Bugs/Features (LWR)

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Existing Game Bugs

Many unfixable bugs from Long War 1.0 and XCOM:EU/EW are now considered features, including:

• Aliens will sometimes double move off the bat as some of them were waiting for you in ambush and will get an extra move to reflect this
• The terrain on maps will sometimes allow you to see aliens that cannot see you in return. Similarly, sometimes aliens will be able to see you and you cannot see them. This is actually not THAT unrealistic and should be expected (as it's part of the base engine code that we definitely cannot change). Just be aware that you might get shot at or overwatched by an alien that you can't see because of a hole in a building, or a crack in a door, or a space in a wall/roof, or flying just out of your sight range (but they can still see you) -- and also realize that sometimes you are doing the same to the aliens (but probably aren't aware).
• Reaction shots against someone performing an action will sometimes inactivate their action because getting fired at sucks and it's hard to do things with bullets flying at your face
• SHIVs need extra time to load onto the Skyranger during combat; make sure the SHIV has full actions and is in the extraction zone before attempting to abort the mission or the SHIV may be left behind
• Suppression will sometimes not fire when the target moves (and you'll get a cool slow motion view of it) because you were distracted while suppressing and maybe some bullet shells or a fly got in your eyes
• Big Sky (the Sky Ranger pilot) has a girlfriend that he likes to see sometimes -- if your mission happens to be at the same time he may bail on you and you'll notice there is no evacuation zone. We've talked to him about this but he's the only one in the world capable of flying the Sky Ranger so there is no way around it. Just make sure you pass all the missions when there is no evacuation zone.
• Exalt will always know where your covert op is as soon as they are activated as they have a transponder on everyone and figure out that he's the mole! Expect them to beeline for your operative as soon as they are activated.
• Being Mind Controlled is a really intense experience and can have some weird side effects that include (but are not limited to): having a soldier lose some of his equipment (specifically grenades and rockets), gaining an extra turn (specifically with hit and run), having the soldier stay behind on the mission (MIA), and having unexpected fatigue/injury times.
• Aliens have invisible floating teleportation devices -- they aren't used a lot because they really hurt but sometimes if one or more aliens are desparate they will use these devices to teleport around the map
• Sometimes a dying soldier will fall into a hole the aliens dug inside the mountain/building/dirt. If they do it's best to just move on as the holes will often form an inpenetrable barrier that prevents access until the occupant is completely dead (or sometimes reloading works).
• Panicking units will not gain an action during their turn, EXCEPT if that unit is visited by it's guardian angel. It happens rarely (1% of the time), and you won't be able to see the angel (obviously they are only visible to the soldier/alien they are guarding), but you'll see the panicked unit miraculously act as if he wasn't panicked. If you see this happen you should not feel frustrated and instead feel blessed to have witnessed such holy greatness.
• You will sometimes hear chyrssalids where there are none - it was probably just your imagination - you need to relax man.
• Sometimes it looks like a soldier can see an alien to shoot at but they can't. You may think this is ridiculous but the aliens are equipped with reflective padding that can really cause a glare. From above it looks like the soldier should see the alien, but the glare is quite deceptive the soldier just thinks the alien is a broken street light or something. This is especially common on ramps as everyone knows glare can be a problem when changing elevations.
• If the aliens attack your base things are going to be a little bit chaotic (understandably so). Your reinforcements may come from multiple different places: the normal hatch, under the platform, on the platform, the roof, under the tiles, in the janitor's closet, etc. The point is: they don't understand how they got there and neither will you. It's probably the aliens using their matter dislocation auras but we can't be sure.
• Units that go invisible sometimes stay that way for the entire mission. This is because being invisible is really cool and the unit gets addicted to it (like cocaine). If it's an enemy unit, you can try AoE effects or using the console. If it's one of your soldiers he/she should snap out of it after the mission.
• Close Combat Specialists usually have PTSD and will sometimes not fire at an enemy when you want them to. The training that they take is very intensive and these momentary freezes in the heat of battle are to be expected.
• Run and Gun trained soldiers will sometimes not move if they try to run and gun aftering being commanded or if they try to run and gun during an xcom scamper. Again, this is because of very intensive training causing PTSD which acts up when too much is happening at once.
• An XCOM soldier may get so startled upon discovering an unactivated alien pod that he scampers a second time in the same turn. This happens when the game is saved and reloaded, which resets the scamper counter, so the player needs to keep the count himself, if he wishes to prevent the exploit.
• Sometimes in the loadout screen, your soldiers will overlap each other. This might seem like a visual bug but it's actually your soldiers being friendly and sharing a moment of intimacy. Please respect their privacy.
• Sometimes your soldiers will step out of cover to perform an action, if they do this during a full moon when Juptier is touching the ecliptic, the soldier will feel a strange desire not to move back to cover and may actually stay in the stepped out space.
• If you rapidly click on buttons to purchase or sell or place equipment/buildings/etc. sometimes the engineers and assistant engineers will get confused and order too many or too few and the accountants sometimes also get confused and you lose money.
• Sometimes invisible sectoids will appear and then immediately be shot, either by XCOM or the aliens. Don't ask about them... for your own safety.
• Some Exalt missions will CTD or appear as a black/blank map if you try to enter them. This is because the covert op has already died in such a gruesome way that the game is trying to spare you the suffering of witnessing his final condition and instead encouraging you (quite forcefully) to just skip that mission.
• NEVER SAVE/LOAD ON THE XCOM BASE DEFENSE MISSION. It angers the XCOM gods and they may prevent you from finishing the mission, stop spawning aliens, or even corrupt your save.

How to Prevent Bugs

XCom is a game that has many functions running simultaneously. We have found quite a few bugs that will only occur when a computer is running slowly. For example, szmind had one bug only and always occur whenever the 'power saving' mode of a laptop was turned on (i.e. it was moving slower). Another bug was reproducible only if a player had been playing for many hours. With new features/functions that we code we literally have to say "don't run this for 3 seconds" to make sure other functions will finish first, in case they take longer than normal. It seems like bugs will occur if the memory storage gets too restricted or the computer too slow. Having said that, even on a really old (20 years) laptop the game still runs with minimal problems. Still, I have 3 recommendations for players:

1) Save and restart the game if you've been playing for more than 4 hours (clears up memory)

2) Try not to run many other programs in the background (allows functions to finish quickly)

3) If you can, run it on the fastest computer with the most memory (functions finish quick, clogging up memory not a problem)

Map Bugs

The terrain on maps will sometimes allow you to see aliens that cannot see you in return. Similarly, sometimes aliens will be able to see you and you cannot see them. This is actually not THAT unrealistic and should be expected (as it's part of the base engine code that we cannot change). Just be aware that you might get shot at or overwatched by an alien that you can't see because of a hole in a building, or a crack in a door, or a space in a wall/roof, or flying just out of your sight range (but they can still see you) -- and also realize that sometimes you are doing the same to the aliens (but probably aren't aware).

An Example

This "one-way mirror" on this UFO lets units inside the UFO fire out but blocks vision into the UFO.

This is the exact same point in the battle.

First picture is the alien point-of-view (POV). Second picture is the XCOM POV. Notice how the alien has the XCOM soldier as a possible target (from the icons in the bottom right), but the XCOM player has no targets available. This is because it is a 1-way wall at that exact angle, allowing the sectoid to target the XCOM soldier but not vice versa.

Alien POV

XCOM POV