Talk:Game File Exploits

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Revision as of 20:01, 19 November 2008 by Spike (talk | contribs) (→‎Cleanup or deletion needed: Cleanup mostly complete)
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NOTE:THIS PAGE are the discussions ripped from the main discussion section from exploits (the main page). It need cleanup and is only here to keep the other page clean without older discussions. Will slowly integrat...

Someone's To Do List

  • Destroying unique alien type/rank combos by way of transfering to a throw-away base with a containment + lab (nothing else necessary), starting research on the uniques, dismantling base completely. Repeat ad infinitum. Not exactly a very exciting exploit, but a useful one to know.

Repairing damaged UFOs

Want to stop a UFO from doing it's mission? Shoot it down. Want to get a full load of engines and elerium? Leave it alone for about 2 days. The longer you wait before launching the ground assault, the smaller the hole and smoke, and eventually the craft will be completely repaired.

Note that you will also get a full complement of enemy soldiers -- all the dead will come back to life when you do this.

(You may want to save the game before landing, so you can resume waiting if the UFO was not fully repaired when you attacked.)

Actually, UFO damage is random. You see, the damage done to a UFO in the battlescape is caused by the game detonating the power units with varying detonation strengths every time the map is generated. Sometimes it's only strong enough to destroy the power unit, and if there are many power units, some of the might not even be detonated at all. So there's no wait, just save the game in the Geoscape, and enter the mission. If the damage is not to your liking, reload and try and try again until you get a favourable outcome. - NKF

Keybouncer and NKF, you've both tested this likelihood versus time? Seems easy enough to do. 

MikeTheRed


Or the time left until the crash site disappears. That is almost certainly in the savegame, and would be worth mapping in its own right.

-- Zaimoni, 9:25 Jan 11 2007 CST

Elevator Shielding

Hi Tonic, I think this is the first time we've met. Well met.

I've never heard of Elevator Shielding before. I'm not playing XCOM ATM but in my recollection, they readily shoot through elevators. At least, from upper battleship floors to lower ones.

Who else has seen this alien base elevator shield?

Thanks for contributing, tb! - MikeTheRed 21:29, 21 June 2007 (PDT)

I've never seen what Tonicboy describes, but I have had troops toasted from one floor of the battleship to another. In fact, any amount of time spent on battleship raids should teach that the aliens are at least programmed to shoot DOWN lifts, because I can't count how many times that precious Commander I was after went into the top floor lift room, tried to fire his Blaster Launcher down the shaft, and turned himself into KFC. Also have lost troops to Heavy Plasma shots. However, the entrance elevator on the alien base is smaller(2x2) than the elevator on an alien battleship(3x3). So I'll present three theories that might explain what Tonicboy is seeing.
1: Aliens can only shoot down lifts, not up.
2: Aliens need a specific 'width' of elevator in order to shoot up or down through, and the Alien Base elevator is too narrow.
3: Aliens can't shoot through a space that has a unit on it, regardless of whether there is the capacity for the shot to connect or not. What's keeping the aliens from firing is not the fact that they can't shoot up or down, it's that every space on the elevator is occupied by a soldier. This means that with 9 troopers, or 5 troops and a tank, you could replicate this situation on an alien Battleship.
I have no idea which theory is correct, but I just thought I'd offer my insight. Arrow Quivershaft 21:40, 21 June 2007 (PDT)
#3 doesn't make sense because they ought to be able to shoot at a unit.
re: #2: I did a little testing on a supply ship, and aliens didn't shoot down a lift at a soldier right below them. I think I saw them take shots when the soldier moved, although that might've been another alien I didn't spot.
I've definitely seen "lift immunity" in alien bases. Have all your troops retreat to the access rooms, plug up all the upper lift spaces, and watch the aliens swarm underneath without taking any shots. (Edit out Blaster Launchers first.) This is true for CE -- is it different for the DOS version?
--Ethereal Cereal 11:45, 22 June 2007 (PDT)

I think that blaster bombs ignore elevator shielding. can't be sure if any other weapons can, but I've seen them shoot down both battleship and alien base command center lifts with blaster bombs, and only blaster bombs.--(name here) 19:07, 26 November 2007 (PST)

Yes, but it does not have to be a Blaster Bomb; any weapon can shoot up or down a lift, unless it is one of those weird situations where the Alien could shoot at you, but it will not. - NinthRank 06:19, 27 November 2007 (PST)
elevator shielding is the name for those situations. but it does not seem to apply to aliens with blaster launchers. maybe aliens don't shoot straight up or down a lift?

Only for large 2x2 or 3x3 sized lifts (alien base and command room/battleship respectively). For these, they can fire at an angle with no trouble - and so can you. In the Collectors Edition, 1x1 sized lifts give them trouble on account of the bug that sends the blaster bomb to the south of the map when any attempt to set any waypoints above or below each other occurs. You can fire it up and down a 1x1 lift if fired at just the right angle, but the AI isn't smart enough to do that.

I don't think any shielding really occurs for the lifts, myself. At least, not in UFO. It may differ slightly in TFTD, so some observations would probably be needed to round it all off.

Has anyone tried reversing the positions of the alien and the soldier to see through the POV of the alien? It might just be that the alien has a harder time spotting a unit directly below it. Perhaps some heavy use of mind control, or even simply using XComutil's SWP command might be of some help here. - NKF 20:41, 27 November 2007 (PST)


Cleanup or deletion (was) needed

Some observations

  1. This discussion page itself needs a lot of cleanup. A big chunk of it needs to be moved to UFO Crash Recovery - or deleted altogether if it's a duplication.
  2. The item on the main page about LIBLOB is a bug fix, not an exploit. The money exploit part of it should be moved to ExploitsA (Free Stuff).
  3. The item about RESEARCH is also a bug fix, not an Exploit
  4. The long series of disjointed items describing an alternate scenario have become very poorly structured. They definitely do not describe an Exploit. Perhaps they could be moved to Making The Game Harder (apart from the fact that the scenario is nerfed so much e.g. with $100M/month funding.

So probably this whole page could be de-linked from Exploits, dismembered, repurposed onto other pages a little, and then orphaned/deleted. Spike 12:49, 18 November 2008 (CST)


The reason for the mess would be that some time ago, the main "Exploits" page was split off into the categorized exploits pages you see today. The person who did this on his own copied the discussions over to the appropriate talk pages, but it wasn't ordered completely correctly. So it did get a bit disorganized. As for your points, I agree on the LIBLOB and RESEARCH.DAT file exploits being mentioned elsewhere or even moved around, but I disagree they are not exploits. I have a LIBLOB I could use to give a starting-game X-COM about 2 billion dollars in the bank. As for research, it's also an exploit since it allows X-COM to pick up Plasma weapons on their first UFO assault and use them. Also, this is the "Gameplay Alternatives" Exploits page, so it's going to be a bit different. Arrow Quivershaft 15:45, 18 November 2008 (CST)

True the LIGLOB item contains a bug fix and an exploit, which is what I meant by "the money exploit part". These need to be split out and clarified. Same with the RESEARCH item, there's a vague reference to a possible exploit that could be split out and clarified, especially by incorporating your suggestions. On re-reading the Aliens Own Earth article I think I understand it now, but it's definitely not an Exploit, it's just a way of creating a (pretty cool) alternate scenario. It belongs in scenarios, not in Exploits - Making The Game Harder is probably the best fit.

I'll have a bash at cleaning this one up. The other Exploits pages stand up pretty well but this one is a real oddity. Spike 17:15, 18 November 2008 (CST)

Copying game files from one save to another can be a fix for corruption, but it certainly isn't an exploit: it's something else entirely. An exploit is a bug or glitch you can abuse in-game. By leaving the game and copying files it's like lite modding really.
If you have a chance, feel free to move the relevant UFO PS stuff to the crash recovery talk page. I know for a fact that a bunch of it will be useless when my tests with Alien Alloys are completed. Even now, I think a lot of the stuff could be removed as it is outdated. Just pick the parts that don't seem to be resolved yet. ;) --Zombie 18:52, 18 November 2008 (CST)

OK I'm pretty much done here. The only other thing I'm considering is list the Exploits/LiteMods first, and then explaining the Bug Fixes as alternate uses of the Mods. Currently it's the other way round. But it might make more sense on an Exploits page. Or maybe just move the Fixes altogether over to the Bugs page, and link back here. Spike 14:01, 19 November 2008 (CST)

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