Talk:UFOs

Someone needs to make a table of, what you see before you get Hyperwave, vs. what it is. For example, you see a Medium UFO (before Hyperwave)... what are the various possible UFO types and missions it could be? Is this here on the wiki somewhere already? ---MikeTheRed 23:57, 21 December 2005 (PST)

---

Ye reallye quicke toe-doe notee:

Might want to have a single page summarising the crew populations.

- NKF

---

Another question.

All UFOs, will take on the role of the smaller non specialised UFO classes, if you gun down the smaller ones too many times righty?

Like will an abductor do scouting if you smash too many scouts? Or is it just battleships that does scouting? And if it is so, the battleship will never be involved in harvesting right?

Yeah on that case, should put mission roles in that table. Nice table etheral cereal.

--Vagabond 05:54, 22 March 2007 (PDT)

Do battleships & c. really do scouting in the later game? Or is it just that they appear to "scout around" because they can't find their landing point -- because you shot down the scout that was supposed to find it for them. Battleships on retaliation missions either make a beeline for your base, because the scout found it, or wander around (not actually scouting) when the scout was shot down.

Thanks about the table. I borrowed the idea from Sf's addition to the Craft page. It was just a bit of info long overdue on the site: amazingly, we didn't have any UFO stats until now.--Ethereal Cereal 13:02, 22 March 2007 (PDT)

From what I can remember, I have seen Battleships out on scouting missions, but I can't remember if it was for a base or retaliation. Normally the battleship is the final step in the campaign, but you sometimes spot them wandering about idly and land from time to time. This leads me to believe that the scouting phase of the campaign can sometimes use larger vessels. Don't take my word for it though as this is purely anecdotal. Just a keep an eye out for non-scouts in your games. -NKF

One sees Battleships scout and land while on base and infiltration missions, although they're always accompanied by 3+ other ships. Maybe if you're pre-HWD you might only detect the Battleship. You're not likely to have shot down all but the Battleship without realizing they're all together because they all show up at the same time.--Ethereal Cereal 03:49, 23 March 2007 (PDT)

Weapons Vs. UFOs

How about a table of weapons with notes on the UFOs the weapons are effective against on the side with some notes? Say:

Cannon	Effective against all of the scout class UFOs. Battleship - Idiocy, but a minimum of 4 required and something that can survive the battleship long enough.
Stingray	Effective against X.
Avalanche	Effective against Y.
Laser Cannon	Effective against Z.
Plasma Beam	Effective against everything.
Fusion Ball	Effective against everything but extremely limited.

Okay, perhaps not as frivolous as that or as unhelpful. Or perhaps even a more number-crunchy approach with calculation on how much damage can be expected to be thrown in each direction after X of the UFO's attacks or ... eh, no better not give any ideas.

Or the other way around, a table of UFOs with notes on the effectiveness of weapons on the side?

- NKF

Well, I'd put a table like that on the Armaments page, not the UFO page. The survivability of X-COM craft doesn't seem very relevant since you generally want to weapons that disallow counterattacks (which is only impossible for Battleships). I think I'm happy with the Weapons vs. UFOs section as it stands.--Ethereal Cereal 03:49, 23 March 2007 (PDT)

Hmm. Perhaps not. But a small table to note effetive weapons beyond beyond UFO plasma beam ranges for quick reference might work. Using your observations, I envisage it looking something like:

	Cannon	Laser Cannon	Stingray	Avalanche	Fusion Ball	Plasma Beam
Small Scout	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Medium Scout		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Large Scout				Y	Y	Y
Harvester		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Abducter			Y	Y	Y	Y
Supply Ship			Y(x4)	Y(x2)	Y(x?)	Y
Terror Ship				Y(x2)	Y	Y
Battleship*				Y(x5)	Y(x3)	Y

The above numbers are AVERAGE number of ships required, where I used 75% average weapon damage (range 50%-100%) and multiplied by accuracy and number of shots.

* Battleships' maximum range is within that of all X-COM weapons.

This could be at the end for quick reference. - NKF

Well, the info still doesn't jump out at me. I've edited it; it might be workable now.--Ethereal Cereal 12:17, 23 March 2007 (PDT)

Should this page be adjusted to take the UFO sequencing verified in MISSIONS.DAT as authoritative? Currently, it directly contradicts MISSIONS.DAT in several places. -- Zaimoni 20:47 CDT 08 June 2007

Zaimoni: If data extracted from the code contradicts my "UFO Behavior" section in any way, correct it. I obviously misinterpreted the data if it did.

I see. It's more "extracted from observing in a hex editor", but MISSIONS.DAT sequencing information is very spoily. Any revisions will have to retain the non-spoily nature of this page. -- Zaimoni 11:03 CDT 09 June 2007

"Effective" is untrue... ALL weapons are effective on ALL UFOs... what actually is most relevant are "SAFE-ty" and "Number of ships required" ... I notice that the second category is included in the tables. Cool.

In that sense, NOTHING is safe against Battleships.

Jasonred 17:23, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Standardized Layout

While we're working on a standardized layout for the weapon pages, we might want to consider one for the UFO pages, too. I'll come up with a suggestion later today.

Supply Ship Weapon Range

As quoted from the article page:

The range given for the Supply Ship is also incorrect in the in-game UFOpaedia.

I've looked in all my versions and the Supply Ship always has a weapon range of 288 units which translates to 36km. So where does the value of 34km (272 units) come in? The Large Scout has this weapon range, so maybe the Supply Ship was being confused with this UFO? Or, perhaps XcomUtil was used and messed with UFO stats? Don't know. --Zombie 23:37, 10 January 2009 (CST)

Given that I wrote that, and I always use XComUtil to run so that when(not if, WHEN) the game crashes on me, it doesn't mess up all my computer desktop settings, I would suspect the XComUtil option. I'll check on it later. Arrow Quivershaft 05:25, 11 January 2009 (CST)

Some of the figures for the Damage Capacity, Crashed and Destroyed table look very very weird!!! Can someone confirm this for me? It's messing up my analysis... wah... Jasonred 07:14, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

Can you tell me what you're asking? I made most of those tables, but your request is unclear. Arrow Quivershaft 23:22, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

Could be talking about the tables on the UFO pages? Eg Small Scout? They're about the only things I can think of that would have those three terms. - Bomb Bloke 23:35, 18 March 2009 (EDT)

Ok, error located in the edit log. Zombie redid the table a bit ago and he changed the headings. "Crashed" and "Destroyed" are actually the POINTS that X-COM is assigned for doing such to the relevant craft. So X-COM gets 75 points for shooting down a Medium Scout, but earns 150 points if they vaporize the thing. I'll correct this immediately. Arrow Quivershaft 02:19, 19 March 2009 (EDT)

---

Spike: " (It's possible with 3 craft, but if you are even moderately unlucky the interception will fail).". I don't think the calculations show that. Damage is 50-100%, and we need 1600 damage. 230*2*2*3*0.58=1600. So there's a 16% chance of failure if all crafts survive. Possibly you meant this only for 3 interceptors which might not survive long enough to fire all their ammo? Cesium 13:03, 14 February 2010 (EST)

You are right. Failing to down a Battleship with 3 unharmed craft would be extremely unlucky. The absolute minimum damage from 12 FBLs is 1380. The probability of getting below 1600 on the total of 12 independent random values is far less than 16% in fact, I would guess it's well below 1%. You are right, I was thinking of the (quite likely) case with Interceptors when one Interceptor is destroyed by return fire and so only 10 FBLs hit, average damage 1725. Not sure what the original author was doing saying 4 craft are required.Spike 14:00, 14 February 2010 (EST)

Single Plasma Beams

"Only a single Plasma Beam is necessary, except against Battleships." "With a Plasma Beam you will always have stand off range advantage against anything short of a Battleship, making dual Plasma Beams unnecessary."

Not if you're using Firestorms against Terror ships or using Interceptors at all. One Plasma Beam takes (obviously) twice as long to down a UFO, so there's a higher chance it'll escape before you can down it. I don't think we should advise people to use just one Plasma Beam; there are clearly advantages to mounting two on anything not named the Avenger (and the Avenger WILL be squaring off against Battleships on a regular basis so it's largely a moot point). Opinions? Magic9mushroom (talk) 09:23, 14 August 2014 (EDT)

Craft destruction

I just tested the mechanics of interception with a craft with two weapons of the same type. Specifically, I used an Avenger with twin Fusion Balls to attack a Medium Scout, and the Medium Scout was crashed. This implies that simultaneous hits are impossible, even with matching weapons, as it is impossible for two Fusion Balls (damage range 115-230, cannot miss) to do less damage than the Medium Scout's hull strength of 200.

This means that, in order to destroy a craft, a weapon must take it from 50% damage or less to 100% damage or more in a single hit. This is clearly impossible for anything bigger than a Large Scout, as no weapon can deal more than 230 damage per hit.

For interest's sake, here are the probabilities of destroying the various destructible craft with the various weapons:

UFO/Weapon	Cannon	Stingray	Avalanche	Laser Cannon	Plasma Beam	Fusion Ball
Small Scout	0%	58.33%	100%	58.33%	100%	100%
Medium Scout	0%	0%	0.04%	0%	15.99%	26.72%
Large Scout	0%	0%	0%	0%	2.70%	8.26%

The chances for the Small Scout are simply the probabilities to destroy in 1 hit, since all weapons except the Cannon will at least crash the Small Scout in 1 hit. This is also the case for the Medium Scout attacked with Fusion Balls. The others, however (Large Scout, and Medium Scout vs. Avalanche/Plasma Beam) are the chance that the first shot doesn't crash it multiplied by the conditional probability that the second shot destroys it outright. Magic9mushroom (talk) 10:43, 2 July 2018 (CEST)