Talk:XBASES.DAT

My mistake, Zombie. I just was cleaning redlinks and thought we'd already found the "targeted" file. Sorry! Arrow Quivershaft 22:42, 3 October 2008 (CDT)

Quest for the Base Attack

Just did some quick checks: neither obvious way of manipulating this file is sufficient to cause the aliens to attack the first X-COM base in North Africa:

• set byte 0 4, byte 4 1 as suggested (trying to cause an attack on base record 1)
• set byte 20 4, byte 22 1 (got idea from Seb76; trying to cause an attack in region North Africa)

In neither case was a countdown timer active in this file just from setting the named bytes. In fact, setting all 48 bytes to 1 did not find any countdown timers with increment 1 hour or less.

So...try creating a Floater retalation mission for North Africa and repeat with all 48 bytes 1. This gets me a Floater retaliation Battleship that heads straight to internal coordinates 1,1 on the globe.

Try again: set bytes 20-23 to the location of the base. Battleship goes to some weird choice of internal coordinates in the Atlantic.

Try again: set bytes 0-3 to the location of the base. A Retaliation Scout shows up. Same results if bytes 16-19 are set to the location of the base.

Try setting bytes 20-23 to 01 00 01 00. Battleship heads straight to base -- and hovers there pointlessly. Hmm...Retaliation c/sub-c is still 0/0.

Try 1/0: pointlessly hovering Battleship.

Try 2/0: pointlessly hovering Battleship.

Try 3/0: pointlessly hovering Battleship.

Try 3/1: pointlessly hovering Battleship.

I'll have to try to figure out the actual X-COM base attack trigger later. -- Zaimoni, 3:58 Dec. 19 2009 CST

Looks like each entry is indeed 4 bytes (one entry per zone). If the first 16bit value is not zero, it means a base was discovered in this zone. The second value is a LOC.DAT index to the base. The first entry is reset to 0 after the base is destroyed or after a successful defence (i.e. not reset after a battleship is destroyed by base defences). Seb76 10:03, 22 December 2009 (EST)

Ok. Any idea how I got the superbuggy UFO by setting the first entry 0, second entry to the LOC.DAT entry for Skyranger-1? -- Zaimoni 13:24 Dec 22 2009 CST

When a ship arrives to its LOC.DAT destination, the game checks its type (base, craft, waypoint...) and acts according to the faction of the ship (xcom craft reaching alien craft -> dogfight, alien craft reaching xcom base -> base defence and so on). The code is not meant to handle an alien ship reaching an xcom craft so basically it does nothing, or at least nothing that crashes the game right away... Seb76 17:28, 22 December 2009 (EST)

That explains 1,1. I'm looking at 0,1 ("not detected" Skyranger-1) Zaimoni 3:37 Dec 23 2009 CST