Today I learned that UFO/X-Com has
a lot of bugs, several of which
can be exploited.
Some good stuff:
- Tanks are automatically filled with ammo if your base is invaded and you have no ammo
- Building zero of an item, then changing it to 1, lets you build it for free with no material cost
- Staff in transit between basis at the end of the month take no salary
- If you have 256 engineers or scientists, it loops back to 0 and you no longer need to house them or pay their salaries. You can stlil use them as long as there's at least one project on the go at all times, otherwise it consider you to have 0 engineers/scientists free and you can't start a new project
- You can throw grenades and shoot rockets up through the ceiling to the floor above, and he'll be safe because explosions don't carry between floors
I also discovered that some people think
the game isn't hard enough, and play with self-imposed restrictions:
- No exploits (256 engineers, throwing grenades through ceilings, XComUtil mods)
- Limited alien tech (no alien weapons; no alien tech for X years, no psionics, no Avenger until Cydonia
- Limited manpower (three-man away teams only)
- No manufacturing for profit
- Alien sabotage: assume alien at landing sites detonate their ship after turn 20 (simulate by aborting the mission on turn 21)
- Government control: Governments confiscate all Elerium, or all but 50 units
- Stealth: No radar allowed
The author of XComUtil came up with his own scenarios, some of which are literally impossible:
- Xenophobe: No capturing aliens alive. Alien tech sold immediately. You can't actually win.
- Bean Counter: You may only use items that are re-usable and don't require ammo. You may not destroy anything, including shooting down UFOs or the use of explosives.
- Explosive: Only explosive weapons!
- Photophobe: Night battles only.
- Technophobe: No scientists or engineers. No alien technology. You can't actually win.
- Neo-pacifist: You can't directly kill any alien. You can use proximity grenades, or grenades with a long timer, since it's the alien's fault if he doesn't avoid it.
- One base. In Hawaii.
Another difficult scenario is
1 Mission X-Com, where you're only allowed to make one away mission during the entire game. In order for the game to be winnable, this must be a battleship, and you must recover a live alien commander and leader to unlock the Cydonia mission, plus enough intact alien tech to build the Avenger.
To make it even harder, you may not sell items you manufacture, sell items from your one away mission, use psionics (except to research Mine Shield), or fire blaster bombs with multiple waypoints. If your base is assaulted, you must abandon it. Because you can only make one away mission, you can't respond to terror sites, assault alien bases, or loot UFO crash sites. Apparently someone's actually beaten it.
