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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Zombie's Permanent Control Of Aliens Via Stunning


aelf

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I decided to get myself a squad of Ethereals as ready-made psi soldiers. No need to take months training them up, and I might even be able to take them to Cydonia. Imagine the aliens' shock in discovering that they are facing a couple of their best, with at least one Ethereal leader to boot.

 

Unfortunately, the exploit described in this Ufopedia article doesn't seem to work. I'm running DOS v1.2 on Dosbox, by the way, so I don't see why it doesn't work as per what is written in the article.

 

I mind controlled a few Ethereals and lined them up, blasting them with stun bombs until they were unconscious. I repeated this until I had 4 unconscious mind-controlled Ethereals. The leader just wouldn't faint, though, so I kept him under mind control for several turns while I went to revive the rest and see if they really became part of the team. Well, they didn't.

 

After being revived, they reverted to being enemies and were still enemy after 1 turn. I waited another turn. Still enemy. Obviously this wasn't working, so I tried not reviving them instead. I shot the mind-controlled Ethereal leader with lasers and he actually didn't die! At the battle results screen I killed 2 aliens which were shot up by my HWPs, but there was no mention of the other aliens (they weren't captured). I thought I was successful and got a nice little team. I didn't find them in my roster, though, but I sent the same Avenger to recover another UFO to see if they appeared. Disappointingly, they didn't show up in the equip screen and didn't turn up in the Battlescape either. Somehow the trick didn't work even though I followed all the instructions.

 

Now I know this is an exploit, but I personally feel that it would make my game a lot more interesting. As it is, I feel unmotivated to continue.

 

So what gives? The article doesn't mention that it doesn't always work or anything. Do I need to make sure there's enough room in my Avenger for them to turn up? Does it not work on all types of aliens? I'm baffled, and spending some time searching the forums and the internet for answers turned up nothing.

 

I'd really appreciate it if someone can help. Thanks in advance!

Edited by aelf
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Hi aelf. This is Zombie (same guy who found the bug). :)

 

I know this "feature" can be exploited on both the Playstation version as well as the Collectors Edition. Would assume it also works in the DOS versions as the game has virtually identical files, but I haven't tested this explicitly on any of them yet. So it may be possible it just can't be exploited in those versions. For all I know the PSX and CE ports introduced this. Anyway, I have the DOS version sitting around on my computer somewhere so I'll try to recreate the scenario where the Permanent MC issue crops up this afternoon. B)

 

- Zombie

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Hi, Zombie. Thanks for your response. You're certainly the best person to answer =b

 

I was under the impression that you used the DOS version, since you mentioned stunning friendly units with stun rods, which you said doesn't work in CE. Incidentally, that doesn't seem to work on the DOS version either.

 

But now that you said you were using the CE, then maybe it just doesn't work on DOS, which is sad. Being able to field alien soldiers would increase interest factor and replayability to me.

 

Well, I await the result of your test. The fact that those aliens are unaccounted for after the battle must mean something.

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I always use the CE version for my tests unless otherwise mentioned. The problem with the wiki is that my bug contribution has been edited end re-edited by so many people that the original point has been lost. So take it with a grain of sand sometimes. ;)

 

Anyhow, you are correct. Permanent MC control isn't possible in the DOS version (I used the v1.0 floppy for this test). So you'll need to use the CE to exploit it. Sorry for the bad news. :(

 

Just to make it clear, even if it did work, the aliens under permanent X-COM control only stay that way for the mission. When you end the mission those friendly-aliens are discarded by the game. See, soldier.dat holds the geoscape soldier info. Since there isn't an entry for a MC'd alien in soldier.dat (alien and X-COM soldier tactical info are stored in the temporary files called unitref.dat and unitpos.dat), they aren't transferred back to the geoscape. So you only get control of them for a mission. Start a new mission and you'll need to start all over again.

 

So apparently the CE and PSX versions do not handle the unit ownership flags in unitpos.dat properly. :)

 

- Zombie

Edited by Zombie
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I always use the CE version for my tests unless otherwise mentioned. The problem with the wiki is that my bug contribution has been edited end re-edited by so many people that the original point has been lost. So take it with a grain of sand sometimes. ;)

 

Anyhow, you are correct. Permanent MC control isn't possible in the DOS version (I used the v1.0 floppy for this test). So you'll need to use the CE to exploit it. Sorry for the bad news. :(

 

Just to make it clear, even if it did work, the aliens under permanent X-COM control only stay that way for the mission. When you end the mission those friendly-aliens are discarded by the game. See, soldier.dat holds the geoscape soldier info. Since there isn't an entry for a MC'd alien in soldier.dat (alien and X-COM soldier tactical info are stored in the temporary files called unitref.dat and unitpos.dat), they aren't transferred back to the geoscape. So you only get control of them for a mission. Start a new mission and you'll need to start all over again.

 

So apparently the CE and PSX versions do not handle the unit ownership flags in unitpos.dat properly. :)

 

Well, I suppose since the alien soldiers are not permanent relative to the whole game, then I guess it was never meant to be :P

 

I did read of someone getting an alien soldier in a subsequent battle, though, apparently involving putting a stunned alien a soldier's inventory. Any experience of something like this? Well, I'm not going to put much hope in this.

 

Anyway, since the issue is cleared up, I think it's time for the game to move on. Cheers!

Edited by aelf
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Well, I suppose since the alien soldiers are not permanent relative to the whole game, then I guess it was never meant to be :P

 

I did read of someone getting an alien soldier in a subsequent battle, though, apparently involving putting a stunned alien a soldier's inventory. Any experience of something like this? Well, I'm not going to put much hope in this.

 

Anyway, since the issue is cleared up, I think it's time for the game to move on. Cheers!

Never really heard of the issue where a stunned alien is "reconstituted" in a new mission. Anything is possible though as the game doesn't wipe the contents of some files (it just appends them) so it's possible that some corruption caused this to happen. I personally haven't seen it in the CE. :)

 

Time for the game to move on? Or time for you to move on? Don't give up on it! You could try some mods out for size or any number of improvements made by the community to spice things up a bit. (Check out StrategyCore's files section). Heck, you could even impose some restrictions on the game to make it a little more interesting (the Making the Game Harder page at the wiki has some good ideas). =b

 

Or try out some of the other games in the X-COM series to put a new spin on things. :P

 

- Zombie

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Never really heard of the issue where a stunned alien is "reconstituted" in a new mission. Anything is possible though as the game doesn't wipe the contents of some files (it just appends them) so it's possible that some corruption caused this to happen. I personally haven't seen it in the CE. :)

 

Time for the game to move on? Or time for you to move on? Don't give up on it! You could try some mods out for size or any number of improvements made by the community to spice things up a bit. (Check out StrategyCore's files section). Heck, you could even impose some restrictions on the game to make it a little more interesting (the Making the Game Harder page at the wiki has some good ideas). =b

 

Or try out some of the other games in the X-COM series to put a new spin on things. :P

 

Haha, no, I meant time for the game to move on, not me. I can live with the whole idea not being possible in the first place, strangely, but not with it being possible but me being unable to do it for some reason.

 

Thanks anyway. I'll be lurking around :)

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How about trying it on the first map of Cydonia and see how your new troops fare into the second stage? There aren't many, but there are some psi wielding sectoids on the first part.

 

I seem to recall that if this was done in TFTD's last mission that you'd keep the units as you progress to the remaining maps.

 

- NKF

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