Notable Exploits

[GlyphGryph]

Have you found any fairly extreme exploits, anything that will give you a big advantage in-game but makes you feel dirty for doing it?

I've figure out one, at least - you can safely train troop health and strength (and TUs if patient) by simply attacking an enemy base and aborting, then clicking the dropship to attack again before it leaves, over and over again. Assuming everyone is weighted up, they'll gain +1 strength each time. If you move them around and empty out their TUs for a couple turns first, they'll gain +1 TU as well, and as those increase they will gain health on top of it.

[SnowiiFrog]

Nice exploit bit are you sure you dont get a rep hit for aborting the mission?

[victorix58]

I think this might have been mentioned in another thread but.... you can reload after getting dread and the dread will be gone, or you can medpack a soldier's injuries that he sustained on a previous mission (effectively avoiding recovery times), aliens generally don't shoot at tanks. Or, perhaps, the fact that aliens don't shoot through smoke no matter how much they might know you are there.

[GlyphGryph]

Or, perhaps, the fact that aliens don't shoot through smoke no matter how much they might know you are there.

I have found this to be pretty untrue. Smoke certainly makes them LESS likely to shoot at you (and they can't reaction fire at all) but I'm pretty sure I've had them open up on me in the smoke more than once.

[victorix58]

Well thats good. I guess it just hasn't happen to me yet - I don't use smoke all that often.

[Amaror]

I think this might have been mentioned in another thread but.... you can reload after getting dread and the dread will be gone, or you can medpack a soldier's injuries that he sustained on a previous mission (effectively avoiding recovery times), aliens generally don't shoot at tanks. Or, perhaps, the fact that aliens don't shoot through smoke no matter how much they might know you are there.

The smoke one isn't really an exploit since your soldiers can't shoot through smoke either. Even if they know the enemy is there.

[crusherven]

You can shoot through smoke. Try it.

[EisenKreutzer]

I found one a few days ago, not sure if it is reproducible: I had no laser rifles in storage, and one of my soldiers had an equipped laser rifle with two or three rounds missing. I unequipped the rifle with the missing rounds and re-equipped it thinking it would return reloaded to the soldiers inventory. It did, but afterwards there was a new laser rifle in storage where previously there had been none, ready to be equipped on another soldier.

[Ol' Stinky]

If you lose track of an enemy in the grey fog of war, you can check which square he's on by seeing if you can walk there - if the square's occupied by a unit, it won't come up with the green square prompt. Another, quicker version is to use the line of fire indicator and move it around, the grey "select" circle icon will appear if an enemy's in the tile.

[victorix58]

Amaror, the way to shoot through smoke (or at terrain you want to destroy) is to hold ctrl. Holding ctrl, you can shoot anywhere even with a "0%" chance to hit. The 'chance to hit' is not actually indicative of your chance to hit. This comes in handy if you want to destroy cover or blow up a door etc.

[Wraith_Magus]

Although it's not massively game-breaking, you can go into the personnel screen when a dropship is in-flight, and, even though the dropship's compliment of soldiers is grayed out and supposedly unselectable, it defaults to letting you pick those soldiers and change their equipment.

This means characters can swap out gear if you chain together multiple missions, reloading guns and restocking ammo and grenades, even equipping weapons or armor that were just manufactured back at base while in-flight.

[Elydo]

Wow, that's pretty bad. Although I've been meaning to bring up some of the research that becomes available after a given misson. The research activates before the dropship returns to the base, presumably delivering the relevant items. In the case of the auto-research of alien autopsies, these can often occur whilst the bodies in question are in flight over an ocean.

[GlyphGryph]

You can throw grenades for significantly less TU by dropping your weapon, throwing the grenade, and picking it back up. Especially useful if throwing more than one grenade.

[Snarks]

You can throw grenades into an alien aircraft from the outside.

[Wraith_Magus]

Although I know that savescumming in general is cheating, on the geoscape it deserves some special mention - it seems like all the UFOs spawn at the same time, basically at midnight on certain days. I tried testing it out, and you can just reload at 23:59 hours and find that every "wave" of UFOs has the same number in them for a given date, but where they appear is randomized at around that midnight on spawning dates. Hence, you can just reload until you get the kinds of UFOs you want, spawning right next to your base for easy interception. Since the geoscape is really fast to reload or do anything, it doesn't even have that tedium deterrent of the battlescape to prevent players from trying.

If the game pre-calculated and saved what the next wave would be like (and a seed for what their flight plan would be - you can savescum away events like tidal disrupitons, or what direction a UFO flies in, to make them fly within range of your interceptors) at the point where the current wave spawns, you could prevent most applications of savescumming in the geoscape, since it would likely mean having to go through every mission in that wave of UFOs to get back to the point where the waves were randomized again.

[Aaron]

This thread is a gold mine, thanks! Many of these things are just bugs we need to fix, but loopholes like the base attack stat buffing are just as valuable for us to know so we can address them.

[GlyphGryph]

Good to see it's working as intended! I have a habit of finding the ways to "break" things I'm playing, so even though stuff like the base attack buff isn't a bug, and thus probably shouldn't be reported in bug reports, I wanted /some/ way to report it was "broken". So I'm glad I succeeded, and I hope to discover yet more exploits in the future that can be accounted for!

[StellarRat]

If you don't care about saving enemy equipment and bodies in an alien ship you can simply place C4 all the around the perimeter of the alien ship and detonate it. The blast will pass through the hull and kill anything near the outer walls as well destroying alien equipment and interior props. The hull will not be damaged, but the contents are turning into alien pesto.

[EchoFourDelta]

Although it's not massively game-breaking, you can go into the personnel screen when a dropship is in-flight, and, even though the dropship's compliment of soldiers is grayed out and supposedly unselectable, it defaults to letting you pick those soldiers and change their equipment.

This means characters can swap out gear if you chain together multiple missions, reloading guns and restocking ammo and grenades, even equipping weapons or armor that were just manufactured back at base while in-flight.

Changing weapons and armor should be iffy, but it makes perfect sense to be able to re-fit and re-arm.

[Wraith_Magus]

Honestly, I do think an "ammo bin" in the chopper would make sense - even as an in-mission ability to just run up to the ammo bin and grab a couple more clips.

However, it would probably work better as an entirely separate inventory. That way, the swap-outs would still make sense. You'd have some inventory management to handle for the chopper, as well. You could even stash some alternate weapon in case you're surprised by the situation. I'd make a suggestion thread on it, but I just made a new one yesterday, so I'll wait that one out a bit.

--

On an unrelated note, if they take away the ability to reload to make the UFOs fly in a different pattern, it will be somewhat disappointing. I don't reload when I get a guy blasted, but something about those UFOs spinning in circles doing tidal nonsense basically off the coast of Antarctica, where I can't reach them really just annoys me. Come back and get gibbed like good aliens!

[GizmoGomez]

I agree; we shouldn't need to use gamey whatevers to play the game. Loading up soldiers with tons of ammo and dumping it in the chinook isn't what we need.

Brilliant idea that could/would solve the issue:

I really like the idea of an ammo crate in the chinook. Really like it. People's got a point; why wouldn't they have a box in the dropship that has spare mags?

Personally, and I don't know if this'd be possible, I'd make an "Ammo Crate" equipment entity permanently assigned to each dropship (like soldiers are assigned to dropships) in the soldier equipment screen. Here you'd be able to load stuff into the inventory squares. In the dropship management screen you'd have another "ammo crate" symbol to move around (like you move around soldier starting positions) so you can decide where to place your stuff. It'd just pile the equipment on the ground on that spot.

The "ammo crate" would be limited in what it could carry because of the size and number of the inventory slots. I'd recommend making it large enough for rockets, C4, grenades, and ammo, but not large enough for weapons or shields.

I'd recommend this kind of set up:

[ ] = equipment square

[ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][ ]

[ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][ ]

[ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][ ]

[ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][ ]

The rows are one high, and three or more wide.

Ammo, rockets, grenades, and C4 would fit easily in the spaces provided. Weapons would not; not even stun batons or pistols. (This could be altered by making the spaces 2 high and less than 5 wide if we wanted to allow pistols and batons).

More rows could/would be added for higher-end dropships to accommodate the larger number of troops.

Here's something I came up with ages ago. Enjoy!

[Ol' Stinky]

Aliens always seem to rotate to face the nearest xenonaut, even if the alien can't actually see them. My favourite use of this is breaching UFOs.

Have a couple of guys as bait go around the outside of the ship. Park the bait in spots that would have them closer than the breaching team, if it wasn't for the UFO's hull. The aliens will turn to face the bait at the end of the turn. If you've done it right, this means that you can cut back on the flashbangs. An example with a regular scout:

The shieldbearer's in the ship's the first one to move in the turn. After the screenshot, the rest of the guys move in and eliminate the aliens.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Amaror]

You can shoot through smoke. Try it.

I did and the bullet hit the smoke like a solid wall. Maybe i found a bug?

[victorix58]

I did and the bullet hit the smoke like a solid wall. Maybe i found a bug?

Shouldn't happen, if it did its a bug. Perhaps you hit the ground or a piece of cover? Make sure you are clicking on your intended target, rather than the place where you want the bullet to enter the smoke.

Edit: On another note, EisenKreutzer I have also gotten that glitch with the extra laser rifle being produced. I got that on multiple occasions but I didn't know what caused it until now.

Edited October 1, 2013 by victorix58

[StellarRat]

Aaron - I hope you're still monitoring this thread. That one about the aliens facing enemies they can't even see is a pretty bad one.