Bugs/Features (LWR)

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Existing Game Bugs

Many unfixable bugs from Long War 1.0 and XCOM:EU/EW are now considered features, including:

• Aliens will sometimes double move off the bat as some of them were waiting for you in ambush and will get an extra move to reflect this
• The terrain on maps will sometimes allow you to see aliens that cannot see you in return. Similarly, sometimes aliens will be able to see you and you cannot see them. This is actually not THAT unrealistic and should be expected (as it's part of the base engine code that we definitely cannot change). Just be aware that you might get shot at or overwatched by an alien that you can't see because of a hole in a building, or a crack in a door, or a space in a wall/roof, or flying just out of your sight range (but they can still see you) -- and also realize that sometimes you are doing the same to the aliens (but probably aren't aware).
• Reaction shots against someone performing an action will sometimes inactivate their action because getting fired at sucks and it's hard to do things with bullets flying at your face.
• Sometimes your soldiers will step out of cover to perform an action, if they do this during a full moon when Juptier is touching the ecliptic, the soldier will feel a strange desire not to move back to cover and may actually stay in the stepped out space.
• Panicking units will not gain an action during their turn, EXCEPT if that unit is visited by it's guardian angel. It happens rarely (1% of the time), and you won't be able to see the angel (obviously they are only visible to the soldier/alien they are guarding), but you'll see the panicked unit miraculously act as if he wasn't panic* Aliens have invisible floating teleportation devices -- they aren't used a lot because they really hurt but sometimes if one or more aliens are desparate they will use these devices to teleport around the map.
• Sometimes a dying soldier will fall into a hole the aliens dug inside the mountain/building/dirt. If they do it's best to just move on as the holes will often form an inpenetrable barrier that prevents access until the occupant is completely dead (or sometimes reloading works).
• SHIVs need extra time to load onto the Skyranger during combat; make sure the SHIV has full actions and is in the extraction zone before attempting to abort the mission or the SHIV may be left behind.
• Some Exalt missions will CTD or appear as a black/blank map if you try to enter them (it happens usually in the city map with 4 buildings). This is because EXALT hacked your home Wi-fi IRL using a backdoor in that furry porn site you always log in. Try starting the game offline (log in on Steam offline or disable your Wi-fi).
• If the aliens attack your base things are going to be a little bit chaotic (understandably so). Your reinforcements may come from multiple different places: the normal hatch, under the platform, on the platform, the roof, under the tiles, in the janitor's closet, etc. The point is: they don't understand how they got there and neither will you. It's probably the aliens using their matter dislocation auras but we can't be sure.
• NEVER SAVE/LOAD ON THE XCOM BASE DEFENSE MISSION. It angers the XCOM gods and they may prevent you from finishing the mission, stop spawning aliens, or even corrupt your save.
• If you rapidly click on buttons to purchase or sell or place equipment/buildings/etc. sometimes the engineers and assistant engineers will get confused and order too many or too few and the accountants sometimes also get confused and you lose money.
• Sometimes the Aliens will send a UFO to the Arctic or Antarctic. It will often stay there for a day and disappear. We think it's because they feel threatened by both Santa Claus and Penguins. We believe this is attempt to assert their dominance over both.
• Using a Controller (instead of a keyboard) will sometimes crash the game when loading out your soldiers.
• Having a MEC Trooper punch a Chryssalid into an object that explodes (usually a car) will cause any human units who die to the explosion to rise again as zombies, somehow the chaos always results in the eggs from the chryssalid magically managing to infect the corpses

How to Prevent Bugs

XCom is a game that has many functions running simultaneously. We have found quite a few bugs that will only occur when a computer is running slowly. For example, szmind had one bug only and always occur whenever the 'power saving' mode of a laptop was turned on (i.e. it was moving slower). Another bug was reproducible only if a player had been playing for many hours. With new features/functions that we code we literally have to say "don't run this for 3 seconds" to make sure other functions will finish first, in case they take longer than normal. It seems like bugs will occur if the memory storage gets too restricted or the computer too slow. Having said that, even on a really old (20 years) laptop the game still runs with minimal problems. Still, I have 3 recommendations for players:

1) Save and restart the game if you've been playing for more than 4 hours (clears up memory)

2) Try not to run many other programs in the background (allows functions to finish quickly)

3) If you can, run it on the fastest computer with the most memory (functions finish quick, clogging up memory not a problem)

Map Bugs

The terrain on maps will sometimes allow you to see aliens that cannot see you in return. Similarly, sometimes aliens will be able to see you and you cannot see them. This is actually not THAT unrealistic and should be expected (as it's part of the base engine code that we cannot change). Just be aware that you might get shot at or overwatched by an alien that you can't see because of a hole in a building, or a crack in a door, or a space in a wall/roof, or flying just out of your sight range (but they can still see you) -- and also realize that sometimes you are doing the same to the aliens (but probably aren't aware).

An Example

This "one-way mirror" on this UFO lets units inside the UFO fire out but blocks vision into the UFO.

This is the exact same point in the battle.

First picture is the alien point-of-view (POV). Second picture is the XCOM POV. Notice how the alien has the XCOM soldier as a possible target (from the icons in the bottom right), but the XCOM player has no targets available. This is because it is a 1-way wall at that exact angle, allowing the sectoid to target the XCOM soldier but not vice versa.

Alien POV

XCOM POV