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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Some doubts and a bug


Guest Roderick87

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Guest Roderick87

Hi to all, and congrats for such a good forum.

 

The problem is, I read that someone else in the forum had this bug, but I can't get to find it, not even with the Search button, sorry.

 

My bug is that exactly at around 0:55 AM, the 1st of every month I get a terror mission. It doesn't bother me so much, as I've already got a team with a displacer/sonic and veterans, some of which use MC. What really bothers me is that I can't avoid those terror missions, and the terror ship seems to appear only at a ship or at an artefact site, they never appear at an island or a port, which I really liked in my first (failed) playthrough.

 

How can I avoid this? I read something about it being caused by saving at particular times, and I save a lot (before missions, after missions, after researching, after manufacturing, before moving all my soldiers, after moving all of them, after spotting one alien, etc).

 

Aside from this I had some other doubts:

 

- Are there really 12 artefact sites? I mean, I've already dismantled 3 o 4, but will I keep getting artefact missions after 12?

- I need a Calcinite for the melee weapons, but I've never seen them, and the only terror missions on land (ships...) I get are against either lobstermen or tasoths. How long before I get a mixed crew mission or one with aquatoids?

- Can you do the 'up-the-lift' trick with the DPL as you could with the Blaster Launcher in xcom1? I tried, but it always failed, and I don't know if it's because my aquanauts fail miserably or it just can't be done.

 

Thanks

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What missions the game roll out is picked at random, so you can have some bad runs where all you get are missions that you dislike. Easily makes you dislike maps that you would otherwise like when you get them so many times in a row. I seem to have bad luck with shipping lane missions and artefact sites in the mid to late portions of the game.

 

Note that if you know you'll be racking up a good amount of points in that area with the terror site (say you've got a supply ship milking operation nearby), you can afford to skip some terror sites. Just be sure to land and then dust off to minimize the points.

 

The general advice for saving is to save often in the Geoscape, and make separate save for the battlescape. Also make extra backups from time to time as necessary if you want an extra layer of security. This is mostly to work around or avoid crippling bugs that stop you from advancing the game.

 

If I remember correctly, the alien mission timetabling is set up in advance, so the stuff that will happen immediately after the save will not appear to vary too much. In Apocalypse on the other hand, there's not scheduling of missions - it's completely random.

 

There's a bit of information on mission timetabling on the wiki, but it's all in the technical details of the files. Think it might be mission.dat.

 

- Artefact sites can go beyond 12. A lot of the literary stuff in the Ufopaedia should be taken with a grain of salt. They're basically another terror site variation with quite a hefty penalty attached to it for not attending or failing to destroy the site.

 

- About the mixed crews, it's hard to say as it varies. Some players never get them by the time they are able to launch the end-game mission. Best thing is to treat them like Deep Ones and to go after the Calcinites as early as you can in the campaign, or just add a corpse into your stores. I find that commonly secure them from port/island attacks, ships or floating base attacks. The bright side is that you only need a corpse, so they don't have as much drama attached to them as the Deep Ones.

 

- As BFL said, the lifts are tough and block DPL torpedoes.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Guest Roderick87

Thanks for the replies.

 

I still have the problem of fixed terror missions, that is, I never get to see the terror ship, so I can't shoot it down and prevent a terror mission I don't want to do. I have two bases, one in the Western Mediterranean and another one Southeast of Japan, both with transmission resolvers, and still I never catch terror ships, even when they open artefact sites or attack ships in the Atlantic. Does the fact that it is fixed have anything to do with saving at certain points? I always keep two separate save files, one for the general game and another one for the battlescape, just as I did in xcom1, and I never had that happen there.

 

Right now I'm ready to make the final assault on T'leth, it's just that I wanted to see the melee weapons, they're one of the few things that have no equivalent with xcom1, but it seems I'll have to spend months (I hope in game time) before I find a calcinite...

 

I have another question about looting: is there any kind of priority system when receiving items from crash sites or colonies? Right now I'm a bit desperate for Zrbite, but it has happened to me several times that whenever I loot a USO I only get the typical items (weapons, ion-beam accelerators) and a lot of aqua-plastics which I don't need instead of Zrbite. And it's not that I destroyed the Zrbite when attacking the USO because I have been able to see it inside the ship, and I have even looted USOs that had landed. I don't know if it has anything to do with store space, because I have 3 general stores in each base, and about 55 or 60 space used.

 

Thanks

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for lots of zrbite dont shoot down the craft. catch it on the ground. While this will not get you such spectacular scores you will get more zrbite.

 

Besides a containment editor all you can do is wait.

 

NKF: I wouldn't call them tough. the MCD just has a LOF floor in the working lift tile in TFTD but not in UFO.

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Guest Roderick87
for lots of zrbite dont shoot down the craft. catch it on the ground. While this will not get you such spectacular scores you will get more zrbite.

 

The problem is that even when I catch it without a shot, I still don't get Zrbite. Last time I checked I cleaned a lobsterman medium uso, keeping the ship intact without grenades, and even then I got 400 useless aquaplastics and no Zrbite. Is it a bug?

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It's unusual that you're not getting anything. The Escort and Cruiser should at least net 1 Zrbite crystal each (each crystal converts into 50 units when recovered). What other subs have you tried?

 

You might want to try the Fleet Supply Cruisers that land at the colonies (go after them when they've landed). Intact supply ships always generate 3 Zrbite crystals on the map, so you should be able to recover 150 units of Zrbite from them. Watch out that the supply ship crew don't use their DPL torpedoes around the engines.

 

Are you using XComutil for any randomization of the maps by any chance? If yes, then it leaves the zrbite where they were before modifying the map, so you may find the zrbite crystals out in the field. At least, I know older editions of XComutil did this.

 

If not, I take it the physical zrbite crystal objects are actually on the map before you end the mission?

 

NKF: I wouldn't call them tough. the MCD just has a LOF floor in the working lift tile in TFTD but not in UFO.

 

I meant tough in the sense of solidarity rather than being durable. ;)

 

- NKF

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Guest Roderick87

I normally go for medium, large or very large usos. I just either ignore or shoot down and leave smaller ones because I'm too lazy (:P) to spend 15 minutes in the battlescape for just 50 Zrbite at most.

 

In all the assaults in which I got no Zrbite when I should have I saw it in rooms. It was arranged in pillars made up of 4 columns, moving up and down, or at least I think that was Zrbite, being so similar to the picture in the usopaedia. Can you somehow pick it up and put it in your inventory?

 

I don't use xcomutil or any other mod, just the Collectors Edition.

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Yes, Zrbite is an object you can pick up and carry home. In UFO, you could literally blast the power units away and pick up the elerium and escape from the mission with it. In TFTD, they've made it a bit difficult as the Ion Beam Accelerators explode when damaged.

 

Zrbite looks like a small yellow bar at the base of the Ion Beam Accelerators. Or perhaps greenish. Easiest way to tell is to open up your overhead map and check the IBA location for the tell-tale signs of an item icon.

 

- NKF

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Guest Roderick87

I always prefer to leave it as it is, just in case I accidentaly blow it up and get no Zrbite or Elerium, but that could be a solution.

 

By the way, does the space you have in the Triton (or Leviathan or whatever) limit the amount of loot you get? This could explain why there would be no space for Zrbite, but I think there should be an option or at least a priority system in which Zrbite comes before aquaplastics. It is much more useful (manufacturing, fuel), and aqua plastics themselves can be manufactured...

 

Finally I finished T'leth, got tired of waiting for a Calcinite to show up :P

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There aren't any space limitations in the Triton, when you win the mission or anything put inside the Triton when you abort the mission should be hauled back to base. Note that for a two-parter mission, you lose everything on the first part of the mission, including what's on the floor inside the Triton.

 

- NKF

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Guest Roderick87

Yes, it always seemed odd that right after you finished a mission all the corpses and items were magically teleported to the base <_<

 

The problem is still there though (well, not anymore since I torched T'leth), but thanks anyway for the replies.

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Thanks for the replies.

 

I still have the problem of fixed terror missions, that is, I never get to see the terror ship, so I can't shoot it down and prevent a terror mission I don't want to do. I have two bases, one in the Western Mediterranean and another one Southeast of Japan, both with transmission resolvers, and still I never catch terror ships, even when they open artefact sites or attack ships in the Atlantic. Does the fact that it is fixed have anything to do with saving at certain points? I always keep two separate save files, one for the general game and another one for the battlescape, just as I did in xcom1, and I never had that happen there.

 

I think the game automatically generates a 'fixed' terror mission for you every month (at least on 'superhuman' it's every month), either a 'vanilla' terror mission (island or port), an 'alien activity' artifact site, or a shipping attack mission. You can't stop these, unfortunately, as there is no terror ship (certainly not for the latter two). It's one of the worst aspects of the game, IMO, I because those missions get boring from overuse (I can tolerate the artifact ones quite a bit, but the ship ones drive me nuts after the first 2 or 3 - so looooong, and it gets SO boring when you're doing them constantly).

However, since you're using two save games, if you save at the end of the month, then the next month your 'fixed' mission will be decided, and you can always go back to last month's savegame if it draws you a boat mission instead of a quick 1-part island or port mission. Once you're into the month though, the mission will have been 'picked' and will always occur at a certain time and of a certain type. So you can't change it once the month is underway. (I think that's how it works from memory!)

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Guest Roderick87

Don't tell me... The first terror mission I got in my last playthrough was a lobsterman cruise ship...

 

It's an issue from TFTD right? Because I don't remember exactly if it happened the same in UFO, and I remember doing everything the same there and saving a lot, and still I could shoot down terror ships befor ethey landed.

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Don't tell me... The first terror mission I got in my last playthrough was a lobsterman cruise ship...

 

It's an issue from TFTD right? Because I don't remember exactly if it happened the same in UFO, and I remember doing everything the same there and saving a lot, and still I could shoot down terror ships befor ethey landed.

 

yeah, in UFO there's always a Terror ship en route to the site you can shoot down and then ignore, if you want - if i'm bored I usually shoot everything down in the ocean 'till something I want comes along (-;

 

i guess they stopped that in TFTD to 'increase the difficulty' (-;

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