Talk:Main Page/Archive

Discussion/talk page proposed format

Ok folks, we all seem to have our own ways of adding comments to a discussion page. The way it stands now, it becomes really difficult to follow a discussion when it is broken apart with different formats. What I suggest is this: when you leave a comment use a horizontal line to separate your post from the one(s) above it. In this manner, everything is left justified and the comments are separated. The reason why I do not support the colon as comment separation is that as the discussion progresses you are going to be adding more and more just to get the indenting correct. It also makes it confusing. Another side effect is that once you have a lot of colons present it pushes the text off the page itself and forces a scroll to the right to view. That isn't good.

I suppose if we really want to use colons as separators, we could alternate the use. If a comment is indented above yours, do nothing. If a comment is not indented, use a colon for your submission. Still, the constant zig-zagging isn't really the best idea either.

My vote is therefore to stick with the horizontal line (four dashes). If the discussion veers way off course, or if you have a couple questions/comments, break it apart into different headings. And always sign your post too as that makes it easier to follow.

Discuss.--Zombie 20:46, 9 March 2007 (PST)

Works for me, Zombie. Another problem with indentation is that one isn't necessarily addressing only the previous comment, but it could be about the previous one, and tying together things that are 4, 6, and 12 entries back. Colons are fine for quick rejoinders, but not as a requirement. A potential alternative is to leave two blank lines, as I just did after your sig. This is a fairly clear delineator for folks scanning quickly. However, the horizontal separator is more clear, in general. So I guess I'd vote for the hor-sep for all except quick comments thrown in, which can use colons. And anything that's a new topic or big break should get a new topic, using = signs. - MikeTheRed 21:10, 9 March 2007 (PST)

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I've reformatted Talk:Exploits#Extra_Ammo_Exploit to demonstrate how the indentation style can work, if done consistently. I think it's somewhat better than the line-separator style for very long discussions, making the structure a little clearer. However, if it's sometimes-used and sometimes-not things get messy, as you've noticed.

I'll codify the rules right here (surprisingly, they're not well-codified on Wikipedia itself, despite the fact that it's used quite consistently throughout the site):

• Add an indent for each reply
• Reuse your prior level of indentation if it's a back and forth:

First person's comment

:Second person's comment

::Third person's comment

:Second person again

::Third person again

::Third person's afterthought

:Second person again

::First person jumping back in

:::Third person once more

::First person again

• If you get to 5 or 6 indents, just "reset" (start without indents for the next reply).
• If you have an addendum to your own comments, use the same indent level and re-sign.
• If somebody doesn't know/doesn't use the right indent level, fix it when adding your next reply so the rules become clear during the course of conversation.
• Likewise, if someone adds a new comment to the top or fails to add a heading when starting a new subject, fix it when replying.

The problem we've had lately is the mixing of styles, neither being used correctly. So far it seems that myself, Sf, and NKF have been using indents, you (Zombie) and Mike favoring dashes, and most newcomers failing to use either. No clear winner just yet. ;-) --Ethereal Cereal 23:56, 9 March 2007 (PST)

What if you're addressing several and various issues raised before, not just a comment on the previous statement? (And it runs on for four or six paragraphs?) - MikeTheRed 00:14, 10 March 2007 (PST)

If you're consolidating a bunch of replies to several earlier points, that's a good time to reset the indent.--Ethereal Cereal 01:07, 10 March 2007 (PST)

Works for me, Eth - MikeTheRed 16:47, 9 November 2007 (PST)

Game Editors

I was going to add a link off the Main Page to the Game editors section that I wrote, under Misc. I still have a nagging feeling there is another list of them somewhere, but I can't find it. Any comments?

Also, any additions to the Game editors section are welcome.

Spike 03:40, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

I don't think we've ever had a particular listing of editors.

Tell you what, I'll throw these changes in, and we'll see how this works out.

1. I'll put the new game editor section onto the UFO main table (I've also renamed the page to stick to the first capital letter naming convention the other articles use).
2. I removed XComutil off the main table, since it'll be under the game file section.
3. Removed the UBK - it's just a tool for wiki editors and not something that would interest players of the game.

I might also add the Command Prompt to the game editor section for its notes on using MS-Edit as a binary file editor.

- NKF 04:46, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

While I see the validity of adding XComUtil to a page regarding editors won't it make sense to keep a sublink to the page which deals on how to use it, together with MSEdit? I mean, the other editors only have links to them on that page and I think that at least XComUtil deserves main page status because of its notoriosity and complexity. What do you guys think? - Hobbes 14:08, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

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a good idea to include the Command Prompt help. How about broadly dividing it into 2 sections: X-COM-specific tools and general purpose tools? Spike 07:08, 17 March 2008 (PDT)

Newb questions

Hello good sirs. Sorry for my bad non-native english. While in total noob in wiki, im relatively for long playd this great games. Great thanks for you for this great site, it really helped me with some ideas, especially with Funding Nation, even dont know how i played it before without it. Now more close to point, i realized what TFTD section here are, say, unperfect, if not somewhat wrong. As i readed somewhere not all play TFTD much, UFO1 instead, so it maybe be the point. Id edit something on it, but im totally dunno how to do it, and my language will have too many mistakes to be proudly presented to people. So id be glade to hear what you may propose for me to do. Again big thanks. Ill wait for answer.

PS Or im searched too badly, or its differ in TFTD (i play only it now) from UFO1, but i cant find here about stunned persons behaviour. Cant find what they awake only if theyr stun is lower then HP's and if only they have awaken person in theyr tile during end of turn. IMHO its important thing to know off, at least for me.

PPS. My friend made great tiny changes to one tiny file, what make FundingNations game way more easy and elegant then described in issue. I can upload it if you need this, tho its for TFTD im sure he can do UFO1 also if its needed. Anyway this game too easy even on FN to play it without it :).

Eh PPPS. Dunno how to properly log on :(.

Do not worry about the language barrier - sometimes it's harder to understand people who speak English natively! ;) In any case, There'll be other editors who will be able to help fix the article for you if you can get the idea across.

To get started editing pages, check the Community Portal on the left sidebar. That has links to articles that can help you get started - more or less. One good way to find out how some text is formatted (or anything else you'd like to duplicate) is to edit the page and see how it's done in the source.

If in doubt, or if you're unsure about editing the article, feel free put your ideas or suggestions in the article's Discussion page.

Because TFTD and UFO share a lot of the same mechanics, there would be a lot of unnecessary duplication if we were to write up articles for it that are already available in the UFO articles. Therefore we mainly include articles that cover topics that are unique to TFTD, like the weapons, door opening, aliens, etc. General mechanics like how damage works or how experience is earned is identical to UFO's, so there's no need to duplicate them. What sections do you think need improving or what sections do we need to add? The more input the better.

Regarding consciousness, have you checked the Unconscious article? I think we might need to redo that article bit and perhaps add a few illustrations. One note about the difference between UFO and TFTD with the visual appearance of a unit recovered with a medikit needs to go in there too if it hasn't already. Oh well. - NKF 22:54, 22 May 2008 (PDT)

PS, to sign your messages in the discussion pages, put four tilde's ~~~~ anywhere you want to insert your name and the timestamp.

same questions

Thank you for answer. I been somwhat incorrect in my english. I didnt mean what TFTD pages are bad or what they lose reduntand UFO1 information. All they lack are only slightly wrongly described alien's dangers levels (one of most dangerous creatures cant be low treat, and least dangerous one medium) and lack of mission types what only TFTD have. Also i readed "Unconscious@ article few times, stiil cant find only how to use medkit and no word about what generally need for stunned person to rise. From that follow advices to grenade stunned chryssalids and so on.

PS. Oh, yes, and whats wrong with door openings? Derrida 08:59, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

A unit falls unconscious when the stun bar is equal or greater than the unit's remaining health points. If it's under that, the unit will be awake.

To wake a soldier up, you have to reduce the stun level by either waiting for the stun to wear off, 1 point per turn, or use stimulants on a medikit. Looks like the TFTD section doesn't have its own medikit page, but UFO's Medi-Kit section explains how to use it, as they are identical. Basically, if the unit is unconscious, the medic must stand on top of the unconscious unit and use stimulants (the second choice) until the unconscious soldier wakes up. When the unconscious unit wakes up, they'll appear to the north of the medic.

TFTD's stun weapons are much more powerful than in TFTD, so you often have to use a lot of stimulants to wake a person up.

TFTD's unique because it allows you to open doors by right clicking them - and it's a free action so you won't spend any TUs to do it. UFO cannot do this (except the Playstation version).

As for the threat levels of the aliens - I agree, some should be reclassified. Personally I'd move the Gill-Men and Calcinite up to medium threat - all the current medium level threats look just about right though. What are your suggestions?

Hang on, why are there so many references to vibroblades in the overview article? That can't be right. I'll have to update that later on. - NKF 15:05, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

Nonono. I mean what if unit's stun damage falled below it's HP, and no one stand in tile it lying, it will never rise. Medkits not the point. No stunned aliens or soldiers will rise if no one will end turn on it, or take it to inventory/hand. I tried to say this. Maybe it been different in UFO1 (as with doors, i thought what doors always open by right click, and in UFO1 too (btw cant find about door opening anywere in wiki)), but in TFTD it means what you dont have to bother with stunned tentaculats etc to rise after stun if you do not stand on it, or try to move it in backpack/hand. Same with soldiers, you can click zillion turns, but they will never rise until someone stand on it. Without this game must be horrible with all this undying lobsters awake afer you pass them. With danger level id suggest this: Harmless: hallucinoid; deep one; Low: gillmen; aquatoid; Meduim: zombie; calcinite; bio-drone; lobsterman; xarquid; high: tasoth; triscene; What really matters: tentaculat. In line of growing dangerness. Derrida 16:30, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

Regarding image file formats

I'd really like to add a note somewhere obvious about using GIFs for screenshots in the wiki, rather than JPGs. For 256-color images like X-COM uses, GIFs are no larger than JPGs and generally look much better. For example, see the nasty compression artifacts on the terrain maps in the Terror Ship article. PNGs might work just as well, I'm not sure, but we should really avoid JPGs.

Where would be the best place to mention this? I'm thinking near the top of the main page for visibility, but that might be more clutter than people want. Phasma Felis 23:59, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

It's been dealt with here that PNG is the preferred file format of the wiki; however, where to note this...I honestly don't know. Arrow Quivershaft 00:37, 12 June 2008 (PDT)

PNG's reduced to 256 or less colours can be quite the space saver for X-Com screenshots. You can go the extra step and run them through PNG compression programs and somesuch - but they're pretty good as-is. Jpgs should be reserved for images with a broader range of colours. One place the note could go is in Guidelines to writing articles. In fact, that section could do with a few extra additions in any case to expand is to that it's not just covering the composition of the language of the articles, but to cover the creation of the articles. - NKF 03:04, 12 June 2008 (PDT)

Hosting move.

Hi guys. It appears I'm still hosting the UFOpaedia - I did discuss moving it to StrategyCore with both Zombie and Pete a while ago and I think I gave them copies of what would be required.

Anyway, I'm moving hosting servers so the UFOpaedia is going to move too. I'm aiming to carry out the transfer on Sunday September 28th at about 8pm GMT+1. Any changes made between this time and the time that the transfer completes may be lost, but hopefully not. Just thought I'd give you guys a bit of notice.

I should point out that I still have no objection to hosting the UFOpaedia on my servers, it's a great project and you guys have done a bang-up job with it, it's far surpassed my original intentions :) However, if StrategyCore want to take over hosting to remove the potential "failure point" (i.e. me) then that's fine and we can give it another shot?

GazChap, 25th September 2008 12:50 GMT+1

Thanks for the heads-up Gaz-Chap! Sure, StrategyCore is still willing to host the UFOpaedia. Sorry things didn't quite work out the last time we talked. Pete needs to be constantly reminded to do things as he's easily distracted. I'll try and start a fire under his bum to get the ball rolling again. --Zombie 07:14, 25 September 2008 (PDT)

Hosting has now been moved to StrategyCore. Cheers to Pete and Zombie for sorting it out. GazChap, 11:28, 1 October 2008 (GMT+1)

There may be a slight problem with caching of the temporary holding page ("coming back soon". On some browsers I'm using (not all), the temporary page is still up and you can't see the UFOPaedia site. Spike 17:48, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

The new website address is quite likely still propagating out through DNS, since we moved hosts. So that's just the nature of the internet and should be gone in a day or two. Arrow Quivershaft 19:06, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

Most browsers seem to allow a full page refresh via Ctrl + F5. There's also an option re caching under the Misc section of your Preferances - I had to disable it ages ago 'cause it was always failing to show me page changes... - Bomb Bloke 21:54, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

Sorry about the downtime everyone. The bandwidth limit wasn't set high enough after the recent change in hosting and basically didn't allow access. I contacted Pete and he fixed the issue. Good to catch these issues earlier rather than later. --Zombie 15:11, 15 October 2008 (CDT)

14 March 2009

Zombie mentioned that Pete may be moving the server this weekend. I'm getting lots of errors and more or less unable to make updates to the site. Probably this is to do with the server move. Spike 19:14, 14 March 2009 (EDT)

Apparently the move has been complete most of the day. So if you guys continue to have problems, please contact me and I'll relay it over to Pete. I'm not experiencing any problems though. --Zombie 21:34, 14 March 2009 (EDT)

500 Internal error

This seems to occur whenever I edit a subsection on a page, and I click the edit button on the TOP of the page instead of the edit button next to the subsection title. So, if you wanna avoid this error, try using the button which only edits that subsection... Jasonred 05:40, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Already been tried. Doesn't work any better. UFOpaedia admin is on it, I've been told. Arrow Quivershaft 12:05, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Pete's finished his latest round of changes. Give it another go. - Bomb Bloke 22:12, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Humor and Flavour Text

GEH!!! This whole issue is taking on a life of it's own. On one hand, yes, I can see the allure of ufopedia being a serious informative site. On the other hand, there's the "fun" factor... When you get right down to it, Xcom is actually a rather simplistic game in terms of storyline, and storyline interactivity, so we REALLY have to make up our own, otherwise the game degenerates into "capture this technology, research research, shoot shoot. MC = win game". The ingame UFOpedia is great, but it's limited to several paragraphs to describe an entire race of creatures, and 2-3 lines to describe the horror of Blaster Bombs and such. ... I vote that this online UFOpedia becomes everything that the ufopedia in-game was missing... let's have something that ENTERTAINS as well as giving good accurate information!

I'll wait for the votes to come in before touching anything else. I agree with you guys, the Lobstermen and other aquatic aliens getting eaten is something that is VERY much a part of the X-com community's culture... it should go into the UFOpedia. Jasonred 04:00, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I've nothing against humour. All for it. In fact I'd very much like to see more of that so that definitely gets my vote. A few light hearted moments in between all the seriousness does wonders. Perhaps not when you're getting into the particulars, but the descriptions or opening paragraphs that don't get into deep detail could be livened up a little. In moderation, of course!

However, the hard part is deciding on the line between being humorous within the confines of what's available (yes, funny discussions amongst the troops about eating lobstermen after battle instead of selling it could count towards that), and then there's making stuff up. Apologies to Morken for borrowing an example from his on-going graphic novel: explaining the alien's general idiocy/sportsmanship through their strong belief in the tenets of Amgoth. Highly amusing, but not part of the story. Granted, I don't think we've got anything like that on the wiki, but you never know.

In any case, a good mental exercise for the writers. -NKF 05:14, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

My two cents then: I like the humour, anecdotes, flavour and fan fiction but I think the main purpose of UFOPaedia is informational and that should not be compromised. I like the little touches of humour, and I've been known to attempt them myself. But humour and anecdotes should be kept brief and supplementary - e.g. one-liners and wry observations at the end of a section. Non-canonical flavour text and fan fiction (especially) should be kept clearly separate and distinguishable. Someone reading the site with no prior knowledge of XCOM should be able to tell right away what is factual vs what is humour or speculation/imagination. Not quite sure how to do that - maybe by using sidebars, the Humour category... ok ran out of ideas there already. Maybe we need an "official" font for reproducing canonical, in-game flavour text, so it stands out. Not sure.

Also, humour, anecdote and flavour are much more subjective than fact. What one person thinks is funny, others may not. So non-factual content may just get edited out unless a lot of people agree that it's funny/cool/interesting etc - in fact that's probably already happening. Maybe a good idea is to make the jokes on the Talk pages, and if they are found to be universally funny, move them on to the main articles later - pretty much the same as factual content in fact? Spike 05:19, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I'm certain that we would all agree that the wiki is first and foremost an informative site. We needn't go so far as to point out to the readers what is or isn't. That would be overdoing it. A dash of humour anywhere we can get away with it without compromising the message, facts or turn it into fan fiction is really all that's required and can be more effective. Like spices, the right amount can add to the flavour of a dish. Too much and it just ruins it.

Now a little creative writing to make the articles (with or without the humour) more captivating to the reader and less like text-books will certainly go a long way. But then again, I believe that we've always attempted to do this. -NKF 06:04, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I agree with NKF's point here regarding humor. But, concerning fanfic, to make up and add things that aren't on the original UFOPaedias or the History distributed with Interceptor is to take too much liberty with the original material (in regards with fan fiction). Just because it gets discussed in the forums at strategycore or xcomufo or that it is mentioned in someone's fanfic doesn't mean that it should be taken as a fact, regardless of the argument that the game story belongs to its fans/players. The game belongs to all of them and quite frankly we are quite a minority (although a very loyal one) regarding that. Hobbes 21:58, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

I personally hate the in-game perspective of some articles. I come to this page mainly to get information, not cheesy stories somebody made up. How about splitting it into two wikis? A serious one in the style of a guide book and a fan-fic one full of funny stories and made up background information? RedNifre 07:55, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

That's why we've got the Field Manual, which is all fiction. The rest should be as fan-fiction free as possible, and any light hearted bits in the non-essential text shouldn't affect the game mechanics explanations (which I feel is the wiki's star aspect). Much of what fiction there (all the non-canon stuff) is a throwback to when we first started and were populating the wiki before we started developing article standards. If you think there's anything that can be done better, we can easily sort that out. -NKF 08:53, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

XML dumps available?

Hello guys! Kudos for creating this amazing wiki!

I have some ideas and I'd like to test them on an XML dump of ufopaedia, since it's a small but interesting wiki. Do you offer the dumps for download somewhere (like wikipedia does)? That would be absolutely fantastic. :) RedNifre 10:23, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

Do you mean Special:Export? --Zombie 20:31, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

I'm not sure if that export page does the job. It seems that it only allows downloading a list of articles I have to type in. What I want is ALL articles of Ufopaedia in XML, be it one file per article or one file for all articles(which I would prefer, since that is what Wikipedia provides and I'd like my software to work with all wikis). You can see what Wikipedia offers here [[1]] and here [[2]]. Thanks! RedNifre 23:19, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

Never mind, I just entered all the relevant categories into the export page and got the XML file I was looking for (Downloading only the files relevant to playing X-COM 1 results in 1.5MB of XML). Thanks! RedNifre 11:21, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

More problems! Since "Special:Export" seems to only allow categories it is impossible to download articles that have no category (e.g. "civilian"). I see two ways how you could fix this: Add an option "Include all uncategorized articles to export" to the export page or put every article in categories. Or run a script that puts every article without category in a "Other" category. RedNifre 07:26, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

I've read a post concerning this and I suddenly couldn't remember if there's any guidelines regarding this, so I decided to ask your opinion about it. I've been transcribing quite a few descriptions from game manuals and game UFOPaedia's for the articles about Apocalypse that I've been adding because I worked under the assumption that this site is basically an online resource for players and it already uses a lot of copyrighted materials, especially images (and also to save some work in creating articles for the pages I've been adding). Another thing that I've been putting into practice is some special editing to differenciate canon material from official sources, I can't remember how to describe but just check any the page of any organization from Apocalypse. Likely there's a better way to it but the most important would be to add something regarding this matter to the UFOPaedia's guidelines Hobbes

I've been thinking that official quotes of in-game text should be clearly defined as such and left unmodified. Perhaps a formatted table with a note at the end stating its source (or title/author/publisher/ISBN if it's from official printed material). Perhaps even have the quotation in italics.

(Example removed)

Would something like the above, or along similar lines work? Could be done by way of two templates (open and close), and you just sandwich the text in between them. The open/close templates could take one parameter each, the title/source. Leaving it out will obviously leave a blank. -NKF 21:56, 28 February 2010 (EST)

Something like this would do rather nicely. I think the important part is for the source of the copyrighted material to be clear. Hobbes 12:36, 6 March 2010 (EST)

These could use some adjustments if anyone has any feedback to offer, but I've converted the previous example into a pair of templates. We now have {{Ref Open}} and {Ref Close | }} to wrap around quotations.

UFOpaedia entry

Celatid Autopsy Official Entry "The core contains a small bio-mechanical device which appears to be a naturally evolved anti-gravity propulsion system. The sac of venom is the largest organ and there does not appear to be a separate brain structure. There is no discernible digestive or reproductive system. A small organ contains embryos which can grow rapidly into a new being."

Source:

The pipe symbol is very important for Ref Close - you put the list of references right after it. Check the source for the above example. The text is set to display one size smaller than the current font and is right aligned, but you can also use links and simple text formatting in the reference list. -NKF 22:15, 6 March 2010 (EST)

Awesome stuff - thanks for the great work NKF. Spike 4:57, 7 March 2010 (EST)

And for those wondering if the above reference blocks look a bit off, I've update-ified the reference tags to make them a a bit easier to maintain and so that less effort goes into formatting the text that you sandwich the ref open and ref close blocks around. Actually the formatting and indent are gone - but I don't think it matters too much. On the bright side, the formatting can now be altered site-wide by just editing the templates rather than the individual pages.

Another change is that I have made the parameters into named parameters. Means you've got so specify them to set them. They also appear to be case sensitive. Ref Open now takes a title. If not set, it uses a default message UFOpaedia entry. Ref Close takes source. NKF 06:40, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

Translation?

Hi everybody

I just found this ufopaedia and now I'm spending most of my time at work here :-)

In Uruguay there is a very small X-Com community, and AFAIK, I'm the first one to find this site. I was thinking about translating the articles to spanish (very slowly), since most players around here are not familiar with the advanced "tips and tricks". I could also post about the rather poor game translation. Do you think it could be worth it?

Diegoba 06:38, 15 August 2009 (EDT)

Hi Diegoba. I think those are great ideas. You could even work on an improved SPANISH.DAT. Hobbes posts here frequently and I believe he did the Spanish translation for XcomUtil. If you were translating Wiki pages, I wonder which pages should be translated first? We would need to think about how to structure it. Maybe an /en and an /es path, like Wikipedia does it?

Spike 13:10, 15 August 2009 (EDT)

Having the /en /es path sounds good. I was thinking about leaving the pages with the most basic info (IE, Geoscape / Base screen description) for the last. I believe that anyone already knows this basics, and are not that hard to understand.

But I really don't know how to get it started. Do I just create an article called "pagina principal" (main page) and then link from there? I guess that page can then be mapped to es.ufopaedia.org

Diegoba 07:04, 16 August 2009 (EDT)

I see you already started on a home page, cool. It makes sense to start with "Top Tricks & Tips".We probably need that in English too!

Thinking about the structure, this is a wiki, so maybe name your pages e.g. "Home Page (Espanol)". Then link each Spanish name "{Spanish Name}" as a wiki redirect to each "{English Name} (Espanol)" Spanish page. Or vice-versa.While you only have a small number of Spanish pages, link them from See Also of the English page, as well as from the Spanish Home Page.Just some suggestions. Hopefully Zombie and those other sysop-type guys will express a view.

Spike 09:47, 16 August 2009 (EDT)

I have no idea how this would work out to be honest. An /es path would probably be the best idea, but I think we'd need to be running a second copy of the wiki software to make that possible. (Something I always wanted anyway as UFO2000 isn't really a game in the series but a project - we are just hosting their pages). If anyone knows how the Wikipedia handles the languages internally, please let me know. Doing all those redirects just doesn't make much sense to me because it is a huge amount of work and could tax the system if there are too many queries. --Zombie 22:30, 18 August 2009 (EDT)

What about just creating a link for both languages in the left side menu, and a link to the other language in the main page?. That is simple enough, and most people will be visiting one language or the other, not switching around.

Diegoba 20:18, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

That would work for now and it has the benefit of being simple. Spike 06:31, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Ok, I added a link to the Spanish main page in the sidebar. Is that good? --Zombie 23:53, 28 August 2009 (EDT)

Juju Dredd 12:00, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Hi, I'd like translate at least part of this great wiki to French, could somebody tell me how to add Français(french) in the list, or do it if I'm not autorised to do it by myself?

It has to be Gazchap (administrator) to add it to the list on the left methinks. But it is possible to add the link to the main page when the french main page is ready. Hobbes 15:55, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Ok, so I should start with translating this one. Juju Dredd 17:16, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Oh, I've just seen how to modify the languages section. Juju Dredd 17:27, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

I can edit the side panel if you want me to add a French section to the wiki. Shall I call it Francais and link it to Page Principale? -NKF 19:02, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Yes, I was mistaking with the "other languages" sentence at the begining of the main page, I cannot add the link by myself. You guess right, I've begun to write Page Principale as the main page for French. But I think you should call it Français (French) with the cedilla to be consistant with the two others languages links. Juju Dredd 3:16, 1 October 2010 [EDT]

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Site TODOS

A general dump of to-dos or maybe not-do's. Add any where appropriate:

• Template navigation toolbars for subsections. (Some tests have started)
• Strategy by terrain notes?
• Mention of bug where unit gets stuck in the corner of the map
• Mention of bug where you reload a battlescape mission only to be on an invalid level and how to recover from it (use OHMap, go back down to legal level, click until you find the map again, save the game). Often happens after editting the game, strangely enough. Is it possible the game stores map camera coordinates as a file checksum or somesuch?
• Categorizing all pages related to the games. I've finished it already with Apocalypse and TFTD shouldn't be too hard because it has the less pages, but it UFO is going to be a long work. I've already started a few categories for UFO and TFTD (Category: Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and nowiki>Category: TFTD</nowiki>, along with a few specific ones (Research (TFTD and so on). It could also be possible to have some general categories that emcompass the whole of the series (UFOs/USOs, X-COM craft). Hobbes 16:32, 4 November 2009 (EST)

Discussion/talk page proposed format

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Discussion/talk page proposed format

British vs. American spelling

Summary: Use which ever convention you want. It does not matter as long as you do not get into petty spelling convention battles.

XCOM Box Art

Someone (NKF? Danial?) once asked if anybody could scan XCOM's box art, so that they might e.g. put a better graphic on the main page. I just uploaded a 300 dpi scan of all four sides as Media:XCOM_UFO_Defense_DOS_US_Box_Art.zip (3.2 MB). The box is not in mint condition (see the ReadMe), but a little tweaking by somebody with skillz (Danial) could easily spruce it up. - MikeTheRed 18:05, 19 October 2007 (PDT)

Was it me? Hmm. Can't remember. I did think to just grab the cover for the PDF version of the X-Com Player's Handbook (US version - with the Mars/Super Avenger cover), but it's black and white. Could've sworn I've seen a copy in colour somewhere. Not that sepia version wouldn't look great though!

Oh hang on, I don't think it was for the front page graphic in particular, but we did want to get various versions of the box art for the various games. - NKF

---

NKF - or anybody - can we consider replacing the current main page art, with the XCOM box art? Or a portion of it. I loved the game's intro and in-game "cartoon art", but why not use the game's best image, for our primary Main Page image? (Is there somebody with skills that can clean it up quickly? I'm happy to, but I'm no pics wizard.)

One of many possible screencaps

Related to this, I think it would be a nice touch if anyone put a bunch of selected and/or random screen captures (screencaps) onto a page, with a link just "under" (i.e., indented under the Main Page entry for) About X-COM: UFO Defense...

I have a sneaking suspicion that we get a ton of lurkers (someone who is there but never speaks) who once played X-COM and came across our page by chance, and would like to relive it, if even for a few screencaps... yet as it is now, our site is becoming more of an in-depth encyclopedia, instead of a "you were once here" kind of place. All us hard core players gravitate toward the encyclopedia - but even if folks who once played it don't stay, if they say, "wow, I remember doing all that" based on a stack of screenshots, that would be good. I'm thinking of easy sections that are light on text (and no Ufopaedia info), but heavy on thumbnails and click-on screencaps (see the image to the right - I love that financier in the background) like:

• My first base - Decisions
• The Globe - Radar alert!
• First contact! Small farm in Iowa, USA
• Managing Research
• Terror in Sydney! (include zombies - squad wiped out - see next)
• Headline: World Council generally supports X-COM efforts - subheadline - Australia may now be under the control of aliens (funding results for a month)
• Headline: X-COM squad impacted by "Blaster bomb" - the world cries (before and after pix)
• The tricky depths of a Battleship
• Elite squad Mind Controls all aliens
• Final showdown: Cydonia

Each of the sections above might have 1-5 images. Something like that.

If no one objects, can I ask that anyone who is willing to do it, make a bunch of screencaps, using .pngs and thumbnails as shown above. Then lurkers can "remember the days" right up front. And a few more lurkers than currently breeze through, might stay.

To put this in context, CNN recently had a number of articles admiring Commodore 64s (one of them here). X-COM is like that, to me... it lives past its "life expectancy" to gamers, because of how well put together it was, especially including how much it hit you in the gut.

In summary, then. I have one question for us XCOM hardcore (can we change the Main Page image) and one for everybody (want to post a lot of screencaps?). I have made a stub page for the screencaps page. I'll retract it if the hardcore object or there's no response in a couple of months' time. - MikeTheRed 21:44, 14 December 2007 (PST)

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I'm perfectly fine with getting the main title changed. Get a few more ayes and we'll make it so.

A screencap section would be nice. I'm quite partial to creating screencap mini-comics (no, not real comics. Just sequential before/during/after images), although I never use them and they just get deleted in the end.

One benefit is that some of the shots can also be recycled throughout the rest of the site to illustrate certain things. Or for an article that's no more than a solid block of text, something to break up the monotony. I'm also always for a few well placed humorous shots.

-NKF 01:02, 15 December 2007 (PST)

Sounds good, NKF. There could easily be a "comics" page link several ways:

1) The new Main Page entry indented under About X-COM: UFO Defense could also have a link to a comics page, but on the screenshot page itself,

2) That same new entry on the Main Page could read something like "Screenshots - and Comics!" The concept of the screenshots page is to help folks relive the past. And something just as good as screenshots - or better - is screenshots with humor.

3) Or, make a link for it, all by itself, somewhere obvious on the Main Page.

I think it's a great idea!

As for the other idea - you said you're fine re: changing the main title. But it's the graphic at the top of the Main Page that I'm talking about. Just to make sure we're clear on that. - MikeTheRed 17:21, 21 December 2007 (PST)

Request

I have noticed that there is no pictures of TFTD, Apoc, or Int on the main welcome page. Any ordinary joe browsing to here from the four wiki (which I just added the links to point to here in "External links" on each page) is going to leave if they see just the first game picture (and not scroll down to see the other games covered).

SO, my request: have a collage of all four (five incl. email? ) on the front page which easily shows each game box-front. If copywrite issue, then someone could get creative with their own personal artiste skills.

Further up this page there actually has been discussion of using the box art for the various games. Real life, as is often the case, intervenes. But it's not a bad idea mind you. A change is as good as a vacation. -NKF 18:20, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

I was just thinking about this the other day in fact. Anyway, there is a nice collage of all the game boxes on the side of the X-COM Collection box. I could probably scan that and stick it up here for you guys to check out if you want. --Zombie 23:30, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

Zombie, have you had a chance to scan the collage? Just spotted this as I was responding to a different matter. -NKF 22:05, 28 February 2010 (EST)

Favicon

Does the UFOpaedia have a favicon? -- NinthRank 17:51, 6 November 2007 (PST)

We did have it at one time but I think it disappeared after an upgrade to the wiki software. If you have an idea for a favicon, submit it here. --Zombie 18:21, 6 November 2007 (PST)

Okay, I don't know where that logo in the upper left came from, but after a quick GIMP edit, I came up with this: Media:favicon.zip. I'm not quite sure how The GIMP works with icons, so I also included the .png's. What do you think? -- NinthRank 18:51, 6 November 2007 (PST)

Not too shabby. Next time I talk to GazChap, I'll run it past him. Any more ideas for a favicon? I'd like to get a few (at least 3) and run it through a vote here. --Zombie 20:28, 6 November 2007 (PST)

NinthRank and Z, my two cents are something like this. My pics are incredibly crude - I'm a total graphics n00b - and would need somebody like you, Ninth, to turn it into the "burnished gold and navy" (or is that black?), like you did with yours. I couldn't even get my damn background to change for me using simple MS Word art ... what do you use? (See how n00b I am?)

I think you have some great ideas there, but my favicons show as 16x16 pixels. (Is this because I use small icons? I had never heard the the word until you said it, Ninth, at which point I read the wiki entry, and it made immediate sense.) At 16², you have to keep it incredibly simply... having the COM on a big X does that, because it doesn't "waste a repetitive 'X-' across the center", if that makes sense. Another idea is be careful with the X ... I didn't like the X in your 16x16 and 32x32 because it was "narrow" (more vertical than horizontal). I definitely like your 48x48. (I can't tell what's going on with your animated 16x16 .ico, my friend - a 16x16 pic on a 1280x1024 screen (or higher) needs to be real simple. It looks like a tiny pulsing thing, with an X sort of there, overall.) I think the X should be, if not symmetric, then, more wide than high - to me, this implies something "ominous". A true X would have to be "cut off" at the corners to be "wide and fat" at 16x16. This shows more in my second try than the first.

You can make things bigger than 16², a real plus and you get much more flexibility, but for me, only 16x16 exists.

My two cents. I love your overall idea, and using navy (or black?) with gold trim. Thanks for signing in and helping out, NinthRank! -MikeTheRed 19:40, 14 December 2007 (PST)

Technical Commentaries

I just thought of adding a specific section concerning commentaries regarding the game, i.e., trying to explain how the weapons/diplomacy/funding/etc. would work in real life. The idea here is not to expand on the canon X-COM material but to describe/explain in a rational way. I've come with this idea after reading Spike's section (on his User talk:Spike page) explaining the economics of X-COM and starting my own section regarding the Council of Funding Nations. I think there is plenty of material available on the Data canisters that could be used/adapted to this. Also, the discussion regarding Elerium (with all those formulas) on the Talk Page is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.

- Hobbes 22:59, 10 March 2008 (PDT)

I don't see any problem with it. Go for it. We've started with a magnificent wealth of knowledge about the game itself (and a bit beyond, with the binary file diving). Theories and explanations of the X-Com world wouldn't be out of place. They'd certainly add a bit of literary colour and interest for those that wish to look beyond the game. There are lots of interesting bits and pieces scattered throughout the articles (like real world equivalents of weapon or tanks, just to name one example) that would probably fit better in a section like that than in the articles. Perhaps a an expanded data-canister like section would be in order. - NKF 01:13, 11 March 2008 (PDT)

Regarding image file formats

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Regarding image file formats

Proposed top level links

I've written some pages which I'd like to be proposed be linked to the main page, unless anyone can suggest where to put them (careful now!).

I'd like to link Fictional Equivalents to the main page.

I'd like to link Wish List (TFTD) to the TFTD page. It would also be good to start a Known Bugs (TFTD) page, for TFTD-specific bugs.

However as some tricky template work is involved, I'd rather not make these links myself for fear of screwing up the main page(s). Thoughts? Spike 11:20, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Feel free to edit the templates - as long as the tables look okay when you preview them, they shouldn't break the page. The templates are standard pages but with a fancy prefix to their file name to categorize them as templates. This was needed so that any updates to them would show up on the main page right away without forcing the viewers to force-refresh the page. - NKF 12:46, 14 November 2008 (CST)

It should be noted that the TRTBAG more or less covers the "Known Bugs for TFTD" segment. Arrow Quivershaft 16:08, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Well it covers the Research Tree bugs but not any of the other TFTD-specific bugs as far as I can see. Still that's a good starting point, thanks AQ! And thanks Zombie for adding the links. Spike 17:34, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Maybe TRTBAG should just BECOME the "Known Bugs(TFTD)" page. Arrow Quivershaft 17:36, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Because TRTBAG is such an excellent self contained guide, and well written, and quite long, I think it should be separate. I will link to it under the Known Bugs (TFTD) page. I suggest the main page link to TRTBAG be remained "Research Bug Avoidance Guide". Probably the TFTD Alien Glitches page can be gotten rid of. It only mentions one bug, which is not a bug at all. Spike 06:16, 15 November 2008 (CST)

Terminology

X-COM/XCOM/XCom/Etc.

I remember reading about this discussion before and if something concrete comes out I think it should be added to the Guidelines to writing articles. Do we have set a proper spelling to refer to the organization? IIRC the game uses X-COM/XCOM/X-Com/etc. Should we set a standard for the Wiki? Hobbes 07:52, 21 November 2008 (CST)

It's a good idea to agree on a single standard spelling for the Wiki, if only to keep links consistent and prdictable. But it's a shame if there is no clear canonical spelling though. Spike 12:28, 21 November 2008 (CST)

From what I recall there isn't a standard followed on UFO Defense, where you have X-COM/XCOM/XCom/etc. Apocalypse might be more consistent and I have no idea for the other games. I try to use X-COM and I've done some edits to follow this standard spelling but I'd like to read more opinions Hobbes 17:43, 22 November 2008 (CST)

I've had a check through the in-game strings and most if not all of them say "Xcom", which is my least favourite spelling. :( I think X-COM has the best flavour. Spike 19:41, 22 November 2008 (CST)

If any of you folks here have been following what I've been up to lately at the StrategyCore forums, you'll see I have been amassing a collection of most of the game versions in the series. Checking my UFO Game Versions site page, you'll see that the original European release used XCom while the budget releases used X-Com. Other than that, those spellings quickly fell by the wayside as MicroProse decided on X-COM which quickly gained approval and remained the standard spelling throughout the series. (You can't really go by in-game text as those were not checked for consistency). Anyhow, I'd opt for the same route MicroProse took: X-COM. --Zombie 20:33, 22 November 2008 (CST)

Capitalization guidelines/rules for the wiki

Another thing that crossed my mind are guidelines/rules tossed in to prevent overcapitalization.

Specific ingame terms/names should be always capitalized:

• Weapons (Boomeroid, Elerium, Entropy Launcher
• Alien Races (Sectoid, Lobsterman, Skeletoid, etc.)
• Organizations (MarSec, General Dynamics, Council of Funding Nations)
• X-COM Crafts (Skyranger, Manta, Dimension Probe)

Generic ingame terms/names (that already exist in English) should be capitalized the first time they are mentioned on a wiki entry. Some examples:

• Weapons (Plasma Rifle, Torpedo Launcher, Vortex Mine, etc.)
• UFO types (Large Scout, Dreadnaught, Alien Mothership, etc.)
• Soldier Attributes/Agent Stats (Stamina, Psi-defense, etc.)
• Base Facilities

Wiki terms should be capitalized the first time they are mentioned on a wiki entry:

• Tactics
• Economics
• Game Mechanics
• Etc.

A few other rules to prevent overcapitalization and make a smooth reading:

• After the 1st mention, generic ingame terms are not required to be capitalized. As an example, after the first mention of a Laser Pistol, any additional mention(s) to them can simply use the term pistol(s).
• When refering to similar names/terms, it is advisable to capitalize both when they are mentioned. Eg. "Auto Cannon, unlike Heavy Cannon, allows for automatic fire" "Large Scouts are more dangerous than Medium Scouts".
• The same applies to wiki terms.

Hobbes 16:54, 23 November 2008 (CST)

Humor and Flavour Text

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Humor and Flavour Text

Stats & Purchasing Options

Two wildly different subjects here, but worth mentioning:

1) Are any of the Wiki overlords interested in gathering Wiki usage statistics using something like Google Analytics? I just fished about in the server logs and it may interest you to know that the Wiki gets 6,000-8,000 unique visitors a month with anywhere from 13,000-25,000 visits a month from those visitors. With Analytics plugged in (which would take about five minutes from me) then interested parties could keep an eye on what's getting the most attention and, possibly, what people are searching for most (as in things that they're looking for that may not be covered). I'm new to MediaWiki though so I have no idea whether it's got some level of reporting built in?

2) Is it worth putting a link in the menu to the left to a page with more details on buying options and what's in the "complete" collections (as they're not totally complete technically, and people may not be aware that they can buy just one of the games if they want)? I would imagine it's something that quite a few people would be looking for, though admittedly without the detailed stats it's hard to say. Just pretend I don't have an interest in affiliate linking with this question too - I'd thought about it before putting my business hat on, honest! --Pete 17:58, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

1 - MediaWiki doesn't have much in terms of stats so it would be great if you could install that for us. Would be a handy tool for all sorts of things.

2 - Good idea. If someone creates such a page I'll add it to the left menu. :) --Zombie 20:11, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

I like both ideas as well Hobbes 20:30, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

That is a decent number of UVs and well worth monetising just to defray the costs a bit, which is all it would do. I guess you are talking about some Adwords and affiliate links to Steam? Fair enough. I don't pay for the site and it has to be paid for somehow.

Interesting stats though. So there are 6 to 8,000 people viewing and what, at most 10-20 people posting regularly? That's a pretty high "lurker ratio". :) Spike 21:18, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

UFO Classes

Hi all!

I recently finished a mod for X-COM UFO: Enemy Unknown that automatically assigns class and level to soldiers based solely on their stats, called "UFO Classes". It would have been nearly impossible if not for all the reseach into game mechanics i gleaned off this site.

In hope that my work improves the best game of all time, for all the people who made this possible, I proudly present: UFO Classes

--Necuno 15:20, 9 December 2009 (EST)

NPOV-ing of TFTD Equipment

Deleted old discussion for brevity. NPOV-ing of articles in general still in progress.

OpenXcom

Hello,

I thought you may be interested in this new project - it's open source reimplementation of original X-com engine (it uses data from original game). Besides fixing bugs, adding new features and support for new platforms, aim of this project is to create clean open source cross-platform code, which will be useful for future tweaking/modding etc. It's in early development phase. You can find more information about that project on official site http://openxcom.ninex.info/ --Michal 11:43, 29 June 2010 (EDT)

Duplicate watch

Just as an attempt to streamline the wiki, if anyone spots an article that appears to contain duplicate information that is clearly covered in detail in another article, can we have them mentioned here. It occurs to me that since the wiki is quite large, there is bound to be some duplicated information floating out there, or even stand-alone pages that are probably not necessary. The problem is that there could be some disparity in information when one or either article is updated independently of the other. Again, if you spot any, please feel free to bring up the issue here. -NKF 03:00, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

Main Page reorganisation

Just throwing up an idea for everyone to consider. The wiki's a great resource, but I've often found the main page to be a bit cluttered since it has the main menus for all three major games that are being covered and they're restricted to tight columned tables. Also sometimes finding specific information isn't always that easy as some of the relevant documents are buried several articles deep.

I'm no organisational expert, but one thing I thought that might help reduce the clutter is to simplify the main page and have it mainly link to the various submenus for each different game. The submenus can be broken out of their tables and rearranged in a format that would make it easier to access all the relevant articles.

The earlier suggestion of using actual game box art would be a great idea for the main page as well.

Thoughts, suggestions, etc? -NKF 06:45, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

?. More book like. A simple, from a information point of view, and short, to make it in fit(in general) into a singe browser window, main page. And link it up to a general main index page. Could be a full index page. But having a special short-type of index page seems better to me. --MvGulik 09:20, 16 October 2010 (EDT)

I agree with NKF. The main page is cluttered. I agree the solution is to reduce the main page to pretty much a menu option for each game and some other links that are not game-specific. Then fill up unused space with some nice box art. :) Spike 14:41, 17 October 2010 (EDT)

I resurrected and cleared most of the Mock main page to make a space to be able to draft a concept new main page. Haven't really got a handle of how it should look at the moment, but got to start somewhere.

The excellent work Zombie's done scanning the various game boxes from his collection will be a good resource for the box art images. How big should they be though? More specifically, what dimensions?

I've got an idea how we could re-organize main page, but also I've got a lack of time to draw a sketch of it. And some questions: does wiki allow to use an image as a background for template and how to do this? And where can I get these Zombie's scans?

I am not entirely sure about the backgrounds, but as the wiki does allow some CSS code in the HTML and wiki markup code, I imagine you could put some background images into some page elements like the tables and some blocks of text.

As for Zombie's scans, they can be found on Strategycore's game data bank. Look under the individual games in the series and check the 'game versions' to see scans of various releases of the game. For example: UFO's game versions. What i was thinking was perhaps an image that contains bot the European and American styled box art in one image for UFO. And the same for TFTD and Apocalypse. -NKF 08:53, 22 October 2010 (BST)

Also regarding the news box. There's not a lot of news, but I was thinking that it could be template-ized and we simply include it on the main page. We don't get enough news, but the template markup that includes/excludes part of the template could be useful to keep only the new items visible on the main page while the old news is hidden except when you view the actual news page. We could even go without it too. Any thoughts on that? -NKF 07:44, 22 October 2010 (BST)

I would be happy to assist with a new layout in terms of box art as I've got all the files to hand (as pointed out in the databank link above). I think maybe the way MediaWiki does news on their site is possibly the way to do it: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/News - if you look on their homepage it pulls in that latest news block (though I don't know how) so we could have latest and older news similar to that. Alternatively there does appear to be a few extensions for handling news but people seem to be having some difficulty with them. --Pete 10:32, 23 October 2010 (BST)

Looking at the source, there is a bit of code there, but otherwise looks like it mostly manually updated. Or only the items under the recent news heading may be included. Still, I think I think we could bash together something similar by hand easily enough to not need an extension for it.

Any suggestions on how the box art should be displayed? -NKF 23:16, 24 October 2010 (BST)

It's a tricky one to be sure. If the box art is given too much prominence then you might not realise they're clickable (assuming you want to use them to click through to the relevant game, which would make sense). It maybe needs to be box art, with an obvious link to go to that game and perhaps a short sentence about each game. Not sure whether that's wasted space though as most people will know what each game is, but maybe that's just an assumption on my part as there's a new generation who are starting from scratch so a short sentence overview could be really useful.

I would say maybe just do it with two or three games per row perhaps and lay them out like that with a link to each section and an intro. The issue with this site is how silly it would look on wider screen resolutions as it stretches, but I can pull off some stats for the most commonly used resolution and work it out so it looks good on that. What I'll probably do is take a screenshot of the current homepage and whip something up later on quickly in Photoshop as a rough example for discussion. It is best to keep it basic though obviously so the layout easily survives future software upgrades (the exact opposite of what happens on StrategyCore ;)). --Pete 13:48, 25 October 2010 (BST)

Check the Mock main page - is something like that what you had in mind? Just imagine the icons filled with pretty box art. The box art would be links to the pages as well. The end size of the boxart will have to be something that would work well both for wide screens as well as tiny devices like cellphones. -NKF 06:57, 26 October 2010 (BST)

Wiki software upgrade - 15/10/10

Hi all. After discussion with NKF regarding adding some new extensions to the wiki in an attempt to help out with the spamming issue, I've been working on an upgrade routine to update the software from the current version (1.11) to the latest (1.16) as well as installing these helpful extentions.

Using a development version of the site, I've worked out any kinks in the upgrade path and as such will be going ahead with the upgrade betwen 3-4pm GMT today (see note on the homepage - I figured a nice, obvious message was called for on this occasion).

The upgrade itself should only take 15-20 minutes - it's a case of uploading the new files and running the upgrade script, so it hopefully shouldn't take even that long. Extensions can be added once it's back up and running as they don't cause any interference, however I'll be looking to do all of this within that window. Please see the link in the message at the top of the homepage for an idewa of the time difference between where you are and where I am.

Fingers crossed this should close several security holes in the system (according to the software developers), maybe reduce the amount of spam and certainly give sysops more tools to combat it. --Pete 04:00, 15 October 2010 (EDT)

This has now been completed as of 4.05pm (slightly later than scheduled due to going for a walk this mornig that turned into a long one!). All upgraded and new extensions installed which can be seen on the Special Pages:Version page, and I took the upgrade message down off the homepage. I've had a good look around and everyhting seems in order, however you can contact me easily via PM at www.strategycore.co.uk/forums if you do spot any issues. Thanks! --Pete 11:09, 15 October 2010 (EDT)

Hosting Move - 20th October 2010

We're having and issue with the current hosting is that all sites on our server (including UFOPaedia and StrategyCore) are going down at random intervals several times a week for anywhere between 15-30 minutes. Unfortunately the hosting company are unable to track down the issue, and their best suggestion is for us to upgrade to a package with more resources, ie. try a different server as they're baffled. Now, if we're facing a server move one way or the other I'd rather be in control of it than leaving it to web hosts to do it when I'm not around to monitor it.

Firstly, before anyone gets flashbacks of the less-than-perfect way this was handled last time, I'll re-assure you all that this is a necessary evil and that I've done my best to test an exact copy of this site on the new server with the help of NKF and Bomb Bloke in order to work out any potential issues and minimise any downtime.

Whilst I've been researching the best way to do this as seamlessly as possible over the last few weeks, I found another host that was able to provide us with more resources for a cheaper price whilst providing a higher level of up-time - this sounds like the new server is cheap, but in reality I was paying over the odds for the current hosting - we're talking a few hundred dollars more than necessary here. I use this host for UK sites and they also do US hosting for the same prices, which is good as both sites in question are on US hosting currently but I then also get the benefit of the pricing being in Pounds Sterling for my accounting purposes (I live in the UK in case you were wondering).

Theoretically I can migrate the site with no downtime and minimum interruption to service. The process involves putting up a message on the homepage with the date and time of the move (which I'll do in a few minutes) followed by another message 15 minutes before the move reminding people not to add to or edit the WIKI until they see a message saying they're viewing the new site. Then I copy the site across, which takes 10-15 minutes and point the domain to the new server, which takes a further 5 minutes or so. I've reduced the amount of time that the domain name should be cached by DNS servers to 15 minutes - in laymans terms this is the amount of time browsers and DNS servers cache the IP address that relates to a domain name - and this will take effect in 23 hours (I changed it about an hour ago). At that point, your browsers should be checking the IP address associated with the domain every 15 minutes, so once you see the message saying the site is being moves, wait 15-30 minutes and refresh your page - you should then see the new site.

An additional failsafe will be in place in that I can tell the current server to forward all HTTP (web) traffic directly to the new server at the same time, so even if your browser is caching the old IP for longer for some reason, the current server should forward you on to the new server instantaneously.

All that said, this is the first time I will have attempted all of these "tricks of the transfer" at the same time, as last time I was unaware of the reduced DNS refresh trick and the domain IP forwarding. There is a lot going on and I'll be going through it very carefully to ensure it's done right this time, so please be patient with me.

Assuming all goes to plan, you will know you're on the new server and can begin adding to/editing the site once again as I will replace the red "server move on 20/10/10 at 9AM" message on the homepage with a green "server move complete" message (but with a more descriptive message) so there will be a clear indicator as to which server you are viewing.

Just a final note that I will only be moving UFOPaedia.org on the 20th, not StrategyCore as well. Last time I moved both at once and it was a nightmare to track down issues across two sites, especially since StrategyCore has 3 pieces of software to troubleshoot and UFOPedia has just the one. My aim is to focus on one site at a time this time around to keep potential disruption to an absolute minimum.

New Sysop appointments

Just letting everyone know that Pete has let me appoint a few new Sysops to the administration team to assist with dealing any spambots, spammers, vandals and general troublemakers. Spike, Bomb Bloke and ufo.mesh have been appointed to the roles. Thanks everyone. -NKF 00:55, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Be afraid, be very afraid... >:] - Bomb Bloke 03:00, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

I appreciate your confidence and will serve loyally for the growth and prosperity of the unique Ufopaedia! --ufo.mesh 07:06, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Carry on the good work guys! --Pete 07:44, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Сongratulations to all! :) ---=Troll=- 07:50, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

New registrations temporarily disabled

Just a heads up to everyone and potential wiki contributors: Due in part to the recent vandalism, new user registration has been temporarily disabled. Apologies for any inconveniences caused, but don't worry as this situation is only temporary. -NKF 06:34, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Something must be done to prevent vandalism in the future. Temporarily disabling registration you'll only delay future attacks. Open it and new attacks will follow. I noticed that every wave of vandals was after the moment when I published update news at Russian forums. After that in a day or two new trolls appeared here. I think they visit forums regularly and track down changes at wiki from there but I can still be mistaken with that.--ufo.mesh 17:35, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Just a quick one to say that registrations were re-opened "the other day" (Friday 15th or Saturday 16th - can't remember exactly). I'm not sure whether the vandalism we've been seeing was potentially automated or due to real-life people signing in and wrecking stuff, but if it was partially automated then the updated software should hopefuly curb the level of vandalism. either way, just to let you all know that registrations are re-open to test this out. I'm also keeping my eye out for other software extensions that may help with this ongoing battle. --Pete 15:46, 18 October 2010 (EDT)

Dubious Accounts

There have been some pretty dubious user registrations over the last 2 days. Names that look to be generated by an algorithm. Views on what to do about these accounts? At what point do new accounts become eligible to post? Spike 22:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the new accounts are allowed to post right away, but these ones look very suspicious indeed. Having a bunch of them sign up at the same time and with the same format with random numbers and letter after the name - and not one of them's posted (yet). Might be sleeper bots waiting for a certain time/date before they become active. I'd like to take action, but don't want to be jumping the gun either. -NKF 23:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Could be that the new Wiki software blocked whatever the presumed Bots tried to do. I think we should block these accounts, and any like them that appear in future. But, what's the recourse if one of these accounts is a genuine user? How would they be able to let us know the mistake? Spike 18:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I had a very brief look at the past block logs and it seems that similar accounts have been blocked since late August or early September. Either I've been blocking them or the wiki's been auto blocking based on the IP's of some past accounts I'd put blocks on. All feature the same generated name format.

Unless the bots are designed to use the e-mail feature as well, I think one option is to block the account but allow them to send e-mails. That way they can contact the admins to sort the problem out. -NKF 06:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't you just add some kind of Turing test feature to the registration procedure? That should block most bots but should not be to much of a hassle for real new users. And add a autoremove after 30-60 days without a posting after registration(no checking for inactivity for established users)?

--Tauon 14:16, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Hosting Move - 7 December 2010

Unfortunately the current host isn't as good as I'd initially hoped and there have been unacceptable preiods of downtime for both UFOPaedia.org and StrategyCore as a result.

I've since found what looks like very good hosting with support technicians that will proactively work to get the sites running again as soon as they do go down (fingers crossed they won't), rather than the current hosts who pretty much leave it until you notice it yourself. To my mind that's worth a bit of extra hassle to move the sites again and worth the slight added expense for that kind of service. There are also far more resources available to us in terms of processor power and RAM which should hopefully see the end of the recent periods of instability.

So, the plan is to move UFOPaedia.org on Tuesday the 7th of December at 7pm GMT (again, refer here to see the differences to your local timezone: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/current-time.htm ) with as minimal impact as possible. As per last time, a red notice will appear on the homepage just before the move begins, and when you see the green notice to say the move has completed successfully you will then be viewing the site on the new server. I'll put up a notice shortly directing people to this message to give some advanced warning.

Thanks again for your patience.

Due to being stuck on the other side of the country for most of the day because of adverse weather (in England that is) I've had to reschedule this to tomorrow night instead - sorry for the short notice! --Pete 21:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The server move has now been completed and everything seems to be working okay. If something isn't working however, please let me know! --Pete 17:10, 8 December 2010 (EST)

Thanks a bunch Pete. Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from here on. Or at least better than it was before this. -NKF 00:39, 10 December 2010 (EST)

Fingers crossed. Stupidly enough just after the files were moved across the site on the old server got into difficulty so there was some unexpected downtime for a few hours but with it being mid-week I'm hopeing nobody was affected/noticed too much! The new server is showing a CPU load of 0.01-0.04 (1 = full CPU load, but the number is a bit random as I've seen it working at 4.0 on some sites and on the last host anything much over 1.5 was causing massive issues). I'll monitor it tonight and tomorrow when it's likely to be busier and all being well I'll move StrategyCore over on Sunday afternoon if everything looks like it's behaving itself. --Pete 14:33, 10 December 2010 (EST)

<~~ Nudges the conversation stream left again

Hi Pete and NKF. Pete, I looked at your Talk page... good to see another fan, plus a StratCore founder. I'm impressed!

Thanks for caring for the UFOpaedia. I haven't touched XCOM lately - like you, there's so many games and so little time... plus a tiny niggling reminder in my brain about real life, whatever that is... but still. I feel like a major chunk of my soul is on these pages, and I wouldn't want it lost. I hope that anyone who loves XCOM can appreciate all that I, Zombie, BombBloke, NKF, and many many others have done here. And I still remember the heady days that Zombie, I, and Danial rushed to pin down the explosion and weapon damage equations - made effortless by BB's great tools.

Thanks and - enjoy! --MikeTheRed 03:18, 12 December 2010 (EST)

Why not to move 2012 OR vanilla ufopaedia stuff to another hosting?

<IMHO> With this X-COM Enemy Unknown (2012) classy ufopaedia became almost unreliable (unsearchable) source of information. "Modification history" is spammed with 2012 project, which has nothing to vanilla xcom. There are no "filters" which could make it slightly better. Moreover, whole internet become spoiled and spammed in sense of searching something about ufo defense. And it's a pity. Because Ufopaedia is not The Ufopaedia anymore. Wouldn't it better to have totally another hosting? After all XCOM:Enemy Unknown (2012) doesn't even have UFOPAEDIA.

With this 2012 heavy spam I stopped to make my Xcom1/Xcom2 contribution here. That's one of results. --Volutar 13:28, 11 November 2013 (EST) </IMHO>

Totally agree with NKF and disagree with SuicidalSectoid. Mixing new with old contents makes mess in both sides. It would be better to setup different wikis with different modification histories for classic xcoms(1-3) and for new titles. And not to get into conflict to each other. There's nothing in common between them in terms of game mechanics. Personally I was very annoyed and disappointed seeing modification history spammed with 2012 info, and having no chances to monitor what's happening with ufodefense/tftd info. And seeing how fast my ufodefense info update drowned I stopped to make any updates. --Volutar 14:43, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Have you tried using the [watchlist] function on the top right? You can use that to track changes to the specific pages you're editing if you don't want to see all the changes.

My complain is about spam in change history. I just don't want to see any history of EU2012 pages. Unfortunately there's no such filter. To use that "watch" I'll have to tick evey non EU2012 page and new non-EU2012 pages also should be ticked by default (that's clearly impossible.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

What you call 'spam' I call a lot of it my personal work. The same way I call work all of the edits I've done on UFO/TFTD/Apocalypse. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Is there an option in the prefrences that allows us to set all edits to minor edits unless otherwise specified?--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)

This wiki has always been about the game series: Apocalypse/Interceptor/Enforcer have about as much in common with UFO/TFTD as Enemy Unknown (2012) and The Bureau, regarding game mechanics. And now that there's a ton of new information on the internet because of the new games and new wikis, that's the main strength that separates The UFOPaedia from all the rest: it is the only site that focuses on the whole series, not a specific game. And if we split the wiki into smaller ones, you're basically contributing to turn UFO/TFTD into footnotes, because only the few players of the old games will know about UFOPaedia.org, since it's not anymore on the new game. By having all of the titles together (and the specific pages with the common aspects of the series, like Sectoid/Sectoid (EU2012) crosslinked we're contributing to keep the old games alive. Hobbes 15:32, 11 November 2013 (EST)

And how big the UFOPaedia is in helping to pass the torch? Read it from Jake Solomon itself, lead designer of EU2012: "I've spent more time there than I'd like to tally" [3] Hobbes 16:08, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Sorry, I'm just not interested in EU2012. And one notice - this wiki was never about Interceptor/Enforcer. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Nor did I say it was only about those two games. Read the top of the Main Page of the UFOPaedia: "This site is dedicated to X-COM, a computer strategy game series introduced in 1994 by MicroProse." Hobbes 16:21, 12 November 2013 (EST)

And would you be willing to move all the pages over to another wiki.

Also it is a bit late to be separating them now, we have an almost complete EU2012 section and half completed Bureau section, it would take us ages to separate them.

Yeah, so I quit updating this resource. It'd be easier to setup new information reosurce, without spam of casual modern pseudo-ufo-like games, than to split this on vanilla (xcom1-3) / non-vanilla.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

You don't like the new games, I respect that. You want to go through the work of setting a new wiki, I'll respect it also. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)

My third is that most of the people who edit the wiki commonly edit both, so separating the wiki would be like trying to force them onto one wiki where they are unable to monitor the other wiki.

My final point is that hardly anyone actually edits the original three games' pages anymore because they are almost – if not fully – complete. So on the Original X-COM wiki you would get edits every now and again, which would make it less worthwhile to host. But hosting them on the same wiki allows for fans of the new to see where it all began and begin to play those games.

Just some ideas--Ditto51 15:21, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Something else to add about what Ditto51 said about the first 3 games pages being complete: before Enemy Unknown 2012 was announced you could spend weeks on the UFOPaedia without any meaningful edits taking place. That pretty much showed the general lack of interest and activity regarding the first 3 games. Do we want to get back to that? Hobbes 15:41, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Aah - Where to start?

The new games are new, so they are in the spotlight, and it's not unexpected for there to be an explosion of new data to chronicle on the wiki. Once things have settled the update pace is likely to slow back down back to what it was.

I must comment however that recently there are a lot of micro updates on the same pages within a short span of time. That does have a tendency to fill up the recent pages very quickly. Preview folks!

Mainly my fault there, specially since I forget to check the "minor edit" box quite a bit during mass edits. But I also feel that we're lacking something to individually keep track of specific pages, like Volutar has mentioned. Hobbes 16:36, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Next, looking at the time stamp on my comment in the conversation above, about a year out, I must admit that I completely forgot about that conversation. Likely because I was too busy playing EU2012 at the time and never did get round to come back and elaborate on my vision.

My thought at the time wasn't to move it to a new host or make a whole new UfopaediaV2.org just for the new games. Heck no, just keep it as the one wiki to rule all the X-Com wikis. I was thinking one wiki with interlinked subwikis that share the same resources, so there will be no loss in the legacy of the originals at all. In fact, it would be no different to the end user than it is now.

Administration wise it would be a hassle to start off with, but you then would have less to worry about disambiguations or conflicting names and any updates on the recent updates or searches will be context sensitive and relevant to the game or series you're looking at. Section-wide changes like skins could also be implemented without having to update each and every single page. It may also offer the possibility of fostering smaller community of contributors that want to focus on particular games who would otherwise be shy or intimidated to contribute to the wiki as it is now.

The idea was a bit of an offshoot of how multilingual wikis are implemented. Not quite, but just an idea to manage it in smaller chunks. But all that doesn't really matter to me anymore. I'll just get back to casually tending to any pages that take my fancy. -NKF 00:34, 12 November 2013 (EST)

If you look at my update history you'll notice that I was updating vanilla pages pretty often, but stopped as EU2012 came out (sep'2012). Just because changes was heavily spammed, and I felt how this site became ufopaedia2012 (though there is no ufopaedia in EU2012), so I lost interest in fixing unreliable info and adding new for vanilla. Just what for? It will anyways be drowned in this EU2012 massive promotion. Which spoiled whole internet. When you'll search for UFO:Enemy Unknown you'll still find EU2012 info. And it will be a luck to get anything about vanilla. I feel like vanilla ufopeadia became kind of unnecessary here, so i think I better move on. Thanks for your points. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Seriously, lets just leave it now, this was a conversation from a year ago that would have been relevant then, but now there is just too much information to move onto a separate site now, so lets leave it as it is.--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Other Wiki

I have recently found another wiki bearing the XCOM title. It focuses purely on the remake and frankly it is pointless considering the Ufopaedia is already established.

I'm just getting the word out.--SuicidalSectoid 14:08, 24 December 2012 (EST)

Got a link to it? Redundant or not, it's nice to see other eager about the game. NKF 16:00, 24 December 2012 (EST)

This one, I'd say. Most likely exists because someone thinks every new game needs to be on wikia. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 05:03, 25 December 2012 (EST)

I've noticed it even before the new game was out. They have nice design and content for the new game and a lot of traffic from being on wikia but all those commercial advertisements and structure and being restricted to the new games are the negative factors. Hobbes 12:13, 25 December 2012 (EST)

Ugh. I wouldn't describe wikia's design as "nice". It's superficially impressive, but crammed with advertising and if you try to actually get anything done on it it's horrible. There's a reason most of wowwiki deserted wikia when they imposed that format. Binkyuk 12:45, 25 December 2012 (EST)

By design I mean the navigation elements that make it easier to access game sections. Visually I also think it has too many elements. Hobbes 13:54, 25 December 2012 (EST)

Recent Spambot attacks

I've sent Pete a message about the recent spammer issue. I've suggested a temporary halt on new accounts.

Also, just a note to other members, please don't alter new pages created by the spammers and wait for one of the admins to sort it out. It adds a bit of confusion in the clean up process. Mainly because the block option is near the member name in the recent changes, I've caught myself nearly blocking a valid member a few times now! If I have, you have my apologies. Please go to the official Ufopaedia forum and give me a buzz.

NKF 01:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

Would it be possible to determine the IP of the spammer(s) and block it instead, as Ditto51 has suggested in my Talk Page? I think that putting a halt on new accounts may be a drastic measure since the amount of fake accounts isn't overwhelming for admins to deal with. Another thing I've been considering is to add new admins to help with the running of the wiki. Hobbes 06:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

Since to create an account we need to do that weird word/letter enter thing to create an account, wouldn't it be an actual person who is extremely bored? So wouldn't they eventually get bored of making accounts and then getting blocked?--Ditto51 17:48, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

My guess is someone has developed some software that can see through our Captcha. Given the naming conventions and whatnot I doubt this is manual work. Binkyuk 05:37, 24 September 2013 (EDT)

User:SonyaUliana has got the same name format at the other Spam Accounts, and I'm pretty sure SHIVs can't save civilians during terror missions or deactivate powernodes or bombs on the bomb defusal councilmissions (see [4]). --Ditto51 05:05, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

Well, it looks the same name format but there's a regular user at the 2K forums named SayuriUliana and although I don't use SHIVs myself I seem to recall a few discussions at the 2K forums mentioning their use to save civilians. Hobbes 07:31, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

Ah, okay. I was just wandering.--Ditto51 07:37, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

I know that we really do not want to stop all User Creations, but the number of spam accounts have increased recently and so when you look through the Recent Changes all you can see are the new Users. Although we could possibly find and install something that allows people to remove User Creations and Blocks from the Recent Changes menu.--Ditto51 09:44, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

We're still waiting for Pete to answer NKF's message and to temporary suspend all account creation so that the bot will go away. Otherwise it will still be a lot of unnecessary work to have to delete pages/block users, even if there's an easy way to do it. Hobbes 12:09, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

I meant make it easier for those of us who aren't admins and so don't have the ability to see the user creations and blocks so that we can just see what we want to see plus maybe the extra pages the spam accounts make--Ditto51 16:05, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

Ditto51, I really really wish we had that sort of filter too. We do have a recents cleanup plugin that admins use to manually hide the signups and blocks, but it's a manual process and not suited to a large number of attacks like we've got at present.

By the way, Hobbes, it probably can't hurt to send Pete a PM as well. There's not too much we can do until he gets back, but the more the merrier. NKF 00:47, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Just sent Pete a PM Hobbes 05:36, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Over on Bulbapedia they have it so new accounts can't edit their Userspace or make new pages in the mainspace until they make an edit on a mainspace article. Have we got something like this implimented, if not then we should so that the spam accounts should, in theory, be unable to create pages or edit their Userspace.--Ditto51 03:06, 2 December 2013 (EST)

If not, we could make a "Introduce Yourself" page for new users to make a short quip, like which XCOM they prefer. Other option could be making spelling/grammar edits on pages to identify not spam. Otherwise if they make new page or edit namespace first, instant red flag?--DracoGriffin 17:34, 2 December 2013 (EST)

I've just sent Pete another message asking about the spambot situation and possible solutions. I've also asked about the new wiki functionalities mentioned on the thread below this one. Hobbes 17:52, 2 December 2013 (EST)

New Main Page using Tabs

Welcome to UFOpaedia.org, Your X-COM Wiki featuring 2,894 articles and 4,432 users.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) Terror from the Deep Apocalypse

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

In other languages: Español, Pусский, Français, 한국어.

This site is dedicated to X-COM, a computer strategy game series introduced in 1994 by MicroProse.

This wiki contains a wealth of information including strategy, tactical tips, plus an in-depth look at how the game functions. If you love X-COM and want to contribute, please see the Community Portal. All rookies welcome!

Disclaimer: To be absolutely clear, this site is dedicated to a series of computer games and not to general conspiracy theories regarding UFOs and aliens.

X-COM News
Terra Invicta 1.0 released! Terra Invicta Geoscape March 11th, 2026 Terra Invicta, the alien invasion game made by the developers of the Long War mod for Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown has been officially released in early 2026 after years of early access. With the familiar background story of an alien invasion heading towards Earth, it features eight human playable factions who battle for control of Earth and the entire solar system to determine the destiny of humanity. Phoenix Point Firebird Update! Phoenix Point Firebird Update December 11th, 2025 Five years after its initial releas, the Phoenix Point team led by XCom's original creator, Julian Gollop, has released the Firebird update. Many of the changes and improvements of this free update have been inspired by work done in the Terror From The Void mod, which is a community project made for Phoenix Point, and whose name refers back to the original Terror From The Deep game.
Archived News

UFOPAEDIA News
January 1st, 2018 Maintenance In Progress. In order to improve the wiki's usage, UFOPaedia has been moved to a new server, together with an an upgrade to its MediaWiki software, all thanks to NineX, who has offered to host the wiki. Please reports any bugs you might find in the Talk: Main Page.
Archived News

OriginalReboot

Enemy Unknown (1994)

UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense)
Overview General Information Background The Geoscape Geoscape UFO Detection UFO Interception X-COM X-COM Bases Base Facilities Manufacturing Research Country Funding X-COM Craft Craft Armaments Soldiers Equipment Weapons Armour Heavy Weapons Platforms Miscellaneous Equipment Aliens Alien Life Forms Overview of Aliens Alien Missions Alien Ranks UFOs UFO Components Alien Artefacts	The Battlescape (Tactical Combat) Battlescape Mission Types UFO Crash Recovery UFO Ground Assault Alien Base Assault Terror Missions Base Defence Tactics Field Manual Night Missions Squad Composition Rear Commanders Initial Deployment Scouting Sweeping the Battlescape Time Management Reaction Training Reaction Fire Triggers Alien Movement Patterns Grenades Proximity Grenade Smoke Grenade Grenade Relay Stun Rod	Game Strategies A Beginner's Guide Base Management Base Layout Strategy Experience Training Economics Buying/Selling/Transferring Hiring/Firing UFO Recovery Values Manufacturing Profitability Tricks, Tips and Hints Common Mistakes Managing the Item Limit Making the Game Harder Murphy's Laws of X-COM Miscellaneous Information X-COM Timeline Weapon Analysis Sightings in other fandoms Glossary of Terms Data Canisters Realistic Equivalents Cultural Influences on X-COM Mars Game Editors & Mods Council of Funding Nations The Mysteries of X-COM Wish_List_(EU) GUS Music in Dosbox Ideal DOSBox Settings (UFO/TFTD)	Technical Information Game Mechanics Damage Explosions Destroying Terrain Damage Modifiers Fatal Wounds Stun Accuracy Formula Reaction Fire Experience Psionics Unconsciousness Recovery Time Equipment Recovery Line of Sight Difficulty Levels Research Technical Details Data Tables Alien Appearance Ratios Inventory TU Table Movement TU Tables Item Weight Unit Height Scoring Kill Modelling Starting Stats Alien Stats Research Times Terrain Exploits Game Files Known Bugs Game Versions Open Questions

Terror From the Deep (1995)

X-COM: Terror From the Deep
General General Information Background The Geoscape Geoscape X-COM Subs Sub Armaments Aquanauts Equipment Weapons Submersible Weapons Systems Base Facilities Research Alien Research Alien Artefacts Economics Funding Aliens Alien Life Forms Overviews of Aliens Alien Missions Alien Ranks Terror Units Alien Weapon Loadouts Alien Subs Alien Sub Components	The Battlescape (Tactical Combat) Battlescape Overview Mission Types Alien Sub Crash Recovery Alien Submarine Assault Terror Mission Port Attack Island Attack Shipping Lane Mission Artefact Site Colony Assault Base Defense T'leth Terrain	Game Strategies TFTD Strategy Guide Miscellaneous Weapon Effectiveness tables Weapon Analysis Realistic Equivalents Sightings in other fandoms Enabling the cinematic intro/outro Wish List GUS Music in Dosbox Ideal DOSBox Settings (UFO/TFTD) Technical Information Scoring Data Tables Alien Appearance Ratios Game Files Known Bugs Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide

Apocalypse (1997)

X-COM: Apocalypse best viewed in 1280x1024.
General Information & Credits History & Background Keyboard Commands Known Bugs Mega-Primus Cityscape Cityscape Overview Cityscape Maps Game Difficulty Organizations Buildings & Areas Population Unit Attributes Damage & Modifiers Relations Trade Score & Technology Progress Cityscape Mission Styles Battlescape Battlescape Overview Battlescape Mission Styles Battlescape Tactics & Gameplay Start A Mission Equipping Agents Agent Controls Using Cover Engaging Hostiles Anti-Alien Strategy Capture Live Aliens Psionic Agents Defend Your Base Combat Format Combat: Real-Time (RT) Combat: Turn-Based (TB) Comparison: RT vs TB	X-COM Bases Overview Locations Layouts Facilities Science & Manufacturing Overview Science: Biochemistry Science: Quantum Physics Manufacture: Engineering Agents Overview Attributes Promotions Equipment Armor Vehicles Overview Armaments Engines Equipment & Devices Aliens Aliens Overview Life Forms Exotic Artifacts Alien Infiltration UFO Overview UFO Appearance Cityscape UFO Combat Alien Dimension Overview Dimension UFO Combat Alien Buildings	Miscellaneous Information Historical X-COM Timeline Cut Content Cheat Codes Weapon & Equipment Analysis X-COM In Other Works Technical Information Image Properties Audio Properties Music Files Cityscape Files Learning AI Apocalypse Editing Useful Utilities Apocalypse Guides & Modifications User Guides OpenApoc OpenApoc: The Open Source Remake OpenApoc: Suggestions, Ideas, & Concepts

Enemy Unknown (2012)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) / Enemy Within DLC
Overview Game Information Commander's Briefing Base Location The Council Difficulty Levels Second Wave Achievements Headquarters Mission Control Research Alien Containment Genetics Lab Psionic Labs Engineering Foundry Cybernetics Lab Barracks Officer Training School Hangar Situation Room Gray Market Finances Covert Operations	Soldier Classes Assault Heavy Sniper Support Psionic MEC Trooper S.H.I.V. Covert Operative Equipment Armor Weapons Gene Mods Medals Aliens Alien Life Forms Overview of Aliens Alien Stats Alien Deployment UFOs Alien Artifacts Meld EXALT EXALT Soldiers Equipment	Missions Mission Types Maps Tables Gameplay Mechanics Chance to Hit Cover Critical Wounds Damage Overwatch Suppression Movement Guides & Tips Strategy Guide Building Optimization Economy Panic Air Combat Story Walkthrough Tactical Squads Class Builds Combat Tactics List of all Abilities Survival Guide XCOM Substack Posts	General DLC General Information Elite Soldier Pack Enemy Within Slingshot DLC Operation Slingshot Friends in Low Places Confounding Light Gangplank Shaojie Zhang Progeny Operation Progeny Portent Deluge Furies Annette Durand Multiplayer Multiplayer Multiplayer Tactics Squad Builds	Miscellaneous Game Credits Storyline News Ticker Game Universe/Artwork XCOM Heroes Making The Game Harder Glossary of Terms Murphy's Laws (XCOM) Technical Information Patches Bugs Mods & Suggestions Game Editors Game Files Unused Features Wiki Tips

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2013)

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
XCOM Game Information From the desk of Myron Faulke Difficulty Levels Achievements The Bureau The Base Investigations Equipment Weapons Personnel Classes Agent William Carter Director Myron Faulke Agent Angela Weaver Lieutenant Leon Barnes Doctor Alan Weir Agent Nico DaSilva Supporting Staff	Aliens Alien Life Forms Infiltrator Axis Origin Missions Gameplay Mechanics Combat Tactics Battle Focus Squads Mission Types Major Operations (Spoliers) Base Investigations Minor Operations Dispatch Missions	Game Strategies Guides & Tips Story Walkthrough Class Builds Miscellaneous News From the Front In-Game Notes In-Game Photos Glossary of Terms Patches Bugs Mods & Suggestions DLC Codebreaker Hangar 6: R&D Agent Donovan Light Plasma Pistol

Spin-Offs

X-COM: Interceptor General Information Background The Frontier Hypernews Network Research Cheats/Exploits

E-Mail X-Com General Information

X-COM: Enforcer General Information The Enforcer, Dr. Standard and the Enemy Weapons and Power Ups The Missions Tips and Tricks

Featured Projects

UFOpaedia.org is also home to several open source X-Com based projects.

UFO2000	OpenXcom	UFO:AI
UFO2000 wiki	OpenXcom wiki	UFO:AI wiki

Discontinued Titles

X-COM: Genesis	X-COM: Alliance
General Information	General Information

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