TFTD - 2-stage missions

[wsmithjr]

So, got my first cruise ship terror site ... yeah, we won't talk too much about that!

Anyway, I finished Stage 1.  After losing all my hair trying to complete Stage 2 ... my single soldier gave up the fight and ran home.

Upon arriving back at the base, I noticed that none of the equipment or alien corpses from Stage 1 came back with me.  Now, I believe this is the way the original handled it.  Also, never liked that!  XComutil used to allow us to recover everything from Stage 1 and even if we abandoned Stage 2 immediately ... like I probably should have done ... we at least got something for our effort.

So, is the plan to keep it as per vanilla?  And if so, can we have a mod/option that allows us to recover items if we beat Stage 1 as long as the Triton makes it home?  Obviously, if we get wiped out on the 2nd stage, we lose everything but in a game as difficult as this, it never seemed fair that they took away hard-earned loot like that.

Umm ... maybe this should go in the "Feature Request" section.  Would have been nice to bring that live Calcinite home from Stage 1.

[Arthanor]

But.. if your only operative left runs home without securing the ship, allowing the aliens to blow it up, who had time to do the clean up and bring all of the loot to base? Or do the triton's pilots also perform clean up duty top side while the aquanauts are cleaning up the underside?

I'm not saying it isn't harsh, but it feels more realistic than magic "You kill it, you got it" looting of more modern computer games.

[wsmithjr]

Yeah ... but you could also say we secured the artifacts and prisoners in the Triton before descended into the bowels of the ship.  Works for me.  But, your reasoning is why I suspect they will keep the vanilla behavior, but it could be an option like many others that I'm sure would make sense to some if not everybody.

[Arthanor]

Well, that could work (but then why are the civilians still alive if you wasted time to clean up? But why are they still alive after the top-side fight?).

There are a lot of XComUtils/UFOExtender mods built in for EU, so it is not unlikely that we will see something of the kind for TftD.

Then everyone can play their way, and each other's way

[wsmithjr]

Then everyone can play their way, and each other's way

That works for me.

The corollary to this is ... the mission previously mentioned, I went back and loaded the auto-save before I abandoned the mission.  Somehow I got lucky and ran into the last 2 aliens and survived.  So, I got my stuff after all ... except I didn't.  I had a Live Calcinite at the end of the 1st Stage which is not in my base.  Again, I think this is vanilla behavior ... and again I think it sucks!  So, I would like to add that to the request as well.

At this point I don't have the saves so that I can check what I did and did not get after that mission that I think I should have.  If I survive another such mission, I'll have to keep better track.

[Warboy1982]

ok, so here's the lowdown:

anything inside the landing craft at the end of stage 1 is guaranteed to come home with you, whether you abort or succeed, assuming the craft isn't lost.
anything outside the landing craft at the end of stage 1 will be recovered _IF_ you are successful on stage 2, the assumption being that before the mission is over, anyone left outside would be focused on keeping the site secure in case the breaching team has to make a hasty retreat, and leave the site cleanup detail until the mission is over. i don't know if this is 100% in keeping with standard military procedure, but it seems pretty justified to me.

as for unconscious aliens not surviving from stage 1, that seems like an actual bug, because i'm pretty sure i did code around this. get another save if you can (preferably near the end of stage 1) and i'll see what i can see. (and log bugs on the tracker, not here)

[wsmithjr]

as for unconscious aliens not surviving from stage 1, that seems like an actual bug, because i'm pretty sure i did code around this. get another save if you can (preferably near the end of stage 1) and i'll see what i can see. (and log bugs on the tracker, not here)

OK ... I don't have appropriate saves but I can replay those missions and hope to get similar results.  Unfortunately, I leave for a 10 day business trip today so it's not going to happen for a while.

I didn't post it on the bug tracker because I was remembering (incorrectly or not) it to be vanilla behavior.  When I get a chance to do it again, I'll log it there.

Thanks.

[Warboy1982]

not to worry, i found the cause and fixed it.

[wsmithjr]

not to worry, i found the cause and fixed it.

Cool! Thanks for all the hard work on the game.

[Surrealistik]

Soldiers that fell unconscious in the first stage should probably be recovered in the second upon abort; at least if the first stage was 'won', since the area would be secure enough to at least retrieve them.