PURCHASE.DAT

General Notes

PURCHASE.DAT is found in the savegame directory (GAME_1 through GAME_10) and contains both buying and selling prices for all items. It also contains the value for delivery time (even for manufactured and alien items) and a flag for whether or not an item may purchased on the Purchase/Recruit Screen.

There are 91 entries, each of which is 20 bytes long, for a total of 1,820 bytes long.

Items are divided into three general categories: Personnel, Crafts, and all other items. Of the 91 entries, 3 are for Personnel, 5 for Crafts, and 83 for other items, including 11 for alien corpses (5 for the major races + 6 for the terrorists they bring along), and 3 entries that the game doesn't seem to use (UFO Construction, Alien Reproduction, and Alien Habitat.)

The order of items in this file is generally the same as on the Purchase/Recruit, Sell/Sack, or Transfer Screens. Each entry also contains a value that generally conforms to the sort order on the Base Information->Stores screen (which is slightly different from the sort order of the other screens.) See Notes on Sorting at the end of this article for more details.

Values are presented according to offset (0 to 19) in bold.

Structure

0: Item Category:

  0 General Item...basically, anything not Personnel or Crafts
  1 X-Com Craft
  2 Soldier
  3 Scientist
  4 Engineer

1: Sort Order (or Index, see below): for General Items(Item Category=0), this value seems to control sort order on the Base Information->Stores screen (only General Items appear there.)

  00-42 'Human' Items...all purchaseable equipment, all Craft weapons/ammo, all HWPs, Lasers,
        Motion Scanner, Medikit, and PsiAmp
  43-48 Not Used
  49-59 Alien Weapons/Ammo...Heavy Plasma through Alien Grenade
  60-61 E-115 & Mind Probe...Alien Non-Weapon items that can be picked up in Battlescape?
  62-64 Not Used
  65-75 Alien Corpses
  76-79 Not Used
  80-89 Alien Items...UFO Power Source through Alien Habitat
  90-92 Armor...Personal Armor, Power Suit, Flying Suit
  93-95 HWP Ammo...HWP Cannon Shells, HWP Rockets, HWP Fusion Bomb

For Personnel, this value is '0', while for Crafts, it indicates Craft Type:

  0 Skyranger
  1 Lightning
  2 Avenger
  3 Interceptor
  4 Firestorm

2-3: ?? These two bytes are set to [E8 03] (=1000) for all entries except manufactured Crafts (Firestorm, Lightning, Avenger) (See Below)

4-5: ?? These two bytes are set to [00 00] (0) for all entries (See Below)

6-8: Item Cost if Purchaseable. 24 bits = max value ~16.7mil, ~8.4mil if a signed integer. Curiously, starting with entry 56 (Heavy Plasma Clip), set to [E8 03 00] (=1000) for the remainder of entries (none of which is normally purchaseable.) Not sure why, or why it didn't start with entry 55 (Heavy Plasma), the first 'pure' alien item in the file. Needs more research...

9: Set to [00] (0) for all entries (See Below)

10-12: Item Selling Price. 24 bits = max value ~16.7mil, ~8.4mil if a signed integer

13: Set to [00] (0) for all entries (See Below)

14: Transfer time for new purchases, in hours. All items have this value, even manufacture-only and alien items, and it is usually a multiple of 24 (=1 day):

  96 for most Crafts, HWPs, and Craft Cannon Rounds
  72 for Skyranger and Personnel hires
  48 for Craft Weapons and Ammo (ex. Cannon Rounds), HWP Ammo, and non-Battlescape Alien Items
  32 for Alien Corpses and X-Com Armor
  24 for everything else

15-17: Set to [00 00 00] (0) for all entries (See Below)

18: Purchaseability flag: 1 for everything that you can buy on the Purchase/Recruit screen, 0 for everything else

19: Set to [00] (0) for all entries

Special Note

Alot of these 0 values can be explained by using 4 byte integers (longs), since the game stores these values in little-endian format. Also for values such as Item Cost and Item Selling Price, 24-bit integers are not common, however 32-bit integers (longs) are more common and are used in the game, the your current funds in LIGLOB.DAT for example is a long integer. It also makes sense that the prices would be in the same data type to help with calculations.

With offset 2, it also explains why offsets 3 and 4 are always 0, since the only values used are 0 and 1000, it would always set the higher bytes to 0. The last offset (19) is probably also the high byte for the Purchasability flag, and again would always be 0.

All of this is speculation (read: I'm too lazy to test this) but would make this file's values completely known. Only the Purchaseability and 'Manufactured' craft flags the only thing worth looking into more. --Pi Masta 15:14, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Entry Index

#	Item Name	#	Item Name	#	Item Name	#	Item Name
0	Soldier	30	Heavy Cannon	60	Plasma Pistol Clip	90	Flying Suit
1	Scientist	31	HC-AP Ammo	61	Blaster Launcher
2	Engineer	32	HC-HE Ammo	62	Blaster Bomb
3	Skyranger	33	HC-I Ammo	63	Small Launcher
4	Lightning	34	Auto-Cannon	64	Stun Bomb
5	Avenger	35	AC-AP Ammo	65	Alien Grenade
6	Interceptor	36	AC-HE Ammo	66	Mind Probe
7	Firestorm	37	AC-I Ammo	67	Sectoid Corpse
8	Stingray Launcher	38	Rocket Launcher	68	Snakeman Corpse
9	Avalanche Launcher	39	Small Rocket	69	Ethereal Corpse
10	Cannon	40	Large Rocket	70	Muton Corpse
11	Fusion Ball Launcher	41	Incindiary Rocket	71	Floater Corpse
12	Laser Cannon	42	Laser Pistol	72	Celatid Corpse
13	Plasma Beam	43	Laser Rifle	73	Silacoid Corpse
14	Stingray Missile	44	Heavy Laser	74	Chryssalid Corpse
15	Avalanche Missile	45	Grenade	75	Reaper Corpse
16	Cannon Rounds[x50]	46	Smoke Grenade	76	Sectopod Corpse
17	Fusion Ball	47	Proximity Grenade	77	Cyberdisk Corpse
18	Tank/Cannon	48	High Explosive	78	UFO Power Source
19	HWP Cannon Shells	49	Motion Scanner	79	UFO Navigation
20	Tank/Rocket	50	Medi-Kit	80	UFO Construction
21	HWP Rockets	51	Psi-Amp	81	Alien Food
22	Tank/Laser Cannon	52	Stun Rod	82	Alien Reproduction
23	Hovertank/Plasma	53	Electro-flare	83	Alien Entertainment
24	Hovertank/Launcher	54	Elerium-115	84	Alien Surgery
25	HWP Fusion Bomb	55	Heavy Plasma	85	Examination Room
26	Pistol	56	Heavy Plasma Clip	86	Alien Alloys
27	Pistol Clip	57	Plasma Rifle	87	Alien Habitat
28	Rifle	58	Plasma Rifle Clip	88	Personal Armour
29	Rifle Clip	59	Plasma Pistol	89	Power Suit

Notes on Sorting

NOTE: Based on some hacking of GEOSCAPE.EXE, the 'sort' value appears to be an index to arrays. See User:Pi Masta for more details.

1) For all screens, the order of the manufactured craft weapons is reversed (i.e. they are listed as Plasma Beam, Laser Cannon, Fusion Ball Launcher in this file, and follow that order for the 'Sort Order' (offset 1) value as well, but are displayed as Fusion Ball Launcher, Laser Cannon, Plasma Beam on the screens)

2) Except as noted in 1), above, the Purchase/Recruit screen displays items in the order of their entries. If you hack Offset 18 so everything is purchaseable, they will display in that order.

3) On the Transfer and Sell/Sack screens, all soldiers not currently assigned to crafts will list individually first, then all crafts (but not neccessarily by the order listed in this file, e.g. in my test file, Interceptor-1 listed before Lightning-2,) then scientists and engineers, then the rest of the items will sort in the order of their entries (except as noted in 1), above)

4) Finally, on the Base Information->Stores screen, only General Items (i.e. anything for which Offset 0 = 0) will display, sorted according to the Sort Order (Offset 1) value (except as noted in 1), above.) This basically means that E-115, which normally sorts between Electro-flare and Heavy Plasma, will instead sort to between Alien Grenade and Mind Probe, and that HWP Ammo sorts to the end of the list instead of immediately following its HWP entry.

See Also

• BASE.DAT - Items bases have in stores
• OBDATA.DAT - Stats on most of the items listed here
• TRANSFER.DAT - Items being transfered to bases including purchased items
• Saved Game Files