Talk:Battlescape

It's true, victory is subjective. Just a quick - well, a long-ish word on victory.

Technically speaking, dusting off from a site that's still manned with aliens can also be counted as a success if you were able to get whatever it was in the battle that you came for (be it experience, an abduction of a really difficult alien (such as an Ethereal without the convenience of the Psi Lab), capturing a certain weapon, etc). What you do not win is the loot outside the Skyranger and the UFO Alloys and its remaining components.

A fine example of this is Zombie's patented Smash-And-Grab technique with alien bases, where a base is raided, one alien is left alive and the rest are dealt with. Once cleared, all the equipment (and corpses) are then carted to the entry platforms and all troops head back to the entry points and the dust off command is issued.

The mission will read as a failure, but the score, experience and loot will reflect a successful mission. As it is a base and the victory condition for the base destruction has not yet been met (destruction of the command tables or all aliens), the base will remain on the map.

Other missions types are a lot less permanent and tend to vanish (crash sites/terror sites) or take off (intact UFOs).

So, don't read in too much to the status on the tally screen. Let the score, experience and goods that you were able to come away with tell you whether you've won, or lost.

- NKF

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"What happens if you hit Lift Off with NO units in the dropship? - BB": From article page.

All units are MIA and the craft is lost. --Zombie 11:55, 21 January 2007 (PST)

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What if you mind control an alien, and lift off while only he is in the ship? - BB

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Nothing, except the craft is lost. (MC'd aliens are not in Soldier.dat and cannot be considered a true X-COM unit). --Zombie 19:49, 21 January 2007 (PST)

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Just copy and pasted the discussion from main article - plus a thought of my own:

What happens if you hit Lift Off with NO units in the dropship? - BB

You will end the scenario immediately. Chances are, you will not have killed enough aliens to cover the loss of all the soldiers missing in action. Yeah, you will still have the transport though!--Vagabond 02:40, 7 March 2007 (PST)

That's basically admitting defeat. Don't forget you lose the ship if you abort an alien base attacks as well with no troops in the exit. By the way, lifting off from a site does not always count as a loss. You may very well have come for what you came for and didn't want to bother cleaning up the rest of the aliens. For example, in a typical smash-and-grab scenario, or if you've stolen some artefact or abduct a specimen from an alien race you're not ready to fight (like the ethereals before you learn your psi strength). The game tells you you've lost, but you've technically won if you've accomplished what you came for. Just pointing out the silver lining. - NKF

Yeah. If I manage to stun a Sectoid Leader in an early mission (especially if it's the first Terror Mission), I'll grab him, pile into the ship, and dust off. Woot, Psi Lab.--Ethereal Cereal 12:10, 7 March 2007 (PST)

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Battlescape Interface

To-do list: 1. Inventory screen. (Already uploaded an image, but needs compressing) 2. Motion detector Radar screen. 3. Map screen.

Are they necessary? For one thing, I know I am still quite at odds on how to use the motion detector properly (maybe a separate article/tutorial for it?) I am quite sure that there would be others as well. As for the Inventory screen, I think it is a must, and well, the Map screen, we can skip that as I think it is self explanatory... Well, I think that by doing all the screens and explainations, we might get the wiki article a tad too big...

--Vagabond 20:08, 7 March 2007 (PST)