What Do You Guys Consider Cheating

[dan2]

I think everything allowed by the game, like load&save, shooting upwards in elevators, or anything done inside the game itself is not cheating.

Modifying files or even taking a peek inside them I consider them cheating.

Anybody have other opinions? Anybody like to cheat or try not to?

[Quantifier]

by "allowed by the game" do you mean exploiting ingame bugs too? bugs like unlimited fuel or salary transfer, they are cheating. also keeping terror sites targeted so they don't dissapear.

 

modifying savegames to workaround research tree bugs i consider not cheating.

Edited December 19, 2004 by quantifier

[dan2]

by "allowed by the game" do you mean exploiting ingame bugs too? bugs like unlimited fuel or salary transfer, they are cheating. also keeping terror sites targeted so they don't dissapear.

This is a good and interesting point, some bugs in the game can be considered cheating. I wonder if there are other cheating bugs. I cannot think of anything else right now

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Anything that makes you feel bad inside or nags at your conscience is cheating. Anything that doesn't do either of those is not cheating. IMHO, cheating is strictly a matter of personal preferance.

 

That said, I have various ideas of cheating about various games.

[dan2]

modifying savegames to workaround research tree bugs i consider not cheating.

I'm not sure about this, I guess each version of XCOM2 have some other research bugs, but I consider myself lucky not to need any workarounds for research. Of course, it was a lot of trial and error until I figured out what I need and what I shouldn't sell right away (like an Deep One corpse)

[dan2]

That said, I have various ideas of cheating about various games.

That's true, of course, but I was interested in people's oppinion (and yours included) about what's considered cheating in TFTD and how often this happen

[Tsereve]

Anything that makes you feel bad inside or nags at your conscience is cheating.

 

Conscience? What is that?

 

I agree with Quantifier and dan2 on all above respects.

[dan2]

In an earlier topic, "Med Kits Useless?", I found out that you can use a medi-kit to find out if there is an alien on the other side of the door. Although is a minor bug and its use is limited, would anyone consider cheating taking advantage of it?

[dan2]

Yep

Now, how about using a medi-kit to revive a stunned alien. For sure they don't have the same physiology with humans, it's highly unlikely those compounds to work on any of the aliens species and pretty much impossible on all (1 square type) of them. Is this considered cheating?

[[Blehm 98]]

tsereve, if you have any posts, please make them at least 10 words. i'll chop them down just as fast as you can put them up, so don't try to beat me

[Tsereve]

??

 

dan2, I wouldn't consider that cheating. You're simply using a medikit for what it was intended for, which is reviving things. Aliens or humans, it's still reviving things.

[Guest Azrael]

*Nothing* is cheating

[Tsereve]

[[Blehm 98]]

??

 

dan2, I wouldn't consider that cheating.  You're simply using a medikit for what it was intended for, which is reviving things.  Aliens or humans, it's still reviving things.

 

well, using it through wall is cheating though

[dan2]

tsereve, if you have any posts, please make them at least 10 words.  i'll chop them down just as fast as you can put them up, so don't try to beat me

I was happy he actually said what he was thinking about it and if one "Yep" was enough, that was no harm. It's not about comparing or strength, it's about interacting and exchanging ideas.

About the revival mechanism of the medi-kit I was reffering to it as being unrealistic, because every type of alien has a different way it's body is working, so a chemical from medikit that works on humans its probably not working in the same way on aliens. And since you can research medi-kits without any alien knowledge, I assume its made to work on humans and not for anything else

[dan2]

How about the next situation: when I have a Barracuda armed with 2 Sonic Oscilator and a Dreadnaught (very large) ship appears. I intercept it, minimize the window, save, then cautious approach. At 480 the Dreadnaught misses, at 440 my Barracuda shoots then starts going back to visual range, Dreadnaught misses again and at 560 I minimize the window and save again. Of course, much more often this scenario doesn't occur, but it happens, like 10% of the time. If it doesn't happen I have to reload, instead. After 8 "lucky" shots, the Dreadnaught is a wreck-down and my Barracuda is untouched. Would you consider this cheating, just because a Barracuda wouldn't normally stand a chance against a Dreadnaught?

[[NKF]]

Cheating, eh? Depends.

 

Save and reload immortality is cheating. It's always going to be a form of cheating. However, that said, this game is hard, but your enjoyment comes first and foremost above everything else. If you're up to it, you can restrain yourself and live with your actions. If you want a simple game just for fun, well, there you go. It all depends on what you're aiming to achieve.

 

Bugs like being able to send explosive effects through walls can be debateable. It's not your fault the game didn't destroy the wall, right?

 

Throwing grenades through the ceiling... it's technically cheating. But you can always fool yourself by saying that you're pushing it through a grate.

 

Shooting explosives up at the ceiling (and not getting hit yourself):

 

1. It's not your fault that explosives are only partially 3-d in effect.

2. It's not your fault if the ceiling is not destroyed. You can always say shockwaves, heat, shrapnel, etc went through the ceiling.

 

Money transfer trick with scientists/engineers/soldiers (and possibly even leased ships): Cheat. Very minor cheat since you tend to make so much money anyway that it's pointless. Unless you employ a lot of them.

 

Selling unresearched items: Eh. Not that it really matters.

 

Fuel bug: While a cheat, you do make up for it in a few ways.

 

1. Your ammo is limited. 100 plasma/sonic shots, and it's over for your ship as a UFO interceptor. Not as a mobile scanner though.

2. And if you foolishly enough use a short range weapon against opponents many times bigger than you: your hitpoints are limited as well.

3. You have one hangar/sub pen that cannot be used.

4. If you send the ship to scout a remote part of the globe: You'll be away from your base and thus cannot launch the ship immediately if necessary.

 

Free Tank ammo at a base defence bug (assuming not enough ammo to rearm): Technically a cheat, but you can also think of defending the base as a way of earning the free load of ammo. You get to keep whatever's left over too. In UFO, this makes the fusion tank THE base defence unit, as its weapon is weaker then the handheld variety, so you have a reduced chance of destroying base modules - and with free ammo, you might as well waste every shot you've got. In TFTD, this makes gauss coelacanths a good 'low cost' SWS to use as a throw-away.. I mean a base defence unit. I'd still use a sonic displacer for general purposes, but with a Gauss Coelacanth, you don't feel so bad when you lose it.

 

The Grenade Relay: Not a cheat. You spend more TUs in a grenade relay than when you get one soldier to prime and then throw the grenade. So you pay for the tactical advantage by paying more TUs.

 

Attacking enemies that have been 'spotted' but are still in the shroud of war. Not really a cheat.

 

Walking/flying through some walls. An odd 'cheat' and can only be done under strict circumstances for non-flying units.

 

Stunning/mind controlling civilians and then killing them so that the cost 0 points at the end of the mission: Stupid cheat, but a cheat nonetheless. You make up for it by not getting the points you would have obtained by saving them normally.

 

Shooting an alien on the other side of the map that you cannot see, but was spotted by another soldier. Not a cheat. Remember, X-Com maps are actually very small areas. We just don't see this immediately because of the game resolution. The visual limitations are artificially imposed, because it wouldn't be much fun or much of a challenge otherwise.

 

Kneeling in mid-air/water. Not a cheat. You spent the TUs to get the 15% improved accuracy so you earned it. You also need to spend the TUs to 'stand up' if you decide to move or move upwards (not downwards though).

 

So on and so forth.

 

- NKF

Edited December 20, 2004 by NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

-Getting around research tree bugs by use of programs: cheat. I had to go through the game three times before I got over all of them and I didn't have internet at that time.

 

-Giving yourself a calcinite corpse for melee weapons: cool. The game sometimes misses the aquatoid terror mission so you have to wait a pretty long time for mixed crews and such. Add to that the stupidity of calcinites in relation to vibroblades and the fact that you need a gillmen (FOR CRYING OUTLOUD WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING???) for the improved blades, you should probably just give yourself these weapons when you finish zrbite and aquaplastics.

 

-Save/load: neutral. Mission specific. Or rather, case specific. If I've been studying for three hours and I want to have some fun, and the next mission is an alien colony assault (second part), I am not going to stress myself out when my aquanauts become Tentaculat stew. I will just hit the magical "that didn't happen" button.

 

-Fuel thingy: Two possibilities. If you "park" the craft somewhere and the craft returns to base after its first interception, it's cool. I mean, you should be able to land the craft some place and not waste fuel. If you use the trick as a means of unlimited flight, cheat.

 

-Transfer trick: cheat. Why bother anyway? Seriously. Stop hoarding those sonic cannons FFS.

 

-All those battlescape things NKF pointed out one by one: cool. Aliens shoot themselves in the head sometimes (for no apparent reason). We don't go "ooooh that alien cheated so I could win" and load to a previous save do we? Stuff happens.

 

-Giving yourself certain artefacts before they appear: cool. You have to research it anyway. Then manufacture it if you want to use it.

[dan2]

Cheating, eh? Depends.

Walking/flying through some walls. An odd 'cheat' and can only be done under strict circumstances for non-flying units.

- NKF

Wow, that was a long list of bugs that can be exploited. Thanks. Now I want to ask you a question. I know you can go through some walls using a flying suit, but I had no idea you can make your soldiers go through walls even without being able to fly. Can you explain how that can be done?

[[Blehm 98]]

your guys will sometimes walk through the walls to get to a place in front of the door, only time it happened to me was on a large scout mission, i told my guy to walk to the front of the door, and viola! He sees an alien right by the door

 

you don't think i reloaded, do you?

[dan2]

-Getting around research tree bugs by use of programs: cheat. I had to go -Giving yourself a calcinite corpse for melee weapons: cool. The game sometimes misses the aquatoid terror mission so you have to wait a pretty long time for mixed crews and such.

-Giving yourself certain artefacts before they appear: cool. You have to research it anyway. Then manufacture it if you want to use it.

While mostly agreeing with your message, I still think these two are cheating.

I think that if I don't get a calcinite early in the game, I rather restart the whole thing (it's very early in the game, just two easy battles) or wait until 1 april and try to get a mixed crew on the cargo ship terror site. Or I even play without vibroblades at all, it's not impossible, it's just harder.

About giving artefacts before they appear, my questions is "Which ones do you really need before they appear anyway?".

My biggest annoyance is when at the end of the port terror site I don't get an MC Reader. All that fight for nothing. Well, almost nothing, I kill a lot of aliens and that's the game about, but still, a lot of lost effort. And I have to start it all over, but it's sure worth it.

So, after all this answers, I get the idea that there are not major bugs in the game worth to be exploited to the extent that can be considered a cheat.

Xcomutil wanted to make Gauss Technology worthwhile again, similar to Lasers ,but at the same time the purpose of it was to make the game more challenging. While I don't use Xcomutil right now, what do you think about its Gauss Technology improvement, is it a cheat or is it a rectification of a programming error?

[dan2]

your guys will sometimes walk through the walls to get to a place in front of the door, only time it happened to me was on a large scout mission, i told my guy to walk to the front of the door, and viola!  He sees an alien right by the door

 

you don't think i reloaded, do you?

Hmm, this is a bug I never come across yet, and I played this game a lot. Is it repeatable? Do you need to have the screen on that soldier, on the edge or out of the way? I hope you remember more about how this can be done

[dan2]

Maybe you're wondering why do I bug everyone about cheating. I know this game is hard and the files are so easy to hack. When I got this game in ?96 in the begining all I was doing was seeing my soldiers shooting with a gauss pistol in auto mode (30% accuracy and the soldier 40-50%) after aliens and the bullets going after anything but the alien, seeing aliens coming and shooting only once from really far and hearing the screams, then the alien retreats and all I was saying was: :: I decided to take a look at the files and see what can be done, and soon my Gas Cannons were 100% accurate on auto mode, 150 Streght HE clips, all my soldiers had MC Strenght of 100 and the list continues. Playing was much easier and I learn slowly the tactics of the game, how the research tree was and what do I need to do to finish the game. What I was still unable to do was how to down very large subs using Barracuda's, but that was less important, I was able to actually play the game. But it came the time to see, now with improved knowledge, if the game can be won the way programmers wanted the game to be. And I was able to finish it, even at superhuman, so at that time I pushed the challenge even more, playing it only with weapons that can be bought or researched by my team, but not taken from alien technology, and that was accomplished, too.

But one thing is still unclear, what others think about cheating, what is cheating for them and can the game be won without any cheating involved? And I hope the answer is YES

[[Blehm 98]]

the game also cheats though, that is a thing to remember. and the gauss weapons were a huge blow microprose made to try and make teh game much harder, because back then, no one had good ai's, so instead the ai would cheat

[[NKF]]

Nothing wrong with cheating at first to familiarise yourself with the game, and then playing it for real.

 

I know for certain that you can play the game without cheating, even on the ridiculous superhuman difficulty level. Yes, even in TFTD, where superhuman is about one notch higher than UFO's superhuman.

 

Speaking of the walk-through-walls 'feature', there are several conditions that need to be met.

 

1. This involves different levels. You want to walk into a wall on a certain level, you have to start from a level other than the level you want to stop on.

 

2. The wall you want to walk through must occupy the entire tile rather than just one edge of it. That is to say, the walls there, but you cannot walk into the tile that it's sitting on. Corners are good example of this, and usually the north and western walls of enemy ships. Basically any wall that you can toss a grenade into and it'll blast on either side.

 

3. You must only be able to walk. Most important rule.

 

4. You must be able to walk towards the target destination. So if there's no ground, pretend that there is ground. So if there's any obstructions, it won't work.

 

Now, as an example, say you're standing on the roof of a low building and the enemy ship is nearby. From the roof and on the same level, move the cursor to a spot that's just above the wall you want to step into and then walk there (only northern and western walls, or corner walls). Yes, even if the destination is in mid air, just click away. When you start walking, you'll drop down to the ground level and then suddenly walk into wall (assuming it occupies the entire tile and not just one edge of it). From there, you can choose to step into any adjacent tile that is clear.

 

In UFO, try going to a mission in the Lightning. Stand at the base of the steps. Then point your cursor to a spot under the Lightning that's right underneath one of the chairs, or the power unit. Then click. Instead of walking around the stairs, the soldier will walk up the stairs and step right into the chair or power unit. If you were in the power unit, you're stuck there for good, by the way.

 

My guess is that the game keeps thinking that the unit's walking on its original level and doesn't stop to consider the change in elevations for its collision detection.

 

I can't really think of any good examples in TFTD unfortunately.

 

----

 

Speaking of XComutil's enhanced gauss weapons, I can't see the purpose, really. Gauss ammo is so cheap and you can produce it by the tons. I actually quite like the default gauss pistols as they are (large clips, and the speed! Good combination) . But, on the other side of the coin, clips can run out on prolonged missions (two parters). That just means you need to bring more ammo, or have backup weapons available (like sonic weapons).

 

The enhanced heavy gauss is nice, but the sonic pistol is still better than it (overall) even if it does have unlimited ammo. But that's just based off personal preference, is all.

 

So is it a cheat? That's debateable. It's not playing it the way the programmers intended it, most definitely. I'd probably recommend using the enhanced ones for a while until you've become familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the gauss weapons, and then switch to the original gauss weapons and see how it goes from there. Having ammo only means you have to be more watchful on your ammo. You also have to force yourself to learn how to conserve your ammo.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I consider using xcomutil gauss cheating. But that's just me. BTW, my idea of cheating only applies TO ME, so if anyone says "I'm doing this and I don't think it's cheating", its actually fine by me.

 

If you can cheat your way a little to learn the game, and revert to non-cheating ways to defeat the game, and not get bored of the game during the process (or think you've messed up the whole feel of the game), then congrats. You have done something which people have argued as the true purpose of cheats.

 

Having said all that, I'd like to jump to the "let the computer cheat since its brainless" topic. True, the old games (especially RTS) relied heavily on having the computer cheat (since it lacked AI). This is the "cheap" way of making a harder, and the alternative is something like this:

 

Let's say we have a shoot em up game (something like Raptor). If you want to increased the difficulty, there are a few things you can do:

 

-Increase enemydamage/playerhealth ratio. Effectively means the enemies do more damage. Alternatively, you could increase the number of shots the enemy fire per second, thus making it harder for the player to get in between them and blast him. In terms of programming, this is just changing a number.

-Decrease playerdamage/enemyhealth ratio. Enemies become tougher. Again, you just have to change a few numbers to make this happen.

-Make the enemy respond to the player's movement. Now, this requires a new function. And it is hard to do.

 

There are a lot more ways to make the above game harder, and other types of games will have completely different ways of making them harder. The thing is, new games are not totally focused on AI. We are led to believe that and to be honest, there are serious improvements over the AI. Unfortunately, most games focus on graphics and the game engine (which is mainly about graphics) so increasing the difficulty is still "make them thougher".

[dan2]

There are a lot more ways to make the above game harder, and other types of games will have completely different ways of making them harder. The thing is, new games are not totally focused on AI. We are led to believe that and to be honest, there are serious improvements over the AI. Unfortunately, most games focus on graphics and the game engine (which is mainly about graphics) so increasing the difficulty is still "make them thougher".

I am myself unhappy with most of the games of today, I still consider games made in 92-97 better than the ones made today. Well, I hope I won't be dissapointed with the latest "Leisure Suit Larry", but that's a different story.

I'm overwhelmed by everybody's replies, they're great and I can say this forum was the greatest finding on Google that I had in a long time. I wasted so much time with gamedex and gamefaqs, but they're far behind. Thank you very much to everyone who replied.

Now about the game. While playing XCom3 I noticed that Smoking Grenade has the value of ~80 (if I remember correctly, but it's close to this value, anyway), but in TFTD the Dye grenade has a value of only 10. Do you think this is a mistake and what the programmer wanted is to give it the value of 100, but it was a typo?

I think the tactics can change a lot, especially in the begining with a more powerfull covering. Even in XCom1 is like 60, isn't it? Would it be a correction or a cheat to change it's value to 100? Or maybe you think of a better value?

About the movement through walls bug, yes, it's seem reasonable, although it's hard to apply it if it works only on oblical walls. Thanks for your explanation, NFK, I hope I can test it soon

Edited December 22, 2004 by dan2

[Snakeman]

I had an instance with the moving-through-walls thing with the alien supply ship involving the second level above the right entryway (when it was executed, I can't quite remember where the soldier began as he was in a flying suit, but he wound up in that little corridor behind the closet). I couldn't reproduce this however after several retries.

 

I'm not entirely sure, but I think sometimes the game let's you get away with an action, but not always if you try it again the exact same way. In my case though, since I may not have gotten the positioning right in the later experiments, it couldn't be carried out the way I'd seen it the first time.

Edited December 22, 2004 by Snakeman

[[NKF]]

Not just oblique walls. Any wall that occupies an entire tile (i.e. you cannot walk into the tile adjacent to it).

 

Along with the dart gun, I think the dye grenade is a bit of a let down, in my opinion. It spreads, yes, but unfortunately, by the time the particles have spread, the cloud's way too thin to provide any decent protection. Even a magna blast grenade can provide better immediate protection.

 

In UFO, the smoke grenade is at its best during the two or three turns after you've detonated the grenade (when the cloud is small but compact). By the time it spreads out, it'll be thin and the smoke screen cover will be somewhat reduced. In TFTD, 10 smoke damage only produces 1 tile of dye particles and you have to wait for it to spread out. It's just not on I tell you. It's just not on.

 

So yeah, I think they may have intended it to be 100. But oh well, not that it really matters too much. There are so many other weapons in this game (and scenery objects) that can produce the same effect.

 

- NKF

[dan2]

So yeah, I think they may have intended it to be 100. But oh well, not that it really matters too much. There are so many other weapons in this game (and scenery objects) that can produce the same effect.

- NKF

It matters in a way because new strategies can be developed based on a dye grenade of 100. I think even the "rendering unconscious" effect would be visible, allowing capturing of weaker aliens using grenades.

About the subject, I noticed that when people finish the game on superhuman and that seems easy, they think of something I would call "reverse cheating" in order to make the game harder.

I took a lot of new ideas from http://xcomutil.scotttjones.com/ in the section XCOM Scenario Suggestions and I found them quite interesting. Just a few examples: Bean Counter, Explosive, Photophobe, Neo-Pacifist, Single-Base, are all great ideas to make your life even more miserable at this game. Now my question comes: "What new ideas do you have besides all these great reverse cheats that you think are worthy and enjoyfull to be played?"

[dan2]

Since I was having some time and a very good team of MC Enabled guys, I began to experiment on aliens. I observed that Incendiary ammo doesn't do much damage even to aquatoids. If the ammo hits directly it takes between 1-11 damage. If if hits the ground and the aquatoid begins to be in flames it takes only 1 point of damage. Now the funny part comes. Any time you shoot with an incendiary ammo and hit something in the map (so the ammo doesn't leave the map unexploded) and incendiary explodes, even if this happens on the other side of the map, every aliens in flames loses 1-11 points of health. You can see if the alien is covered in flames, by seeing flames on their body even if they're not anymore in the middle of the fire. I guess this damage is dependent on the below armor, so a LobsterMan will move around untouched. In another experiment I've seen that there's no difference between AP, Gauss or Sonic. I tried this on Aquatoids, Gillman and Deep One. Even if in Kchang's walkthrough is specifically said that Aquatoids and Gilmen are vulnerable to sonic, but not on gauss or AP, there was no difference. If the bullet had the power of 10, all of them were doing damage 5 up to 16, so I assume any weapon will do a random damage between 50% and 160% of its nominal value. If the damage is lower than the armour, no damage occurs. If the damage is higher, damage is decreased with the armor strength value and this applied to decrease health. For 1-9 damage, armor decrease with 1 and for each 10 more with one more (ie: 10-19 decrease of health means armor goes 2 down, 20-29 is 3 and so on). Edited December 26, 2004 by dan2

[dan2]

Since I've seen a lot of people around consider saving as cheating, I started a new game. But I believe that not saving in battlescape in extremely challenging at superhuman, but not saving in geoscape is pure masochism. Is like saying to the aliens "Spank me more, my score is not yet -4000". So I decided to save only in geoscape and indeed, I see a huge challenge. I have to start the mission like 10 times until finally I get one without casualties. I even think the game is cheating, since my soldier, two squares away from alien is unable to hit the lousy alien. Where is Xcom hiring from, Bumville? Even worse, if you shoot with explosive, the game tries to move the impact place just so the alien isn't hit. I mean when you shoot with AP, it goes 2-4 squares away, but with EX it goes 2-4 squares + the explosion radius. In my first succesful battle I put my guys so high, on 3rd floor so they can shoot anywhere and make the field a heck. When every alien outside was gone, only one remains inside. I open the door, shoot on auto and none of them hits. From 4 squares. At least it hit the ion accelerator which goes boom and the last alien dies. Damn, I lost also the zrbite, but at least, I finished the mission untouched. Now with a Coelacanth is easier, they're having a decent armor, but still, the challenge is huge. It's 13 january and I'm begining the 4th mission. Wish me luck

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Good luck

 

Let me tell you something about random numbers though: in real life, random numbers are truly random. Unfortunately, with a computer, you can never get truly random numbers. Computers use the internal clock to roll random numbers, and mostly, since they take the milliseconds (I think, someone can correct me on this one), and process this with a function, the numbers are kinda random. But no computer can be truly random, since the random number depends on something quite "not random".

 

This does not mean 60% accuracy does not actually mean 60%. It means that, it just doesn't "truly" mean that.

[dan2]

Everything is random if the numbers are generated faster than they can be predicted. Anyway, I'm not sure if I was clear earlier, I was saying that even if some species are told to be more vulnerable to some ammo types, it appears that only the power of the ammo and the armor strength are taken into account. Of course, this result is just in the begining, more experimentation on other species has to be done. Is there anybody interested, though, in this? Or it would be worthless?

Does anybody knows if you can kill using incendiary ammo anything else beside aquatoids, gillmen and hallucinoids? Triscene seems to have a very low below armor, but I'm not sure they can be killed this way. A sonic pulser seems really effective.

And is saving only in geoscape still a cheat or not?

[[NKF]]

Let's put it this way: Compare the two phases of the game. The battlescape is a lot harsher than the geoscape and you tend to want to use the save-reload feature in it. A lot. In the Geoscape, while you can still make mistakes, they are very minor compared to the battlescape. On the bright side, if you do use save/reload for your missions, you are effectively giving the aliens a chance to save/reload as well since every mission will be started afresh with full troops on either side and a brand new map. You might want to occasionaly choose to accept an outright defeat rather than replay the mission over and over to get a perfect run. But again, even if you do reload the map to get a perfect run of a mission, you still put in the time and effort into getting the perfect run in one sitting. That's quite good when you compare it to saving every two steps, right? But anyway, that's entirely up to you.

 

So, no, it's not really a cheat. But it would be considered cheating if you intend to play a more serious ironman campaign where you save in case of a crash and when you want to end your game session.

 

 

 

---

 

As for fire effects:

 

Just food for thought: I killed a superhuman sectopod in UFO (one of the most heavily armoured terror untst in the game, beating even X-Com power suits) with multiple incendiary rounds from an autocannon. And that completely ignored its under armour. Note that under-armour only absorbs high explosive and stun effects. Oddly enough, it doesn't stop fire impact damage when the unit is standing in a patch of fire (every other unit on the map standing in fire gets affected too, as noted).

 

I'm pretty sure it can be done to a lobsterman as well.

 

The thing is, fire does not behave like high explosive damage.

 

---

 

As for your accuracy: Anything under 100% is subject to success or failure depending on the random number generator (it still is even when it's over 100, but that comes in when the bullet is travelling to its target destination). The aliens don't really cheat that much in this respect. It's just that in TFTD, they start off with very high accuracy levels.

 

---

 

Damage. I haven't delved much into the TFTD side of damage resistance, except that it is identical to UFO's, with the different aliens taking different levels of damage. For example, a lobsterman, after a bit of number crunching, ends up takes roughly 1/2 from armour piercing rounds. Ignoring the armour levels, I had a gas cannon with AP shells (60) do a maximum of 30 damage to a lobsterman. Take away 24 (superhuman level armour), that leaves 8 points of damage. But, it did do some damage, so that's good to know.

 

So, damage is calculated as:

 

Random number from 0 to weapon damage level as listed in UFOPaedia, mulitply by 2, multiply by alien's damage resistance modifier (this is what makes or breaks an alien), subtract the armour, and the remainder is how much health is lost. If negative, treat as 0. Depending on how much damage is done, the armour is damaged between 0 - 3 points.

 

This seems true for all damage types except fire. Stun damage, being non-lethal does not damage armour and only increases stun level.

 

Anyone with the TFTD Official Strategy Guide by Dave Ellis will be able to provide us with a more accurate listing of the modifiers, I know the damage levels are listed in the UFO OSG.

 

So, if my formula is right for TFTD, lobstermen should be taking something like 25% from armour piercing. Anyone care to confirm this?

 

- NKF

Edited December 27, 2004 by NKF

[dan2]

So, no, it's not really a cheat. But it would be considered cheating if you intend to play a more serious ironman campaign where you save in case of a crash and when you want to end your game session.

I'm pretty sure it can be done to a lobsterman as well.

Random number from 0 to weapon damage level as listed in UFOPaedia, mulitply by 2, multiply by alien's damage resistance modifier (this is what makes or breaks an alien), subtract the armour, and the remainder is how much health is lost. If negative, treat as 0. Depending on how much damage is done, the armour is damaged between 0 - 3 points.

This seems true for all damage types except fire. Stun damage, being non-lethal does not damage armour and only increases stun level.

- NKF

Once I tried to kill a lobsterman with fire and after 10 shots I used the MCReader on it and I see it is untouched. Even my men in Ion Armor are untouched, so I really think the armor below have something to do with the damage from incediary.

What is the percentage of losing games in "ironman" mode? I guess if people save to go to sleep, they're allowed to load only once, isn't it?

I'm not sure if the damage begins at 0, because in my experiments all damage power was at least half of the nominal value. And I never saw an aquatoid surviving a sonic cannon or even a rifle, which means the damage starts with higher than 0 and goes to 0 if the armor is higher.

I played succesfuly the no-save-in-battlescape campaign and I reached on 24 january the terror mission. In one I killed every alien but one, find it, shoot in its back with a sonic pistol, it doesn't fall, shoots back, my man dies. Another one, also 3 square far misses. My coelacanth shoots 3 times from 3 squares, all misses. Another shot from far, miss. I'm out of options, go on alien turn, it throws a sonic grenade at the closest soldier and both of them die. End of mission, 2 soldiers dead. I reload, spent carefully another 3 hours, nobody dies, but no MCReader in stores. Damn bug, I have to start all over. This is frustrating

Edited December 28, 2004 by dan2

[Quantifier]

0 damage happens sometimes. several times one of my aquanauts/soldiers survived shot during alien turn, and then in my turn he wasn't hurt at all, or lost only few hp (without armour, but then again unarmoured soldier actually has few armour points).

 

as for reloading, i generally try to avoid it. once it gains momentum, it is hard to slow down.

[[NKF]]

If armour had any effect, I would never have been able to kill a superhuman sectopod with incendiary rounds. I think it may have more to do with the lobsterman's resistance against fire.

 

Phosphor seems to have a lesser effect underwater than it does abovewater. Have you tried comparing the two?

 

Regarding damage reaching 0: It can. Even against an armour of 0. However, getting a 0 is very rare indeed. Same goes for getting a 100% value hit. But they are indeed possible.

 

As for accuracy: Yes, it can happen. TFTD aliens do have far more accuracy than you so they'll appear to hit you more often in the early game. So you might only be doing things like 60, they'll be having accuracies of 80 or so (and your coelacanths have awful accuracy to boot, I wouldn't trust them with precision shots). It may not look like much, but the difference in accuracies are truly astounding. On superhuman, they're ridiculous! To the point where a shot from an alien will mean instant death unless the random number generator comes into play.

 

Remember: If you can't hit them with your guns, walk up to them and shoot at them point blank (never do this when they are able to see you). At that range, even with 0 accuracy you'll hit something - gauss pistols and gauss rifles really excel at this sort of dirty work. Or, toss a grenade or fire an explosive into a solid object near the alien (like a wall).

 

- NKF

Edited December 28, 2004 by NKF

[dan2]

Phosphor seems to have a lesser effect underwater than it does abovewater. Have you tried comparing the two?

Regarding damage reaching 0: It can. Even against an armour of 0. However, getting a 0 is very rare indeed. Same goes for getting a 100% value hit. But they are indeed possible.

Remember: If you can't hit them with your guns, walk up to them and shoot at them point blank (never do this when they are able to see you). At that range, even with 0 accuracy you'll hit something - gauss pistols and gauss rifles really excel at this sort of dirty work. Or, toss a grenade or fire an explosive into a solid object near the alien (like a wall).

- NKF

Unfortunately, after the new year I'm back to work, but hopefully soon I'll test the difference between in air and in water incendiary rounds.

Damage 0? I'm still not convinced. I had situations (very rare, indeed) when my soldier was hit in front (armor = 11) and survived a sonic pistol blast, but with a lot of health lost and several critical wounds. If I had those formulas I would be able to calculate the percentage of 11 or less damage from a nominal 80 sonic pistol.

In the situation I was describing some time ago my sodier shot from 1 square away (no squares in between), but the gilman was lucky. I eventually restarted the mission and got everything I needed from that terrorized port. Even more interesting, something that never happened to me before, after a month another terror attack. Actually I had Sonic Oscillators and I sank the large USO, but when I saw aquatoids I just reloaded and let the USO attack the port and I got calcinites. All the times before in my terror missions in ports I got gilmen, but no aquatoids. Initially I though it will be piece of cake, but without being able to save in battlescape the aquatoids seemed to be even more efficient in killing my soldiers than gillmen and this time I had Ion Armors.

Hmm, lousy aquatoids aren't lousy at all when you can't save

[[NKF]]

You might want to have a look at the damage modifier tests we're running on XTC's UFO forum. It's UFO, yes, but as the games are roughly the same, you can easily translate the ideas back and forth. The main difference being the damage resistance percentages for the various units, the weapon damage levels, and whether or not TFTD doubles all its damage or not.

 

Trust me, it's long, it's boring, but it's informative.

 

http://www.x-com.co.uk/community/index.php...topic=2122&st=0

 

---

 

Speaking of shooting, curiously enough, even 100% accurate shots can go astray. My guess is that these may be caused by minor rounding errors, so the bullet ends up travelling a greater or shorter distance than it really should. I mean, I too have had point blank shots miss when the bullets hit the floor instead of the alien.

 

- NKF

[dan2]

Trust me, it's long, it's boring, but it's informative.

http://www.x-com.co.uk/community/index.php...topic=2122&st=0

Speaking of shooting, curiously enough, even 100% accurate shots can go astray. My guess is that these may be caused by minor rounding errors, so the bullet ends up travelling a greater or shorter distance than it really should. I mean, I too have had point blank shots miss when the bullets hit the floor instead of the alien.

- NKF

I was able to open the link some time ago, I was reading it for a while, but since I couldn't finish I try to open it also today for further reading. Unfortunately now I get page missing. I'll wait for a while, maybe it's just temporary.

About point blank missing, isn't it annoying? And unfair. A wounded biodrone is able to shoot perfectly 3 times in a row. Well, actually this isn't that bad, since with ion armor a frontal hit usually doesn't hurt, while a slight deviation to left or right armor can be fatal. But I think it's unfair because it's not realistic for a task force to hire such poor soldiers as sharpshooter. I think the game cheats when it's deciding how bad the hired soldiers are. Anyway, at least they can be trained, which is why I don't allow them to die even if I have to play 100 times the same mission

[Quantifier]

it's not temporary.

x-com tactical command forums moved from www.x-com.co.uk to www.strategycore.co.uk

 

as for shooting biodrone from point-blank range: would ion armour resist explosion?

[[NKF]]

The new url's:

 

http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=746

 

No, I don't think Mag Ion Armour would be able to shrug off most of the damage. Knowing how the TFTD developers liked to make the alien weapons overpowering, I imagine the blast may be around the same power level as the sonic pulser. On the bright side, Mag Ion Armour is quite hardy, so you may be able to survive.

 

But if you're at point blank range, and if you've got a drill, any drill, use that instead. Biodrones don't blow up from melee attacks. Even the thermal tazer works, but I'd only use that as a last resort, after the biodrone's taken on some damage.

 

- NKF

[dan2]

it's not temporary.

x-com tactical command forums moved from www.x-com.co.uk to www.strategycore.co.uk

as for shooting biodrone from point-blank range: would ion armour resist explosion?

Thanks for the new link.

Yes, an Ion armor, which I get much earlier in the game, its most of the time (~75%) enough to stop the blast from a dying biodrone, assuming you're facing it. By stop I mean no damage at all. Ion armor have a 132 stregth in front, which is pretty good already. But of course, the drills are way better, if you have them, to kill biodrones.

[Quantifier]

i knew that biodrones don't explode when killed in melee. i meant, when i finally get armour i try to avoid unnecesary risk, and i don't remember if i ever shot biodrone right in the face (brain?). the only way i killed them was either hth or from beyond explosion radius, except for some unarmoured-expendable-rookie-kamikaze routines.

 

afaik explosives affect only under armour which is 55 for ion suit.

Edited January 11, 2005 by quantifier

[dan2]

afaik explosives affect only under armour which is 55 for ion suit.

I disagree here, because even if explosive ammo take into consideration the lower armor, biodrones and grenades not directly under the soldier when explode damage the armor from the direction the explosion is coming. So many times aliens throw sonic pulsers at my sodiers, but if my sodiers are facing the grenade, they are (most of the time) unharmed. Or if they're unlucky their side armor get affected. Do a quick experiment and let an armed sonic pulser in the middle of your soldiers that are wearing Ion Armor and see which part of their armor (I mean front, side, back, below) gets damaged. I'll do the same experiment tonight and I apologize if I'm not right. About biodrones, I'm pretty sure the armor is good enough, because I shot one 2 days ago from 2 squares away and my sodier was fine.

[Quantifier]

since right now i don't have savegame, i just had to test it with started game, and try it with regular grenades. it seems we were both partially right. explosions affect under armour if unit is standing on the center of explosion or 8 adjacent tiles. units standing farther use their armour in direction the explosion is coming from.

 

so, shooting biodrone at 'point blank' is different from 'close distance'.

[dan2]

since right now i don't have savegame, i just had to test it with started game, and try it with regular grenades. it seems we were both partially right. explosions affect under armour if unit is standing on the center of explosion or 8 adjacent tiles. units standing farther use their armour in direction the explosion is coming from.

so, shooting biodrone at 'point blank' is different from 'close distance'.

So you verified it then. I knew it can't affect only lower armors for the entire blast radius. Although in my previous games I remember I shot biodrones at 'point black' and the soldiers still weren't harmed. But maybe standing on one side of a door while the biodrone is on the other side might influence this, who knows.

I have the unpatched version of TFTD, so for me getting Ion Armor is fast, in the begining of february, but to get a Lobster Man Navigator for Magnetic Navigation and Magnetic Ion Armor I have to wait at least till April. But Ion Armor is a good armor, too bad it can't be used for flying

[[NKF]]

Actually, because this game is relatively simple in the way it performs a lot of things, all area effect weapons affect under-armour. (With the exception of phosphor, which appears to follow slightly different rules from HE or stun)

 

It's not realistic, but that's just how it works. I suggest running a few tests and see for yourself. Try a few low power explosives, like HJC-HE shells or magna blast grenades with unarmoured/plastic aqua armour and see how their armour is affected depending on the distance of the blast. Use HE because it will damage armour, stun won't.

 

- NKF

[dan2]

Actually, because this game is relatively simple in the way it performs a lot of things, all area effect weapons affect under-armour. (With the exception of phosphor, which appears to follow slightly different rules from HE or stun)

It's not realistic, but that's just how it works. I suggest running a few tests and see for yourself. Try a few low power explosives, like HJC-HE shells or magna blast grenades with unarmoured/plastic aqua armour and see how their armour is affected depending on the distance of the blast. Use HE because it will damage armour, stun won't.

- NKF

I did the experiments myself, several with grenades and several with explosive (HE) ammos and I stick to quantifier's findings. When an explosion occurs, from a grenade or ammo, everything on the hit square or those directly attached to it (so 9 squares in total) gets hit in the underarmor, but everything else in the blast radius gets hit on front, side or back armor, depending which one faces the explosion. And only those with clear line of fire from explosion get hit. So, maybe if you want to experiment about it, I'll be glad to see if you agree with us or not.

Note: all experiments were done in TFTD and on aliens