Talk:Alien Base Assault

There is a limit to the number of bases that will be built: usually 2 per zone: one for an alien base mission and another for infiltration. The water zones won't have either, and some zones won't have infiltration missions. Once a particular mission in a zone is complete, that mission is deactivated for that zone. -Tycho (talk) 00:13, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

Remember that infiltration missions loop until all countries in that region are infiltrated, and that infiltration missions have been observed to spawn 2 bases some of the time for a single country infiltrated. So you can have more than 2 bases in a given zone. Magic9mushroom (talk) 01:36, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

True. It would be one base per zone for a base mission (outside of zones for Atlantic, Indian, etc.) and one per country for the infiltration missions. Where is the discussion that more than one base has appeared after a successful infiltration? Is this something that occurs in DOS? Because I can't see how more than one base can be created for either mission after seeing the code for "alien mission complete" routine in CE. Could it be if a base was already established and when one gets discovered so does the other? - Tycho (talk) 05:16, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

Possible, I guess, from what I recall of the circumstances. If you've done a code dig that's probably right. I think the North/South Atlantic and Indian Oceans are the only zones that can't get bases (because they don't get any incoming UFOs at all); every zone in ZONAL.DAT has a nonzero starting ACTS.DAT value for Alien Base. (Presumably, bases in the Pacific are in Hawaii or the shores of the Bering Strait, since that's the only land in the Pacific zone.) Magic9mushroom (talk) 06:10, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

Yes. In fact, the North/South Atlantic and Indian Ocean are not part of any code to create missions: The loop counters for routines about missions only goes up to 11. 11 12 zones and 16 countries would be 26 27 possible bases, but 1 less since Siberia can't be infiltrated, so 25 26 bases are the maximum the game should create (if no glitches in the mission creation routine occur.)-Tycho (talk) 07:44, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

12 zones. North America, Arctic, Antarctic, South America, Europe, North Africa, Southern Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia, Siberia, Australasia, Pacific. The counter you're thinking of probably runs from 0 to 11.

Regarding maximum number of bases built, do we know what happens when ZONAL.DAT and ACTS.DAT run completely dry after 4 years and 2 months (the 49 acts from ACTS.DAT, plus the freebie Alien Research in Jan 1999)? Magic9mushroom (talk) 23:01, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

Your right, once I get thinking about the code I tend to start thinking in the simple hexidecimal numbers. From the way the code is written, eventually the aliens can only do retaliation and base supply missions, if their are any alien bases present. Those missions are generated under special circumstances outside the normal parameters of ZONAL and ACTS.DAT. Tycho (talk) 12:08, 17 May 2015 (EDT)

I'll change the info on the page, if you have no problems. - Tycho (talk) 19:17, 18 May 2015 (EDT)

You mean the "no limit to how many can be built" line? Sure. The one thing I'll note is that I will take my current game through to March 2003 to be absolutely sure ACTS.DAT doesn't re-initialise (you've got me curious now). But in the meantime, go ahead. Magic9mushroom (talk) 20:05, 18 May 2015 (EDT)

Sure. But I have already seen that scenario: Some time ago, a guy sent me his saved game where he had done just that and all the alien could do was retaliate against his bases. He had already removed all the alien bases from the globe. The Gallops didn't foresee that players would just keep playing rather than complete the game. Also, I suspect that if they had had time to complete the game's economic model, the player would lose the funding to maintain his forces and thus lose the game long before the aliens ran out of missions. - Tycho (talk) 20:29, 18 May 2015 (EDT)