Messages

1

Discussion / Anti-Virus problem trying to download 2.5

« on: November 11, 2013, 03:25:46 pm »

Not sure if you're aware, but I tried to download 2.5 the other day, and got this from Symantec's virus scanner.  Not sure what, if anything can be done, but thought I should bring it up in case folks didn't already know.  Probably, this won't be an issue for most people - my company is has pretty tight security settings, but either way, it looks like Symantec has it in for UFO:AI

2

Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: November 11, 2013, 03:18:03 pm »

I'm well into "late game" on my current playthough in 2.4 on the "hard" setting.  I'm pretty much dominate with 6 interceptor bases running Stingrays and two troop teams dropping in Herakles dropships (My favorite of all the ships, by the way - the deployment process is much more faithful to the original X-Com -- I always enjoyed the 'fall out' process and was always a little let down that my crew started already sort of randomly scattered in UFO:AI).  The raptor doesn't seem to have enough room to pack in 8 fully equipped soldiers...  and anyway, provides little or no cover in the first couple rounds (which, imo, is a main key to success in the harder difficulties)

I have more or less global coverage, at least on land, between bases and radar towers, so there's not too many UFOs getting by, mostly I let them land so I can feed the Antimatter beasts that are my ships... and to get both the heavy needler and particle cannon (as well as to scavenge for ammo), I conduct raids on one of the three alien bases I've located (haven't killed one since I don't want to end the game - I feel ending the game after a single base, especially when there's more than one was an unnecessary mistake... I mean, the game is unfinished, why make it end arbitrarily like that??  but that's another thing)  anyway...  My question is about the corruptor.  I've run across one - I let it land, took it - the Alien AI is messed up, 6 of them hung out in the cockpit shooting the windows, so the mission was really easy -- but it's been a whole year (a YEAR) and I've not seen another one.  I've done all the research there is, near as I can see - have the XVI map (which is broken - I went a whole month letting the aliens have their way, XVI went up 1% then dropped back to 0% when I recalled my people from the brothels...).  Is there a way I can force-spawn some corruptor missions?  also, bomber?  Never seen a bomber at all, not ever in all the years I've played this game, I've never seen one.  This is also the first time I've ever encountered a Corrupter too, but to be fair, I only started playing 2.4 a couple weeks ago, and the last time I played it was 2.3 and 2.3.1.

Anyway, I really do like the game, and I'm looking forward to it's evolution.

3

User modifications / Re: How do I increase starting money?

« on: November 10, 2013, 10:33:37 pm »

I've been around playing various releases for, oh, 5 years or so now, but never created a forum account.  Since I've tried the game vanilla and spent a good bit of time fooling around with the .ufos as well, I thought I'd give you some advice...

1:  You don't need a special program to unzip the .pk3 files.  They are ZIP.  If you change their name to give them a .zip extension, you'll be able to extract them.  MAKE A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FILE, but give it a different name.  I use 7z, so to make sure the game doesn't try to get the original files I call it ufos-original.7z

2:  (wait, what do you mean "make sure the game doesn't try to get the original files" )  - glad you asked.  If you simply extract the files, say, to base/ufos/* -- which is where you should put them (that means, create the directory) but leave the original pk3 file where it is, you're modifications will be read (or perhaps ignored? not sure of the parse order or precedence), and immediately overwritten by the original configuration.  That means, you have to either hide the originals (by renaming the ufo.pk3 file) or deleting it (not recommended - you may want to revert to the original configuration at some point if/when you make some change that crashed your game...)

3:  To increase your starting money, after you'd got your ufo files sorted out right, open campaign.ufo in a text editor (not Word!!! use a text editor or developer IDE. I use Sublime Text 2, but TextPad is a good one, NotePad++ etc) then, either pick a difficultly level or copy and paste one - make sure to change it's name - then find the line for "credits" and change the number.  Keep in mind, the max money you can have is 10,000,000 credits.

You can go on an edit all sorts of other things, but once you've made your armor impenetrable, gave all your guys Superhuman (100+) stats, make your interceptors fly as quantum speeds, invulnerable and insta-killers, made your guns shoot (effectively) infinite ammo at 1 TU per shot across the whole map with no spread...  (etc etc etc), just keep in mind, it's fun at first for sure to one-hit every alien with reaction fire from 5000 yards... but the game isn't finished, so it gets boring VERY fast when the battles aren't really a challenge.