Phishfood

First time: Engaged UFO 2 - light scout - and shot it down, moved to engage UFO 1 and I ran out of fuel in combat. So I clicked yes to return to base, game crashed out. Second time: Intercepted a UFO and tailed it until 9s of combat fuel was left. Ran out of fuel in combat, clicked yes to return to base and CTD. Screenshot of the moment of the crash: http://imgur.com/LUxG6 I think I have a dump file from the first one if it would help.

Oooookkkaaaay.....and its gone today. Same game, works fine. This is one of THOSE bugs I guess.

OK, I think I can confirm this one. I have a save game where when I load it, I can not interact with research and workshop jobs correctly. Clicking the arrows to increase quantity or assigned personnel flashes the button and plays the "click" sound, but does not alter the value. However HOLDING the mouse button does work.

Going back to the idea of researching UFOs and having it do something concrete in game rather than being a "texture" or "junk" research, how about hiding the alien's firing arc and such until it is researched? If you engage a UFO before you research it, the UFO just appears on the radar as a blip, no firing arc, no indication of HP or even class. Then you research this one project, you get a class of UFO, get a firing arc and maybe a rough damage indicator. Later in the game, as you capture each UFO/weapon and get a proper look the firing arc becomes accurate and perhaps graduated - 100% accuracy here, 50% accuracy here. The hp bar gets 20 notches instead of 4. Down side to that is that the person who has played before knows some of the accurate data and then you have the whole metagaming problem, but that strongly existed in X-com and pretty much every other game ever anyway.

Good idea, thinking out loud (out text?) some more... If you start with the premise that the game begins with the "return" of the aliens, then you could add all sorts of superficial analysis of the UFOs, perhaps have the scientists compose a report on its capabilities. It always bugged me that you had to capture a UFO to find out basics like its max speed and turn rate. So an early research project could be a first look at UFOs, sort of speed they can get, estimates on cargo capacity, crew capacity perhaps weapon capacity. Then that could easily branch to improved aircraft, perhaps the aliens have a better aerodynamic model than us. As mentioned, better tracking capabilities... perhaps even a research element that increases a missile to-hit chance. Or faster missiles, more agile missiles. Another option would be alien language or transmissions. I still think it makes some sense to have research relating to the original incident, things that are over-looked or things that couldn't be researched due to lack of human technology. You take a PC back to 1850 they won't even be able to turn it on, and not because they can't find the button. Perhaps you have some research topics that are maybe more mundane but true to life - research into computers, rocketry and so on.

Must have missed that bit, still it does make some sense that there would be topics left to research, especially things like origins. They could have been ignored as irrelavent when there were better things to research. Perhaps to go the AC route step 1 is research corpse transport and step 2 live transport.

Well, what you need is controlled randomness. Sure, one rocket won't bring down a whole warehouse, but it could just bust the walls it hits, or it could chain to 10 squares of wall and a few of floor or it could take out the entire room. I guess the mathematical formula you want is basically including several rules. 1) A floor tile with no supports falls. I think for aesthetics, diagonals shouldn't count as support. It would be odd to have a square of floor hanging by a corner. 2) a floor tile with an intact wall does not fall. 3) a floor tile supported on 2 sides (not counting diagonals) does not fall. Then you need some sort of probability map. The closer a floor tile is to a removed wall the higher the % chance of falling. So, on level initialisation all floors have a 0% chance of falling. Then, as soon as a wall is removed the chance of falling is set. That way you can set up a big building that has huge floors and no pillars, but if any wall is removed it instantly becomes fragile. Seems a bit unrealistic though, since you'd get a warehouse collapsing as soon as one wall tile was removed. So... we need to calculate on a wall stretch e.g. the North Wall. a) % of wall stretch removed - removing 2 wall segments does nothing, removing 50% does a lot b) "quality" of the damage. Removing 10 tiles in one chunk does more than shooting out 10 tiles spaced evenly. That then scales - destroying 3 chunks of a large building does nothing, but taking out the wall of a garden shed causes instant total collapse. so P(fall) = % of walls destroyed / (distance from destroyed segment * k) + (% supporting floors already fallen - 25%) + damage + load modifier + Rand(-20 to +20) So, floor can fall if 1) Directly damaged 2) all four surrounding pieces destroyed 3) Nearby walls are destroyed - "nearby" defined by k, scale for buildings? k <1 causes greater chaining, k>1 4) Random 20% chance either way. General gist is an undamaged tile will never fall, a damaged tile may fall especially if loaded and a nearby wall is taken out. <edit 2> Actually, better and simpler is P(fall) = % of walls destroyed * straight line distance from intact wall* k * adjoing floors already fallen * damage * load * random(0.8-1.2) Balance the variables right and you should get cool stuff like WXX# W### WWXXX (W = Wall, # = floor, X = collapse) stays standing until a person tries to step on it, then it falls but absurd strucures like WXXXXXXX# WXXXXXXX# WXXXXXXX# W####### WXXXXXXXX never happen Lots of multiplys, which can be costly in performance especially when we are looking at a large multifloor building. You then need a second formula for upper wall segments I guess, simply: P(wall fall) = 33% * # of below walls fallen. ie. Side view: ####A#### ###BBB#### Take out all 3 Bs and A will fall. Take out 1 and it might fall. Perhaps weight it some, so middle B gives 50% fall chance and edge B only 25% <edit 3> Theres also some possibilities on how this is applied. Obviously if every tile is checked every turn, its going to be slow and also one rocket will eventually take out every building piece by piece. So either it needs to be a one off check on a rocket explosion or perhaps after each explosion a building is unstable for 3 turns and after that will not collapse any more.

Well, I know people didn't like x-com appocalypse much (its my second most played version ) but they had some relavent but in essence pointless research elements from the start. 1) The hyperspace gates - gave you nothing initially other than info. So adapting that to this story, you could make it about the mothership UFO that crashed. (I'm assuming all ingame UFOs are smaller than the pregame one) 2) Alien Containment - you didn't get to capture aliens until you had researched the containment unit. 3) Alien Language/Behaviour etc - Again, using data from the backstory can easily generate a couple potential "junk" research projects to get things ticking over. 4) Ammo type - Shouldn't be too hard to have the first research project be a variant on standard ammo, even if its as simple as doubling the powder load. Clearly humans got their ass whooped first time round, so this time we go in with Hollowpoint Titanium shells instead of parabellum or whatever. Would also help cover the gap between getting our ass kicked in the intro and (hopefully) kicking ass in the game. Mass Effect was a terrible offender for this - 2 minutes in redshirt dies in one hit, rest of the game everyone has shields absorbing multiple hits and can be brought back to life with medigel. Whut? I suppose you could work some stuff like perhaps you get 2 sets of armour, a good set and a light set and you can research the all round set that isn't as heavy but is as good, like using american materials with russian construction techniques to get the best of both. Again that is more sprites and such to make. An effective way to pad out a research tree would be to give every item 5 upgrades. No sprites to draw, just stats to change. Obviously, thats an addition to a complete research tree rather than a replacement.