How long should Supply Ship stay at the alien base?

[grzegorj]

As I have noticed, Supply Ship flees very quickly in OX, much quicker than in the original game (UFO:EU). As a result, "alien base milking" is very hard.

It is so because the initial value of ufos: secondsRemaining: is set to 2000 seconds. Perhaps two thousand seems to be an impressive number - but one hour = 3600 seconds! In other words, UFO waits for only a little more than half an hour... With Skyranger, it is impossible to be there on time. Unlike in the original game...

Is it on purpose, or is it a bug of OXC?

[Hobbes]

As I have noticed, Supply Ship flees very quickly in OX, much quicker than in the original game (UFO:EU). As a result, "alien base milking" is very hard.

It is so because the initial value of ufos: secondsRemaining: is set to 2000 seconds. Perhaps two thousand seems to be an impressive number - but one hour = 3600 seconds! In other words, UFO waits for only a little more than half an hour... With Skyranger, it is impossible to be there on time. Unlike in the original game...

Is it on purpose, or is it a bug of OXC?

I'd like to actually record a Supply Ship on both games to be certain of this but my impression is that it is the same time. It was really difficult to get a Supply Ship with a Skyranger, even with a Hyperwave Decoder for early detection.

[grzegorj]

Interstingly, I used to play UFO:EU many times, and I have NEVER little problems with catching Supply Ship, also with Skyranger. With OXC (without making changes in the save record) it appears to be impossible (unless my base would be located VERY close to the alien base). I guess Supply Ship should stay on the ground for several hours in UFO:EU. I hope it is not a very hard work to check it... I am going to search for a suitable savegame...

[moriarty]

It sure feels the same way to me... but I know my memory plays tricks on me with things like that.

I also think that in vanilla xcom, it was perfectly possible to have an interceptor hovering over a landed supply ship and shooting it down when it takes off... in oxc, the UFO isn't even dragged into a dogfight, because it is too fast from the start. but again, my memory might fail me...

[grzegorj]

Oh, it is not a problem to refresh memories :-) There may be serious problems with running so called UFO for Windows (Collector's Edition) under Windows 8 / 64bit, but the DOS version runs perfectly under DosBox, even on the newest computers.

I have just checked some of my savegames, and it appears that an alien ship stays on the ground 20,000 seconds, i.e. ca. 5 hours 30 minutes. So, there is a bug in OXC. It should set secondsRemaining to TWENTY thousand seconds while it sets it to TWO thousand seconds. The time of UFO staying on the ground should be ten times longer then (in OXC).

Please correct this...

[pkrcel]

You should post an inssue on the bugtracker I guess.

[grzegorj]

OK, I will

[kkmic]

I've played TFTD way more times than UFO, but I believe this particular game mechanic is identical in both games.

I too remember being easy to catch the Fleet Supply Cruisers with my Tritons, most of the time. So yeah, if in OXC the Supply Ship land for only 2000 game seconds (about 33 minutes and 30 seconds), it's definitely a bug.

I just wanted to confirm this.

[ivandogovich]

Just wanted to confirm the 33 minute touchdown.  I have a recording of it, and yup. 33 minutes. Way too fast.  Can this be changed by altering mission parameters in the xcom1ruleset?

Cheers, Ivan

[volutar]

Since 2000 is not SECONDS, but game time units. Game time unit in XCOM is 5 seconds. So 2000 Xcom units is 10000 game seconds.
Which is 2 hours 46 minutes and 40 seconds. Precisely. Without any random deviation.
There was already report, https://openxcom.org/bugs/openxcom/issues/816
I guess for some reason this "ground timer" is initialized with vanilla values, but counted down by 5 each second, so it runs out 5 times faster. Gonna be fixed.

[kkmic]

Well, it stays on the ground less time than in the vanilla. I don't care about the technical stuff (what units are being used or how are they counted down), this is still a bug.



Though an insight in the OXC game mechanics is always welcome. Thanks Volutar.

[ivandogovich]

Thanks for the feedback and the bug track info, Volutar.

I noticed a comment in the bug tracker,

Perhaps you're using modified EXE with hacked ground timing values.

Hmm.. I am using Shoes' Soldier Diaries.  I'll have to ask him to look into it. 

But Trajectory 9 is the correct one for Supply ships?

Thanks!
Cheers, Ivan

[Meridian]

@Ivan: as far as I understood, the problem is not in the Shoes' custom executable (that would be very weird btw.)

The reported bug will be re-opened and fixed.
(it will just be solved differently than proposed by the person who opened it)

The problem is not in the number 2000 (which is correct), but in how OXC interprets this number and how it makes the countdown (as Volutar said, 5-times faster than it should). But again, number is correct, it's interpretation is wrong.

[ivandogovich]

Thanks Meridian.

I'm going to hack a bigger value in the trajectory into a modset just to even this out.  As I'm staying on 1.0 and not nightlies, I won't benefit from any changes there.    I've pm'ed Shoes to ask him if its a possible issue in his executable.