Usopedia

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I'm trying to rewrite the whole USOpedia (in fact, I'm getting my hands on everything I can find in the ENGLISH.dat file). I will try to fix certain stuff and maybe introduce new reasoning behind some tech links.

 

Ideas are most welcome

 

I am putting a savegame that has all USOpedia entries if you want to skim through them all. It replaces the 6th savegame.

 

The first complete revision of english.dat is complete. Here is a list of changes:

 

-Changed all USOpedia enteries. Drastic changes to some races, and the "Ultimate Threat" and "T'leth, the Alien's City" enteries have been vastly altered. I have also fixed some typos in certain item names.

-Alien USOs have mostly been renamed. I have also changed their description to fit what the numerical values suggest. Some USOs make solid sense now.

-Changed all mission briefings. I have mostly tried being more descriptive while keeping the dramatic feel of the text. The T'leth briefings are more of a progressive read now, rather than three separate texts all saying "hurry!!! three levels!!! move it!!!"

-I have been hesitant about changing certain texts that were ALL IN CAPS. I hate all caps messages. I have fixed some that were truly annoying (from my perspective at least) and left the rest alone.

-Some things are still subject to change and in fact I would truly welcome new ideas. Certain things can barely make sense (bio-drone floating for example).

game_6.rar

english.rar

Edited November 17, 2004 by Jonaleth Irenicus

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Hmmm. It seems you can only work comfortably using MS Word up to a certain point (until you hit that wall of "no more writing allowed from here on"). You can erase the stuff you edited before and copy it, but I do not know if this upsets the game. I am looking for other programs that will not bust my donkey as much right now.

 

Also, I realised that after formatting my computer, I have lost a lot of my save games. Right now I don't have an "everything research all USOpedia entries available" savegame, so if anyone has something like that, I would really like to grab it.

 

It has to be a CE savegame though, since I can't work with older versions.

[[NKF]]

No worries there. CE and dos savegames are interchangeable. They are the same format.

 

Why not just put the entries up here instead? That way some kind soul can come along and do the changes for you.

 

Don't post them all at once. Probably split each catagory into a single post, or somesuch.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

A few problems with arise with that approach. First, I would end up torturing the poor soul, because I am going back and altering certain stuff as I go along (in order to make sure there are no conradictions among entries). Second, I need to see if the entry actually fits the USOpedia page for that item (which by the way is another reason I need a savegame with all entries). We could go with a system like "x amount of characters per item", but some items have less space (personal armor and SWSs for example) and the USOpedia font is not like FixedSys (characters need different amonts of space and all). I usually end up going back and forth between the game and the .dat file, to make sure I am using maximum space and saying everything possible (if only there was the scroll option and I had a bigger space).

 

I tried the end battle savegames by SupSuper, the game just broke down when I tried viewing Leviathan. Maybe other entries will not cause such problems. Let me see....

 

EDIT: Yeah, the save games only lock up on leviathan, probably something I did on my part, I'll try to find out what actually went wrong.

Unfortunately SupSuper's game does not have the full USOpedia (some items are missing) and I'll be calling him "damn noobar!!!" everytime I see him from now on.

Edited November 11, 2004 by Jonaleth Irenicus

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Progress report (damn I love writing up progress reports):

 

-I dealt with the problem MS Word not being able to show the rest of the text on a single line. You can just press enter and move the whole text down to the next line, the game can still use the .dat file without problems.

 

-I have cheated my way a full USOpedia (why didn't I do that before...)

 

-Craft & craft weapons, as well as half of the alien creatures are complete.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I have completed a lot of stuff, some of which were really hard to do. They are still susceptible to change, since I believe other people can fix things I've missed.

 

As of now, I've completed crafts, craft weapons, alien life forms, alien technologies (things like craft construction and ion beam accelerators), zrbite, aqua plastics, ultimate threat, t'leth and some of the facilities.

 

Some items do not follow the order inthe USOpedia (the last five mentioned above are just an example) so I cannot say in what order and when I can complete the whole thing. I will try to put the .dat file so people can view the changes I made.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I've traced my steps back and corrected a lot of typos and grammar mistakes. I've also completed all of the facilities, coming up with a lot of stuff that make some sense now (bombardment shield is an interesting read at least).

The next things up look like the human weapons, and that may take quite some time.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

A complete version of revised english.dat file is posted up in the topic. Lots of changes and fixes. Details above.

[[Blehm 98]]

And then blehm said: Let this topic be pinned!

[dan2]

And then blehm said: Let this topic be pinned!

I'm sorry to bother, but I'm new here. I have no idea what exactly is it a PINNED topic, can anybody tell me what is it?

I did a search in help, but nothing for "pinned"

Edited December 20, 2004 by dan2

[[NKF]]

A pinned topic is simply a topic that will stay on top of the list of existing topics.

 

See, normally, every thread that gets created will go to the top of the heap of topics as replies are added to it. When the replies stop, the old topic will eventually go to the bottom as new and current topics pile up on top of it.

 

A pinned topic stays at the top as long as it is pinned. Kind of like pinning a piece of paper to your desk, or somesuch.

 

It's also sometimes known as a 'sticky' thread.

 

So, it's a topic that stays around and just won't go away.

 

- NKF

Edited December 21, 2004 by NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

BTW, thx for the sticky blehm.

 

I'll be updating the .dat file sometime this week, seems that I missed Sonic Cannon entry altogether (it was in such a wierd place, it couldn't be helped). I'll also try warpping up some other things that bother me.

[Rovlad]

And to think of that, nobody have said what amazing job you've done!

 

I LOVE the new USOpedia! It simply rocks for what I've seen so far (don't want any spoilers since I never squeezed through TFDT so far). And you've even explained why clips are wasted after single shot.

Oh yeah, and mission briefings are now much better, too!

 

Excellent job, man! I'm going to continue my game with your writings.

[Rovlad]

Also, some minor errors:

 

- grenades do NOT explode "at the end of your turn" when timer is set to 0. They explode when they reach the ground.

- the entry for gauss rifle clip is identical to gauss rifle, and that's probably not what you've intented.

- looking at "alien learning arrays", it's hard to say how aliens could be put "inside" them. Probably, this needs to be slightly changed.

Edited January 13, 2005 by Rovlad

[[Blehm 98]]

No, are you sure? i'm always remember grenades exploding at teh end of teh turn when you set it to 0 turns, only in UFO 2000 they explode when they hit the ground

[[NKF]]

In UFO and TFTD, grenades set to 0 will explode at the end of your turn but before the start of the alien's turn. Grenades set to 1 will end at the end of the alien's turn, but before your turn. Grenade turns are really two times the number of game turns. See, each turn consists of your turn and the alien's turn, which is two turns. So a grenade set to detonate after 22 turns will blow up after 11 game turns. 23 will cause it to blow up after the aliens get to move on the 11th turn after the grenade was primed.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Thx for all the feedback.

 

NKF has already confirmed this, 0 timed grenades explode at the end of your turn. I was actually reluctant putting that in the actual entry, since the descriptions there are mostly "realistic", or rather, in tune with the general mood of the game "not being a game". If you suddenly say "oh btw if you set this to 0 turns it will explode at the end of your turn" you are suddenly veering waaaay off from that element.

 

My hands are actually tied with the Gauss family, since the game designers never intended the weapons and the clips to have different entries. There are not separate entries for the clips, they are just exact replicas of the weapons. What I am doing is actually "troll's work" in terms of editing the game, I am only opening up the file with a word processor and changing things I find (nothing fancy). If anybody knows how to separate the weapon/clip entries, I actually already have things in mind for them.

 

Abuot alien learning arrays, yeah, I checked them, that part of the entry really looks goofy for that picture. If you don't have anything better (or more creative), I will have to go with the classic "the alien brain is directly connected to this unit" thingy (initially, I thought the first of the three, the golden one that looks like are monitor of sorts, could contain the smaller aliens, but I remember in the colony missions you get to see these and they are not that big).

[Rovlad]

1. Hmm... so if you set it to 0, and press "End Turn", it will explode???

I was absolutely certain that it will explode only when you throw it. In fact, I remember carrying primed grenades, set to 0 turns and throwing it much later. In UFO, that's for sure, not certain about TFDT. Oh, and I've never played UFO2000 (my bad )

I think it would be better to simply remove that sentence, since it's abit out of place.

 

2. Um, aren't there different entries for, say, Sonic Cannon and it's clip? Or this "same weapon/clip description" rule applies only to Gauss Rifle?

 

3. Yeah, that's exactly what I've meant.

 

Again, you're doing a great job, keep it up!

Edited January 15, 2005 by Rovlad

[[NKF]]

Grenades only explode when they are on the ground and their timer is up. If they're still in your inventory at the end of the turn, they will not explode, but the timer will still count down. Note, inventory for unconscious or stunned units always counts as being 'on the ground'.

 

Grenades exploding on contact in UFO/TFTD is generally associated with a glitch when the game is starting to get unstable. It doesn't normally happen.

 

They're like M&M's. They explode on the ground, not in your hands.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Yeah, this strange thing only applies to gauss family, only their weapons/clips share the same entries, all other weapons have separate ones.

 

BTW, how do M&Ms explode on the ground but not in your hands?!?!?!?

[Quantifier]

recently i downloaded your usopaedia. it is good work, but there is something i miss, descriptions for live tentaculat and lobsterman. those two i liked more in original (this is just my opinion)

 

ps. haven't you ever dropped m&m's?

 

edit : note by j'ordos : redundant discussion about m&m's deleted, please continue.

Edited January 17, 2005 by j'ordos

[Rovlad]

NKF

That's right, that's right. I should have said "after you throw it and press ET button". Never meant they exploded on contact (that would be fun, but quite useless, except for maybe you can see if your target has died and plan the rest of your turn accordingly - not much of an advantage )

 

But they still don't "explode at the end of your turn" under every possible cicrumstance (sp?), so I still think this sentence is not correct.

 

Ok, I'll stop rambling, I just removed it from my USOPaedia and fixed some minor spelling errors, and I'm fine.

[Sinscale17]

This looks rather good, though the save didn't work and I'm far too lazy to start a new game up and research everything (the save provided crashed my game, and my latest actual save was still in the first year, and I couldn't find any relevant editors ah well=|), just a few things to say based on the technology I did get to look at.

 

I didn't remember magna packs using Sonic Beams. I could well be completely wrong though, been a long, long while since I played. And the damage for the Gauss weapons seems rather extreme? Minor things anyway.

 

The Vibro Blade, if I recall, is an Alien weapon, actually used by the aliens along with Thermic Lance et al. Why does it use Alien Alloys when this generation of aliens doesn't actually have any reported use of them?

 

Likewise, the M.C. Reader is an Alien, rather than human device, would it possibly make more "thematic" sense to say that the device is used by alien leaders to monitor troops on the battlefield in handy dandy technical readout, without having to go into "M.C skill" at all? I don't think calling it "Our new technology" will sit well with the Aquatoids who wander around with the things all day, and Tasoth lawyers can seriously turn nasty.

 

There's a mispelling of "Entrance" on the Airlock entry. No biggy, just thought I'd say. Happens again on Sub pens.

 

Calcinites entry - Not a major issue, but "alloy" implies an inorganic metal, rather than organic goo, which you've later on the autopsy referred to as muscle tissue. I might be misreading and you may be meaning to refer to the suit itself, which I thought was just a scavenged old diver's suit? If it's the latter, a small rewording should fix it.

 

On the other hand, detecting CO2 underwater seems rather unlikely, though relying solely on detection of body heat would work well in frigid cold waters and land bound locations alike.

 

As to the functionality of a vibroblade, the weapon itself refers to difficulties in replicating a fast enough rotation, or an inability to deal with high pressure environs, rather than the rhetoric, since Calcinite corpses lead to vibroblades, rather than thermic lances. One rather unpleasant possibility is having the goo serve as the perfect lubricant for vibroblade maintanence, or possibly the devices embedded within the calcinite in some way solving progress to future research.

(Sorry about being so verbose on this, Vibroblade was my favourite weapon. I feel it deserves the best )

 

Deep ones - Again, the difference between a metal "alloy" and plastic fibers. Nothing major.

 

The people talking about grenades exploding on impact? In the Apocalypse Turn based game it does this, maybe people are thinking about that?

 

 

Hopefully this is constructive enough to be helpful, I hope you don't think I'm criticising just for the sake of things.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I'm at work now, I can't open p the game to look my files over but I'll try to respond as best as I can.

 

I didn't remember magna packs using Sonic Beams. I could well be completely wrong though, been a long, long while since I played. And the damage for the Gauss weapons seems rather extreme? Minor things anyway.

 

No, the magna pack tech relying on sonic physics was entirely my idea (can remove it if it sounds out of place). The thing is, magna instantly reminds me of something based on a fiery explosion (because of the similarity to magma) and a fiery explosion underwater didn't sit well with me, so I thought I could make this up to provide something different. The description shuld not point towards alien sonic technology though (what with the beams and all) but merely basic human technology (I mean, we do use those grenades... what were they called...). About gauss weapon damage, I didn't change any numerical values, so if there's something strange, it's either something with the version of the game I have or an error within the original game file. I don't think the damage values are inside the english.dat file.

 

 

The Vibro Blade, if I recall, is an Alien weapon, actually used by the aliens along with Thermic Lance et al. Why does it use Alien Alloys when this generation of aliens doesn't actually have any reported use of them?

 

Well, to be honest, I was pretty sick of how pretty much everything in UFO was mostly warped and served anew. I thought it would be nice if some materials (like the alien alloys) were mentioned in some way and did not sound like they were upgraded to the new shiny "aqua plastics". The idea here is that alien alloys are lighter, so they are better used above water and aqua plastics are denser/heavier, so they are better used under water. A vibroblade requires a blade light enough to spin at high speeds but strong enough to withstand deep ocean pressure. IMO, humans tried making under water drills using alien alloys, but the material was not strong enough to withstand the pressure. The alien vibro blade uses a mixture of the alien alloys from the previous war and the aqua plastics more common to the new war. Again, this is nothing derived from the original game, just how I thought things "could be". For all I know, TFTD accepts the fact that the first war happened, but denies that any tech was actually left over from it.

 

Also, I'll have to look at the entry again, since it should say that vibro blade is an alien weapon, and if you have the feeling that it sounds like a human weapon, I'll probably change it. Unfortunately, it's unlikely I can add any of the discussion I had above, because of the crammed up entry space.

 

 

Likewise, the M.C. Reader is an Alien, rather than human device, would it possibly make more "thematic" sense to say that the device is used by alien leaders to monitor troops on the battlefield in handy dandy technical readout, without having to go into "M.C skill" at all? I don't think calling it "Our new technology" will sit well with the Aquatoids who wander around with the things all day, and Tasoth lawyers can seriously turn nasty.

 

Damn, I was hoping someone would overlook this . The thing is, if you gather the M.C. related entries from the original game, there are a lot of gray areas. Does M.C. require the target to have implants in order to effect it? If yes, why are your soldiers vulnerable to M.C. at the beginning of the game? If no, why do all aliens have an implant in their brains (or the equivalent of them)? Why do aquatoids have M.C. implants (they are supposed to be masters?). Why do you even need an M.C. reader if you can basically control a target (reading is much easier than controlling, and various entries suggest aquatoids control the other aliens through their M.C. powers). Heck, why do you even need a live Tasoth before you can research offensive M.C.?

 

In trying to answer these questions, I had to come up with something logical that at least did not contradict itself. This is how I think it goes:

Tasoth have innate M.C. ability. This power is something special to their race and it is different than psionics. When T'leth is buried deep in the ocean, it forces the sectoids to evolve into the aquatoids and chooses/mutates other possible candidates to serve as minions. Because of their vast ability as aquatic fighters, T'leth breeds massive numbers of Tasoth (since T'leth is buried under water, it needs species that can operate in such conditions). Anyway, since Tasoth have innate M.C. powers, T'leth bases the whole control of the alien armada on M.C. (as opposed to psionics). Aquatoids are the masters while all other species are employed as slaves (including the Tasoth). All (except Tasoth) have M.C. implants, only select few (generals) have implants powerful enough to launch offensive control powers, and Aquatoids are the ones truly in charge.

So you need Tasoth to understand how a natural M.C. "brain" actually works in order to use it in an offensive manner, but you can simply look into the implants (terrorists) and discover M.C. technology and learn to interrupt these messages (via the M.C. reader). Of course, this explanation assumes the aliens do not actually use M.C. readers, which is essentially wrong.

If anyone can think of something better, I can play around these entries to make the necessary changes.

 

There's a mispelling of "Entrance" on the Airlock entry. No biggy, just thought I'd say. Happens again on Sub pens.

I'll fix that when I get the other version out. English is not my native language, so I probably have spelling errors here and there.

 

Calcinites entry - Not a major issue, but "alloy" implies an inorganic metal, rather than organic goo, which you've later on the autopsy referred to as muscle tissue. I might be misreading and you may be meaning to refer to the suit itself, which I thought was just a scavenged old diver's suit? If it's the latter, a small rewording should fix it.

I can't remember exactly, but it should say the armor is both organic and inorganic, and I specifically had the alloy in quotes (I don't know what you call a mixing of organic and inorganic material, if there is even a word for it). The muscle tissue is the thing inside, the green goo that animates the suit. I also gave up on the whole diver's suit idea, since it sounded a bit cheesy.

 

 

On the other hand, detecting CO2 underwater seems rather unlikely, though relying solely on detection of body heat would work well in frigid cold waters and land bound locations alike.

I'm not really sure, but I seem to remember calcinites are stricted to terror missions (land and ships), I don't think they appear in colonies or T'leth itself like some other terrorist. That's why I thought I could use CO2 (and to be honest, I really wanted to throw in "like mosquitos" line there). BTW, I do not know how effective heat detection is underwater, if you could shed some light it would be nice. I always have the feeling too much of the heat would be absorbed by the cold waters that range of heat detection would drop significantly underwater (this is not derived from scientific knowledge, just troll guessing).

 

 

As to the functionality of a vibroblade, the weapon itself refers to difficulties in replicating a fast enough rotation, or an inability to deal with high pressure environs, rather than the rhetoric, since Calcinite corpses lead to vibroblades, rather than thermic lances. One rather unpleasant possibility is having the goo serve as the perfect lubricant for vibroblade maintanence, or possibly the devices embedded within the calcinite in some way solving progress to future research.

(Sorry about being so verbose on this, Vibroblade was my favourite weapon. I feel it deserves the best )

 

Actually, the goo idea is pretty nice (and probably one of the few explanations regarding the relation between calcinite and vibro blade). I knew you required calcinites for vibro blades and not thermic lances, but I thought I could just leave it at "calcinites are vulnerable to heat so it's logical to upgrade vibro blades to thermic lances". I would really like it if the research tree was smt like plastics+zrbite lead to vibro blades and calcinites+vibroblades lead to thermic lances. Unfortunately, it is not like that... Anyway, I'll try and see if I can edit calcinite and vibroblade entries to introduce this goo idea.

 

 

 

Final note, I'll have to look into the DeepOne entry to catch what part you are referring to. Thx a lot for the reply though, I really liked your suggestions and will try to improve accordingly. It was really constructive criticism and I enjoyed reading it (I also enjoyed replaying back, which took a few hours, since I'm at work). Hope to hear from you soon (I'll try to update the USOpedia as soon as I can).

[Sinscale17]

I shall have to start a new game of TFTD just to get all the techs to read through now.

 

1: The term "Magna", if I recall correctly, is sometimes used as a short form for electro magnetic influences, at the very least implying electrical, rather than temperature-based, effects. Subsequently the Magna Pack could likely be an electromagnetic pulse explosion, or at the very least generated as such.

 

2: No real problem about implying the vibroblade isn't alien in origin, just the idea of aquatic aliens using space alloys that seemed somewhat incongruous, if you assume aquatoids use alien alloys, then it stops being a problem.

 

3: First things first, M.C implants are the alien method of interlinking with the "ultimate alien", Aquatoids and all other aliens have them primarily as a link to this communal hivemind mentioned I believe, in one of the original T'sleth entries. As to M.C probing, I find only one real incongruity to oppose the idea that it only "reads" M.C. implants, and that would be civilians, whom you can probe.

 

Since it's not especially good at differentiating civilians, it's quite possible that the M.C. Reader can vaguely "scan" non-implanted individuals as a secondary feature, but this would be a secondary feature to its main function of tactical data aquisition.

 

As for Molecular Control, I'd consider this a far more "active" action, rather than simply overriding an M.C. implant, the controller would work to dominate key molecular points in the victims brain tipping temporary control over the brain, switching the victims mentality of friend or foe, as well as something akin to hypnotic suggestion causing them to unquestioningly obey commands.

 

Finally, for Tasoth, I seem to recall their entire body was a unique cybernetic/biological mix? They could be walking M.C. devices given their structure, and grant scientists an unprecedented level of activity to monitor, far more than races with tiny implants in the brain.

 

4: Spelling mistakes are never a problem so long as you have someone to point them out to you, that's why people need editors. ^-^

 

5: "Biomechanical sythesis". I just made the word up, but it sounds really cool.

 

6: I seem to recall energy moves more easily through a liquid than a gaseous medium, sonar, electrical and smell all transmit more easily through the denser substance as there're fewer "gaps" between molecules. I honestly don't know how efficiently heat transmits.

Actually, given the "goo" nature of the calcinite, it could potentially be extremely good at surface diffusion of chemicals - "smelling" creatures akin to a shark would be interesting.

 

That's about it. I'll get to playing that game now.

[Slavick3000]

Hmmm, I have always thought that Magna refered to Magnesium, which reacts with water. Other than that, great USOpedia!

[dan2]

Hmmm, I have always thought that Magna refered to Magnesium, which reacts with water. Other than that, great USOpedia!

"Magna" is the latin for "Large" or "Huge".

Magnesium doesn't react with water unless the water is boiling. Which doesn't usually happen in the depths Even then, the reaction is really slow.

Magnesium is able to burn in steam, but is quenched in straight water.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I'm back btw (had to deal with real life), so I'll get to working on the USOpedia again. Anyway, AFAIK, magnesium burns steadily and brightly, and I think that is why it is used in those underwater flares (I may be wrong, I just woke up ).

[[NKF]]

I'm no chemist, but phosphorous is one of the chemicals used in camping flares - and the game already uses phosphorous as a component for its incendiary ammunition. A weaker version is used for making matches.

 

Turning them on and off (i.e. they go off after picking them up) may be done via means of shutters - but that's not apparent from the in-game image.

 

- NKF