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)