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Author Topic: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating  (Read 4958 times)

Bruce

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shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« on: August 31, 2017, 01:45:47 pm »
hi
wondering if this is a bug or at veteran difficulty there are some time limitations



I had near 3M funds and just one country quitted

ty

Offline Hobbes

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2017, 01:56:39 pm »
Your Finances must have gone into the red twice. The first time your money can't cover all the expenses at the end of the month you get a warning. The second time, it's game over

Offline Yataka Shimaoka

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2017, 03:04:25 pm »
Might be the big 8 countries withdraw

Offline Meridian

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2017, 04:04:00 pm »
Might be the big 8 countries withdraw

It's not. You cannot lose the game even if everybody withdraws.

Like Hobbes said, he got warned last month already about financial situation... and this month went into minus as well.

Offline 7Saturn

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2017, 04:57:15 pm »
While we are on the subject: Is it necessary to have the negative balance twice in a row, or does this also hit, if you had a negative balance once before at any given time and now again?

Offline Yataka Shimaoka

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2017, 05:25:27 pm »
It's not. You cannot lose the game even if everybody withdraws.
Wait what?!
Like Hobbes said, he got warned last month already about financial situation... and this month went into minus as well.

Offline Meridian

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2017, 05:45:40 pm »
While we are on the subject: Is it necessary to have the negative balance twice in a row, or does this also hit, if you had a negative balance once before at any given time and now again?

Only twice in a row counts.

Offline Hobbes

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2017, 10:30:38 pm »
Only twice in a row counts.

In OpenXCom it's twice in a row but not in the original?

Offline Meridian

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2017, 10:36:37 pm »
In OpenXCom it's twice in a row but not in the original?

I'm not sure how it was in xcom1994... if someone has time to test, I would like to know too :)

Offline Countdown

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2017, 08:16:06 am »
I'm not sure how it was in xcom1994... if someone has time to test, I would like to know too :)
Third-ed. I'd also be curious to know, but don't have time to run through a test campaign in DOS Box at the moment.

The UFOPaedia and other online strategy guides for the original don't specify "consecutive months" over a million in debt, while they do specify "consecutive" months with a bad score. However, the wording doesn't make it 100% clear and also 1) the UFOPaedia could be wrong or vague 2) the end of month calculations in the original game were apparently buggy anyway.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2017, 08:17:53 am by Countdown »

Offline thundergraham

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #10 on: September 08, 2017, 11:08:58 pm »
I remember reading that, after finishing a month in debt, the game sets a "Financial warning" flag, and if you finish another month in debt with the flag true, then game over. Also that, due to oversight, the flag applies to all games, so having debt in one game will cause you to lose if you finish a month in debt in another game, which - I presume - will unset the flag.
So to the best of my knowledge, the months don't have to be consecutive, but that's for vanilla- I'm not sure if OXC is any different here.

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2017, 07:39:06 am »
this is a clear and simple bug that we have fixed.

in the 1994 version, when you were given a warning, a flag was set. this flag was stored in memory ONLY, and not in the save file. once it was set to true, the only way to reset it was to restart the executable or get a game over.
you could save your game on the 29th, get a warning, reload, and get a game over. you could also save on the 1st, after receiving a warning, then restart the game and get a second warning the next month. heck, you could get a warning, start a new game, and if you overspent, get a game over at the end of January.
the only way to trigger this game over scenario "normally" was to play through two consecutive months with a negative balance in a single play session.
we simply changed the flag from a memory-bound global variable to a value in the save file.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2017, 09:03:59 am by Warboy1982 »