Known Bugs (Apocalypse)

In recent years it has come to light that, with the well documented end of development being so chaotic, and the shift from Microprose ownership, to Spectrum Holobyte and finally Hasbro, causing a multitude of problems in of itself, that multiple distributions, all with slight technical variations, of Apocalypse exist. For this reason, it is important to note the CD-ROM serial number from which the bug occurs to make this page more useful at tracking and listing Apocalypse related bugs.

For digital distributions, there are a number of known issues. First, and foremost, they use DOSBox to emulate the CD-ROM drive and then mount either an ISO or CUE/BIN image. Sadly, as DOSBox emulation for CD Images as CD-ROM Drives is poor, even requiring special patching, exclusively for Apocalypse, by the DOSBox Dev Team, use of DOSBox with a CD Image is known to create a host of problems. The NoCD error is often reported by users when using DOSBox with a CD-Image instead of the original Discs in a physical drive. Secondly, and less well known, the Learning AI (Decision Matrix) that controls faction and alien behaviour based on the recording of player performance and battlescape data will be broken from the outset. The learning AI files will update as the game progresses, but the Decision matrix fails to utilise that data when changing the "stance" of any given opponent and the associated behaviours, instead resorting to the defaults as specified in the "0" suffixed versions of the Learning AI files

The GOG release of the game, since the Galaxy 2 update for both offline and galaxy installed versions of the game, has also had issues with the cross-naming of the two sets of executables in TACEXE and UFOEXE, this is covered in detail in the relevant section below. For users on GOG who have not "fixed" their installation manually, it can be assumed that any bug report is somewhat invalidated by the fact the distribution in itself is broken both on it's reliance on a CD Image and that GOG has created a custom DOSBox environment with mismatched core game executables.

Cityscape bugs

Firing Infatuated Agents

This happens if you have more than twenty combat agents (or biochemists, or engineers, or quantum physicists) assigned to single base. Only the first twenty specialists are visible in the hire/fire interface. The others cannot be fired from the agent interface.

Firing specialist (agent, biochemist, engineer or physicist) #1 fires agent #21 (and engineer #21 if present, and quantum physicist #21 if present) as well. Firing specialist #2 fires agent #22 (and engineer #22 if present, and quantum physicist #22 if present) as well.

And so on.

To fire >#20 specialists one needs to "transfer" some <#20 specialists to other base. Then it's still only possible to fire only first 20 specialists, but those which were further down the line are now visible. This can be done without unpausing - so it's possible to transfer those specialists back once proper guys/gals have been fired.

Rendor Plasma Shot Undercount

Per NKF's research ( http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242028127 ), the Rendor Plasma gun (an air vehicle weapon) actually has all 140 of the shots it used when loading up. The game divides this by two, reporting 70 shots.

Is that base yours ?

When aliens get to your base by spreading through the tubes, the game treats your base as if it was a building owned by the government. Hence, the alien activity will start growing on the government, if aliens are spotted you will have an alarm, and if you start a mission, you will combat in a standard warehouse or slum scenario, rather than in your base.

• Possibly not a bug since it appears that X-COM bases are located underground, i.e. in the basement levels of said buildings.

Battleship ex nihilo

One of the Infiltration fleets (#17 on the UFO Incursions page) consists of one Battleship that inserts aliens, one Escort Ship, and one Battleship that bombs a building. This is the only UFO fleet in the game that has the same UFO type performing two different missions, and as such it runs afoul of a bug in the spawn routine. See, when checking whether there are enough UFOs for a fleet, the game checks for the presence of each UFO group separately, and the two Battleships are in different groups. As such, the game checks for whether there is 1 Battleship, 1 Escort Ship and 1 Battleship, not whether there is 1 Escort Ship and 2 Battleships, and may erroneously spawn this fleet (with both Battleships) even if there is only one Battleship in the Alien Dimension.

Time Lapse

If too many vehicles are on the Cityscape at the same time, you cannot choose the "Ultra Fast" time control option. This usually happens on the biggest Mega-Prime map on Superhuman where, due to the way some roads are connected in a criss-cross pattern with eachother, sometimes vehicles get stuck moving in circles eternally or if in one of those criss-cross sections of the map one exit was destroyed during UFO fights the vehicles will be unable to pathfind another way out, as they seem to try and always go for the shortest path, even if that one is destroyed, and will never try to go for an alternate longer path, regardless if one is available or not. To solve this issue, you have to use an X-Com Craft to either directly destroy some of the vehicles or use the Manual Craft Control (M to activate, LMB to shoot) to destroy the road/bridge the vehicles are on (no reputation loss).

65535 Widget Bug

You may sometimes find a store item with an unusually high count of 65535 or close to that amount. This bug occurs when the item count somehow goes into a negative value. Because item counters are instanced as unsigned integers, the negative will wrap back around to the highest value that it can hold. In this case, 65535.

One such example of how this could occur is when shifting an unresearched alien artefact that is instanced in both the air and ground transfer screens. If the item sliders are not locked and can be moved independently, you may be able to send more items than you physically own and put the store count into the negative.

Note that the user interface will properly report the negative count before you commit the item transfer.

With 65535 instances of any single item, this bug can easily be used as a money exploit.

Storage alchemy

When you sell off all of an alien artifact and it disappears from the sell screen, the game doesn't always re-point your stores correctly. One known possibility is all your Elerium-115 (potentially several hundred) being transmuted into GLM Air Defenses when Cloaking Fields are sold off.

This has been tested has it has nothing to do with alien artifacts or any ammo in particular. This is an error in the update routine when selling off the first item in the list of craft specific items to a zero storage quantity. If you buy a Light Weapons Control the game will give you the correct amount and your list will work as normal. If you happen to sell all the light modules, the quantity amounts (but not item list) of all your items in the Ground Vehicle section (even though you may have sold it in the Air Vehicle section) will be bumped down the list once. The second quantity of the item, that being Medium Weapons Control modules, will be inserted as the third quantity as well! eg: if you have seven medium modules and the repeatable bug appears, then will now have seven heavy modules as well - as long as the technology has been introduced. Repeatable (and exploitable): If you buy all the light modules again (and wait for delivery) and then sell them all, the quantity values will bump down once again!

Tested with a game around week four, multiple xcom bases, lots of mixed vehicles. Tested as such that it works exactly as mentioned. Others may find slight variations of this bug (which wouldn't be surprising).

Not to be confused with the 65535 Widget bug which is seperate.

Crazy transportation

If you hire new men and the road to access your base is broken, your men will pick a car but will not be able to reach the base and will keep turning around and around. But as soon as you set the "ultratime" on he will get to the base regardless the road was repaired or not.

No music bug

Whenever you save a game or sometimes when you end a battlescape mission, the music seems to stop playing. However, all that happens is that the music volume gets set down to 1 during the post battle screen or when you save the game, and fails to set itself back to its previous value. (you can still hear the music if you listen closely)

There are 4 ways of solving this:

1. Enter the options screen and simply uncheck and check the master volume slider.

(this will cause the current music track to get skipped or start from the beginning)

2. Move the master volume slider a bit to the left/right and then back to your desired position.

(this will prevent the track from being skipped / starting from the beginning)

3. Wait until the next music track plays, the volume will be correct with the next track playing.

(you might have to sit through 2-3 mins of silence)

4. Playing with the original CD reduces but not fully removes this bug. During the CD access to play the next track the volume usually gets set back to its proper value.

UFO Incursion - Battle Music

Usually you only get an eerie/slightly more worrisome music track playing (Uneasy Calm / The Infestation) during UFO incursions and rarely the battle music (Kill them ALL / Chase) will play.

This is most likely intended design, as the more hype battle music will only play during Apocalypse missions and only if enough UFOs are present. Around 5-6 UFOs minimum are required for the game to play the more threatening sounding tracks. It'll also continue playing as long as enough downed UFOs are still present on the map. Once you recover the wracks and the number of present UFOs on the Cityscape falls below the 5-6 threshold, the music will change back to Uneasy Calm/The Infestation and then back to normal, once all UFOs are recovered/expired.

Due to this, the more hype battle music can and will play regardless of the UFO incursion mission, as long as enough UFOs appear. Though it is most likely meant to only play during the Apocalypse mission.

Vehicle Repair Bay Placement in Starting Base

The starting base may have a bizarrely placed Vehicle Repair Bay. In the case shown below, it also takes up the two "empty" squares to the lower-left of the Access Lift.

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Freeze after Midnight

Sometimes the game might just freeze once it passes a day at 00:00, this freeze is somehow connected to the city repairing itself bit by bit everytime the clock reaches midnight. What exactly causes this is unknown and there are no known ways to prevent this as the city already starts partially destroyed (from the intro cinematic UFO) as well as avoiding city damage during incursions or just by stray Megapol Policecar shots being a nigh impossible thing.

If you encounter a freeze past midnight but have saved the game just before, a way to prevent the freezing (for a while at least) is to destroy more of the city. In this case the Cult of Sirius buildings are a good target, as no matter what you do you will inevitably end up or already start the game with being hostile towards Cult of Sirius. Once you have destroyed some of their buildings, the game should no longer freeze once midnight passes. However, this might have to be repeated everytime a freeze occurs. Sometimes it manages to fully get rid of the freezing, requiring no more destruction of the city, sometimes it can only prevent the freeze for a few days.

Tactical section bugs

Poor pathway finding

The pathway finding algorithm will choose very poor paths when you move your men in the turn based version of the game. The path chosen will be OK only if you your men can reach their destination following a straight path and there are no obstacles around. Otherwise it will pick very crazy routes. The behaviour of the algorithm is particularly crazy when you are using flying units and more complicate routes can be chosen. Also, the path that your men follows when you move appears to be different from the one selected to predict the TUs left after the move, so that this prediction is often incorrect.

Agents travelling in time

When you start a mission in turn based mode, the clock will advance by a few seconds after each turn. But after that you have completed the mission it will get back to the time before mission started. The odd part is that the ship carrying the agents is ready to take off.

Quarreling with Transtellar is dangerous!

If you happen to upset Transtellar your men will not be able to move using transtellar cars. If you hire some men they will try to get to your base through the tubes, but they often will not be able to get to your base and remain stuck in another building. At this point if you then succeed into getting a better relationship with Transtellar, your men will not immediately get to your base, and some of them might remain stuck into their positions even running the ultratime. One way to unlock the agents is to transfer them temporarily to another base, another is to order the agent to any nearby building and then send a vehicle to pick them up.

Visual glitches

There are some glitches when you move your men flying very high, especially if tall structures are around. You will see "shadows" to appear and move here and there, and, after movement is completed, they will not be cleared until you force a complete redraw of the screen.

Resistance bug

In the turn-based mode when you are flying with the marsec armour at high speed (running) the stamina is unaffected, so that you can run as long as you like and each move has a reduced TUs cost. But if you run out of stamina everything works as if you were walking: the TUs cost of your movements is increased.

Spying capabilities

In turn based mode if you spot one or more aliens and you end your turn, the first steps of the alien that moves first (among the ones that you have spotted) are always visible, regardless that the alien is outside of the visual range of any of your men.

Big aliens visibility bug

Big aliens (Megaspawn, psymorphs) might not be visible to your men if part of their body is hidden behind structures. Even if the alien is sitting in front of you and half of its body is in sight.

Items limit in tactical combat

There seems to be a limit of items in tactical combat (roughly 500). If one takes a full contingent - 36 agents - to a combat, if there's too much equipment in their inventory some agents may not spawn and/or aliens (Anthropods and Skeletoids) may spawn without equipment. This *may* be a good exploit for dangerless tactical missions, but it will *not* give any points/credits for equipment that is missing - since it's not present.

Ammunition consolidation bug

In the agent equipment screen during tactical combat, ammunition can be combined by picking up an ammunition clip and then dropping it onto the same type of clip held in the inventory.

This is not necessarily a bug and likely intended to allow the player to consolidate partial clips such as those used in multi-munition weapons.

What is most likely unintended is that no bounds checking is performed to ensure that the target clip is only refilled to its maximum capacity. Instead the ammunition count for both clips are combined onto the target clip. The held clip on the other hand will be left with a count of 0.

This process can be repeated several times to consolidate multiple clips into a single large clip that only takes up the space of one.

This is a storage space exploit only. The game will still calculate the correct weight of the gestalt ammo clip and weigh down the agent appropriately. A Marsec Heavy Launcher Rocket with a count of 10 for example will still weigh as much as 10 rockets.

Brainsucker Pods left with a count of 0 will not hatch.

Android Resistances

By default, Androids are assigned the Human resistance values. Meaning, they will just as quickly fall unconscious to stun damage as Humans and Hybrids, causing Androids to take 100% Stun Gas and 100% Stun (Stun Grapple, Psionics) damage instead of 0% Stun Gas and 20% Stun damage as well as taking 100% Incendiary damage (IN Ammunition, Diablo Incendiary Grenade) instead of only 60%.

Note that this cannot be fixed by using modding programs such as "Apoc'd", which can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/apocd/, and assigning Androids to the Android Damage Modifier. The reason for this is that Androids are assigned the "X-COM Agents" role, as every soldier is (Humans as well as Hybrids). The "X-COM Agents" role however is assigned the "Human" Damage Modifier Group, which take priority over each individual damage modifier class and therefore overrides the "Android" modifier with the "Human" modifier again. S.E.L.F. units (building security) are treated as humans and will not be affected by this change, either.

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Inventory Soft Lock

If you manage to open the inventory screen just as your soldier is dying, the game will softlock itself.

This can happen in Turn Based mode, if you approach a Popper who starts its reaction turn while your soldier is still walking towards it and you click the inventory button just at that very moment.

When the soldier dies just as the inventory screen is up the entire interface will be corrupted. If you hit the bottom right button, it'll return to the battlescape screen and everything will look normal again, however the game will still act as if you were in the inventory screen.

You will be unable to move your soldiers, shoot, turn, etc. and pressing any of the buttons, even the end turn button, will result in nothing happening.

There is no known work-around. If this happens you will have to restart the game.

Security Station turret TU

In turn-based mode, the TU of the turrets in Security Stations is not refreshed at the beginning of either X-Com's or the aliens' turn. As such, each turret will typically only get one shot off before becoming inert for the rest of the battle (like the aliens, they only start with 25% of maximum TU). This is the reason Security Stations are largely useless in turn-based mode.

A guide to fixing this with a hex-editor can be found here.

Brainsucker Door Exploit

In turn-based mode when you place a Soldier directly in front of a door, Brainsuckers usually fail to jump on the soldiers head. They usually try several jump attacks until they run out of time units and then end up sitting ducks in front of your soldier with no time units left.

Sometimes though the Brainsucker can get stuck inside the wall above the soldier, remaining invisible for the rest of the mission and preventing it from being completed.

A work around to that would be shooting the wall to destroy it in order to gain visibility of the Brainsucker or having to forfeit and leave the mission with all of your soldiers to proceed or trying to avoid the exploit all together. However, sometimes this is not possible as you might accidentally end your turn in front of a door with a Brainsucker lurking somewhere.

Just keep in mind that if after a failed (not connected) Brainsucker attack the Brainsucker remains gone that it might be stuck inside the wall above the tile it initiated the jump from.

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Left picture: Cursor is where your Soldier is positioned before the Brainsucker attack.

Middle picture: Previously invisible bugged Brainsucker revealed after destroying the wall.

Right picture: After ending the turn the Brainsucker regained consciousness but was still unable to move. It visually appeared on level 5 as well, where there was a free walkway, yet the minimap showed its position at the same level as the wall itself.

Missing Aliens in the bigger UFOs

Most prominently the Micronoid, being only available through a downed Bomber, fails to spawn on the other bigger UFOs even though it's in the crew list of the UFOs. Making it a very elusive alien to capture before entering the alien dimension, as you'd most likely only get one chance downing the Bomber and catching it alive before you are ready to enter the alien dimension.

This issue happens because of 2 reasons:

1. Aliens are grouped together like your own soldiers, however this can mean that 2-3 troops units can be occupied just by a few aliens, for example: Troop 1 consists of 2 Anthropods, Troop 2 consists of 3 Skeletoids. Even though both troops still have room for more aliens, none of the other alien types are grouped into them. For the bigger UFOs this means, that aliens higher on the spawn list get to be assigned a troop first, and once all troops are occupied, fully or even with only 1 alien, the remaining aliens fail to spawn as they cannot be assigned into those troops.

2. In the Debug and Beta versions of Apocalypse, the game didn't have a limit on how many alien units can be on the map, leading to scenarios where you would have to fight over 40 aliens on the Battlescape, along with more aliens arriving through the map exits or being dropped off and entering the map through the highest available level. The troop/alien number restriction added on the final version of the game makes it impossible for UFOs to spawn more than 36 aliens at once, while on top of that the restrictive troop grouping will prevent the aliens that didn't get assigned to a troop to spawn in the first place. Each organization therefore is hard limited to only 36 possible units, while any human organization other than X-COM, is set to spawn up to a maximum of 20 units only.

Design flaws

X-COM Recyclotorium - Superhuman

On the Superhuman map X-COM is assigned the ownership of Recyclotorium Two.

This is most likely an oversight by the map's creator. Recyclotoriums usually are only owned by Evonet, while X-COM can only obtain ownership to base facilities.

This decreases the difficulty on Superhuman immensely; during Alien Retaliation attacks the UFOs will frequently target the Recyclotorium building instead of actual X-COM bases, completely averting any threat to the player as there is no fear of your base collapsing and possibly killing all your personnel.

The Recyclotorium can be reassigned to Evonet with modding programs such as Apoc'd.

Cannot rotate the view

Shorter aliens (Brainsuckers, eggs, multiworms, hyperworms) might be covered by taller structures, making them hard to see or tell apart. Being able to rotate the view would fix this.

Dimension Probe

The Dimension Probe is falsely assigned MarSec as its manufacturer even though all Research Technology that can be produced as well as recovered Alien Technology has X-COM as default manufacturer. This is probably a leftover from the Debug/Beta testing peroids of the game.

Learning AI Bugs

The Learning AI is a fragile but amazingly cool feature of X-COM Apocalypse. Unfortunately it tends to easily break or not work at all with certain distributions of the game.

Why it doesn't work with digital distributions (Steam/GoG/own (il)legal Copy)

The Learning AI is dependent on the physical location of the Learning AI files on an original physical CD, as the CD is segmented into several physical sections visible with the eye. Digital distributions such as the Steam or GoG version use .iso/.bin .cue files that are directly mounted in DOSBox, hence making the important files all available on a single track without that physical separation which then prevents the Learning AI from functioning. The Learning AI files (EXPERIEN.DAT, BRAIN.DAT, WEAPEXP.DAT) will still update and adjust themselves according to your tactics (this counts for all distributions/localizations), however the Learning AI will fail to activate and make use of it. The same counts for mounting the file on a virtual drive and using that with DOSBox.

Burning the .iso/.bin .cue files onto a CD will also not make it work, as the tracks will not be in the exact same location / read order the AI requires them to be in. This also means that certain official CD distributions of X-COM Apocalypse, such as certain localizations/versions/re-releases, also have the issue of the tracks being in an order that completely breaks the Learning AI.

Additionally, only direct CD clones of the original CD with identical burn marks on the backside of the CD will have a working Learning AI. Self created .iso files (from a CD with working AI) or other burning methods other than a 1:1 clone will again result in a broken Learning AI.

Confirmed functioning Learning AI

Currently only 2 UK versions are confirmed to have a working Learning AI, these 2 versions carry following serial numbers:

UK Original Release: MP191 207 D01R

UK Powerplus Release: PP191 207D01R

Fortunately, those serial numbers appear quite often on second hand sales, as they were the main version distributed in Europe in countries without their own localization, and will always work through DOSBox, as long as you own a CD/DVD Drive and have it mounted in DOSBox. The serial numbers are clearly visible in big letters on the CD itself.

Additionally, the 1.03 North American version is said to also have a fully working Learning AI, unfortunately there are no more details like a serial number or actual confirmation of a working Learning AI about this version, as that version is relatively hard to find.

What breaks the AI

1. Stun raids

They will scramble the data created in the WEAPEXP.DAT file.

2. Saving the game or loading from a saved game / editing

Breaks the Learning AI by jumping values. Simply the action of going to save the game will break the decision matrix as recently discovered by Skin36 when reversing the code. If you want to play Apoc from start to end with the decision matrix working throughout, you cannot, at any point, save the game, let alone load one.

3. Any general game exploit / unintended game mechanic

In short: Play straight. No cheating no savegames as per the above point, if you want to enjoy and experience the exciting Learning AI.

4. Virtual Drives / .iso / .bin .cue

In general, anything that is not a physical CD will prevent the Learning AI from working.

Currently there isn't enough testing done to detail what does and doesn't work. However, the Steam and GoG implementation of .iso / .bin .cue, directly mounted into DOSBox, will prevent the Learning AI from working.

5. Certain localizations / releases

Though no extensive information is available, it is assumed that the German/French/Italian/Russian/etc. localizations do not have a working AI due to the way the CD's data was written on them.

Following releases are confirmed to have a NOT working AI, due to not being 1:1 clones, causing the Learning AI files to be on different tracks than in the original release:

UK Hasbro Interactive Release 1.00: 51747.331.DL (Disc 2)

US/NA 1.00 Release (Multiworm CD Cover) (No serial number available)

6. Installing the game from any other source other than the original CD through a physical CD/DVD Drive

Yes, the AI is that fragile.

Please Insert CD Bug

The "Please Insert CD Bug" that many players suffer from on modern distributions (Steam/GoG), whenever they start a battlescape mission, is tightly tied to all this mess. It too is dependent on a physical CD and will not occur as often on official distributions as long as they are played with the original CD on a physical CD/DVD drive.

The main reason for that happening with the Steam/GoG version is because both those versions use the minimal installation setting on top of having the image file directly mounted via DOSBox, as well as the data from the mounted image files being read too fast.

The "Please Insert CD Bug" cannot be completely mitigated, regardless if you play using the original physical CD or the digital distribution, however you can cut down the frequency at which this happens:

Simply copy the "XCOM3" folder from the "CD/.iso/.bin .cue" onto your PC.

(whereever you have designated C:\ to be for DOSBox i.e. C:\Games\DOSBox\Games\"HERE")

Then rename the folder to "XCOMA" and then do a fresh install (200 MB optimal installation) on top of the folder.

That way, even with a virtual drive / image file, the error message won't occur as often anymore.

However, keep in mind that you should still save before starting ANY battlescape mission, i.e. UFO Recoveries, Investigations and Raids. As this mitigation will only lower the frequency of that bug but not completely remove it, you do not want to lose an hour or two of progress.

Also, directly mounting image files into DOSBox is not a good idea, as the integrated mounting system for image files is horrible and can lead to errors during gameplay.

Instead just mount the image file with Windows and then mount the assigned CD Drive as cdrom in DOSBox, as example:

mount d f:\ -t cdrom -usecd NUMBER

"F:\" being the drive Windows 10 assignes the mounted image file.

(to find out what number to put into "NUMBER", type "mount -cd" into DOSBox and then enter the number that is shown left from the drive. I.e. 0. E:\ 1. F:\, in this case it should be "-usecd 1". DOSBox has to be started AFTER you have mounted the image file with Windows for it to show its drive letter.)

GOG.com and other Funky Distributions / UFO2P.exe TAC2P.exe and UFO2P4.exe TAC2P4.exe

THIS IS VERY MUCH A PROBLEM WITH THE GOG.COM RELEASES AND REMAINS UN-RESOLVED FOR THE LATEST INFO PLEASE SEE: https://www.gog.com/forum/xcom_series/xcom_apocalypse_serious_distribution_bug_please_fix_gog

When installing Apocalypse the installed UFO2P.exe and TAC2P.exe files inside the UFOEXE and TACEXE folders are not the actual UFO2P.exe and TAC2P.exe files. Instead, the installation takes the UFO2P4.exe TAC2P4.exe files and renames them to UFO2P.exe and TAC2P.exe to be used instead.

The UFO2P.exe and TAC2P.exe files were designed for pentium based computers while the UFO2P4.exe and TAC2P4.exe were designed for 486 systems with less performance and processing power. By cross-naming/installing these files it leads to incorrect data sharing between the two sets of executables and save corruption, relationship/diplomacy bugs, economy problems, agent hire/fire problems and a host of other nasties that can result in a CTD.

All modding programmes (like Apoc'd) as well as most game mechanics and formulas discovered are taken from the renamed UFO2P4.exe and TAC2P4.exe files. Therefore using Apoc'd on the original UFO2P.exe and TAC2P.exe files will cause errors and weird bugs.

To prevent any weird installation behaviours it is recommended to simply copy the XCOM3 folder from the CD over to your games directory, rename the folder to XCOMA and then doing a fresh full installation on top of that. Optionally, also copy the "music" file from the CD over to where the XCOMA folder is located (not inside of it).