I went on a recovery mission for a downed Medium Scout. I got there, and on the equip screen there was a Sectoid Navigator.

 

I went "okaaaay that's weird" and figured the game was about to crash. I clicked the OK button to go onto the battlescape and it went straight from the X-Com Turn 1 screen to the mission debreif screen. I had won the mission, captured one alien, gotten a pair of corpses and some random weaponry. Near as I can figure, the alien was standing in the smoking ruin of its craft and fainted when it saw my Skyranger coming down.

 

So, any good stories?

[Sectopod]

What's the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on a mission?

 

Just recently I went on a recovery mission for a downed Medium Scout.  I got there, and on the equip screen there was a Sectoid Navigator.

 

I went "okaaaay that's weird" and figured the game was about to crash.  I clicked the OK button to go onto the battlescape and it went straight from the X-Com Turn 1 screen to the mission debreif screen.  I had won the mission, captured one alien, gotten a pair of corpses and some random weaponry.  Near as I can figure, the alien was standing in the smoking ruin of its craft and fainted when it saw my Skyranger coming down.

 

So, any good stories?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Uhh getting eaten by a Chryssilid, and then having "your man is unconcious" with his body below the Zombie (usually there is no body). I think it's one of these moments when it's like your evil twin splits apart from your main body.

[[stewart]]

I think this is a know bug erm feature. Someone like NKF or zombie will explain it soon enough.

[Hobbes]

[uhh getting eaten by a Chryssilid, and then having "your man is unconcious" with his body below the Zombie (usually there is no body). I think it's one of these moments when it's like your evil twin splits apart from your main body.

 

I think this is a know bug erm feature.  Someone like NKF or zombie will explain it soon enough.

 

stewart, you are a Dark Lord of the Sith. You should know about those things.

[[NKF]]

This cloning an unusual bug that happens whenever the game glitches and performs its actions in the wrong order. I think, in this case, it creates the zombie, and then it knocks the soldier unconsious, creating an 'unconscious soldier' item on the ground.

 

This happens as well when you're just about to die from a fatal wound, you're not wearing any armour, and you're standing in smoke just as the turn is ending. Sometimes, you'll die, and then fall unconscious. As opposed to falling unsconscious then dying - the proper sequence.

 

When the opposite sequence occurs, the corpse is created, and then as you're falling unconscious, another corpse item that represents the unconscious unit is created. So you end up with a corpse and an unconscious body, which will survive until the end of the turn unless some medical attention is provided.

 

Another fun chryssalid/zombie related bug is the game forgetting to drop the soldier's equipment after being zombified. Don't be surprised if a laser beam suddenly flies out of the newly hatched chryssalid's teeth. No, it hasn't obtained a new energy attack - it's just carrying a gun and it doesn't have a gun firing animation.

 

- NKF

Edited December 17, 2005 by NKF

[Exo2000]

What's the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on a mission?

 

Just recently I went on a recovery mission for a downed Medium Scout.  I got there, and on the equip screen there was a Sectoid Navigator.

 

I went "okaaaay that's weird" and figured the game was about to crash.  I clicked the OK button to go onto the battlescape and it went straight from the X-Com Turn 1 screen to the mission debreif screen.  I had won the mission, captured one alien, gotten a pair of corpses and some random weaponry.  Near as I can figure, the alien was standing in the smoking ruin of its craft and fainted when it saw my Skyranger coming down.

 

So, any good stories?

 

Sometimes the crew of a UFO can be totally annihilated on impact. I guess what happened was the reactor exploded in the map, and whilst it didn't do enough damage to kill the Navigator, it dealt enough to stun him outright, and therefore you captured him alive.

 

(When the map is generated, the Elerium Reactor is generally exploded at least once or more times to make it look like the UFO took a real hammering, so chances are it only exploded once and dealt stun damage, killing the other two normal crewaliens.)

[Sectopod]

Heh, heres a new one from a couple days back

 

I was there at a Snakeman Terror Mission site, blasting Chryssilids, losing men, but eventually I managed to beat back the aliens at bay until there was 1 more Snake left (or so I thought).

 

One of my rookies stood out in the open and then all of a sudden *Raaaaoooouhhhhh* he was transmuted into a Zombie. Luckily he was outside the 'Ranger so I took some pot shots at him, but only 1 flaw. The Chrissilid and the Zombie were invisible, like they were using some forbidden cloaking technology. I managed to kill one of the creatures (it was the Zombie thanks to the brief exploding into Chrissi lag). And that was invisible :S

 

I killed it before it could kill my men but then there was the original Chrissi being invisible. It was trying to run away. Luckily some pot shots at it from my rookies brought it down. I must say it surprised me at how the cheating computer was going at a whole new level with this

[grislyatoms]

What's the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on a mission?

 

Just recently I went on a recovery mission for a downed Medium Scout.  I got there, and on the equip screen there was a Sectoid Navigator. 

 

I went "okaaaay that's weird" and figured the game was about to crash.  I clicked the OK button to go onto the battlescape and it went straight from the X-Com Turn 1 screen to the mission debreif screen.  I had won the mission, captured one alien, gotten a pair of corpses and some random weaponry.  Near as I can figure, the alien was standing in the smoking ruin of its craft and fainted when it saw my Skyranger coming down.

 

So, any good stories?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Scenario:

 

One rookie all by his lonesome in a field on a terror mission; the rest of the guys were poking around in a building @half the map away. Here comes a Chrysalid running at the rookie.

 

8 squares, 7 squares, 6 squares away, 5 squares, 4, 3, (at this point I am thinking aww crap this rookie is dead and I will have two bleeping chrysalids running around) 2 squares, 1 square: Reaction fire from a vet half the map away kills the chrysalid at the rookie's feet.

 

Rookie had to clean out his drawers; the vet was treated to a shot of tequila and a beer by the base commander.

 

(This happened @1997, and I still remember it!)

[Kratos]

And how could you forget that may I ask?

[Pherdnut]

I liked the "Raaaooouuuhh" description of the Chrysalid sound.

[Dover]

You know what the sad part is, grislyatoms? Reaction fire tends to screw up melee attacking aliens, so even if your vet missed, the chrysalid probably would've turned around anyway.

 

Unless he hit your rookie, in which case I would laugh. Mostly because that's usually what happens to me early in the game...

[GDD]

Geez weez that was close,

 

I think I had one where a guy went in a building, ran out of points just as he spotted an alien, sent half the crew in and all ran out of points trying to kill him, then reaction fire killed the alien before he had a chance during his turn.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

A long time ago a friend of mine told me he'd got a tank panicked. Sounds funny, I think.

[[NKF]]

It does sound funny, but it can happen. Your tank is quite impervious to most means of normal morale loss, but if it kills any friendly units, it will lose morale and will even panic or go berserk once it hits the panic threshold.

 

- NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

... A Sectoid Medium Scout lands at 2-hour-flight distance from my base, daytime.

"Easy 3 kills/50 Elerium/UFO PS/UFO Nav/Aloys" you would think, and that's exactly what I was thinking.

Remember those impassable lakes that appear on "Polar" tileset? And a bunch of those lakes completly blocks the passage to UFO. I have used my Plasma Hovertank to kill a sectoid that was wandering outside. But it can't enter the UFO door and I don't have anybody in flying suit.

I've spent like 15 turns waiting for the crew to go out. But alas - they were sitting inside, laughing and showing me fingers. Bastards.

Neither tank shots nor grenades could breach the UFO walls (I knew they wouldn't, but still gave them a try).

Probably the most annoying retreat I ever had to perform... At least they didn't escape my Intercetor's plasma shots.

[SleepyWu]

after 20's turns the aliens begin to leave thier ufo. it happens very, very often. So, you can just throw motion sensor grenade to the second from the entrance square and wait.

 

blehmedit: fixed tags for you, remember, in order to use HTML tags you have to enable them

Edited May 12, 2006 by Blehm 98

[Blitzen]

the funniest thing that happened to me was an attack on a snake man base. I take 14 men. After 5 turns I have 2 guys left. one is bieng MCed every turn and the other is panicking in the entrance. on turn 15 the aliens (after trying to kill the rokie for 10 turns) lose control of him. He berserks! Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap! 6 crysalids, 10 snake men down! Whee! I won!

[MadMortagan]

One time it was late in the game and the aliens were blasting away at my base, luckily I had two fusion cannons and a grav shield. I forget exactly how this happened but I managed to put every gun in the base on one of my Avengers and it went off on a mission, right before that I had ordered like 20 soldiers to get them equipped there with armor and deport them. As my Avenger was on its way back from the mission, another battleship attacked my base and got through the defense. I ended up with 20-ish rookies and about 50 hand grenades to defend the base with. After they blasted half my men away with plasma/blaster shot I managed to get some kamakazi action going on and finally killed a few, took their weapons, and got my base back.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Actually it's not an internal game thing - It's when I was experimenting with XComUtil modified aircraft. Something went wrong when patching (setup .bat file crashed and I closed it manually).

I got to the game and send an Interceptor with some soldiers to an UFO site. When the battlescape loaded, I saw the wierdest aircraft I have ever seen:

Is this my "Interceptor"? I got no idea how this "thing" can fly at all.

Edited August 25, 2006 by Bullet-Tooth Tony

[Zombie]

Looks like a cross between one of the unused ufo map files and the Lightning. Yuk.

 

- Zombie

[Diemex]

I did a sectoid base once where maybe 3 kills were mine.... the rest were bad aiming aliens shooting each other.... I witnessed a few sectoids taking pot shots.... at my guys.... only to blast another sectoid in the back.

 

A poorly tossed alien grenade wiped out a few more.

 

And to top it off.... I knew there was only a few left in the control room... I had entered the lower floor and ran out of TUs. The commander took aim and fired his blaster launcher at me.... he missed of course and wiped everything in that room out resulting in a win for me.

[Aiki-Knight]

I did a sectoid base once where maybe 3 kills were mine.... the rest were bad aiming aliens shooting each other.... I witnessed a few sectoids taking pot shots.... at my guys.... only to blast another sectoid in the back.

 

A poorly tossed alien grenade wiped out a few more.

 

And to top it off.... I knew there was only a few left in the control room... I had entered the lower floor and ran out of TUs. The commander took aim and fired his blaster launcher at me.... he missed of course and wiped everything in that room out resulting in a win for me.

 

Yes - those alien commanders can be relied upon to do that often. I often send in HWPs to the bottom floor of the control room. The commander sees it, takes a shot at the floor, and blows himself and all his friends to Kingdom-Come when all the power sources explode.

 

AK

[MaaZeus]

It does sound funny, but it can happen. Your tank is quite impervious to most means of normal morale loss, but if it kills any friendly units, it will lose morale and will even panic or go berserk once it hits the panic threshold.

 

- NKF

 

 

 

I guess targeting computer glitches in friendly fire.

 

 

"computer malfunction! Bleepbloop! BSOD, Windows 98 has made illegal function in memory spot 00ff-5a99, press any key to continue or CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart. ROFL

 

 

 

 

 

About wierd things, can UFO's abduct your soldiers!? I was once browsing my soldier list, and it reported that one soldier is located in ship called UFO-123 (dont remember the exact number but its irrevelant anyway)!!!! A bug or feature? IIRC it happened twice after some mission that ended quite badly. It was long time ago, and hasnt happened since.

Edited September 17, 2006 by MaaZeus

[Patrick1994]

NUCLEAR BOMB!!!! and free crylis under my control

 

wierdest glitch 1 of my guys in a terror mission went inside of a warehouse with a primed alien grenade and turned the corner and a crlisis was standing their and i freaked out and pressed CIRCLE brung up the menu and it has a crlisis on the ground section i went back and it was gone.

then i went back moved it into my backpack then put it in my right hand a turn later

i threw it and it landed under my control and i won the terror mission with it and before it killed all the enemys i threw the alien grenade AND IT EXPLODED KILLING EVERYTHING IN THE WAREHOUSE and the second floor of every building.

killing 3 of my guys and when the mission ended i had the clyisis as 1 of my soldiers and equiped him with like tons off ammo and guns.

 

----------

best glitch ever

 

i was playing and my game froze up

went back to norma 10 seconds later and all my troops has 000 for TU

and i could walk and shoot as much as i wanted eventually i was able to walk into the enemy UFO and went straight up to a alien sectiod commander and

stun rod him and then take his body up to a 2nd floor and threw him off a ledge and he survived .

[Warface]

What's the strangest thing that has ever happened to you on a mission?

 

Just recently I went on a recovery mission for a downed Medium Scout. I got there, and on the equip screen there was a Sectoid Navigator.

 

Same thing happened to me with a Floater right before a Muton (terror ship? That detail escapes me) recovery. The battle went a little differently though. He was in my loadout inventory, and I shrugged and started the mission. Several rounds later, when I had almost wiped out the enemy, I looked in the Avenger for my psi-troops and there was an unarmed Floater standing stupidly in there with them. I laughed my little white bottom off. He apparently made an escape from Alien Containment, stowed away on the Avenger, and foolishly fell asleep, only to awake in the heat of battle. That or the game remembered him from someone's inventory with the same stun damage he had before, and it wore off. How he ended up on the ship is beyond me, but I've heard it happens from time to time. That has to be the strangest and funniest thing I've seen so far.

[Tsereve]

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j54/tserevekicksass/Lawl%57%54%46.gif

 

'nuff said.

[Warface]

I just remembered one other thing... now THIS was odd... had nothing to do with xcomutil or any bug that I know of, in fact...

 

Ever had an Ethereal Engineer shoot three blaster bombs in one turn? From the engine room of a battleship.

 

I had mind controlled about 9 of his buddies, so I guess he was angry. But how did he load it three times? One came down and killed everything I had MCed in the lift; one came down and opened a hole in the lift to the outside; and one came out of the hole and killed the MCed sectopod outside.

 

I know they all came from the same engineer because it showed the flight path; the Engineer had a blaster but no bombs left when I MCed him; and I had accounted for everything else.

 

Luckily it was none of my own troops, so I just laughed about it.

[BladeFireLight]

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j54/tserevekicksass/Lawl%57%54%46.gif

 

'nuff said.

 

That is what happens whe you let a rookie fly.

 

Looks like the work of xcomtuil's interceptor and map generator. quite spactacular.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Pi Masta]

Ever had an Ethereal Engineer shoot three blaster bombs in one turn? From the engine room of a battleship.

 

I had mind controlled about 9 of his buddies, so I guess he was angry. But how did he load it three times?

 

He probably beserked. You get a boatload of time units when a unit beserks (I want to say 255), but loading a weapon is fixed at 15.

 

This happened recently, its more amazing then weird. Had a guy at a terror site with fatal wounds and I didn't have med kits yet, (used XcomUtil's research) so I figured this guy was going to die. Especially considering his health was really low and was loosing 3 per turn.

 

Best thing to do is kamakazi him. I run around everywhere I can with him to spot aliens and never does. I spotted some others with a different soldier and carried on. He got down to 1 HP and I hit the end turn button, I killed the last aliens on reaction fire and he lived. I want to say his wound recovery was like 54 days! I kept him and renamed him Rambo. (He even used an autocannon on that battle)

[Warface]

He probably beserked. You get a boatload of time units when a unit beserks (I want to say 255), but loading a weapon is fixed at 15.

 

I thought of that, but how do you go berserk and set waypoints, or reload your weapon? I thought berserk meant you just fire off whatever's in your weapon in a random direction and then look around crazily. Arming and deploying 3 blaster bombs up one lift and down another to out-of-sight targets, including blowing a hole open to target one of them (after clearing the lifts), is a little complicated for a berserker, isn't it?

[[NKF]]

It's very possible that the game glitched at that moment and you got some wildly messed up weapon during the alien's turn.

 

I've seen it happen in UFO and TFTD a few times. I mean, who's to say that an autocannon that can suddenly rip the Skyranger apart is a normal weapon? Happened when a soldier went berserk. Weapon seemed normal upon regaining control of the soldier though.

 

- NKF

[Cornuthaum]

its a flying, mind-controlling alien that has (according to the ufopaedia entries) no way to sustain its body on its own... who knows, maybe "berserking" equals "must blow up everything that moves lest it eats me"

[Hidden Sniper]

The oddest thing that happened to me was when i landed and an alien was outside my skyrange with a blaster bomb and leveled my team off of reaction fire

[TravelingAngel]

Wound Recovery of over 89 days. And it was on my super-soldier/Captain.

[[NKF]]

Wound recovery time is equivalent to a random value between 50% and 150% of the amount of health you lost. So if you lost 50 points of health, your bed time can be anywhere between 25 and 75 days.

 

Was your soldier down to 1 hitpoint of 60 (or 61) hitpoints? 59 lost hitpoints is equivalent to 29 to 88 days. Sounds like you got a really bad roll there.

 

It's ridiculous, I agree, but that's how it was done.

 

- NKF

Edited January 21, 2008 by NKF

[Morwynd]

Breached a supply ship the other day and found myself face to face with a Snakeman... who was on fire!

 

Maybe that's a common sight if you use a lot of incendiary ammo, but this was a first for me. The odd thing is the supply ship was in mint condition, all three power cores survived the crash... no idea what could've lit him up like that.

 

Anyway he ran around for a turn and then burned to death, it was pretty funny.

[Crafty]

Breached a supply ship the other day and found myself face to face with a Snakeman... who was on fire!

 

Maybe that's a common sight if you use a lot of incendiary ammo, but this was a first for me. The odd thing is the supply ship was in mint condition, all three power cores survived the crash... no idea what could've lit him up like that.

 

Anyway he ran around for a turn and then burned to death, it was pretty funny.

 

I had that on a sectoid supply ship I had shot down, but the sectoid was on fire, ran into a hole from the second floor and fell to the first. I dont' recall if he died by reaction fire or just regular fire, but it was good times.

[Morwynd]

I just had a spectacular save game corruption. This was originally a Supply Ship crash recovery.

 

Exhibit A: The Supply Ship vanished, but left its roof, shadow, and occupants. It was replaced with an open-air Battleship... no third floor or roof--except for a farmhouse roof on the right side.

 

Exhibit B: Seems like all the diagonal floor graphics got messed up. Harvester equipment and sides of meat line the disco room.

 

Exhibit C: My Avenger hopped a tile to the left, leaving its shadow and unused equipment pile behind.

 

Exhibit D: A flying Snakeman! Left over from its previous position in the Supply Ship, presumably.

[Melv]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v731/euanmilne/Xcom.jpg

 

Investigating an Alien Base to see which lifeforms were there, I sent an Interceptor with 4 men on it to have a look round.

 

Imagine my surprise when I landed to see this!

 

I had the two who could move turn round to see two Floaters right in the faces of my team.

Edited July 8, 2008 by Melv

[zarx]

funnest thing that ever happened to me was when I started a new game after a few years not playing I started an easy game to ease myself back into it but my first UFO was a grounded oneman scout containing a floater second UFO was a snake man small UFO third a small UFO containing three mutons lost half my soldiers on that one taking down mutons with human weapons with a newbie crew aint easy

[nonam]

I know this topic is old but there`s no point creating a new one when this one is at the same page.

 

Beginning of a game. Downed a Small Scout and suddendly aliens attack my base! Whoops, that mission must have been REALLY REALLY IMPROTANT!!!

 

There`s one Cyberdisc left amd 3 of my soldiers. The Cyberdisc is on the 2nd floor. I can`t see it althrough i KNOW it`s there(i can`t go up the stairway)If i try moving soldier 2 squares adjacent of it, cyberdisc moves down and kills soldier before reaction fire. When i stand close it doesn`t move down and there`s no way i hurt it with grenades or blindly fire projecties!

 

Turned out i had to sit down in front of stairway, so i can see cyberdisc, but it can`t fire at me. Yes, it blew up, sadly...

 

It shows you when different types of alien soldiers panic. I could wander forever without getting yourself a leader before researching the Mind Probe till there was a Harvester and the message said "Snakeman Leader has panicked"

I had to move my soldiers out of UFO to avoid reaction fire at snakeman, since small launcher was in Skyranger.

[sy213]

yeah so i attacked a landed battleship of snakemen and something oddd happened....

 

so a chryssalid attacked my prized commander (which is named sy) and turned him into a zombie. so i was pretty much done, wasnt gonna play anymore so i mind controlled him, and then killed the zombie sy..

 

and like what many have u discovered i actually controlled the hatched chrysallid and was able to arm him with my old gun and actually killed the chrysallid that made me, and another snakeman... heres were it gets weird

 

after the mission ended i actually got commander sy back, unharmed..... so in other words, i was zombified, turned into a high TU chrysallid killing machine and then when the mission is over, the xcom operatives were actually able to bring me back?

 

=D i was glad, cuhz i got 200 e-115 and it wasnt for nothing... but so bizarre, how can we trust commander sy now? he was once one of them------

[Zombie]

Yep, that's a known bug (or exploit as you found out). MC the Zombie who was a X-COM agent, then kill it. From then on the Chryssalid is under permanent X-COM control and when the mission ends you get the soldier back too. Neat stuff. You can read up on some more MC exploits over at the X-COM Wiki.

 

- Zombie