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[X:CE 0.34.1] Empty wrecked UFO?


Rodmar18

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Description:

First Xeno turn plays as usual, except there is no Alien to be seen, even with a large, uncluttered field of view (and the reach of a Hunter vehicle). Civilians are seen. The outskirts of the damaged crash site is seen (destroyed tiles). Music (and modded environmental sounds) are normal.

When the End Turn button is hit, the mission is won.

Debriefing screen shows no or little stat advancement for troops (only one turn was played), a terrible rating for alien elimination, excellent ratings for Xeno and civilians survival (a pesky display bug prevents me to have the exact numbers, though, so I don't know if "terrible" stands for 0/0 or 0/N, or whatever).

Retrieved items:

Alenium 7   Alien materials 20   Landing Ship Datacore    Alien Engine 1 (sold $8,000)   Total: $8,000

Questions:

As I don't know the exact reason why this happens, and even if the "bug" is related to one of the installed mods, it would be worth to question the game about those few border case behaviours.

  1. In case the "terrible" rating stands for 0/0 aliens killed, shouldn't this case be rated as "excellent" instead? "Terrible" is okay for any 0/N score however.
  2. In case all the Aliens are dead or killed in firefight and the crashed or landed UFO is not already entered, shouldn't the mission go on instead of being instantly won? Even if the eventually is very meagre, consider the case where it's the first time you get to explore this class of UFO. For the player, this should lead to the same gameplay as when a lone non combatant is the only survivor in the rear room of a scout UFO. You don't know it and you explore the entire map down to that room. The end-mission trigger could be: see the UFO / enter the UFO / enter the Command room.
  3. Even with added mods that change the way the Alien crew is damaged during the air combat and subsequent landing crash, the probability that no corpse nor wreckage nor weapon are retrieved is infinitesimal (as far as I remember, Aliens are found dead rather than destroyed inside the UFO). In case the surviving crew number amounts to zero, either because of "normal" death or a bug, is the corpse generation still initiated? I mean, that there is no corpse nor weapon to be retrieved because all dead were destroyed or no dead were generated?

 

"Testing" conditions:

Landing Ship shot down generated Crash Site #80 in China. Xeno Team with Shrike from China Base.

First occurrence in circa 100 ground missions.

Reproductibility:

From last turn save or begin mission autosave (EmptyBarge.sav): always.

From last geoscape save (crash site already generated): replayed only once on a new generated map with same result.

Mods: all those in the Mod Pack, and namely (in decreasing priority):

UFO and crew diversity

Fire in the Hole

Furies, Terrors, and Dreadnoughts Oh My

 

 

EmptyBarge.sav

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This is a minor bug, and probably a case of a small alien crew being generated, and subsequently being killed.

If a small crew of 4 aliens gets generated, then having them all die in the explosion is a 1/256 chance - so a rare event but something you'll probably see eventually if you play a lot. On the other hand, looking at your save I see that it's a Carrier, and there are numerous living aliens stored in the save file.

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I don't understand.

Geoscape info about Crash Site #80 is a medium size UFO ($45,000 worth if bombed) in countryside setting, and debriefing screen tells about Landing Ship Datacore and Alien Reactor, whereas Crash site #81 is a massive size ($60,000 worth) in industrial setting (this one is for my Alpha team). The latter is a Carrier.

Saved game is perhaps corrupted. Would you want to peer at the Geoscape save, a few minutes before the landing, when the two crash sites have already been generated?

As for the chance of occurrence of a having a 4 member-crew be wiped out in the crash, you are right with unmodded X:CE, but the chance drops to 1/1000 (=(0.33x0.33 + 0.66x0.10)^4) with the UFO and crew diversity v1.4.1 mod. Anyways, this doesn't explain why there is no corpse nor weapon to be retrieved, except if this is the minor bug you refer to, or if they all were destroyed in the 5-radius explosion of the power core?

 

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Well, i was going to look into the situation, but then i noticed you were using several incompatible mods together, like Dreadnaught, Armoured Assault, Crew Diversity and Tweaks, which i presume are your personal mod changes.

The situation is quickly explained, you have an aiprops modmerge error. The game tries to load units who dont exist, hence the absents of units and weapons.

I would simply write this of as(s) an incompatible mod setup. Sry gal, aint your fault nobody tells you mods arent compatible with each other.

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Thank you for the hint. I will look more closely to those mods. I just believed that in the case they'd touched the same assets, the priority rule was logical and without any consequence. I will put all things on the table, up to merging all the mods if needed (and if I manage to). This doesn't explain why this one occurrence in dozen of missions, however. Perhaps a rare side effect.

"Tweaks" are indeed minor, personal adjustments in config .xml and gameconfig.xml, such as chances for female soldiers, enabling Xeno overkilled, twice as difficult ranking, alien bases discovery chances, lesser min fuel to launch, reveal all tiles after 30 turns (from 20), LOS angle 100... Nothing that should reasonably interfere with mission generation, even if a bad copied and pasted data could always cause problems (I just copied selected existing lines and changed the value fields, but I'm not even sure if the changes are active without starting a new game).

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Yeah, I'm unable to load the actual save because of mod errors, so I'm stuck watching it in a hex editor.

Checking the code, aliens killed in the crash should normally give corpses and items, although if the power core explodes then the resulting explosion will wipe out items. It does though make me think that I should perhaps include an explicit condition that at least one alien should survive a crash, otherwise pointless missions can be generated in some rare cases.

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1 minute ago, Rodmar18 said:

This doesn't explain why this one occurrence in dozen of missions, however.

This does explain it.

Example 1: Lets say a sensible mod only adds a few units, and uses these units in the ufocontent. Another mod on top of it however "replace"s the whole aiprops again, deleting the added units out of existents again. The added ufocontents files stay ofcourse and still ask for that special units to be loaded.

The more common case i think though is where there is an aiprops modmerge error, where the game reverts to the basic file, i think.

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4 minutes ago, Rodmar18 said:

This doesn't explain why this one occurrence in dozen of missions, however.

Could be the particular alien crew on this mission triggering the modmerge error. I see Caesan Elites, Leader and Medium Drones in the save, perhaps one of those is having a merge error.

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@Rodmar18

If we are getting down to testing this however these are the quickest methods:

1. Start the Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe, load the save and press "Ctrl + Q" to reveal the whole map. "U" for the editor, you can put a soldier into the ship and see if any units spawned at all.

2. Alt tab out of the game and send us the logfile here C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts .

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Thank you both for your help. I'm ready to cooperate :)

27 minutes ago, Solver said:

Could be the particular alien crew on this mission triggering the modmerge error. I see Caesan Elites, Leader and Medium Drones in the save, perhaps one of those is having a merge error.

In the next (Crash #81) mission in Australia, I'm fighting Caesan Warriors, Wraith Warriors and Officer, Medium and Light Drones (so far), and seeing a crashed Carrier.

Also, I just had another look at the "UFO and crew diversity" info pdf and original Carriers have chances to be replaced by Landing Ships, depending on the mission type and the ticker, but I don't know yet how the process is done and if the replacement is a "brutal" data superseding, or is done before the mission (and ship and crew) is generated. I'll look at this with Charon's insight.

Charon, I try something and return.

You didn't ask, but if we are getting down to testing this, please find below the Geoscape save, in case it has some information (the case is Crash Site #80).

800327-E.sav

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Still using Steam  (Wine) on Linux, here are my few results:

  1. Thankfully, Steam lets me manually run Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe, and from within the ground mission, Ctrl+Q works and reveal the map. I find a Landing Ship with enhanced crash site, sometimes with a lateral hole (due to a mod). Hitting "u/U" has no effect or I don't see it. I then used a modified Hunter car to breach and investigate the UFO during the first turn. On the lower deck, most/all props are intact, and no corpse are to be seen (only a few damaged tiles). I can't move the Hunter on the upper deck but I don't see any purple blood stain (you usually see when a map is revealed and not in LOS). There seems to be virtually nobody here and that would explain why the mission is won.
  2. If I kill one civilian, the same debriefing screen immediately appears (only difference is that civilian rating is worst): no need to hit End Turn.
  3. As a side note, one soldier get a Service Medal for active participation to missions. Until now, I thought that "active" means shooting at or killing Aliens, because the actual number of missions is greater than 10/20/30 on the day when the medal is granted. Here, the guy hasn't even moved. Isn't the game tricked another time by this 0-alien mission?
  4. I don't know why I should use Alt+Tab, and anyways, Steam doesn't let me use it as it should be (I can't exit the game, though usually, Alt+Tab works when no Steam app is running). But I did find a log file in my Wine directory. I don't know if this th one you want but I would be interested if I were taught what each line means.

The two MOD ERROR should be my fault as I touched or added both files. I revert to original ones and see if something changes.

xeno_emptyBarge01.png

 

xeno_emptyBarge02.png

xeno_emptyBarge03.png

logfile.txt

Edited by Rodmar18
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9 minutes ago, Rodmar18 said:

I don't know if this th one you want but I would be interested if I were taught what each line means.

Im not getting paid enough to do this.

 

Interesting, that logfile suggests someone simply put an empty ufocontent file inside, but since @Solver confirmed that there were actual units supposed to get loaded i guess thats not the case.

Anyway, at this point i rather would doubt the usefullness of the autosave, as it is not trustworthy enough. The next thing you would need is a geoscape save, optimally right before you hit a bugged crashsite. With that you can reliably load a bugged mission without having to doubt an autosave.

 

Anyway, what we are basically doing is troubleshooting the combination of mods which are not coded correctly, the quicker way would be simply to fix every mod in question, as this requires the same amount of time.

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After undoing my bad actions, the logfile is the same except that there is no more any xcebalance MOD ERROR. At least, I'm not directly responsible for the last MOD ERROR. I'll try to see why the "Projetiles Overhaul" mod generates an error by comparing the merging syntax used by other mods.

About the third line in the logfile (##### : Missing string for label 'alienbase.medium'), xcebalance should be the last mod to define it in strings.xml (well, it's 'AlienBase.Medium'), so why is it missing? Or another higher priority mod breaks the Excel spreadsheet?

'airplane.human.base' appears in aircrafts.xml. Is a value expected in strings.xml?

 

The save I provided in my fourth message is a Geoscape save, and I used it several times in the last hours to change the map generated when entering the ground mission, or after having modified the Hunter car.

Edited by Rodmar18
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  • 1 month later...

I think I found the culprit. The empty UFO bug was still lurking around, now with Cruisers. As said above, it could be a problem with the ufo content table.

It's not the Projectile Overhaul mod (it lacks only some MODMERGE command that I added to get rid of lines in the text log).

It's the Crew Diversity mod: it changes the way UFOs are assigned to perform various mission types according to the ticker, in a clever way. Now, Landing Ship and Cruisers are assigned to Scouting missions as well, as seen in AM_Scout.xml (Landing Ship from 400 ticks on; Cruiser from 600 ticks on).

   <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">m:airplane.alien.landingship/650</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">650</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">20</Data></Cell>
   </Row>
   <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">
    <Cell ss:StyleID="s66"><Data ss:Type="String">m:airplane.alien.cruiser/650</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">650</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">15</Data></Cell>
   </Row>

Except that the mod's author forgot to fill in the min/max columns for scouting missions in the six ufo content files:

airplane.alien.cruiser.caesan.xml ...

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Caesan_NonCombatant_Defensive</Data></Cell>
    <Cell ss:Index="4"><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell ss:Index="8"><Data ss:Type="Number">1</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">2</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">1</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">1</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">2</Data></Cell>
  ...
    <Cell ss:Index="16"><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">1</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell>
   </Row>

The '...' is inserted where to add the two missing lines (columns 14 and 15) with notepad (or just put figures in the cells while using Excel).

I copied the Supply Run columns to these Scouting columns (as it seems the case for the Corvette ufo content files), and I figure that I have now to wait for the next scouting mission to be generated (re-entering the last bugged crashed UFO mission doesn't work).

 

 

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10 hours ago, Rodmar18 said:

Except that the mod's author forgot to fill in the min/max columns for scouting missions in the six ufo content files:

A classic one.

Does anybody need more proof why i am saying 99% of mods on the steam workshop are not bug free ?

Good job for finding that.

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Ha, thank you for asking.

I'm on the last part, xenopaedia; in the worst case, only one article a day. Each time I change a little naming, I pass the change on strings.xml and mod files, and regularly check the result in game. I'm sure to finish the job in the next two weeks (including the included pack mods). If I am the limiting factor, tell me and I can make an effort: no more than 20 articles are left, most of them already revised one way or the other.

Allow me to complain here. It's disturbing to translate as best as you want when you don't understand the technical explanations, even in this sci-fi setting, or feel little inconsistencies here and here. That disturbs me and breaks the pace of the translation (or rather, the correction of a former translated version), as I try each time to twist and reformulate the English text (I don't of course). For instance, I don't understand how a plasma bolt can penetrate armour and flesh (the same way as a molten HEAT penetrator, I figure), and generate a huge thermal/incendiary splash at the same time, or without generating a consequent EMP damage... Or how to describe an explosive plasma ball without invoking timed gravitons, or whatever.  Or how/why you would build a ramjet using alenium which thermal energy release doesn't require any combustion process (and why not a rocket engine?). Or how we missed 90% of the released energy in an Alien Power Source and can now harness it after researching the Alien Reactor. Or how electronic bounds may release gamma rays instead of less energetic X rays. Each time, a few selected words in English could probably alleviate my conscience. Well, I'd probably shut up and return to the translation.

As you ask, I end up with 50+ suggestions to enhance or correct xenopaedia articles (they are only that: suggestions), 4 changes for Lore+ xenopaedia (typos), and 15 new bug correction or UI enhancement proposals for X:CE (including a "######"-named alien missile that shows during air combat at max zoom, or another hard coded strings in English).

Tell me, Charon, wouldn't you have got some stuff to translate in French? I'm sure I'd have some questions for you in return.

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5 hours ago, Rodmar18 said:

Tell me, Charon, wouldn't you have got some stuff to translate in French? I'm sure I'd have some questions for you in return.

X-Division has a 1000 research entries, excluding preresearch stuff, the vanilla game only has 119. Im not sure if this is the time to start on them.

 

If you are looking for scientific truth in the Xenopedia, there is most propably not more scientific truth in it than Chris put into it.

 

 

Well, limiting factor .. we are actually waiting on nothing else for over a month already. Not that we didnt use that time to make further improvements, but the whole XCE 0.35 is waiting on nothing else, i guess. @Solver is busy right now so he wont be able to release anyhing anyway, but on the other the sooner the translation is done, the sooner other people can think about what is necessary for the release. Without compromising on the quality ofcourse.

Edited by Charon
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I partly relieved my conscience by briefly explaining what is "Alenium Repulsion" and what is a "turbojet/ramjet/scramjet" fed by a Singularity Core, and correcting one of the "Terror, Fury, and Dreadnought" mod's article in which the Fury had both an Alenium propulsion and a Singularity Core reactor...

Let us know that an alenium repulsion engine is a turbojet in which the internal combustion chamber is replaced by an electrothermal heater, or if not powerful enough, by a direct alenium cracking chamber, whose aim is to heat the intake air. The onboard alenium electrical reactor (akin to a nuclear reactor/thermal converter/turbine/alternator conversion chain) feeds an electrical motor that move the engine's intake compressor.  As with modern day electrical motors, there is no proper turbine (despite the name "electrical turbine"), only a frontal compressor, whose aim is to compress the intake air (whereas a turbine is used to rotate a shaft, converting a fluid's energy, to move a fan and/or a compressor).

Let us know that, as for the Fury's triple staged propulsion, they are much the same, all fed by the onboard electrical power source. The only difference is that ramjets and scramjets don't have use of compressor anymore. They use their relative speed and internal conformation to compress the intake air (like their internal combustion cousins). Now, the onboard power source is a singularity core/thermal converter/turbine/alternator conversion chain, that feeds the electrothermal heaters used to heat the intake air.

Of course, I made this changes only to the French version (and I added another suggestion to the English xenopedia).

 

Using atmospheric engines, the Fury is not capable of orbital flight (except if we add directional ion thrusters, but they are not meant to impulse combat accelerations).

 

 

By the way, on this screenshot, what are the two oblong reactors (up and down) : power sources or propulsion engines or both?

https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/19385-xce-0341-empty-wrecked-ufo/&do=findComment&comment=168091

 

 

After a while, when I'm certain to not witness empty UFOs anymore (or as soon as I start using a decryption device)  I'll edit this thread's title as [SOLVED].

 

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