Difference between revisions of "Talk:Exploits"

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Does anybody mind if I delete the "Extra Ammo" exploit? What is described there, is actually avoidance of a glitch, not an Exploit. And it's already described under [[Known_Bugs#Disappearing_Ammo]]. I'm about to flesh out the Glitch, and it's annoying to have to repeat in two places when the second's not really an Exploit. I'll do it in a week if nobody objects. If somebody objects, it stays. ---[[User:MikeTheRed|MikeTheRed]] 13:35, 11 December 2005 (PST)
 
Does anybody mind if I delete the "Extra Ammo" exploit? What is described there, is actually avoidance of a glitch, not an Exploit. And it's already described under [[Known_Bugs#Disappearing_Ammo]]. I'm about to flesh out the Glitch, and it's annoying to have to repeat in two places when the second's not really an Exploit. I'll do it in a week if nobody objects. If somebody objects, it stays. ---[[User:MikeTheRed|MikeTheRed]] 13:35, 11 December 2005 (PST)
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Actually I just realized that the Extra Ammo Exploit differs from the Glitch description. It says that even clips that are partially full, become full if unloaded. I vaguely recall I tested this in the DOS version, and that my experience reflected what's described in the Glitch entry. NKF and others, do you know for sure which one is right? - [[User:MikeTheRed|MikeTheRed]] 17:33, 11 January 2007 (PST)
  
  
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-- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 9:25 Jan 11 2007 CST
 
-- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 9:25 Jan 11 2007 CST
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NKF - Cool, I just tried that XcomUtil and it worked like a charm. And guess what... I happened to try it on a Terror ship... and only ONE PS was blown up (although it did, of course, destroy the other 3). Damn, that seems like low odds... and OMG it instantly explodes (cough) the possibility of successive explosions. One other thing can be done via a screenshot of it... one can determine a PS's explosive strength (but maybe not its radius). (Has anybody determined this stuff yet?) Anyway here goes (dusting off [[Explosions]] memory cells):
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*UFO floors are destroyed (initial tile) out to radius 3. Since they need 80-89 HE to kill them (without also destroying the next tile out), the GZ explosion strength must be 110-119. Several things concur:
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**Initial destroyed tiles are not blown through to raw earth anywhere (would've taken 80+50=130 HE). Can someone look up the death tile armor strength for a damaged Power Source? The GZ PS was not raw earth, either... it must be armor strength of 40 or more.
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**Those walls around the PSs on a Terror ship are only destroyed up to where the floor tiles were; they also are 80 initial / 50 dead tile "armor".
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**PSs at 6 straight-line radius and 3 diagonal (walking TUs means its considered 4 tiles away) are destroyed, consistent with [[UFO_Power_Source]] info that they have 50 "armor"... HE strength was right at 50, to take out the PS at radius 6.
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**All the Elerium is gone, of course... it only [[Explosions#Object_Destruction|takes]] 21 HE.
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*In apparent contradiction, though, a Snakeman was also killed, at a straight-line radius of 7 (just past the radius-6 PS). Here, the average HE should be 40, and strength against units 20 to 60. It's a Superhuman game, so the lowest stats ([http://www.strategycore.co.uk/xcom/pg/ufoalienstats Superhuman Snakeman Soldier]) would be Health 45 and armor ranging from 16 Rear to 20 Front, for a minimum of 45+16='''61''' to kill. Hmm. I MCed a Chryssalid nearby and had him check... yes, it's a corpse (not stunned); armaments are Heavy Plasma, Clip, and Alien Grenade, if that helps i.d. the corpse any.
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Am I doing this math right? Maybe we are seeing that anything caught in the blast is hard-coded to die; does anyone ever remember seeing aliens ''injured'' by crash-landing? In my vague recollection of times when I MC everything, they are all either fine, or dead, at crash sites... never injured.
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FWIW there wasn't any other vulnerable stuff around, to tell the whether the blast went farther than radius 7. It could be up to radius 10, with a GZ strength of 110-119... but it also might be deliberately clipped, as certain classes of explosions are (grenades vs. projectiles vs. waypoint are all different... see the "HackPatterns" tab on [[Media:XCOM_Blast_Patterns.xls|this]] spreadsheet).
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Zaimoni, I'm sure you're right. If, of course, it's not always the same amount of time. I vaguely recall that my impression is they always lasted about 3 days (72 hours). I don't know the Geoscape files well... perhaps one of you who do, would know where to look for this? Then again it would be cake to take a savegame from just before shooting down a UFO, then see how long the crash persists. It should quickly be clear if it's always the same, to prove or disprove that. If no variation is seen with that one test UFO, a few other types (small to large) should be tested, to see if it differs by type.
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- [[User:MikeTheRed|MikeTheRed]] 17:33, 11 January 2007 (PST)

Revision as of 01:33, 12 January 2007

Does anybody mind if I delete the "Extra Ammo" exploit? What is described there, is actually avoidance of a glitch, not an Exploit. And it's already described under Known_Bugs#Disappearing_Ammo. I'm about to flesh out the Glitch, and it's annoying to have to repeat in two places when the second's not really an Exploit. I'll do it in a week if nobody objects. If somebody objects, it stays. ---MikeTheRed 13:35, 11 December 2005 (PST)


Actually I just realized that the Extra Ammo Exploit differs from the Glitch description. It says that even clips that are partially full, become full if unloaded. I vaguely recall I tested this in the DOS version, and that my experience reflected what's described in the Glitch entry. NKF and others, do you know for sure which one is right? - MikeTheRed 17:33, 11 January 2007 (PST)


Repairing damaged UFOs

Want to stop a UFO from doing it's mission? Shoot it down. Want to get a full load of engines and elerium? Leave it alone for about 2 days. The longer you wait before launching the ground assault, the smaller the hole and smoke, and eventually the craft will be completely repaired.

Note that you will also get a full complement of enemy soldiers -- all the dead will come back to life when you do this.

(You may want to save the game before landing, so you can resume waiting if the UFO was not fully repaired when you attacked.)


Actually, UFO damage is random. You see, the damage done to a UFO in the battlescape is caused by the game detonating the power units with varying detonation strengths every time the map is generated. Sometimes it's only strong enough to destroy the power unit, and if there are many power units, some of the might not even be detonated at all. So there's no wait, just save the game in the Geoscape, and enter the mission. If the damage is not to your liking, reload and try and try again until you get a favourable outcome. - NKF


Keybouncer and NKF, you've both tested this likelihood versus time? Seems easy enough to do. Two related questions (have they been answered here?): 1) How long do crash sites persist?, and 2) If one Power Source (PS) blows up, yes, it will destroy E115 within a particular distance, but will it cause them to explode?

The reason I ask is that page 311 of the OSG says PSs have a 70% chance of exploding, which sounds about right to me. A table of probabilities of finding intact PSs for the various UFOs could be generated. I would have thought the answer to #2 is that they don't cause them to explode; they're not an explosive object. But in my experience, the ground floor of a Terror Ship is always the same - all four PSs are always blasted up, and the surrounding interior walls are always in the same bad shape (i.e., they're always all gone, except by the door at the south).

Anyway, a probabilistic thing would be fun to do. But the question of successive explosions has been puzzling me. Could E115 trigger something special in crashes? (Successive explosions even though it's not registered as an explosive?) E115 has always had that odd boolean checkmark at OBDATA.DAT[45]. - MikeTheRed


While I have not collected large amounts of data to show any pattern in the extent of the damage vs time, I haven't really seen any difference in damage between the moment the crash site was created or at a point just before the crash site vanishes. It's roughly the same and varies from game to game. If the UFO is repaired over time, this information will have to be stored somewhere. Craft.dat or loc.dat are probably the most likely files to watch. As for the explosions - I guess during the pre-detonation stages, the game may take into account nearby power units that get caught in the blast and detonate them as well. The 70% chance still holds true for isolated units. Can we add extra power units to the existing craft maps to test this I wonder? Or what about setting this boolean flag for enemy corpses, and crossing our fingers? Heh. That might not work. - NKF


Hehe, it might be fun to play with those booleans. Or not. ;)

I wouldn't think info has to be stored anywhere; after all, the crash site is not created unless/until you fight it. (If I remember right.) If it does "repair", it could simply be based on the time since the crash... and I guess this would basically equate to, a lower probability of PS explosion. FWIW, I never had the impression that more time meant less damage, but then I wasn't paying attention to the possibility.

I guess that, since PS explosions are performed by code that is "above" normal battlescape properties (i.e., PSs are not explosive per se), it's entirely possible they also programmed in, that they trigger successive detonations. It could be fairly easily tested, in theory... There are only 3 UFOs where PSs can "interact": Harvester (2 PSs), Supply (3), Terror (4). Supply UFOs might be the most interesting in terms of teasing out whether there are successive detonations. FWIW, straight odds (no interaction) of having 2 PSs intact is 9.00% (.32), 3 intact is 2.70%, and 4 intact is 0.81%.

Remind me, is there some quick way to "lift the fog of war" and see the whole map? Maybe with Mapview? (I don't have it installed ATM; I recently got a new PC.) If so, it would be fairly easy to see e.g. if terror ships ever vary their explosion pattern, etc. Also any differences between combat early or late after a crash.

Maybe we should move all these comments, maybe even this whole section, to Discussion? - MikeTheRed 17:43, 10 January 2007 (PST)


Moved - and discussions split up and line breaks inserted for your reading convenience. Coincidentally, Mike, it has been a while, but I'll let you decide what to do with your earlier comment up above.

As for the maps - I know XComutil has an option to clear the fog of war and make everyone on the map visible (and sets the lighting for the whole map to the brightest setting until you move). Use the command line utility's VIS command. Like so: xcomutil game_n vis wrt - game_n being the directory for your tactical savegame.

-NKF


Or the time left until the crash site disappears. That is almost certainly in the savegame, and would be worth mapping in its own right.

-- Zaimoni, 9:25 Jan 11 2007 CST


NKF - Cool, I just tried that XcomUtil and it worked like a charm. And guess what... I happened to try it on a Terror ship... and only ONE PS was blown up (although it did, of course, destroy the other 3). Damn, that seems like low odds... and OMG it instantly explodes (cough) the possibility of successive explosions. One other thing can be done via a screenshot of it... one can determine a PS's explosive strength (but maybe not its radius). (Has anybody determined this stuff yet?) Anyway here goes (dusting off Explosions memory cells):

  • UFO floors are destroyed (initial tile) out to radius 3. Since they need 80-89 HE to kill them (without also destroying the next tile out), the GZ explosion strength must be 110-119. Several things concur:
    • Initial destroyed tiles are not blown through to raw earth anywhere (would've taken 80+50=130 HE). Can someone look up the death tile armor strength for a damaged Power Source? The GZ PS was not raw earth, either... it must be armor strength of 40 or more.
    • Those walls around the PSs on a Terror ship are only destroyed up to where the floor tiles were; they also are 80 initial / 50 dead tile "armor".
    • PSs at 6 straight-line radius and 3 diagonal (walking TUs means its considered 4 tiles away) are destroyed, consistent with UFO_Power_Source info that they have 50 "armor"... HE strength was right at 50, to take out the PS at radius 6.
    • All the Elerium is gone, of course... it only takes 21 HE.
  • In apparent contradiction, though, a Snakeman was also killed, at a straight-line radius of 7 (just past the radius-6 PS). Here, the average HE should be 40, and strength against units 20 to 60. It's a Superhuman game, so the lowest stats (Superhuman Snakeman Soldier) would be Health 45 and armor ranging from 16 Rear to 20 Front, for a minimum of 45+16=61 to kill. Hmm. I MCed a Chryssalid nearby and had him check... yes, it's a corpse (not stunned); armaments are Heavy Plasma, Clip, and Alien Grenade, if that helps i.d. the corpse any.

Am I doing this math right? Maybe we are seeing that anything caught in the blast is hard-coded to die; does anyone ever remember seeing aliens injured by crash-landing? In my vague recollection of times when I MC everything, they are all either fine, or dead, at crash sites... never injured.

FWIW there wasn't any other vulnerable stuff around, to tell the whether the blast went farther than radius 7. It could be up to radius 10, with a GZ strength of 110-119... but it also might be deliberately clipped, as certain classes of explosions are (grenades vs. projectiles vs. waypoint are all different... see the "HackPatterns" tab on this spreadsheet).

Zaimoni, I'm sure you're right. If, of course, it's not always the same amount of time. I vaguely recall that my impression is they always lasted about 3 days (72 hours). I don't know the Geoscape files well... perhaps one of you who do, would know where to look for this? Then again it would be cake to take a savegame from just before shooting down a UFO, then see how long the crash persists. It should quickly be clear if it's always the same, to prove or disprove that. If no variation is seen with that one test UFO, a few other types (small to large) should be tested, to see if it differs by type.

- MikeTheRed 17:33, 11 January 2007 (PST)