High Explosive

[[stewart]]

Tossed under a Cyberdisk has always done the trick for me. What about Sectopods. and other things?

 

What lives, what dies?

[Zombie]

I just ran some numbers on this and on Superhuman every alien can be killed by a High Explosive blast. Even the mighty Sectopod with 96 health, 90 under armor and 80% susceptibility to HE can fall. The problem is that explosive blasts produce random damage so if the computer rolls a number less than Armor+Health, the alien will not die. But the possibility still remains that everything can be killed by a HE pack.

 

- Zombie

[Dover]

And at 1 tile away?

 

I clearly remember missing an ethereal commander by 1 tile with a blaster launcher and having it live (Barely). I'm sure the High Explosive wouldn't do any better...

 

Edit: Just to clerify, Superhuman commander...

Edited March 7, 2006 by Dover

[[stewart]]

Actually isnt etherial armor BETTER THAN MUTONS!!!!!!

[Dover]

Yeah, it is, but Ethereals don't have the 125 Health that mutons do. -.-"

[[NKF]]

It does have less health. 45 all-round armour including under armour and 55 health. High explosive do between 55 - 165.

 

- NKF

[Dover]

Is that the XcomUtil High Explosive or the regular High Explosive? The XcomUtil High Explosive is rediculously powerful...

[Pherdnut]

These forums convinced me to start using HE as I didn't realize how far a strong agent could throw it. I still don't rely on it for killing discs though. You never know 100% they're going to die the next turn and it's still not worth being that close to one if you don't have to be. But you can be pretty freaking sure any sectoid or floater caught in the near radius is going to be done. I'd much rather see a disc die from laser fire now rather than hope the HE does the job later.

[[NKF]]

Dover: The X-Comutil 'enhanced' high explosive has been literally turned into a blaster bomb. Personally, I prefer the high explosive at its original stats. It already packs a lot of punch as it is - and it's cheap. I suppose it was increased to 200 just to allow it to cut through UFO hulls. An alternate solution to this would've been to reduce the hull armour levels in the mcd files instead.

 

Pherdnut: Feel free to use as many of the high explosives as you like against cyberdiscs.

 

Let me put the high explosive in perspective. I simply rely on them to take out superhuman level cyberdiscs in the early game before I get lasers. They're more powerful than large rockets, and Large rockets are capable of 1-hit kills against cyberdiscs, so there's really not too much to worry about. And hey, if it doesnt' kill it, it's going to be so badly damaged that you'll be able to knock it out easily with pretty much anything. Even a few plinks from a pistol.

 

35 - 40 Strength is a good starting point for any soldier that wants to be able to throw a high explosive at any reasonable distance.

 

- NKF

[Pherdnut]

I've still had discs put up an awful mean fight after getting hit with HE, but yes, it's a pretty good bet their accuracy has gone down quite a bit after having been hit with one.

[Yoni]

I suppose it was increased to 200 just to allow it to cut through UFO hulls. An alternate solution to this would've been to reduce the hull armour levels in the mcd files instead.

 

- NKF

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Could you go into a bit more detail about this? I'm interested. As I'm getting pretty frustrated because of camping aliens inside ships, combined with having to walk through a door to open it in xcom 1. Being able to blow up ship walls might circumvent this.

(I know blaster bombs do the job, but I'm playing a no-alien-tech game at the moment)

 

PS: I know of hexedit and I've used it with succes before to alter data in savegames. So if it's anything along the lines of go to line X in file Y and change the values of Z into something else with a hexeditor I'll understand that mumbo jumbo.

Edited March 8, 2006 by Yoni

[[stewart]]

I took a lasertank into an alien base on one occasion. It fired at the wall (from the outside) that is opposide the big 4-wide door into the command center lower disco level. I think you get 3 shots/turn and I took about 50 turns, and by golly if one panel section didnt come down.

 

I assume alien base walls are equivalent to UFO walls, so like the roman at the walls of carthage, just keep banging away at 'em.

 

BTW does anyone know the strength of a UFO power source explosion and game field ordinance terms?

[Zombie]

Could you go into a bit more detail about this? I'm interested. As I'm getting pretty frustrated because of camping aliens inside ships, combined with having to walk through a door to open it in xcom 1. Being able to blow up ship walls might circumvent this.

(I know blaster bombs do the job, but I'm playing a no-alien-tech game at the moment)

 

PS: I know of hexedit and I've used it with succes before to alter data in savegames. So if it's anything along the lines of go to line X in file Y and change the values of Z into something else with a hexeditor I'll understand that mumbo jumbo.

Since you know what you are doing, this should be a snap. Go into your GEODATA folder, find the file named OBDATA.dat and open it with your editor (54 column width). The damage for the High Explosive is found on Line 23, column 23 (offset 22). Change the value from 110 to 200 and away you go. Insta-UFO can opener.

 

200 is the min strength needed to open up one tile. If you want a bigger hole, increase the damage.

 

Strength of a PS blast? I assume you mean from a crash landing, right? Hmm.. that is going to be tough because there are always UFO walls in the way. :wink1:

 

- Zombie

Edited March 8, 2006 by Zombie

[[stewart]]

more work for zombie.

[Yoni]

I actually meant to ask for how to reduce those armour levels of ufo walls, but this will work fine too.

Thanks!

 

It worked! Do you by any chance also know in which files the alien stats, ship stats and ship weapon stats are located?

Edited March 9, 2006 by Yoni

[Dover]

I took a lasertank into an alien base on one occasion.  It fired at the wall (from the outside) that is opposide the big 4-wide door into the command center lower disco level.  I think you get 3 shots/turn and I took about 50 turns, and by golly if one panel section didnt come down.

 

I assume alien base walls are equivalent to UFO walls, so like the roman at the walls of carthage, just keep banging away at 'em.

 

BTW does anyone know the strength of a UFO power source explosion and game field ordinance terms?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

UFO outer walls are strong. Nothing short of a blaster bomb will even touch them. Lift compartment walls are a bit easier, and regular alien walls are even easier. What you experianced is a lucky "high roll" of a laser tank, but no roll will be high enough to take down an outer UFO wall.

 

 

As for the Power Source, do you mean the explosion when it's crashed, or the explosion when you shoot it yourself? I think the crashed explosion is higher (Takes out the walls on Abductors), but the shoot-it-yourself explosion has the power of a grenade, or a proxy, give or take.

 

I actually have no idea, so I'll just leave it to the pros...

[[stewart]]

I'm surprised it would be different? Because it would be easier to program having the site be created undamaged, then decide which power sources blow up, blow them up then load the scenario for play.

[[NKF]]

Well, the pre-game explosions are more powerful, but only on a technicality. The pre-explosion of power sources are more powerful because power sources don't explode when shot with non-explosive weapons during the battle. On the other hand, TFTD's versions, the Ion Beam Accelerators (and all of its different in-game types) do explode.

 

- NKF

Edited March 10, 2006 by NKF

[Zombie]

It worked! Do you by any chance also know in which files the alien stats, ship stats and ship weapon stats are located?

Yup, they are all in the executable. Somewhere.

 

BTW does anyone know the strength of a UFO power source explosion and game field ordinance terms?

Stew, I just figured this out. I used daishiva's map editor to first create a consistent UFO metal floor for a Terror Ship and placed a Power Source directly in the middle. When I shot it down and visited the site, the explosion was 5x5. But this is for metal floors which are more resistant to damage.

 

To solve this, I removed all the metal floor tiles and placed the Power Source in the middle again. When I shot the Terror Ship down over a desert landscape, the explosion affected an area 23x23. Since I ran a whole bunch of HE trials on desert terrain, I was able to determine that a Power Source explodes with a strength equal to a Blaster Bomb (HE=200)! Impressive, that's for sure!

 

- Zombie

Edited May 15, 2008 by Zombie
Removed garbage characters.

[[stewart]]

Now if you visit an intact ship and shoot the power source with a blaster bomb will you get the same kind of "crash" damage to the ship?

[Zombie]

Technically, no. When a ship is shot down, there are a few factors which influence damage. The first is if the Power Source even explodes. There is a 30% chance that it will survive the crash. The other 70% of the time the damage to the inside is approximately equal to the Blaster Bomb. But it is not a constant.

 

As we all know, the Medium Scout is notorious for sometimes having almost complete hull destruction. Other times the damage is minimal. This would indicate that the Power Source has a damage range, and this range can extend far beyond the damage a normal Blaster Bomb can impart. :wink1:

 

I'll have to run a few more tests in the desert landscape to verify this theory, but it seems to hold so far.

 

- Zombie

[[stewart]]

whats the standard deviation on that

[Zombie]

As we all know, the Medium Scout is notorious for sometimes having almost complete hull destruction. Other times the damage is minimal. This would indicate that the Power Source has a damage range, and this range can extend far beyond the damage a normal Blaster Bomb can impart. :wink1:

Bump.

 

A simple question posed by MikeTheRed on the X-COM Wiki led to my most recent testing spree. It all dealt with the blast strength of the UFO Power Source. If you all recall, a while back I determined through some minor tests on the desert landscape that the UFO Power Source exploded with a strength equaling the Blaster Bomb. Then I went on to say that the actual strength varied greatly due to the destruction witnessed on a UFO crash site. But exactly how powerful can it be?

 

At first, I thought about editing the alien spawn points for a UFO so they would most likely be clustered around the Power Source. After shooting the UFO down and logging the aliens health it should become crystal clear what is going on. While this was novel approach, it had some minor problems (such as back-calculating the power of the explosion at GZ, and trying to guarantee all the aliens would spawn where they should). Then it hit me. Bomb Bloke's numerical testing tileset for the desert landscape would be the near-perfect choice for determining such things as a person could read off the damage directly from the battlescape map. You could also edit the properties of the tiles so that they were all the same type and didn't block the propagation of the explosion. The only problem is that this tileset only works with the scout ships (Medium and Large) as the MCD limit will crash the game with larger UFO's. So after editing a Medium Scout (via MapEdit) so that it consisted of nothing more than a single Power Source, I shot one down over the desert and took a peek at the battlescape. Bingo! It works! Now it was just a matter of gathering damage numbers.

 

Ok, this is easier said than done since the GZ tile (the Power Source) didn't have the damage listed (it isn't one of BB's modified tiles). But I found a way around this slight problem. A few reloads indicated that the intensity of the explosion was always capped to a radius of 11 or a diameter of 23. This is why I initially figured that the Blaster Bomb was the Power Source's equivalent since it also is capped at the same radius. So technically we can categorize the Power Source as waypoint weapon. The reason why all PS explosions look the same (on completely flat and level terrain) is because a waypoint weapon has the same blast pattern at 112-255 damage points. The power source would need to be at the next lower level (102-111 damage, R10, D21) to see any difference in the blast pattern. Neat, eh? Anyway, since the radius of the explosion is always the same, all you really need to do is jot down the damage at the very edge of the explosion and then add 55 to that to get the power at GZ. That was great news.

 

Off I went and started to gather some numbers. For this first group of tests I focused on the damage of the explosion and didn't look at verifying the 70% PS explosion probability or the frequency of an auto-win mission. (An auto-win mission happens when the all the aliens die because they are caught within the PS explosion). This will be left for later tests when the explosion mechanics are completely understood. Preconditions: An Avenger with dual cannons shot down a Medium Scout over desert landscape using aggressive attack on Beginner Skill Level. Not sure if BB's desert terrain tileset has modified RMP's (spawn points), so until this is cleared up the auto-win missions were not considered. Basically, I wrote down the damage at R11, transferred that to a spreadsheet and back-calculated the power at GZ by adding 55. These are the results after 150 trials:

 

		   R11	   GZ	 Ave Dam
Min		35		90	   180
Max		70	   125	   250
Act Ave   52.99   107.99	 215.97
Ant Ave   52.50   107.50	 215.00

 

The Power Source can do a range of damage anywhere from 180 at GZ all the way up to 250 points. The average is therefore 215 (which is 15 points more damage than a Blaster Bomb). Cool stuff. Taking the damage at each tile into consideration vs a theoretical unaltered UFO map showed some interesting patterns. Remember that damages >= 200 can breach the outer skin of a UFO. The Power Source falls within this realm so we can calculate some probabilities on damage. A completely intact outer skin of the Medium Scout can happen 10 out of 36 times or 27% when the Power Source explodes. A 1x1 hole in the roof above the PS happens 14% of the time as does holes of 3x3, 5x5, 7x7 and 9x9. A hole of 11x11 can happen 1 time out of 36 for a probability of 3%. Recall that a Medium Scout is only 9x9 in size so there is a 3% chance it will be completely obliterated from the blast. A 9x9 hole may also be enough, but I'll have to take some time to map this scenario out a little closer to see if a total obliteration is possible. According to the numbers it should happen though.

 

So there you go: a preliminary study on the blast of a UFO Power Source! Next up on my testing list are verifying the 70% PS explosion probability and frequency of a auto-win mission on Beginner Skill Level with a Medium Scout on a desert landscape.

 

If anyone wants to see what my testing scenario looks like or just wants to fool around gathering numbers - just let me know and I'll zip it up and post it here.

 

- Zombie

[MikeTheRed]

Sure, I'd like to give it a whirl! I have to copy over the desert terrain, right? Otherwise it's just a savegame?

 

Your numbers match my very small sample, except for the radius... I'll take another look at my info.

 

Good stuff! - Mike

Edited January 18, 2007 by MikeTheRed

[Zombie]

Ok, here it is. I zipped up my saved game for you to play around with. Please note that you should probably make a copy of your TERRAIN and MAPS folders as changes will be made. Most notably the desert 00-desert11.map files as well as the UFO110 (Medium Scout) and 120.map (Large Scout) files. My zip includes the saved game in the folder Game_1 so make a copy of anything in there just in case it's important. Useage is simple, dump the whole smear into your X-COM game directory and click "yes" to overwriting everything.

 

Don't be worried about my set-up. As is standard operating procedure, I always use maxed soldiers with psi abilities to make testing easier. Also, the game is saved in the geoscape while the Avenger is en-route to the crash site and there is very little time before it reaches it's target, so be warned.

 

Numerical_PS_Terrain.zip

 

- Zombie

[MikeTheRed]

Thanks muchly, Z. FWIW I'm not intending to do much with this - also known as, please keep testing away! But I am interested in having at least a few "clear" examples, past the very muddled picture that UFOs themselves present. It's very hard to calculate how much was affected, when you only have armor 80/50 floor and walls to work with.

 

One minor burning question, which this savegame should answer (but I might not get to it for a while)... is the strength of the PS explosions continuous (can it vary by values of 1 at GZ), or is it more constrained to e.g. strengths that are multiples of 5 or 10? This is something that simply can't be determined, by working with tile destruction alone. Like I had been doing.

 

Another question would be, does it look like the PS blast strength is "rolled evenly" between 180 and 250, as X-COM likes to do?

 

Looking at your numbers, I would hazard to guess that your actual average of 215.97 vs. the anticipated 215 says something is a little different than expected. 150 trials is a good number; sounds like the real average is 216, for some reason (possibly a truncated integer somehow).

 

Thanks again! - MTR

[Zombie]

One minor burning question, which this savegame should answer (but I might not get to it for a while)... is the strength of the PS explosions continuous (can it vary by values of 1 at GZ), or is it more constrained to e.g. strengths that are multiples of 5 or 10? This is something that simply can't be determined, by working with tile destruction alone. Like I had been doing.

Sure, the damage values at GZ are continuous.

 

I guess there is nothing more to say here except that damage falls off by 5 points for every tile you are away from GZ. (Compare this to the 10 points for units). This is because explosives do 50% of their damage to terrain and items.

 

Another question would be, does it look like the PS blast strength is "rolled evenly" between 180 and 250, as X-COM likes to do?

 

Looking at your numbers, I would hazard to guess that your actual average of 215.97 vs. the anticipated 215 says something is a little different than expected. 150 trials is a good number; sounds like the real average is 216, for some reason (possibly a truncated integer somehow).

I'm not sure what is going on exactly (game mechanics-wise) to cause the difference. Numerically, the higher damages happened a little more often than the lower (180 happened only once, while 250 happened a number of times: 5). This may account for the small skew to the high-end of the range. However, I am not really comfortable making any kind of statement regarding the distribution as 150 values is just not enough data points. (250-180+1=71 possible numbers in the range. 150 trials/71=2.1 data points per number on average). It may be just the luck of the draw or it may be a skewed distribution - right now, it's too hard to tell. If I had 750 reloads and saw a tilt, then yes, I would call it skewed, but not at 150.

 

As always, more numbers are necessary. Hopefully, with my next round of trials some of this will be cleared up.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

The Power Source can do a range of damage anywhere from 180 at GZ all the way up to 250 points. The average is therefore 215 (which is 15 points more damage than a Blaster Bomb). Cool stuff. Taking the damage at each tile into consideration vs a theoretical unaltered UFO map showed some interesting patterns. Remember that damages >= 200 can breach the outer skin of a UFO. The Power Source falls within this realm so we can calculate some probabilities on damage. A completely intact outer skin of the Medium Scout can happen 10 out of 36 times or 27% when the Power Source explodes. A 1x1 hole in the roof above the PS happens 14% of the time as does holes of 3x3, 5x5, 7x7 and 9x9. A hole of 11x11 can happen 1 time out of 36 for a probability of 3%. Recall that a Medium Scout is only 9x9 in size so there is a 3% chance it will be completely obliterated from the blast. A 9x9 hole may also be enough, but I'll have to take some time to map this scenario out a little closer to see if a total obliteration is possible. According to the numbers it should happen though.

I took a look at this a little closer and applied the damage pattern to the floorplan of the Medium Scout. Even at the PS's maximum blast potential, there will always be some undamaged tiles left. Let me grab a screenshot of this scenario and post it up.

 

- Zombie