UFOpaedia - User contributions [en]

Research Technical Details

2014-06-02T15:52:20Z

Tlist: /* Research Progress */

== Research Time ==
For a basic version of this table, see [[Research Hours]].

{| {{StdCenterTable}} class="sortable" cellpadding=5
|- {{StdDescTable_Heading}} valign = "bottom"
! Min.
Days
! Known
At
! Ave.
Days
! Max.
Days
!
Research Project
!
Ave.
!
Good
!
Exc.
|-
| 25 || 34 || 50 || 75 || Laser Weapons || 4 || 7 || 13
|-
| 50 || 67 || 100 || 150 || Laser Pistol || 8 || 14 || 26
|-
| 75 || 100 || 150 || 225 || Alien Entertainment || 12 || 21 || 39
|-
| 75 || 100 || 150 || 225 || Alien Food || 12 || 21 || 39
|-
| 75 || 100 || 150 || 225 || Alien Surgery || 12 || 21 || 39
|-
| 75 || 100 || 150 || 225 || Examination Room || 12 || 21 || 39
|-
| 85 || 114 || 170 || 255 || Live Terrorists (4 types) || 14 || 24 || 45
|-
| 90 || 120 || 180 || 270 || Alien Corpses (11 types) || 15 || 26 || 47
|-
| 90 || 120 || 180 || 270 || Motion Scanner || 15 || 26 || 47
|-
| 90 || 120 || 180 || 270 || Personal Armor || 15 || 26 || 47
|-
| 90 || 120 || 180 || 270 || Stun Bomb || 15 || 26 || 47
|-
| 95 || 127 || 190 || 285 || Live Sectoid Commander || 16 || 27 || 50
|-
| 96 || 128 || 192 || 288
| Live Aliens (22 types)
| 16 || 27 || 50
|-
| 100 || 134 || 200 || 300 || Alien Grenade || 16 || 28 || 52
|-
| 103 || 137 || 205 || 308 || Power Suit || 17 || 29 || 54
|-
| 105 || 140 || 210 || 315 || Medi-Kit || 17 || 30 || 55
|-
| 150 || 200 || 300 || 450 || Alien Origins || 24 || 42 || 78
|-
| 150 || 200 || 300 || 450 || Blaster Bomb || 24 || 42 || 78
|-
| 150 || 200 || 300 || 450 || Laser Rifle || 24 || 42 || 78
|-
| 165 || 220 || 330 || 495 || Flying Suit || 27 || 47 || 86
|-
| 180 || 240 || 360 || 540 || Mind Shield || 29 || 51 || 94
|-
| 200 || 267 || 400 || 600 || Alien Alloys || 32 || 56 || 104
|-
| 200 || 267 || 400 || 600 || Heavy Plasma Clip || 32 || 56 || 104
|-
| 200 || 267 || 400 || 600 || Plasma Pistol Clip || 32 || 56 || 104
|-
| 200 || 267 || 400 || 600 || Plasma Rifle Clip || 32 || 56 || 104
|-
| 210 || 280 || 420 || 630 || Laser Cannon || 34 || 59 || 110
|-
| 210 || 280 || 420 || 630 || Psi-Lab || 34 || 59 || 110
|-
| 225 || 300 || 450 || 675 || Elerium-115 || 36 || 63 || 117
|-
| 225 || 300 || 450 || 675 || UFO Construction || 36 || 63 || 117
|-
| 225 || 300 || 450 || 675 || UFO Navigation || 36 || 63 || 117
|-
| 225 || 300 || 450 || 675 || UFO Power Source || 36 || 63 || 117
|-
| 230 || 307 || 460 || 690 || Heavy Laser || 37 || 65 || 120
|-
| 250 || 334 || 500 || 750 || Psi-Amp || 40 || 70 || 130
|-
| 250 || 334 || 500 || 750 || The Martian Solution || 40 || 70 || 130
|-
| 255 || 340 || 510 || 765 || Laser Defenses || 41 || 72 || 133
|-
| 275 || 367 || 550 || 825 || Small Launcher || 44 || 77 || 143
|-
| 300 || 400 || 600 || 900 || Cydonia or Bust || 48 || 84 || 156
|-
| 300 || 400 || 600 || 900 || Mind Probe || 48 || 84 || 156
|-
| 300 || 400 || 600 || 900 || New Fighter Craft (Firestorm) || 48 || 84 || 156
|-
| 300 || 400 || 600 || 900 || Plasma Pistol || 48 || 84 || 156
|-
| 310 || 414 || 620 || 930 || Plasma Defenses || 50 || 87 || 162
|-
| 330 || 440 || 660 || 990 || Plasma Beam || 53 || 93 || 172
|-
| 335 || 447 || 670 || 1005 || Hyper-Wave Decoder || 54 || 94 || 175
|-
| 350 || 467 || 700 || 1050 || New Fighter-Transporter (Lightning) || 56 || 98 || 182
|-
| 350 || 467 || 700 || 1050 || Plasma Rifle || 56 || 98 || 182
|-
| 400 || 534 || 800 || 1200 || Fusion Defenses || 64 || 112 || 208
|-
| 400 || 534 || 800 || 1200 || Heavy Plasma || 64 || 112 || 208
|-
| 440 || 587 || 880 || 1320 || Fusion Missile (Fusion Ball & Launcher) || 71 || 124 || 229
|-
| 450 || 600 || 900 || 1350 || Blaster Launcher || 72 || 126 || 234
|-
| 450 || 600 || 900 || 1350 || Ultimate Craft (Avenger) || 72 || 126 || 234
|-
| 465 || 620 || 930 || 1395 || Grav Shield || 75 || 131 || 242
|}
'''Minimum Days''' is the minimum number of scientist-days needed to research this project (50% of Average Days).
'''Known At''' is the point at which progress goes from Unknown to a progress rating (67% of Average Days).
'''Average Days''' is the average number of scientist-days needed for this project (from [[RESEARCH.DAT]]).
'''Maximum Days''' is the maximum number of scientist-days needed to research this project (150% of Average Days).
'''Ave'''rage, '''Good''', and '''Exc'''ellent shows the minimum number of scientists needed for this progress rating (see below).

== Research Time Basics ==

*The game starts with the average hours needed (from [[RESEARCH.DAT]]) and rolls to see how long a specific project will take (±50%). Laser Weapons take an average of 50 research days, but in practice can take from 25 to 75 days. The time it will take is determined when the project is started, and is stored in [[PROJECT.DAT]].
* Projects only progress and check completion '''at midnight''', so what scientists are doing the rest of the day – traveling between bases, on different projects, or sitting in the coffee room unassigned – is irrelevant. All that matters is what (if any) projects they are on at midnight. This single check also means projects take a minimum of one day.
* Each midnight, the game subtracts the number of research days according to how many scientists you have assigned to that project; the project is done when the counter reaches zero. If a project will require 31 man days and you have 10 scientists assigned, it will take four days to complete (and you have wasted nine). You could assign a lot of scientists until you reach the point where it might be completed, and gradually taper them. But [[PROJECT.DAT|without cheating]], there's no way of telling just how long it will take.
* The efficiency increases as the number of scientists on a project decreases. If you run several projects in parallel, you'll waste fewer man days overall. In the extreme case, you'd assign only one scientist on every project and would be sure that not a single man day will be lost, but it would take months or years to get anything done. You decide.
* Even if you do "waste" scientist-days on the last day of a project, you may well get the opportunity to regain much more time than was wasted, due to the [[Known Bugs#Research Rollover|Research Rollover bug]].

==Research Progress==

===Known versus Unknown Progress===

The game stops showing progress as Unknown when you have completed two-thirds of the average time needed to complete a project. By itself, this doesn't tell you much.

However, the roll for your project's actual time can be anywhere from 50% to 150% of the average, so if you roll less than 67% of the average time, the progress of your newly-created project becomes immediately known - and you know you just got a good roll. It happens a sixth of the time (50% to 67% is 1/6th of the 50% - 150% range).
*If your project is immediately known, it will take a mean of 58.33% of the average time to complete (7/12ths, halfway between 1/2 and 2/3rds).
*If it's Unknown, your roll is from 67% to 150% of the average, with a mean of 108.33% of the average (13/12ths, halfway between 8/12ths and 18/12ths).
Thus, a sixth of the time, it takes ~58% of the average research time to complete. The rest of the time, it takes ~108% of the average time. That's less than twice as long as initially-known projects, on average (13/7 = 1.86x).

In a nutshell, Unknown projects take about as long as the Average. But a sixth of the time, you get a double-speed gift (a Known project).

You can't cancel a research project at a given base, so the only way to exploit Knowns "honestly" would be to try the project at additional bases. However, it would be a hassle to set up labs at lots of bases, especially given the fact that it only takes 3+ [[Laboratory|Labs]] a few months to do most of the research (see Total Time, below). But if you want to be cheesy, you can save and reload if you get an Unknown.

===Progress Ratings===

Once your progress becomes known, ratings appear that correspond to a specific percent of the effort needed versus the average time for the project, as shown below. The ''minimum'' number of scientists needed for each rating is shown in the table above. The reciprocal of the percent shows how many days would be needed to complete the project with the minimum scientists for that rating, on average. "Inefficiency" is the percent of scientists wasted, on average, at that rating. It equals half of the percent assigned (sometimes you might hit the nail on the head and not waste a single scientist day, other times you might barely miss the mark and waste almost all your people the last day... but on average, you waste half of what's assigned on the last day of the project).

{| {{StdCenterTable}} cellpadding=5
| {{StdDescTable Heading}} | Progress
Rating
| {{StdDescTable Heading}} | Percent
Assigned
| {{StdDescTable Heading}} | Max.
Days
| {{StdDescTable Heading}} | Percent
Inefficiency
|-
| Excellent || 26% || 3.85 || 13%
|-
| Good || 14% || 7.14 || 7%
|-
| Average || 8% || 12.50 || 4%
|}

:''Poor only needs a minimum of 1 scientist. If no scientists are assigned, progress will say None.''

===Insights into Research Progress===

[[File:ResearchProgressRateVersusEfficiency.gif|250px|thumb|right|Scientists Assigned versus Time To Completion and Efficiency]]Although the research system allows for some insights, ultimately [[Talk:Research_Technical_Details#Addendum_on_Project_Timeline_Milestones|they're not very practical]]; you can't readily use them to become much more efficient.
*If you closely track scientist days, you can compute the maximum number of research days left. If the project approaches this max, you can use the info to avoid a lot of waste right toward the end. (If you know there's only 10 days left at most, don't keep 50 assigned.) However, you'd have to track every project even though it'd only wind up being useful for the small number that last real long.
Perhaps, then, the only real insights are simple and fairly obvious:
*Know what you're doing if you assign a high number of scientists (more than minimum needed for Excellent). You might want to track projects if they are important, and are using a large percent of your scientists.
*Initially-known projects only need about half the average time; progress ratings under-estimate by 2. (Assigning the minimum for Average progress to an initially-known project gives it about 16% of effort, not 8%.)
*Just be aware, in general, of the relationship between Progress Rating and efficiency of scientist use (see inset). Average or Good progress is also a good balance between time needed and efficiency.
**Poor progress can drastically increase the time needed, for only tiny efficiency gains.
**With Excellent progress, you might not finish it any faster no matter how many scientists you pile on - but you will become more and more inefficient.

===Using PROJECT.DAT===

[[PROJECT.DAT]] is a binary file placed in each save directory. It stores the research days remaining on each project as 2-bit entries, lower-order value first (e.g., if the two values starting at address 0C read 41 01, you have 65 + 255 = 320 research days remaining on Plasma Rifle in your first base). Should you desire to go this far in managing your research, PROJECT.DAT can be used to retrieve this information, redistribute scientists to prevent waste, and grab bonus research when projects finish.
*At midnight, the game runs down through the entries in the file in order, awarding progress where scientists are invested. Helpfully, your base's research area displays its ongoing projects in this very order.
*If a project completes, the game temporarily halts reading at that entry to throw you dialogue screens; Allocate Research, Allocate Manufacture, et al. Progress made on the entries before this one is saved, whereas progress on entries beyond this one is not read at all until the next step.
*After the dialogue screens, the game resumes where it left off, reading only scientist assignments on entries below that of the completed project.
**If you shifted scientists farther down the list, you stand to gain progress in additional research.
**If you shifted scientists up the list, then sorry; the game has already read these entries, and they will not contribute further research today.

Overall, this mechanic tends to compensate people wasting scientists in ordinary play. If Joe Commander finishes ''New Fighter-Transporter'' with 150 scientists, but he only needed 21 on the final day, there were technically 129 wasted scientists. But assuming that he immediately reallocates his entire team to ''Ultimate Craft'' (a lower entry than the transporter) when given the prompt, he accomplishes a total of 171 research that day, with no complaint. In the same situation, though, Commander Maximizus might have run 129 scientists on a higher entry like ''Blaster Launcher'' and 21 on ''Transporter'' that night, before moving everyone onto ''Ultimate Craft''—picking up a total of 300 research.

== Total Research Time ==

The total average time needed to complete all research topics is 27,713 days. This includes the 576 to research [[Research_Basics#The_Minimum_Three|The Minimum Three]], plus 6,498 to add every alien [[Live_Alien_Research#Alien_Species|species]], [[Live_Alien_Research#Alien_Ships|ship type]], and [[Live_Alien_Research#Alien_Missions|mission type]] entry to the [[UFOpaedia]] (a [[Live_Alien_Research#Minimum_Alien_Research|minimum of 35 aliens]], dead or alive).

The 82 projects have an average length of 338 days. There are 51 unique projects; ones that need repeating are for terrorists (4), corpses (11), and live aliens (19, not counting the Sectoid Commander, which is its own unique project).
*It's easy to have excess aliens in [[Alien Containment]] that will not result in any new findings. As long as you haven't finished ''all'' topics they can contribute to, you will capture them. They will then still appear as something for you to research - but there will be no result. Excess aliens like these have not been included in this total.
*There is a least one topic that can be hacked to be made available, but only normal topics are included in the total here.
*This total is only a total of the ''average'' project time. Actual time will vary.

In terms of game time to research all topics:
{| {{StdCenterTable}} cellpadding=10
|- {{StdDescTable_Heading}} valign = "bottom"
! Scientists || 1 || 50 || 100 || 150 || 200 || 250 || 300 || 350 || 400 || 450 || 500
|-
| Days || 27713 || 554 || 277 || 185 || 139 || 111 || 92.4 || 79.2 || 69.3 || 61.6 || 55.4
|-
| Months || 909 || 18.2 || 9.09 || 6.06 || 4.54 || 3.63 || 3.03 || 2.60 || 2.27 || 2.02 || 1.82
|}

:''"Months" are defined here as 30.5 days long''

Because only a fraction of research topics are critical, and because it takes a while to be able to support multiple labs, most players only make 3 or 4 labs. If you're thinking of having lots of labs:
*Be aware of the [[Known_Bugs#Overcrowded_Engineers_And_Scientists|256-scientist problem]]. If you don't want to deal with it, the practical limit for scientists is 250 (per base).
*Going from 4 labs to 5 labs only saves you about a month — which is about how long it takes to set up the lab!
*If you want to use the [[Known_Bugs#Research_Rollover|Research Rollover bug/exploit]], you might need considerably less scientists. A high number of scientists can make quick work of a lot of research, particularly all the [[Live_Alien_Research#Minimum_Alien_Research|live (and dead) alien research]].

== See Also ==
{{Research Navbar}}

[[Category:Data tables]]
[[Category:Research (EU)]]
[[Category:Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense]]

Talk:MISSIONS.DAT

2014-05-25T17:46:26Z

Tlist: Signed Comment

Some questions [Zaimoni: now answered empirically]:
* What is going on with the start time for 0/0 on Research missions? The Jan 1999 one is always 2.5h, but I recently saw an Antarctica Research mission at 3d for 0/0.
* How consistently does the time to the next UFO react to a successful Battlescape game? (I just saw a Retaliation 1/1 go from 7Eh to 136h upon successful completion.)

--[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 6:50 Sept 21 2006 CDT

I couldn't understand much of your research but it made me wonder about one question: is it possible to determine the amount of UFO missions and their types that you will see during a month (and also the areas?). Or are those set in a total random fashion?

If so this could be considered as spoilers but it could also be used for an article describing alien strategy on the field manual.

--[[User:Hobbes|Hobbes]] 18:39, 21 September 2006 (PDT)

MISSIONS.DAT is a spoiler, definitely. It stores the time (in 30-minute increments) for all non-Supply scheduled UFOs that have not arrived yet. While it won't tell you all of the UFOs arriving in the month, it will positively ID arrival time, mission, physical type, and race of each one in the queue. I'm in the middle of redocumenting it.

My current conjecture is that the 0..3 sequence indexes the "size" of the UFO. The legacy content just listing ufo-c coordinates is misleading (it seems to be enumerating the visible sequence of ufos), but I want to positively observe the entire sequence of ufo-c/ufo-sub-c pairs before updating.

At all times, the current mission types and areas are in MISSIONS.DAT...except for supply missions. You really want a Hyperwave Decoder covering each alien base you're harvesting. So far, Beginner and Superhuman schedule the same at the beginning of the months after Jan 1999: 1 Terror mission, one non-terror mission. I don't know the criteria for scheduling Retaliation missions. (I've never seen them show up except immediately after Battlescape missions, but that obviously isn't exhaustive.]

Particularly interesting: Battlescape messes with the arrival time of the next mission after the one you're cleaning up on. This needs more careful analysis (e.g., is it just mission completion?)

--[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 22:35 Sept 21 2006 CDT

The increase in time to next UFO occurs either (or both) at shootdown, or at the start of the Battlescape mission. Since I used XCOMUtil interceptor with six soldiers for this test, I can't tell which one. No change between the beginning and the end of the Battlescape mission. [But a genuine Terrorship will happen soon enough...that gets a no-crew Interceptor and a full Skyranger.]

--[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 23:51 Sept 21 2006 CDT
:After a shootdown, the next UFO for that mission is delayed between 1 and ~9 days ( the formula is 48+RAND()*400 half hours ). A retaliation mission will be scheduled if RAND()*100 < 4*(24-difficultyLevel).
:If RAND()*100 < (50-6*difficultyLevel), the retaliation mission will use the same zone as the shot UFO, else it'll be the zone containing the base the craft in coming from. The first UFO is scheduled in 100 half-hours (the value is taken from the table I speak of later at the bottom of this page).
:[[User:Seb76|Seb76]] 18:56, 12 July 2008 (PDT)
<hr>

I don't think I'll be continuing this savegame, but I just had a Feb 1999 that only generated a new Terror Mission. The other mission...not visible. [I may have messed it up — I did edit the Jan 1999 Terror mission from Europe to Southern Africa.]

--[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 10:38 Dec 30 2006 CDT

== Retaliation ==

Zaimoni, I've been thinking about the comment about HWD's activating retaliation missions from the start. Are you able to check the mission types of the first couple of UFOs through mission.dat without editing the HWD stats onto the base? I'm not entirely convinced that retaliation missions are instigated by having a hyperwave decoder (stats or the module).

- [[User:NKF|NKF]]

: Yes, I can check (and have checked) that by hex editor. [It's a moderately different game with total information on arrival times and mission types...much easier to resume after a month or so hiatus.] I haven't tested with a game whose Hyperwave detection was edited.

: I normally save immediately after starting a new game to apply my custom soldier editor to the game. While I'm at it, I check MISSIONS.DAT. I have always gotten two missions: a Research mission in the same region as my starting base, and a terror mission with a decidedly non-uniform random distribution of location that I haven't bothered to try to analyze.

: I'm not sure whether there's a random component to getting a Retalation series scheduled by shooting down the first Research UFO, or whether it's just hypersensitive to some sort of detail. If the series is not significantly interfered with, the base defense mission would happen 2-3 weeks in.

: --[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 3:23 Mar 20 2007 CDT

Just ran some quick checks, nothing too intensive.
* Editing hyperwave detection in a hex editor: no obvious effect, but would have to tweak the initial MISSIONS.DAT (move the Terror Act to within range) to be absolutely sure. The game does not transmogrify Research UFOs in real-time; I need to test Terror UFOs.
* Start a new game after abandoning one: race information is not cleared in MISSIONS.DAT, but other information is cleared. In particular, both ufo-c and subufo-c are overwritten to their defaults.

--[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 23:11 Apr 11 2007 CDT

'''so''', the question which should be asked:

Is it too difficult to make an editor which changes the sequences? I dunno anything with hex-editors, programming, high level mathematics, etc. It would be interesting to have an opportunity to spawn multiple UFO everyday and not be able to shoot them all down as which is the case for the current mode of EU (and TFTD). The only thing that comes close to something of this current scenario is an inflitration mission where you have 5+ alien ships all at once and not having the capability to deal with them all. I dunno... i just wish having more tweaks to make it harder would be a good thing as opposite to just using editors to dull the technology of xcom to increase difficulty.

Six terror sites at once??? hell yeah! [[User:EsTeR|EsTeR]]

: It should be safe to create Retaliation acts and Terror acts by directly editing MISSIONS.DAT, there will be no internal consistency issues with other files. Editing existing entries in MISSIONS.DAT to other valid entries should be safe (note that not all mission types have been authoritatively mapped). Editing duration should be safe, but problems could happen with invalid races or UFO c/sub-c pairs. Creating other mission types will require counter-editing ACTS.DAT. I haven't specifically checked the behavior of ZONAL.DAT when spawning new acts.

: The ufo-c/ufo-sub-c pair 0/0 is always valid, at least.

: Research, Base, Terror, and Retaliation have fully documented ufo-c/ufo-sub-c pairs. I haven't done any verification at all for Abduction or Infiltration.

: Changing the relative durations between UFOs, time delays incurred when shooting down UFOs, or number of missions spawned per month, requires finding that information first. --[[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 10:16 Oct 17 2007 CDT

Just a note to add to this section lest I forget, and as late follow up to the notes that re on the page: back when I first got the idea that the first UFO was on a retaliation mission, I did not know that there was a 2% chance for every UFO to generate a retaliation mission. Armed with this knowledge, this is probably the sequence of events that happened to me at the time: I shot down the first UFO, recovered it and then got my base attacked. The 2% might've triggered then. This would very well the impression I had that UFOs could start on retaliation missions. They don't, but they can generate an attack. -[[User:NKF|NKF]] 03:10, 3 June 2010 (EDT)

== Alien missions data discovered in geoscape.exe [finally ;-)] ==

OK guys, here's a big one: alien missions data is located in the executable at offset 0x70E70 (gold edition) ; it starts with these values (all 16bit words):

.data:00470E70 structAlienMission <5, 1, 0, 12Ch>
.data:00470E70 structAlienMission <6, 1, 2, 104h>
.data:00470E70 structAlienMission <7, 2, 4, 12Ch>
.data:00470E70 structAlienMission 5 dup(<0FFFFh, 0FFFFh, 0FFFFh, 0FFFFh>)
...
It goes on for 64x4x2 bytes (7 mission types and possible data for additional 'supply' type mission).

Every mission type has 8 entries consisting of 4 words.
First word is the ship type, second is the number of ship of this type to spawn successively (each uses the same time counter), and 4th correspond to the time counter in [[MISSIONS.DAT]]. 3rd one is unknown for now.

The example below is for research mission: one small scout (type 5), then one medium scout (type 6) and finally 2 large scouts (type 7).
The time counter is calculated like this: time*RAND()+time/2.
Anyone care to hack the binaries to confirm this? [[User:Seb76|Seb76]] 10:58, 9 March 2008 (PDT)

: Time calculation looks good for those UFOs with randomized time (there are a few known exceptions). -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]] 10:16 10 March 2008 (CDT)

: It would be very good to locate what controls fixed vs randomized times for the normal missions. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]] 10:59 13 July 2008 (CDT)

The 3rd word of missions is UFO_trajectory_type. It refers into table at address .data:00471070. So there are 10 types of trajectories possible, with maximum 8 waypoints.
.data:00471070 ufo_10_types_52___ dw 5 ; UFO_Waypoint_count
.data:00471070 dw 5, 0, 0, 1, 5, -1, -1, -1; UFO_Waypoint_Site
.data:00471070 dw 4, 3, 1, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0; UFO_Waypoint_Altitude
.data:00471070 dw 100, 74, 28, 47,100, 0, 0, 0; UFO_Waypoint_Speed
.data:00471070 dw 3000 ; Ground_Timer
--[[User:Volutar|Volutar]] 05:59, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

==Clarification pls==

- So all these missions, once started, will continue in the precise sequence no matter what?

:: Yes; only most of these tables have been verified by inspection of the savegame files in a hex editor, however. Infiltration has not. Matching the savegame file behavior against the in-game data Seb76 has located is tricky. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]]

- What about the whole thing with whether it's found the site or not (e.g. Terror Ships finding/not finding a city to raid, Battleships finding/not finding your base)? Does this apply to all missions?

:: The base assault battleships are not on the Retaliation Act sequence, they're controlled by [[XBASES.DAT]]. Reverse-engineering how the Retaliation Act ships find bases hasn't been precisely done yet (don't let the UFOs get too close to the base), mind shielding reduces the range at which a UFO can spot a base.

::: So the two battleships that don't ever spot your base are unrelated to the battleships that come if you're spotted? [[User:magic9mushroom]]

:::: Correct. I've had entire Retaliation Acts cycle without scheduling a base attack battleship, but this was with [[XBASES.DAT]] never flagging a base for retaliation.

:: As for Terror Ships: whether a UFO lands or not, appears to be controlled by its ufo-c/ufo-sub-c indexing. If they have orders to land, they won't have problems finding an appropriate site. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]]

::: So that means that of the two Terror Ship indexes you have listed, only one occurs in any given mission? [[User:magic9mushroom]]

:::: For all act types, the indexes are incremented in strictly increasing order (with all ufo-sub-c indexes run through before the ufo-c index is incremented). It may take more than one hour for a ufo to reach hyperwave detection with incomplete hyperwave coverage. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]]

:::::So are there two Terror Ships per mission or not?

:::::: The separation between Terror Ship 2/0 and Terror Ship 3/0 is a few days, so it's conceptually two missions with one Terror Ship each with the Terror Act. Empirical research into ufo behavior suggests that if they are not shot down, Terror Ship 2/0 never lands, while Terror Ship 3/0 always lands (and gives you a terror site). -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]]

- With the infiltration, what does the "it starts again" mean? Does that mean that once an infiltration mission has started in a zone, endless infiltrations will run there until all countries there are infiltrated?

:: Infiltration is the only mission type that loops. It will continue even after all countries in the zone have been infiltrated. Russia is empirically immune to infiltration in all versions higher than DOS 1.0. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]]

::: So what happens at the conclusion of an Infiltration mission after all countries in the zone are infiltrated? Does a country outside the zone get infiltrated? Does no country get infiltrated? [[User:magic9mushroom]]

::::Nothing happens. Was rather fortunate to experience this a few times - and when I ran a no-funding-country scenario where I edited the save and flagged all the countries as withdrawn. Rather amusing to see them infiltrate an already infiltrated country and yield no results. In this case, the only real impact is the area activity points, which the neighbours will notice. -[[User:NKF|NKF]] 05:30, 10 August 2009 (EDT)

- It says the order for infiltrations is Terror ship -> Battleship -> Supply ship -> Battleship, but my own experience contradicts this - I shot down each UFO in an infiltration run, and the sequence was Terror ship -> Supply ship -> Battleship -> Battleship.

:: While Infiltration has not been verified by me in-game yet, the tables all assume that all UFOs in the sequence are detected. This is more interesting if this was with the Hyperwave Decoder. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 8:42, 9 August 2009 (CDT)

::: It was with a Hyper-Wave Decoder and I shot down each before the next appeared. [[User:Magic9mushroom|Magic9mushroom]] 04:07, 10 August 2009 (EDT)

:::: All eight are in the executable, in the order specified in MISSIONS.DAT. However, the four mentioned are pretty much "in a row": the sixth should arrive exactly one hour later after the fifth, and so on. That is, you have one hour to shoot down the Terror Ship to delay the three others by ~2 weeks. -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 9:37, 10 August 2009 (CDT)

::::: Well, it was days between detecting each one. They definitely arrived in the order Terror Ship, Supply Ship, Battleship, Battleship.

:::::: See it in the executable, fixing that now. (Mapping duration from executable to empirical is tricky, as is estimating turning points and landing counts.) -- [[User:Zaimoni|Zaimoni]], 9:37, 10 August 2009 (CDT)

Thanks in advance. [[User:Magic9mushroom|Magic9mushroom]] 04:14, 9 August 2009 (EDT)

I understood what mean third entry in section Alien Data Missions at executable file.
As I said in forum Seeing speeds of USO sub we can determine the mission of this USO sub even without transmission resolver - even in january 2040
Every USO sub in every missions (interdiction, colony, probe and other) have unique speeds and we can determine mission of USO on their speed
And we can determine what amount of times a sub touch down on his mission - because every mission has unique rule for touch down USO subs
And we can determine what amount of time USO Sub will touch down on their mission - because every Sub in every mission has unique and ALWAYS equal amoun of time to touch down (p.s. this time we can see in file Loc.dat)

And third entry - it's index of speeds of sub.

I have table of speeds of all USO subs. Where can locate it?

== Non-scheduled Terror Missions ==

What is it known on terror missions which are NOT in MISSIONS.DAT? At least in TFTD, such missions are, as a rule, on the 1st of each month, 1:00 (are they always ship route attacks?). Saving the game before the attack but after the midnight (1st, 0:00), and next loading and continuing it, always leads to a mission in the same (exact) location, on the same type of the ship, and with the same alien race (or Mixed Crew). Only numbers of particular creatures of a given race can change. So, the mission properties must be stored somewhere between the midnight and 1:00 (when the attack occurs). The game must store this information somewhere, and it is not MISSION.DAT for sure.

Such a first-o'clock alien terror mission does not influence the normal, scheduled alien missions (so, it is even possible to have another terror mission just few hours after the first one, if only the other mission had been scheduled). Where is it stored?

Does a similar phenomenon occur in UFO:EU as well?

[[File:Nstm.zip]] - a set of savegames for tests, the explanation inside.

[[User:Sherlock|Sherlock]] 20:24, 30 January 2013 (EST)

:It's in [[LOC.DAT]]. As in, the terror site already existed before it became visible to you, so you actually saved AFTER the attack started. -  [[User:Bomb_Bloke|Bomb Bloke]] ([[User_talk:Bomb_Bloke|Talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/Bomb_Bloke|Contribs]]) 02:02, 31 January 2013 (EST)

== Addresses ==

I'm not great at this sort of thing so I'd like to know if the following is correct. Zaimoni's example, ''"E.g. infiltration(3) in Europe(4) would have the offset 3*8+4*(7*8)=0xF8"'' means the entries are ordered by missiontype*8 + region*56 (respectively from [[ACTS.DAT]] and [[ZONAL.DAT]]) ???

Running that logic through excel I generated the addresses below. I guess they make sense; it could look like what's going on in-game though I don't have any saves where I am dead-certain what missions are running... which is what brought me to this page... :)

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"
|-
! Adr.Hex !! Mission
|-
| 0 || Research in North America
|-
| 8 || Harvest in North America
|-
| 10 || Abduction in North America
|-
| 18 || Infiltration in North America
|-
| 20 || Base in North America
|-
| 28 || Terror in North America
|-
| 30 || Retaliation in North America
|-
| 38 || Research in Arctic
|-
| 40 || Harvest in Arctic
|-
| 48 || Abduction in Arctic
|-
| 50 || Infiltration in Arctic
|-
| 58 || Base in Arctic
|-
| 60 || Terror in Arctic
|-
| 68 || Retaliation in Arctic
|-
| 70 || Research in Antarctic
|-
| 78 || Harvest in Antarctic
|-
| 80 || Abduction in Antarctic
|-
| 88 || Infiltration in Antarctic
|-
| 90 || Base in Antarctic
|-
| 98 || Terror in Antarctic
|-
| A0 || Retaliation in Antarctic
|-
| A8 || Research in South America
|-
| B0 || Harvest in South America
|-
| B8 || Abduction in South America
|-
| C0 || Infiltration in South America
|-
| C8 || Base in South America
|-
| D0 || Terror in South America
|-
| D8 || Retaliation in South America
|-
| E0 || Research in Europe
|-
| E8 || Harvest in Europe
|-
| F0 || Abduction in Europe
|-
| F8 || Infiltration in Europe
|-
| 100 || Base in Europe
|-
| 108 || Terror in Europe
|-
| 110 || Retaliation in Europe
|-
| 118 || Research in North Africa
|-
| 120 || Harvest in North Africa
|-
| 128 || Abduction in North Africa
|-
| 130 || Infiltration in North Africa
|-
| 138 || Base in North Africa
|-
| 140 || Terror in North Africa
|-
| 148 || Retaliation in North Africa
|-
| 150 || Research in South Africa
|-
| 158 || Harvest in South Africa
|-
| 160 || Abduction in South Africa
|-
| 168 || Infiltration in South Africa
|-
| 170 || Base in South Africa
|-
| 178 || Terror in South Africa
|-
| 180 || Retaliation in South Africa
|-
| 188 || Research in Central Asia
|-
| 190 || Harvest in Central Asia
|-
| 198 || Abduction in Central Asia
|-
| 1A0 || Infiltration in Central Asia
|-
| 1A8 || Base in Central Asia
|-
| 1B0 || Terror in Central Asia
|-
| 1B8 || Retaliation in Central Asia
|-
| 1C0 || Research in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1C8 || Harvest in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1D0 || Abduction in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1D8 || Infiltration in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1E0 || Base in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1E8 || Terror in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1F0 || Retaliation in Southeast Asia
|-
| 1F8 || Research in Siberia
|-
| 200 || Harvest in Siberia
|-
| 208 || Abduction in Siberia
|-
| 210 || Infiltration in Siberia
|-
| 218 || Base in Siberia
|-
| 220 || Terror in Siberia
|-
| 228 || Retaliation in Siberia
|-
| 230 || Research in Australasia
|-
| 238 || Harvest in Australasia
|-
| 240 || Abduction in Australasia
|-
| 248 || Infiltration in Australasia
|-
| 250 || Base in Australasia
|-
| 258 || Terror in Australasia
|-
| 260 || Retaliation in Australasia
|-
| 268 || Research in Wilderness
|-
| 270 || Harvest in Wilderness
|-
| 278 || Abduction in Wilderness
|-
| 280 || Infiltration in Wilderness
|-
| 288 || Base in Wilderness
|-
| 290 || Terror in Wilderness
|-
| 298 || Retaliation in Wilderness
|}

--[[User:Tlist|Tlist]] ([[User talk:Tlist|talk]]) 13:46, 25 May 2014 (EDT)

Talk:MISSIONS.DAT

2014-05-25T17:45:13Z

Tlist: /* Addresses */ new section