X-COM speed run draft

[tbgox]

So I finally got around to making a speed run of X-COM UFO Defence.

Difficulty: Superhuman (the difficulty bug is patched using XCOMUTIL)
Total Run-Time (Real-Time): 62:21 minutes (not including save/load time)
Total Run-Time (Game-Time): May 21st 1999
Segments: 8
Save Slots Used: 1

I've uploaded it on Youtube and discuss all the details below.

Segment 1:             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wo71zOr5aU

Segment 2:
Sorry, Youtube only allowed 100 MB loads...
Part1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyxce3ZAuw
Part2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiDpSQgpEcA

Segment 3:             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skcUG8CRgTA

Segment 4:             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk438d2Mb9Q

Segment 5:
Part1 -      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OR-8LuujI
Part2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny42Au7Byfc

Segment 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWLabuxW_w

Segment 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqG3Z-eXOqk

Segment 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP45EtaIST0

[tbgox]

X-COM UFO Defence Speed Demo
============================

Difficulty: Superhuman (the difficulty bug is patched using XCOMUTIL)
Total Run-Time (Real-Time): 62:21 minutes (not including save/load time)
Total Run-Time (Game-Time): May 21st 1999
Segments: 8
Save Slots Used: 1


General Comments
----------------
- I believe that the best time can be from 45 - 50 minute run.
- Quality of video: wanted to use X-COM CE and FRAPS to record but CE crashes at random points so had to resolve to Camtasia and DOSBox of X-COM v1.0.
- X-COM v1.0 had the difficulty bug making Superhuman the same as Beginner. To get around this problem the game was patched with XCOMUtil. Nothing else was

changed.
- In longer videos the sound starts to get slightly faster than the video. Was having some trouble with the DIVx encoder.
- Midway through the run my computer starts prompting me every 10 minutes or so to reboot for Windows updates :S
- My MSN was not set to busy mode so sometimes you'll hear the MSN beep sound :p
- A number of improvements can and will be done to improve the quality of the run and the speed of the run. I'll discuss the approach I took and specific

improvements below.
- Originally I wanted to do a single segment run (no save, no loads) but it became very tedious after a few attempts. Too many random factors in this game.

Especially in Superhuman difficulty the aliens are so accurate, so fast, and fires at you all the time EVEN during your turns. A single segment of Beginner

difficulty would probably be a lot more feasible but maybe if I had enough time to kill I'll try more single segment runs...
- Using multiple save slots would simply the run drastically. One slot meant no turning back...
- The run goes in the following: Research up to Laser Rifle, by then I would have recovered all the components needed to get to the Avenger. While

researching for the Avenger I have to find an alien base, go there, capture a live soldier, a leader, and a commander. While the Avenger is being

manufactured, research up to "Cydonia or Bust."
- Landed and aborted Terror Sites. Even though you get negative points you get penalized less than if you ignored it completely. This is done to reduce the

risk that the X-COM project will get shut down by the government at the end of the Month. For similar reasons all small UFOs are engaged.


Segment 1 - Set Up Base
------------------------

1:32 minutes (not including save/load time)

- I build a base in North America out of habit. It probably makes more sense to build around Russia/Europe since there is more surrounding land for alien

bases.
- The rifle is the fastest and lightest weapon in the beginning I'll used them and sold all other weapons to clear storage space to buy two rocket tanks and

stun rods.
- The default base layout is terrible, on Superhuman the chances of getting your base attacked is extremely high so a priority is given to restructuring the

base to a more defensive set up (thank goodness cuz they attack me in segment 6).
- Research speed is critical so need to get 50 scientists ASAP, i can hire 21 with the current force/base modifications I do.
- I didn't really have to save here but I was tired of doing the same set up procedure after 10 single segment attempts...next run won't break a segment

here.


Segment 2 - Research Avenger
----------------------------

13:39 minutes (not including save/load time)

- Research View Reports are ignored to save time.
- A few misclicks wasted some seconds.
- Scientists were inactive for a short time since I haven't recovered the UFO yet.
- Alien Alloys are researched first and engineers are assigned to manuafacture that when they are not making anything else (Alloys will be needed for the

Avenger).
- I take my Skyranger (6 soldiers and 2 tanks) to a landed UFO to be sure I get the Elerium, Alien Allors, UFO Nav, and UFO Power Source I need to research

alien crafts.
- Since I'm out of money from my base mods I sell all the alien technology I don't need, yap...no Heavy Plasma
- A lot of this part depended on luck. Had to be lucky enough to detect an UFO that will land.
- Went for Daylight battle obviously for better sight. Although I kind of messed up and ended up fighting in Dawn lighting.
- I build a new Hanger and a new workshop ASAP in anticipation for the Avenger


Segment 3 - Search for Alien Base
---------------------------------

3:18 minutes (not including save/load time)

- Technically this segment should/could have been part of Segment 2.
- This part depends partly on tactics but mostly on luck. The luck part requires that the aliens have/build a base near your initial base. The tactic part is

to slow      down time whenever a large UFO is detected and hope that a few of them lands around the same place. If you see this, you know there's a base there.
- The Very Large UFO scared the shit outta me. Thought it was coming for my base.
- Misclicks and escaping UFOs wasted some time.


Segment 4 - Capture Live Aliens
-------------------------------

5:50 minutes (not including save/load time)

- Stunrods should have been equiped on hand from the start to save time.
- Honestly I was really lucky in this map. Floaters (ie no danger of being mind controlled) AND the alien command center was right beside my spawning area.

To my surprise however, the alien commander was no IN the command center area. I had to replay this mission maybe 10 tens, trying to infiltrate the cc only

to discover that there were only leaders in the base. The Floater Commander I found completely by fluke and it happened to be the first few aliens I stunned.

Can't get luckier than this!


Segment 5 - Finish Research
---------------------------

19:34 minutes (not including save/load time)

- In this segment I finish the research of the Avenger, manufacture an Avenger, and finish research on Cydonia or Bust.
- To manufacture the Avenger however, I needed 2 Power Sources (1 Nav Sys, and ~120 alloys). I only had 1 power source so I had to go fight another landed

UFO. This should have been during Segment 2/3 as the engineers wasted some time not making the Avenger.
- I also recruit many rookie soldiers to act as canon fodders and build laser rifles.
- Purchased High Explosives to kill the Brain
- Right after I finished all research my base is attacked. If I had gone to Cydonia a split second earlier I could have avoided Segment 6 all together.



Segment 6 - Defend Base
-----------------------

7:07 minutes (not including save/load time)

- Good thing the base was restructured, making it a really easy defence through a single choke point. Floaters made it even easier (no Mind Control to worry

about)
- This segment should have been avoid all together nevertheless was fun to slaughter the aliens...
- After the mission I WANTED and tried to research Blaster Launcher (would have made Lower Cydonia extremely trivial) but when I tried my base got attacked 3

or 4 game days later...so I decided to go to Cydonia with conventional means.


Segment 7 - Upper Cydonia
-------------------------

3:38 minutes (not including save/load time)

- This segment was tough. A lot of high accuracy Cyberdiscs and Mind Controlling Sectoids. I was also very unlucky that most (~9/14) of my squad was

extremely vulnerable to mind control.
- Had to replay this segment about 10 times, each time was random since I started from Earth lifting off. The tactic essentially involved sending the tanks

out to identify the lower entrance, then running all my troops there while hugging the wall.
- No Blaster Launcher means no tanks can get into Lower Cydonia.


Segment 8 - Lower Cydonia
-------------------------

10:13 minutes (not including load/end time)

- Well, with a Blaster Launcher and two bombs, this segment would have finished in about 1 minute but I did not have any of that so it took literary 30

attempts to get it right, eventually learning the layout of the aliens pretty well.
- The Etherials easily took control of my units and my laser rifles has trouble killing      the Secpods, the larger of the floating blobs (forget what they're

called), the Crysalids, and the Drones.
- However, looking back at the run it seemed pretty trivial. The tactic was, stay in the shadows, avoid seeing aliens, avoid letting aliens see me. Run fast

into the command center, arm some high explosives and destory the brain at all cost, kamikaze style at the end.
- Could have probably saved a bit of time if I had loaded the high explosives on everyones' hands at load screen.

[Sorcerer88]

Very nice. Some comments:

- Please give us some more fps next time, it's quite tedious to watch the movie. Doesn't Dosbox have an in-built recording device?

- When 2 or more aliens are in a row, you should shoot the last one, which opens the possibility that you kill more than one alien with one shot. This way you maybe wouldn't have lost the soldier in the start of segment 5.

- Where did you want to use all the rocket launchers you bought? You didn't fire a single rocket.

- Saving at the beginning of each mission saves an intense amount of time. That way, you can play the missions ahead and learn the positions of the aliens. In mission 5, you needed to search for them quite much, but you were also very unlucky with the last few aliens.

- Dealing with engineers and scientists when building the avenger/finishing research seemed a bit sloppy. Maybe you should have built another living quarters so that you don't need to sell engineers/researchers all the time.

- Have you thought about grenades? They can be quite effective, at least at the beginning of the game.


Anyways, well done. I hope someone will do a TAS or improve this run, but you've built the base for that.

[tbgox]

Thanks for the comments/suggestions.

- You are absolutely right, DosBOX does have a built in recording device (i shoulda read the readme.txt file that came with it).

- the shoot back alien is a good suggestion, definately increases the chances of killing multiple aliens. I'll incorporate that in my next run

- The rocket launcher orginially was meant to be used to blow up the Brain in Cydonia, my base got attacked and i realized how terribly bulky they were so i ditched them for the final mission and used the Heavy Explosives instead.

- This run was meant to be done with minimum exploitation of save/load but you are correct again. In fact for my next run I'll make a TAS run and exploit the save/load to the max making sure that aliens get killed as fast as possible with all mission mapping known.

- yap once again you're right, an extra living quarter woulda saved a lot of trouble.

- grenades would be good but the time units required is tremendous and the regular grenades are relatively weak but definately would have come in handy in certain situations.

---

Anyway, i began a new run:

- goal would be to beat the game as fast as possible, exploiting save/load. (ie, make sure i map out all the alien touchdown maps, alien bases, cydonia, etc. ALSO make sure that every (auto) shot counts; sectiods should be killed with one hit from regular rifles)

- try and get 100 scientists to research on two projects (50 each) at any one time. Research order will be the same as above except I'll try and get Heavy Plasma to be the staple weapon for my troops

- The following missions will be done:
      . 2 small landed UFOs (for the 2 UFO Power Sources)
      . 1 alien base (for alien soldier, leader, commander)
      . 1 base defence (for Blaster Launcher; optional but highly desired)
      . Cydonia

- Lower Cydonia will be done with two Blaster Launcher shots, instead of the current rush tactic

- The rest I believe will pretty much stay the same.

- Oh and of course, I'm using the DosBox builtin recording. SOOO much better quality hehehe

- Will try and get the run done ASAP but i'll be working fulltime soon so time might be hard to find. (i've started a run, im at the "search for alien base" stage but luck has not been on my side)

[Arnvidr]

And restarting your computer after windows update has done its thing

[Lord_Booga]

Impressive indeed, it looks like you have incredible balls, walking up to aliens sometimes, and managing to survive!

Can't wait to see the improved one.

[Faskalia]

Wow, 62 minutes.

Well done. There was a thread awhile back, with some helpfull info from my side (especially a few bugs which could be abused). I also did a test run that was just below 4h iirc.

(But I have to admit I was not THAT hectic on the battlescape )

Good Job at the run. I really cant wait for a tftd run ^^ Would be interesting to see, mainly because depending on the version of tftd the game can last shorter or longer, cause you need either a lobsterman navigator or another live deep one to research the advanced crafts.

Running the older versions (the one where you need a lobsterman navigator) would be really awsome, because when trying to capture the lobby you are pretty much forced to use thermo-tazers, meaning hand2hand combat against the most fiersome alien ^^

[Faskalia]

- Saving at the beginning of each mission saves an intense amount of time. That way, you can play the missions ahead and learn the positions of the aliens. In mission 5, you needed to search for them quite much, but you were also very unlucky with the last few aliens.

- Have you thought about grenades? They can be quite effective, at least at the beginning of the game.

If you are planning a TAS with all mapping known you should look at xcomutil again. There is a flag that reveals the whole battlesacpe including alien locations.

I agree with the grenade statement. Having grenade chains is a rather effective way of killing aliens on also pretty fast, if you are planning on moving every soldier anyway.

Another possibility is to use the CE edition of the game and make use of the "teleporting blaster bomb" bug. This allows you to complete every mission, except base missions and cydonia in 1 turn. It might be usefull if you are running into problems with you score and need some point to avoid xcom gettig shut down.

[Sorcerer88]

That bug sounds effective, can you explain it? Anyways, i'd rather see a run without these extreme bug-abuses. They take away alot of what the game should be like ( and what the running will be like ).

Thinking about grenades, a nice strategy to deal with their "readiing time" ( what do you call it ? ) would be to instantly ready all grenades of your whole crew right at the start of the mission. That would only take some seconds, and if you begin another round right after that, you don't loose any precious movement points.

With grenade chains, you mean building chains of grenades where one grenade lets all others explode? I didn't come up with that idea before. How would you use that? I can't imagine situations where a single grenade wouldn't help.

By the way, progress on your run, tbgox?

[Faskalia]

The teleporting blaster bombs works only in the "CE Edition".

-Select your blaster launcher
-Place a waypoint somewhere on the map.
-Go one level up and place waypont #2 exactly above waypoint #1.
-Place waypoint #3 at the teleportation location (example a ships bridge)
-Fire the blaster bomb

In the CE, when a blasterbomb is forced to go vertically up, it flys straight south instead until hit hits a solid object OR until it leaves the battlescape bounds. If it should leave the bounds it will appear at the next waypoint. Thus you can teleport a blaster bomb anywhere, as long as you are playing on an open map. With enough blasterbombs you can do nearly any mission in 1 turn.

This bug is also the reason, why you often see aliens blowing themselfe up. They place 2 waypoint on top of each other and BOOM.

-----------------------------------------
By grenade chain I mean forming a chain of soldiers and then you can have 1 soldier standing in the skyranger, picking up a nade, priming it throwing it to the next soldier and so on. I often use this on superhuman, to supply my rockert laucnher troops with rockets.
----------------------------------------
As for using the CE. When you prime a proximity grenade and then the battle ends, witheout the primed grenade going of, then a RANDOM piece of equipment will act as a primed proximity nade. This means that proxys arre worthless in the CE for normal play, but with save scamming you can force a blaster bomb to act as a proximity grenade, meaning you can use blaster bombs witheout researching the blaster launcher ^^

[Sorcerer88]

Heh, nice glitches.

I guess i now know what you mean with the grenade chain: one soldier primes a grenade, throws it right on the feet of another soldier who picks it up and throws it to the next soldier, right? That should be a great trick for a run, although you could probably simply equip all soldiers with grenades for the most time. But that's definitely something to remember.

And by the way, tbgox said he couldn't use the CE because it crashes from time to time. That's also why i'm not using it.

[T1]

I remember there being some trick for duplicating items in the battlescape inventory screen, i don't remember how though... it's been a long time.

[Sorcerer88]

Any news on the run? And by the way, have you played UFO: Extraterrestials? In my opinion, it's the best UFO clone ever. Sadly or gladly, depends on how you see it, it's a pretty direct clone, it's nearly a 1:1 copy ( turn-based, YES! ). But there are also a lot of new things, some nice optimizations ( although there could have been more ) and the research/ufopedia totally rocks, they even hired some technical consultants for the ufopedia, and you really notice it. In the beginning, it seems a bit unendeavoured, but i gets much better over time. I love it.

Hmm, something that already came to my mind earlier: Have you already thought about the placement of your base? I never got into details of the UFO engine that much, but if i'd take a guess, id' say that the less land surrounds your base, the fewer are encounters with UFOs, because they have bases somewhere in the landscape themselves. Well, that's just a guess, and it would be your task to think about how to deal with that.

[tbgox]

sorry guys for not updating.

I'm still alive but just got busy with life, graduation, and work, etc.

I haven't given up on this run though !! (just need a lot of time to get it perfect)

[Caos2]

Looking forward to this one!

-C2