Known Bugs
Collectors Edition Blaster Bomb Bug
In the Collectors Edition of UFO, the Blaster Launcher has a bug that prevents it from going up or down on the same tile. Or in other words, you cannot change the elevation of the missile vertically on the same tile.
Instead of flying down (or up) to the next waypoint, it will instead fly directly to the south at the pivot waypoint. Relative to the screen, this would be the lower left side of the screen.
This does not happen if you plot the waypoints at an angle. Or, if the blaster bomb flies right off the map, it will reappear at the proper waypoint as long as there are additional waypoints placed after the vertical move.
This bug also applies to the Disrupter Pulse Launcher in TFTD.
80-item Limit
When loading up your Avenger for a massive UFO assault or arming soldiers for a Base Defense from your overflowing stores, you will likely hit this limit.
You only get a max of 80 items, and you don't get to choose which ones, so you may end up with 80 clips and no rifles for the base defense.
The solution is timely housekeeping. Sell off your spare personal equipment. See our handy Spring Cleaning Tips, and also Managing the Item Limit for ideas.
The trouble with Mines (general)
The armed states for Proximity Grenades in both UFO and TFTD are NOT stored in savegames. More information to come.
TFTD Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide
TFTD's research problems are more of a logical design flaw than a true bug, caused by trying to make the research tree more complicated than X-Com UFO. They can be a pain when you research the wrong thing at the wrong time.
A variation of NKF's TFTD Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide will be forthcoming - free time permitting.
For now:
- ONLY research Deep One Terrorist AFTER you have completed Plastic Aqua Armor and Ion Beam Accelerators.
- You MUST have at least one "Sub Construction" in storage before completing research on Zrbite and/or Transmission Resolver.
- NEVER research the Tasoth Commander. There's no reason to - and as of the last patch, they should no longer appear on the research list. They can block the T'Leth research.
- DO NOT research M.C. Lab unless you have AT LEAST one MC Reader in storage.
Other than the MC reader one, any of the above would make it impossible to finish the game.
Difficulty Bug
The DOS version had a problem where no matter what difficulty level you chose, you were actually playing at "Beginner" level. Because of one or two incorrectly set bytes in all dos versions of the game( 1.0 through to 1.4), no matter what difficulty was selected, the difficulty bug would reset to beginner at the end of the first mission. XcomUtil corrects this problem. This bug was officially fixed in the Collectors Edition Windows port (also commonly known as UFO Gold).
Mountain Map
Due to a bug in the way this tileset was created, when you shoot the ground, it doesn't burn up - it turns into a tree stump.
Because the stump is on object, as opposed to actual ground, any objects that were in the tile already (for example, UFO hulls or the landing gear of your craft) get replaced by these stumps, making it seem as if they were destroyed.
Tree stumps don't take much damage, so they often get burnt up immediately if an explosive goes off, leaving nothing but burnt ground behind. It is easier to view the effects of this bug by shooting the ground instead.
For more details, see Mountain Madness.
Base Disjoint Bug
Base facilities built along the right or bottom edges of the base building area may end up being cut off from each other by dirt walls, a bug in the routine meant to keep soldiers from accidentally exiting the map edges during Base Defense missions. The dirt walls can be knocked down by Blaster Bombs during combat but are otherwise unbreakable.
NKF illustrates this in a pretty picture for you. XCOMUTIL corrects this problem.
Big Text Bug
There are a few bugs in XCOM, especially early versions, that can build up and make the game unstable enough that it crashes and prints out a screenful of green 40-column text, essentially debug or memory dump information useless to you.
In the dos version, the text that you see is simply a memory dump in mode-13h (the 320x200x256 colour screen resoulution the game uses) and the text colour is based off the changes to the pallete that the game made. The game sometimes continues with the next part of the game. The game is made of two different programs, Geoscape and Battlescape, so when one part of it crashes, the other one will not have registered that anything has gone wrong and will attempt to soldier on. In the Windows version of the game, the game simply crashes back to the desktop, unless you're using the XcomUtil split executable variant. - NKF
Minimized Interceptor Bug
One fairly consistent cause of crashes is saving the geoscape game during a UFO standoff, with a UFO Interception window minimized to an icon. The next mission after that point will likely dump you to the green text screen, and perhaps an earlier battlescape mission instead of the proper one.
-- I was able to recover from this state by quickly sending in another interceptor (Firestorm) to take over, which allowed my first interceptor (Avenger) to break off and go home without crashing the game again. After the shootdown I overwrote the buggy savegame. --JellyfishGreen 03:11, 22 Aug 2005 (PDT)
This happened to me also. I fixed it by replacing "UIGLOB.DAT" in the save folder with the same file from another saved game (from the same campaign a month earlier) bylund 00:15, January 12, 2007 (GMT+01)
Interceptions: Using Cautious Attack
When intercepting UFO's, the longest ranged weapon will fire as soon as you are within range of that particular UFO using any attack of your choosing, which is normal.
If you use only "Cautious Attack", the craft will only get within range of its longest ranged weapon. Now, if you only have one type of weapon mounted (eg: two Fusion Ball Launchers) or you're down to your last weapon, when the last remaining shot is fired, the intercepting craft will drop back to "Standoff" range as soon as the last shot leaves the weapon tube.
What then happens is that the last fired projectile is still travelling towards the UFO which was just in range, but as you automatically enter stand-off range when you are no longer armed, your ship will have removed itself from your weapon's effective firing range. When the missile reaches the end of its effective firing range it is wasted.
This means, the last shot of ammo from any weapon using a Cautious Attack will NEVER reach the UFO.
To get around this waste of ammo, briefly enter "Agressive" mode and then return to "Cautious" after the projectile has hit its target.
Sticky Craft Transfer Fee glitch
As pointed out by Zombie and Danial, transferring any craft causes all subsequent transfers to have that cost added to it, for as long as the craft is in transit. Additional craft in transit will add additional fees. (This has also been called the Exponential Transfer Fee bug, although it's actually additive, not exponential.)
Example (all numbers are only approximations):
Cost of pistol transfer (↔ = to or from) EU ↔ USA 80 EU ↔ Asia 100 USA ↔ Asia 120 Cost of craft transfer EU ↔ USA 1600 Notice how transfer fees always work as relative percents, EU ↔ Asia 2000 probably on a distance-based formula USA ↔ Asia 2400 Cost to transfer pistol, after transferring craft from EU to Asia for $2000 EU ↔ USA 1680 (80+1600) EU ↔ Asia 2100 (100+2000) USA ↔ Asia 2520 (120+2400)
The cost of the craft transfer "sticks" to all subsequent transfers, until the craft arrives - although it acts on a proportionate basis, which is probably distance related.
Unfortunately, this cost is additive. That is to say, if you transferred a second craft from EU to Asia while the first was still in transit, it would cost $4000 ($2000 plus $2000 - it too suffers from the glitch!), it would then cost e.g. $4100 to transfer a pistol from EU to Asia. Having even more craft in transit would add even more fees.
This only appears to happen with aircraft, although it does happen for them all. So try to space out your transfers, if you can.
A related problem is that, if you are in the Transfer screen, start to transfer a craft, and then cancel because you remembered you wanted to send something else first - if you then try to Transfer something on that same screen, it will still get the sticky craft fee added. Try it and see. You have to back up out to the main Base screen and hit Transfer again, to get rid of the sticky fee from a cancelled craft transfer.
Transfer Limit cash eater
Only 100 items can be in transit at a time. (Here, a transfer of e.g. 200 Elerium counts as one "item". Also, all soldiers are counted individually.) If you go over the limit, you will get a warning that there is no more transport capacity. If you STILL try to transport something after getting the warning, the item will stay where it is, but the transportation cost still gets deducted. Bad if you're shuffling expensive aircraft.
| Tip |
| To Clarify what constitutes an item in the transfer screen, think of them as batches of X amount. For example, if you transfer 200 alien alloys now, and then decide to transfer another 50 alloys later, this will count as two items in transit. Now, when you look at your transfers, you'll now have two items. Two batches of alien alloys, one with 200 units and the other with 50 units. |
Transfer crash
If you transfer something to another base the game crashes right after acknowledging the transfer price.
Solution: Start UFO, select English language, finish your transfer, save game, restart with your normal language settings (http://www.xcomufo.com/x1faq.html)
Carrying Unconscious Units
Refer to : Unconscious.
Disappearing Ammo
For all game versions, partially-used clips disappear at the end of a mission. This dictates that you should try to use clips that are not full. No mystery here.
However, in the CE edition, clips in alien weapons (not XCOM weapons) are lost at the end of a mission, whether they are full or not. Thus, you should unload all virgin clips before ending a mission, if you have the CE edition of the game. (Partially used clips are lost regardless, so there's no reason to unload them.)
This bug does not appear to affect the DOS or Playstation versions. (Make a note here if you've observed otherwise! -MTR)
Note that you still get credit (score) at the end of missions, regardless of the CE loaded-weapon bug and/or whether a clip is full or partial.
Overcrowded Engineers (And Scientists?)
In the Dos version (probably the others as well) if you hire more than 255 engineers in a single base, the number of engineers in the base will read a negative number once the 256th engineer arrives. Any Engineers engaged in projects will continue to work on them, but if you cancel the project you will lose engineers until you have lost 255 of them. This bug probably also affects scientists. It may be exploitable to pay a negative salary at the end of the month.
What just exploded?
In some versions of the game, a bug allows an armed proximity mine to transfer its properties to some other item in the next mission, which then may explode unexpectedly. (If the item is left on the floor of the XCOM craft, it will explode as you walk past it.) This problem can be rectified by reloading the game -- as a precaution, save before you move your first soldier.
Door jam
If a door is open when a game is saved on the Battlescape and that game is subsequently restored, the door will remain open for the remainder of that mission.