Talk:UFO Crash Recovery

Recovery of Alien Alloys

First of all, thanks to Seb76 for providing me with the Power Source explosion damage offsets in the executable. Basically what I did for the first series of tests was to edit the power source to explode with 250 maximum power all the time (which is 180 base + 70 max randomizing factor). This is the worst case scenario. See the pics below for damage dealt to the Medium Scout.

Medium Scout

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Medium Scout on the ground level when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Medium Scout on level 1 when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

So there wasn't much left of the UFO after this. I count 7 tiles remaining with the alien alloys flag set and since the amount you recover is divided by 10 for the mission, the total you see is 0 ( INT(7/10) = INT(0.7) = 0 ). This checks with the EOM (end of mission) summary. Obviously, no navigations were recovered either. I'll be adding pics and summaries for each of the ships as I get to them. After the max is determined, I'll do the min damage too so that we can get an average. That'll help nail down a range for some of those recovery values. --Zombie 21:14, 17 November 2008 (CST)

Large Scout

Nothing really new here, PS detonates and leaves 28 alien alloys to be recovered (I'm not going to count the number of tiles left as it's 280 or more). The 2 navigations are untouched, but the blast leaves a big 5×5 hole in the roof. The inner wall in the ship is obviously absorbing some of the explosive yield and curbing the upwards damage as the hole in the roof is smaller than that of the Medium Scout.

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Large Scout on the ground level when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Large Scout on level 1 when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

Harvester

I ran about 10-15 trials on this ship and it always seems to get destroyed the same way. The Power Source to the West (or on the left) always detonates first. The explosion wreaks the East power source setting it on fire. After it burns out, the base of the PS is gone leaving a charred ground tile. Another casualty is one of the food containers to the West. The explosion sets it on fire and when it burns out the food canister is gone. Final tally: 90 Alien Alloys, 13 Alien Food and 8 Alien Surgery recovered.

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Harvester on the ground level when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

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  Maximum destruction dealt to Harvester on level 1 when a Power Source explodes with 250 damage.

HE re-direction / channeling?

Very interesting! What really surprises me is the apparent upward channeling effect on the Lg Sct vs the Harvester, as shown by greater damage to the floor/ceiling tiles above. Isn't this unexpected, since walls etc may block HE, but, as far as we know, walls etc don't redirect the blocked HE elsewhere. But unless the external LgSct ceiling is weaker than the internal Harvester ceiling, and assuming only 1 PS detonated in each case, doesn't this look like evidence of redirection/channeling of HE blast? Spike 03:43, 18 November 2008 (CST)

I figured it out. UFO floors go through a progression when damaged. Initial armor is 80 but the associated death tile has an armor of 50 which makes a total armor rating of 130. The PS explodes at 250/2 damage for terrain = 125. 125<130 so therefore, the floor above is always damaged (but not destroyed). For exterior UFO roofs, those tiles have 100 armor but no death tile, and thus, no additional armor to sop up damage. No death tile = hole. --Zombie 09:54, 18 November 2008 (CST)

So in effect, it would seem that (unexpectedly) the interior floor/ceiling of a UFO has more net blast-resistance than the external roof. Great deductive analysis there Zombie. Spike 10:56, 18 November 2008 (CST)

Exactly. I also figured out why one roof tile and wall segment remain on the North side of the Medium Scout. The UFO chairs have 20 HEB. By the time the PS blast reaches the chair, the damage has dropped to 115. Now the chair HEB is applied: 115-20=95. The next floor tile takes 90 which damages it and the wall segment sees 85. Its armor is 100 so it doesn't get destroyed. As for that ceiling piece remaining, recall damage at that distance is 90 due to the chair. That is less than the 100 ceiling armor so it survives. For the West wall, I think the reason why it isn't destroyed is twofold. First, the display panel between the navigation consoles has 70 HEB while PS damage is 110. 110-70=40 which isn't enough power to destroy the wall. The navigations have 40 HEB. 110-40=70 which also isn't enough for destruction. The reason why the outlier (urm, diagonal) West wall segments aren't destroyed is because of chairs again. That 20 HEB (plus the distance from GZ) is just enough of a drop to keep power below 100.

On the Harvester, the East power source has 30 HEB so it soaks up most of the damage as the tile behind it remains undamaged. So is that wall segment beyond that.

I'll be adding the Abductor pics and summary shortly. There may be more pics for this ship as there are 3 outcomes: West PS survives + East detonates, East PS survives + West PS detonates or East + West PS detonate. In the case where only one of the PS's detonates, the number of alloys may be identical but I haven't checked yet (symmetry is hard to judge on UFOs since some exterior walls (N&W) are not constructed the same). The only trial I ran so far was where both PS's exploded. --Zombie 11:48, 18 November 2008 (CST)