Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

[psavola]

The package at mod.io site seems to include everything; the size is right too. Must be a problem at gchpaco's side.

[Kozinsky]

Please report any suspicious values... Also if they seem too good.

Here's what looks too profitable in my opinion (for version 3.6b):

Spoiler:

STR_PORTABLE_LASER_CANNON_CLIP: 188 306 profit
STR_SCOUT_VEHICLE_LMG_TRITANIUM_CLIP: 108 925  profit
STR_PLASMA_CASTER: 18 892 profit
STR_DOUBLE_BARRELED_BUCKSHOT_AA: 16 395 profit
STR_PIKE_MISSILES: 15 324 profit
STR_TRACE_FLARE: 7 873 profit
STR_ELERIUM_FLARE_X5: 4 220 profit
STR_SCOUT_VEHICLE_SHOTGUN_TRITANIUM_CLIP: 1 785 profit

If you know how to work with Excel files, here it is - you can use it however you want
My self-made program was used to collect the raw data for this file.

[psavola]

Really minor things. Every other hybrid (and many others) except the scientist can give you Staff Input: The Nephilim Gene. Hybrid Scientist must be an oversight, because I can't think of a reason why it could not unlock the topic that even all low-level cultists unlock.

[psavola]

"Sectopod Adaptation" depends on, among others, Sectopod i.e. live-captured sectopod. But you can gain information also from an alien engineer without ever seen, let alone captured a sectopod.

The start of the description is as follows: "Having thoroughly studied the Sectopod, we have a fairly good idea on how to repurpose its chassis for our AI units."
I suggest rewording this to be more general, like "With our in-depth knowledge of the Sectopod, we have ...".

[psavola]

I saw a very rare Alien Diplomacy mission with hyperwave decoder. My six bases with a hyperwave decoder in each cover essentially all the globe with only a few parts of oceans left out. I was expecting the envoy ship to land, but it just flew around a little bit and then despawned over the Indian ocean near Australia.

This was confusing, because looking at the rulesets and P0 ufoTrajectory, if I understand this correctly, it should have landed twice (the waypoints beginning with zero). Do the aliens sometimes abort the mission they are supposed to undertake before completing it? I wonder what was going on?  If the envoy ship had been following the ufoTrajectory, there is no way I could not have spotted it using hyperwave decoders earlier.

  - type: STR_ALIEN_DIPLOMACY
    points: 0
    raceWeights:
      0:
          STR_MIXED: 100
    waves:
      - ufo: STR_ENVOY_SHIP
        count: 1
        trajectory: P0
        timer: 12000

....

ufoTrajectories:
  - id: P0
    groundTimer: 3000
    waypoints:
      - [5, 4, 100]
      - [0, 3, 74]
      - [0, 1, 28]
      - [1, 1, 47]
      - [5, 2, 100]

Not sure if this debuggable at this point as I didn't keep a save while this was occurring, but looking back at the save, I can see the following (the only mentions of diplomacy or envoy ship):

  - 'month: 29 script: alienDiplomacy id: 613 type: STR_ALIEN_DIPLOMACY race: STR_MIXED region: STR_INDIAN_OCEAN targetZone: -1 targetArea: -1'

  - 'gameTime: 1999-05-22 10:00:00 ufoId: 305 ufoType: STR_ENVOY_SHIP race: STR_MIXED region: STR_INDIAN_OCEAN trajectory: P0 missionId: 613 missionType: STR_ALIEN_DIPLOMACY'

[Meridian]

P0 doesn't have any landing in its definition.

[psavola]

P0 doesn't have any landing in its definition.

Thanks. It seems I read the ruleset reference wrong so this is working as defined to the engine. Zero in the second one means ground, not the first one.

From mod design perspective, it's rather strange a diplomacy mission that doesn't even land, though.

[psavola]

In mission debriefing, each holodrone corpse or live terrorist also yields you some undefined HOLODRONE_WEAPON with zero cost. I guess this is an oversight.

I was also a bit surprised to see an Alien Domination mission, with Gazer on an Observer craft. There were only two gazers present, and almost a dozen holodrones. I suppose this might be intentional. A bit surprised because other alien races don't bring terror units along with this craft. So this could very well also be a bug in defining alien ranks.

[psavola]

No problem, I'll make more tests later.

I was suspecting I might be hitting the same or similar issue in Night at the Museum mission. So I tested it there and took a save when dealing with the final enemy unit, saurian ghost:

- stunning him (resulting in four squares ZZZ's) with two hits of a power mace does not give you a live capture (should it?)
- ending the mission with MC also does not give you a live capture

Note that I don't even have ghost tank researched, let alone have one built, but I don't think that should affect whether you should be able to at least see the live capture (though you can do nothing with it). In earlier games I have usually had ghost tank build on a secondary base and been able to transfer ghost units there from mission debriefing screen.

Also in debug mode for whatever reason the hotkey CTRL-J for stunning all live aliens did not work, it displays text "Deploying Celine Dion album" (neither CTRL-ALT-J), but CTRL-K for killing works.

I wonder if this is some kind of stunning mechanic issue or related to the way how ghost units are defined.

I got around to testing this hypothesis with a New Battle of Haunted House, where there are stunnable humans and ghosts both. CTRL-J works for humans but not for ghosts. In this second save I didn't manage to manually stun a ghost (and then kill the rest), but on another having one go ZZZ also doesn't give you a live capture of the ghost.

At sometime this must have changed somehow, as I have clear memory of transferring poltergeists and ghosts from mission debriefing screen.

[Stone Lake]

If you don't have ghost tank, you won't see live captures at debriefing. You should see something like "there's no containment, so perp is dead". In new battle it's treated as if you have empty base, thus no captures (probably configurable through editing new battle related save).

[psavola]

If you don't have ghost tank, you won't see live captures at debriefing. You should see something like "there's no containment, so perp is dead". In new battle it's treated as if you have empty base, thus no captures (probably configurable through editing new battle related save).

In such case, the engine should check whether any of the bases has applicable containment - maybe it does (recalling my earlier games where this was the case).

If you do have a ghost tank on some other base, you see the live capture and can transfer the ghost to that base. You see the message about entity degenerating after that, IIRC.

This would logically explain the behavior I'm seeing. Except the curious case why stunning hotkey CTRL-J does not work on ghosts in debug mode (or is the engine again too smart for me?).

[Solarius Scorch]

Here's what looks too profitable in my opinion (for version 3.6b):
(...)

Great, that's very helpful - thanks!
Some of them (not all) indeed had errors.

If you know how to work with Excel files, here it is - you can use it however you want
My self-made program was used to collect the raw data for this file.

Thank you; I have my own Excel, but the errors I mentioned were incorrect values in the files (different from intended prices, etc.).

Yours is very nice though, I wouldn't mind getting an update once in a while.

Really minor things. Every other hybrid (and many others) except the scientist can give you Staff Input: The Nephilim Gene. Hybrid Scientist must be an oversight, because I can't think of a reason why it could not unlock the topic that even all low-level cultists unlock.

I honestly am not sure why it is so, but I guess you're right. Added.

"Sectopod Adaptation" depends on, among others, Sectopod i.e. live-captured sectopod. But you can gain information also from an alien engineer without ever seen, let alone captured a sectopod.

The start of the description is as follows: "Having thoroughly studied the Sectopod, we have a fairly good idea on how to repurpose its chassis for our AI units."
I suggest rewording this to be more general, like "With our in-depth knowledge of the Sectopod, we have ...".

Yeah, that's technically correct, but there are too many such instances in the game; I think it's pointless without a complete overhaul of texts. For now, let's consider it just a simplification.

From mod design perspective, it's rather strange a diplomacy mission that doesn't even land, though.

The Ethereal Envoy waves from the window. He can't be bothered to step on this mudball without a very good reason.

In mission debriefing, each holodrone corpse or live terrorist also yields you some undefined HOLODRONE_WEAPON with zero cost. I guess this is an oversight.

That's very strange, and very new. It's an unrecoverable and fixed weapon. I have no idea what is going on.
...Wait, you said HOLODRONE_WEAPON? Not STR_HOLODRONE_WEAPON? This is curious, as there's no such item in XCF. There was in some older instances, though. Better check for duplicates.

I was also a bit surprised to see an Alien Domination mission, with Gazer on an Observer craft. There were only two gazers present, and almost a dozen holodrones. I suppose this might be intentional. A bit surprised because other alien races don't bring terror units along with this craft. So this could very well also be a bug in defining alien ranks.

That depends on the race.

[psavola]

That's very strange, and very new. It's an unrecoverable and fixed weapon. I have no idea what is going on.
...Wait, you said HOLODRONE_WEAPON? Not STR_HOLODRONE_WEAPON? This is curious, as there's no such item in XCF. There was in some older instances, though. Better check for duplicates.

Looking at this, this might a problem at my end. As you said, XCF uses STR_HOLODRONE_WEAPON. HOLODRONE_WEAPON is (incorrectly) used in two places in the XCF hyper trajectory submod. Maybe that's pulling them in and causing the weirdness.

I am aware, although what exactly looks out of place is subjective.
Which ones you find out of place, exactly? Besides the Vampire Castle background.

Now that you ask, I went through most of them (browsing through the filesystem), and here's a list for consideration:
 - Backgrounds: CULT_BACKGROUND.JPG (though this is long established already and not a real issue)
 - Commendations: MEDAL_STATGAIN.png (low quality, style inconsistent), MEDAL_CARREER_MISSIONS.png (low quality), MEDAL_ALIEN_BASE_ASSAULT.png and MEDAL_AQUANAUT_CPAL.png (OK as such but strikingly different style than the rest)
 - Dossiers: Ding_Quadong_CPAL.png is the only one drawing. Some others are also abysmally low quality pictures, such as Ernie_Lloyd_Sabatka.png and Lo_Wo_CPAL.jpg, but these could be argued to be intentional (the researchers were only able to obtain a bad image of them) - it would still be really cool if some of the worst quality ones were to be replaced.
 - Slides: Cyberdrednought.png is a bit cartoonish and also a bit strange (smoke coming from the pipes as if it was the Titanic from 1900?)
 - UfopediaTechPics: AlienIncursion_CPAL.png (why is this with so strange pink colors, a bit off anyway?), alienneuropsychology.png (the alien especially looks very weird here), ChurchOfDagonRationale_CPAL.png (see above, not really a big issue), CyberwebMystek_CPAL.jpg (really bad quality), fusionexplosives.png, fusionweapons.jpg (maybe), GreenGoo_CPAL.jpg (this is what I was originally thinking about when I said cartoonish out of He-Man), HunterHunted.png (maybe, but ok as such I guess), Hybrid_Agent_CPAL.jpg (a bit inconsistent with the more recent hybrid images), ImprovedUndercoverOperations_CPAL.jpg (OK as such but a cartoonish style differs from the rest), opticalprocessor.png, ResidualPsionicArtifacts.png (OK as such but to me seems a bit off), UNIT.png (a bit off-style but OK as such), xcomagents.png (a bit off-style), xenonauts.png (a bit off style maybe).

[CrazedHarpooner]

Looking at this, this might a problem at my end. As you said, XCF uses STR_HOLODRONE_WEAPON. HOLODRONE_WEAPON is (incorrectly) used in two places in the XCF hyper trajectory submod. Maybe that's pulling them in and causing the weirdness.

This could be easely avoided / detected if submods relied more on the extended update and override nodes instead of the standard type and name nodes when making changes to an existing node from a parent mod. Update will silently skip if the node was not defined in a previously loaded mod, Override will throw a hard error and crash the game with a notification instead in the same situation. The standard nodes will create an item if it doesn't exist yet, assigning default values to missing properties and if it does exist, it will modify it according to the specified properties.

[Solarius Scorch]

Looking at this, this might a problem at my end. As you said, XCF uses STR_HOLODRONE_WEAPON. HOLODRONE_WEAPON is (incorrectly) used in two places in the XCF hyper trajectory submod. Maybe that's pulling them in and causing the weirdness.

Yep, that would definitely cause a problem!

Now that you ask, I went through most of them (browsing through the filesystem), and here's a list for consideration:
 - Backgrounds: CULT_BACKGROUND.JPG (though this is long established already and not a real issue)
 - Commendations: MEDAL_STATGAIN.png (low quality, style inconsistent), MEDAL_CARREER_MISSIONS.png (low quality), MEDAL_ALIEN_BASE_ASSAULT.png and MEDAL_AQUANAUT_CPAL.png (OK as such but strikingly different style than the rest)
 - Dossiers: Ding_Quadong_CPAL.png is the only one drawing. Some others are also abysmally low quality pictures, such as Ernie_Lloyd_Sabatka.png and Lo_Wo_CPAL.jpg, but these could be argued to be intentional (the researchers were only able to obtain a bad image of them) - it would still be really cool if some of the worst quality ones were to be replaced.
 - Slides: Cyberdrednought.png is a bit cartoonish and also a bit strange (smoke coming from the pipes as if it was the Titanic from 1900?)
 - UfopediaTechPics: AlienIncursion_CPAL.png (why is this with so strange pink colors, a bit off anyway?), alienneuropsychology.png (the alien especially looks very weird here), ChurchOfDagonRationale_CPAL.png (see above, not really a big issue), CyberwebMystek_CPAL.jpg (really bad quality), fusionexplosives.png, fusionweapons.jpg (maybe), GreenGoo_CPAL.jpg (this is what I was originally thinking about when I said cartoonish out of He-Man), HunterHunted.png (maybe, but ok as such I guess), Hybrid_Agent_CPAL.jpg (a bit inconsistent with the more recent hybrid images), ImprovedUndercoverOperations_CPAL.jpg (OK as such but a cartoonish style differs from the rest), opticalprocessor.png, ResidualPsionicArtifacts.png (OK as such but to me seems a bit off), UNIT.png (a bit off-style but OK as such), xcomagents.png (a bit off-style), xenonauts.png (a bit off style maybe).

Thanks. I can't check them right now (being at work), but I will go over these examples.
Funnily, some of them were specifically created for FMP (and XCF by extension), if I recall correctly.