Talk:Zrbite

In my experience, Zrbite obeys the same laws regarding being in place at the beginning of the mission as in UFO:EU. However, it appears to be stored at a different part of the ship on at least some craft and thus will sometimes be present even if the alien craft has been shot down. I have found it underneath the globes at the front of one of the 'small' alien subs(the Cruiser or the Escort, I believe) even when the Ion Beam Accelerators had been toasted by the craft being shot down. Can anyone else confirm this? Similarly, can Zrbite appear during Alien Colony Assaults, or during Base Defense missions? Arrow Quivershaft 14:36, 31 May 2007 (PDT)

I believe Zrbite can appear under several different objects. The most common being the Ion Beam Accelerator. As far as I can remember, the second half of a Colony mission do generate Zrbite. Commonly in the "purple sphere" Ion Beam Accelerators in the room that looks like a theatre with a stage and the IBA's acting as the rows of seats. Another example are those fleshy/metal drum things that appear throughout the colony that can explode when damaged. It might pay to check your overhead map any time you go through a sub to see if you can spot any Zrbite in unusual locations. - NKF

Correction: In colonies, 2 units of Zrbite appear in the room above the Synomium device room, the theater like area with rows Ion Beam Accelerators. Namely one IBA and one of the pumping Tower of Hanoi shaped devices on top of the raised platform. My previous encounters with Zrbite in other areas of the colony were a side effect of using XComutil. -NKF (talk) 01:10, 3 April 2015 (EDT)

How the hell...

...do you pronounce "Zrbite"??

Good question - I've heard it pronounced a couple of ways. The most common seems to be "Zer-Byte", and some call it "Sprite". Some don't even try and just call it "Elerium". -NKF 16:05, 6 October 2012 (EDT)

"Don't sell Zrbite"

I'm not sure this is a valid blanket statement to make. Even in UFO, a habit of performing Ground Assaults rather than Crash Recoveries usually winds up with more Elerium than Alien Alloys, but that's admittedly an advanced tactic and the blanket statement thus has some validity. Here, though, it's just garbage. Cruisers are the most common alien submarine in the game, and every single one of them will give you 50 Zrbite, crashed or not, because the Zrbite is in the tail and can't be destroyed by the IBAs going boom. As such, you'll typically wind up with piles of the stuff even if you're going the interception route and selling some (though obviously not all) of it is perfectly reasonable. There's only so many Pistol Power Clips and Magnetic Ion Armour suits you can build before more is redundant. Magic9mushroom (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2015 (EDT)

TFTD does make it an easier commodity to obtain, but it's still reasonable enough to get players to think twice about selling it. Long time players who are familiar with the game will have no trouble at all at generating Zrbite and keeping it topped up. However, all players are different, and some or not necessarily as thorough as others. In mid to late game, it's easy to fall into the habit of just shooting down and leaving the Cruiser wrecks alone to concentrate on the bigger missions. Wasteful use of Zrbite (building lots of Ion Armor for replacement recruits and alien ammo), or having lots of consecutive terror missions, can cause the supplies to start drying up.

It can always be reworded to explain what will happen if you sell it rather than to say you must do it this way because that is how it is done. However, that somewhat moot as the whole 'Uses' section that the line appears in seems more of a vehicle to caution the player not to sell the Zrbite than to detail its uses. Let's sort that out, shall we? -NKF (talk) 01:04, 3 April 2015 (EDT)

Agreed that the whole section's badly worded, and I'll see about fixing it. I'm not seeing how building Mag. IA for rookies that see combat is wasteful; it's only a "waste" if they get killed despite the armour, and given its impressive armour rating and suite of resistances that's not exactly commonplace (direct hit from a DPL or Sonic Pulser, high-roll Sonic Cannon shot from the side, and tentacle rape are the main candidates IIRC, and the flight capability inherently declaws Pulsers). I mean, if you have 60 soldiers at a base with an M.C. Generator and give them all Mag. IA that would obviously be a waste, but if they're in combat their life expectancy is pretty drastically improved. And I'll agree that building Blasta or Cannon ammo would eat it up fast, but that's really more a matter of "don't sell Cannon Power Clips" than "don't sell Zrbite" since you get plenty of both from missions. Anyway, this is all sort of a tangent since we agree on the main point; that the blunt "don't sell it" is neither particularly justified nor particularly appropriate for the section's alleged purpose. Magic9mushroom (talk) 03:25, 3 April 2015 (EDT)

Fact-checking

I'm not 100% on these, but I was under the impression that a) Fleet Supply Cruisers' crew do not possess DPLs until September (when DPLs become commonplace in general) making the note about DPLs inaccurate, b) the failsafe allowing you to get the DPL topic if you research Zrbite before getting a sample only works if you get that sample before the completion of the very next research topic after Zrbite, and not thereafter. Have these been verified otherwise since I've been gone? Magic9mushroom (talk) 04:32, 3 April 2015 (EDT)