UFOpaedia - User contributions [en]

MISSIONS.DAT

2006-07-21T14:23:21Z

Mkirchner: Information on the internal structure of missions.dat

contains counters and race info on the ongoing acts. At the start of the game (beginner level) research in your home zone and terror in a close by zone is initiated. After that each new month you will get two new missions and a terror mission (beginner level).

==Struture of a mission entry==

Each mission has 4 words. With 7 acts on 12 zones these are 672 bytes. E.g. infiltration(3) in Europe(4) would have the offset 3*8+4*(7*8)=0xF8.

offset meaning
0 ufo-counter on the ufos within the mission (FFFF, the mission is not active)
2 sub-ufo-counter used for some missions
4 time-counter, 30 minutes to next ufo
6 alien race of mission

Races are:

0 Sectoid
1 Snakeman
2 Ethereal
3 Muton
4 Celatid
5 Floater
6 Silacoid

==Timetable of a mission==

When a mission starts, the ufo-counter is set to 0 and the time-counter to some act-depending time. The time-count is reduced every 30 minutes. When 0, an ufo will appear, the ufo-counter (or the sub-counter on some mission) will be increased and a new random time-counter for the new ufo will be set.

===Note on the timing===

The randomization makes it difficult to generalize ufo appearances, but there seem to be some categories:

immediate 1h 0.5-2.5h
a day 1d 20h-30h
some days 3d 2d-5d
a week 1w 5.5d-8.5d
two weeks 2w 10d-18d
longer 1m e.g.46 days

===Research===

A undisturbed research mission on beginner level would look like this:

ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 2.5h s.Scout (i.e. after 2 1/2 hours a small Scout
arrives somewhere)
1 1w m.Scout (after another week a medium Scout
will arrive)
2 1w l.Scout (...)
3 3d l.Scout

===Harvest===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 3d s.Scout
1 3d s.Scout
2 1w s.Scout
3 3d l.Scout
5 3d l.Scout
5 1w Harvester
6 3d Harvester
7 1d Battleship

===Abduction===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 1w s.Scout
1 1w m.Scout
2 2w l.Scout
3 3d Abductor
3/1 3d Abductor
4 1h Battleship

===Infiltration===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 2w s.Scout
1 2w m.Scout
2 2w m.Scout
3 2w l.Scout
4 3d l.Scout
5 1h Terrorship
6 1h Battleship
7 1h Supply
8 1h Battleship

after this, the mission does not end, but starts again
with ufo 0 again.

===Base===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 1w s.Scout
1 1w m.Scout
2 1w l.Scout
3 1h Supply
3/1 1h Supply
4 1h Battleship

if you shoot down the supplys the battleship will not come for several weeks and a retaliation mission is started.

===Terror===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 2.5h m.Scout
1 1w l.Scout
2 1w Terrorship
3 1w Terrorship

If you shoot the first Terrorship, the second is going to come
2w later. If you shoot the second Terrorship, the terror-site will not happen.

===Retaliation===
ufo-c time-c ufo-type
0 ? s.Scout
1 ? Battleship

==Using the information==

You might find that may small scouts appear at 2:30 on the first of a month. This is due to a often found count of 5 with the first ufo on a new terror or research mission for the month.

To make use of this knownledge might be difficult. But say, if you see a supply ship at a location without an alien base at the end of the third week of a month, it might be on a base mission. Then you should expect a second supply ship and a battleship somewhere close. If it is on infiltration you might see two battleships. If you see a first havester/abdutor, watch out for a second within three days. With a hyprewave decoder you might have more use from the mission sketches.

ACTS.DAT

2006-07-21T14:10:51Z

Mkirchner: Information on the internal structure of acts.dat

acts.dat

contains information which acts with which priority in respective zones aliens are going to try. Each of the twelve zonzes has seven possilbe acts which sums up to a total of 84 bytes.

Each month two acts (beginner level) are started by aliens and their priority in [acts.dat] is set to zero. If all acts of a zone are tried, the zone is set to zero priority. This would give you about five years worth of alien acts.

The acts are:

offset act
0 Research
1 Harvest *
2 Abduction *
3 Infiltration *
4 Base
5 Terror **
6 Retaliation ***

<nowiki>*</nowiki>
These are not tried in some zones as they are not realistic, e.g. abduction in Antarctic.

<nowiki>**</nowiki>
One act of terror is tried every month, priority is not used.

<nowiki>***</nowiki>
Retaliation is triggered by unsuccesful acts, priority is not used.

The total file might be like this:

Re Ha Ab In Ba Tr Re
NAme 0000000: 0e 10 14 14 14 00 00
Arctis 0000007: 19 00 00 00 23 00 00
Antarc 000000e: 19 00 00 00 23 00 00
SAme 0000015: 0a 18 0c 12 14 00 00
Euro 000001c: 0a 0a 0f 14 06 00 00
NAfr 0000023: 08 08 08 08 13 00 00
SAfr 000002a: 07 08 08 08 09 00 00
ZAs 0000031: 05 05 06 0a 08 00 00
SEAs 0000038: 08 0d 15 0d 08 00 00
Sibir 000003f: 06 00 04 00 09 00 00
Austra 0000046: 0f 0b 04 08 16 00 00
Pacific 000004d: 0f 00 00 00 1c 00 00

Supply, which is requested by the alien base, is not part of acts.dat.

ZONAL.DAT

2006-07-21T13:51:02Z

Mkirchner: Information on the internal structure of zonal.dat

zonal.dat

contains information which zones with which priority aliens are going to attack. There are 12 zones. If a priority of a zone is zero, the zone will only get terror attacks. In editing too many zeros into the file I have often found that the game is considered lost.

offset zone priority
0 Northamerica 18
1 Arctic 4
2 Antarctic 4
3 Southamerica 10
4 Europe 16
5 Northafrika 12
6 Southafrica 8
7 Central Asia 12
8 Southeast Asia 15
9 Sibiria 10
0xa Australia 10
0xb Pazific (+Rest) 5