UFO Flight Patterns

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Revision as of 12:48, 7 January 2007 by Zaimoni (talk | contribs)
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(Zaimoni: Some working notes. This plausibly should be moved to mainline when sufficiently detailed. While I do use MISSIONS.DAT notation to index the UFOs, this does not belong there.)

Common observations:

  • In spite of the game having precomputed trig functions at 1/8 ° resolution, the "turning points" are not nearly so densely packed. (I suspect a sparse latitude-longitude grid, or an explicit valid list somewhere.) It should be possible to identify the precise intermediate destination in-game, at least when it's near the equator and not at the same latitude. UFOs are notably slower at turning points.
  • When a UFO leaves its target region, it's leaving for good.
  • The next "turning point" (or landing site, as the case may be) is only generated when the current one is reached.
  • I have not been able to get a Retaliation mission scheduled when a UFO is shot down at the second or later "turning points". Scheduling is very unreliable even then, and is not a strict matter of either speed or accuracy.

Retaliation searching UFOs

  • Searching Retaliation UFOs (before BattleShip) fly slow. With XComUtil craft, it may be possible to shoot them down with a Skyranger.
  • Searching Retalation Battleships merely fly "normally".
  • needless to say, the sequence will abort if the UFO finds your base.

I am tentatively assuming that the number of turning points is fixed, but that they may not necessarily be visible to the naked eye because of practical colinearity.

Research 0/0

  • These do not land.
  • Four turning points, leave.

Research 1/0

  • Four turning points, land, leave.

Research 2/0

  • Four turning points, land, two turning points, land, leave

Terror 0/0

  • three turning points, land, three turning points, land, leave

Terror 1/0

  • two turning points, land, leave

Retaliation 0/0

  • These do not land.
  • five turning points, leave. (Didn't get a clear sample)

Retaliation 1/*

  • These do not land.
  • seven turning points, leave. The 1/0 I observed to count this did a very tight zigzag pattern...it would have touched any base in about 2/3rds of the nation of South Africa, and just about any base in Madagascar. This may be fluky, though. 1/1 is the same format, but the one I observed was not a tight-weave.

One thing i've noticed that might help: searching Battleships on retaliation missions tend to overfly the base that they are looking for. This could be just coincidence but i've seen it happen a few times. Could the turning points be related to the location of the base?

Hobbes 16:12, 6 January 2007 (PST)

The Retaliation 1/0 I observed was zigzagging across where I had done two shootdowns, so that's entirely possible. The 1/1 was more generalized.

Zaimoni 6:48, 7 Jan 2007 (CST)

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