Battle Does Not End

[Pastafarian]

I'm attacking a large Snakeman ship on the ice tileset. I killed the usual number of Snakemen and Chryssalids, plus a few more from the guys who got zombified. I have cleared out the ship and searched the entire map, in between waiting several turns at a time. It is now past turn 100, and I haven't seen an enemy for dozens of turns. I'm fairly sure there aren't any more, but the game has not ended. What should I do? Do I just have to carry everything I can back to my ship and abort?

[Zombie]

Search the map again with a fine toothed comb. Leave no stone (er, ice block) unturned, and make sure nothing is outside (even check your troop transport, aliens have been known to wander in there). After you are confident the outside is clear, it's time to go inside the UFO and do a floor-by-floor search in there too. You don't mention what type of UFO you are up against so I can't go into specific strategies for hunting down that last bug, but I'm assuming it's either a Terror Ship or a Battleship since those are the only two craft with terrorists. Whatever the case, once you start searching the inside of the UFO, make sure to post a soldier or two outside to act as over-watch spotters in case you flush something out. That way you can be confident that the alien is cornered inside at all times. :wink1:

 

Most likely, a Snakeman has panicked somewhere and is too terrified to move. I'd check the bridge first as the higher ranking aliens usually stick close to that area. Then again, there might be a zombie milling around somewhere too. They don't have many Time Units so they can't move very far either. If this is a Terror Ship, check those rooms with overlooks on to the ground floor. Terrorists love to hang out up there and not jump down. If this is a Battleship, don't forget to search the 4 legs where the Power Sources are; Engineers can sometimes be found there. There are also numerous rooms on L1 and L2 which could hide an alien, so search them carefully.

 

If you still can't find the last alien, attach your saved game here and one of us may manually hunt it down for you. And if that doesn't pan out (unlikely) we could also hack the game to kill the last alien manually. I wouldn't suggest aborting since the potential loot you could recover is pretty significant.

 

- Zombie

[Pastafarian]

Thanks. It's a terror ship (hadn't read the classifications when I first posted). I'll try the search patterns you recommended. Covering the exits might be a little tricky, because I blew two extra holes in the walls with a Blaster Launcher while I was first assaulting the ship-- it might be easier to cover the elevators and holes in the floor.

 

On a completely unrelated note, I didn't know I needed to capture a Sectoid leader to get psionics, and now I hardly ever get Sectoids any more. Do I have to either get lucky or wait until Ethereals show up?

Edited March 16, 2009 by Pastafarian

[[NKF]]

Sectoid leader, sectoid commander or an ethreal of any rank is the pre-requisites for the psi lab. You'lll definitely end up facing ethereals, but it would be good to have the lab screening your psi strength levels well before you meet them. They are an absolute pain to contend with if you have a whole team of troops with unknown psi strength levels!

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Thanks. It's a terror ship (hadn't read the classifications when I first posted). I'll try the search patters you recommended. Covering the exits might be a little tricky, because I blew two extra holes in the walls with a Blaster Launcher while I was first assaulting the ship-- it might be easier to cover the elevators and holes in the floor.

Aliens are oblivious to any new holes in the craft you make, so concentrating on the exits/lifts is probably the best strategy.

 

- Zombie

[Pastafarian]

Regardless, I've gone through it again, and I haven't seen any sign of any living aliens, and there really aren't that many places to hide on this map. Where do I find the save file to upload?

 

Sectoid leader, sectoid commander or an ethreal of any rank is the pre-requisites for the psi lab. You'lll definitely end up facing ethereals, but it would be good to have the lab screening your psi strength levels well before you meet them. They are an absolute pain to contend with if you have a whole team of troops with unknown psi strength levels!

 

- NKF

So do I just have to hope I run into a Sectoid Leader or Commander before then? Somewhat related, is there a way to tell what race a ship is without attacking it on the ground and seeing what I run into?

Edited March 16, 2009 by Pastafarian

[[NKF]]

The save game files are stored in the game directory under Game_1 through to Game_10, the number corresponding to their respective save slot.

 

Until you get a hyperwave decoder, there's no easy way of telling the race of a craft until you visit it. Capture a navigator of any race and you'll be on your way to getting the hyperwave decoder.

 

- NKF

[Pastafarian]

The save game files are stored in the game directory under Game_1 through to Game_10, the number corresponding to their respective save slot.

 

Until you get a hyperwave decoder, there's no easy way of telling the race of a craft until you visit it. Capture a navigator of any race and you'll be on your way to getting the hyperwave decoder.

 

- NKF

Where would the game directory be? I got the game on Steam, and I can't find any files related to it.

 

Okay, new problem. I found the file, now what part do I upload and how do I upload it? It's a folder with a whole bunch of DAT files in it.

Edited March 17, 2009 by Pastafarian

[Zombie]

Okay, new problem. I found the file, now what part do I upload and how do I upload it? It's a folder with a whole bunch of DAT files in it.

Upload the whole folder with all the files. (I would zip it up first just to be safe). How do you upload? Simple. When you are posting, look directly underneath the box. You should see something like this:

 

 

To add a file, click on the browse button, find your file, select it, then click open on the screen. Now click on the green UPLOAD button to upload it to the forums. We aren't done yet though, you still need to add it to your post. To do that, click on the Manage Current Attachments (1) bar and then on the pic with the piece of paper with a green plus (+) sign. It should add a piece of code in your post which looks something like this:

 

[attachment=xxxxx:File name]

 

That's all there is to it. Looking forward to locating that alien for you. I can't resist a good mystery.

 

- Zombie

[Pastafarian]

Okay, it should be here now.

GAME_1.zip

[Zombie]

Looks like some data corruption or possibly a bug happened. I searched the map high and low and couldn't find anything, so I took a peek in unitref. Seems like the first soldier in your squad was turned into a Zombie and survived somewhere. Looked again and still no luck. So I grabbed Bomb Blokes Saved Game Tweaker from the StrategyCore files section and used it to reveal the locations of all the aliens on the map. Turns out that Zombie is out of the mission boundaries for some reason:

 

 

It's right near your craft. Don't know what happened exactly, but what's done is done. I've included a zip of Unitref.dat which applies 254 fatal wounds to the Zombie. Just dump it in your save game folder, run the game and click on the next round button. You should hear a human death scream indicating the Zombie is dead. That should be the end of the mission.

 

BB's tweaker also gives the ability to kill aliens so you could use that instead of my unitref fix. Whatever you prefer is fine.

 

- Zombie

Unitref.zip

Edited March 17, 2009 by Zombie

[Pastafarian]

Yay! It worked. Thank you very much.

[Scrogdog]

That looks very much like what happened to one of my tanks the other night, except that I could plainly see it. Actually, it wasn't even the whole tank. It looked like one quarter was still on the mission map and three quarters were off-map just like the zombie.

 

I always play ironman but that constituted a restart.

[[NKF]]

I occasionally have a soldier suddenly appear one tile off the map, in the air. Can't move the soldier back into the confines of the map. Don't remember the circumstances around it, but it occasionally is a result of reloading a savegame, though once or twice I had it happen while playing the game.

 

A similar odd thing that happens after reloading a game is where the camera coordinates and elevation end up beyond the map's boundaries. Say level 6, a few thousands tiles to the north. You can eventually scroll back to the map (the overhead map helps heaps!), but it is quite peculiar. Wish we knew where the camera coordinates (and current selected unit) are stored in the savegame files. I have a feeling these aren't stored.

 

- NKF