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How reputation works/income increases work.


victorix58

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How do additions to monthly income work, exactly?

The reputation score at the end of a crash site... What does it do? Does it actually add to the monthly income for the country? The only effects on monthly income ive been seeing are from shooting down UFOs (sometimes) or dismantling a base or a terror site.

Do additions to reputation work based on how many UFOs you shoot down? Or is it based on reducing the percentage of UFOs on the whole planet? Or what? I know when there are casualties that hurts your rep, right? Like when the UFOs blow up an airliner or something...

Generally, I do not understand the details and mechanics of the income system.

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Each country has a relationship score with the Xenonauts - this is multiplied by a cash value to give the funding that nation provides at the end of each month. Shooting down a UFO will boost the Xenonauts relations with the country the UFO was over when it was intercepted by a set number (more for harder UFOs) and also completing a ground combat mission will grant you bonus to your relations score - the reward for a ground combat mission is mainly in experience for your soldiers and recovered alien equipment, with the relations boost being a secondary benefit (this may still need tuning once we have settled on the alien balance for ground combat).

Now showing that number at the end of the ground combat probably isn't the best way to do it given we don't show you the actual total relations score for any nations - when we rework that screen we might remove it and leave the "Average", "Excellent" etc... ratings.

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victorix58: I think you lose funding from alien harrassment (like the messages that appear on the geoscape if certain UFOs are left to their own devices such as "the aliens killed a whole load of fish, damn, so many dead fish, I'd really hate to be a fish right about now", or UFOs that land for a time then take off), and also if an alien base is present. If an alien base is left alone, it'll suck something like 5k-10k funding per day.

Each country has a relationship score with the Xenonauts - this is multiplied by a cash value to give the funding that nation provides at the end of each month. Shooting down a UFO will boost the Xenonauts relations with the country the UFO was over when it was intercepted by a set number (more for harder UFOs) and also completing a ground combat mission will grant you bonus to your relations score - the reward for a ground combat mission is mainly in experience for your soldiers and recovered alien equipment, with the relations boost being a secondary benefit (this may still need tuning once we have settled on the alien balance for ground combat).

Now showing that number at the end of the ground combat probably isn't the best way to do it given we don't show you the actual total relations score for any nations - when we rework that screen we might remove it and leave the "Average", "Excellent" etc... ratings.

I guess it depends how helpful you want that label to be, since knowing that I did an "average" or "excellent" job doesn't really tell me anything useful. Did I get +5k funding from that mission? +15k? I don't know without loading a pre-mission save and comparing the two.

I understand the threat of burying the player in numbers - no-one wants to have an end-mission screen that looks like an explosion at the data entry factory - but I'd rather that be handled with some or all of the points breakdown on the left (civs/friendlies killed or saved, etc.) tucked away behind a "show more details" button. Make an option in Game Options to show all the details by default for people who do prefer it that way.

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I'm fine with the generic labels if its possible for me to figure out what they do to funding/nation relationship. Providing too much of the data management for me takes away a skill I could employ in learning how to get better at the game (in other words it takes out gameplay).

Maybe it would be helpful if we got limited feedback about what actions are increasing country relations and what are decreasing it? I agree with Ol' Stinky that we don't want to be buried in data, of course. BTW, thanks Ol' Stinky for the comment about per diem reductions from bases - thats interesting. Bases have really been a problem for my funding lately.

And thank you to Aaron for another reply today.

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Now showing that number at the end of the ground combat probably isn't the best way to do it given we don't show you the actual total relations score for any nations - when we rework that screen we might remove it and leave the "Average", "Excellent" etc... ratings.

I should just point out that the terms used are not really good at describing what happens. (I.E. If I killed every alien, and no civilians or xenonauts died, so I get as many positive points as possible, and no negative points, why is it I can only do "average", just because it was a light scout with few aliens in it?)

It would make more sense if the terms were related to how angry or pleased they are, rather than saying I got a "C" rating for getting a perfect score.

As for hiding numbers - I have no idea how you can get overwhelmed by such a scant readout of information. "You killed 8 aliens, so you get 16 points" is hardly rocket science.

It's also important for players to actually see the game tell players that you get 3 points for a capture, rather than 2 for a kill, which helps tell players to take the risk of trying to capture an alien. Without having the numbers tell you those things, there's no indication of what is important, and what isn't.

Why would you want to take away the only useful information that actually exists on that screen? What's the point in having the screen at all if it doesn't tell you anything? Without the numbers, every single mission just winds up telling you, "good".

===

In completely unrelated news, the alien events (like UFO sightings or tidal disruptions) all seem to be a flat -$5k.

Edited by Wraith_Magus
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I modded my game to give one extra point for each surviving civilian, this makes it slightly easier to get above Average points.

What I do want is a Economic View where it lists all the regions and how I'm doing. A graph would also be nice.

The text is far to small on the Geoscape view for me to mouse over every region and read what the current status is.

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Well, the line graphs of who was funding/supporting the player in the original X-Com is something I do miss in this game. Even if it didn't have any real immediate usefulness, it was just plain neat to have the statistics on hand to show me how my game went, with countries soaring/dropping in support. I hope it gets added in at some later date.

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Ok, is it just me or do you only get points when you shoot down a UFO over land? I never realized this - this is revolutionary for me

It's what the term "confirmed kill" is for.

"Hey, guys! I just shot down another UFO that was heading straight for your capital, just off the coast! No need to thank me... By which I mean "thank me by giving me more money... please.""

"Umm.. what UFO? Prove it. Habeas Corpus."

"Uh... the one that's a scattered trail of random alloys... 50 miles out at sea... where we can't recover it."

"SUUUUUURE it is."

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I was counting on all those fishermen who are constantly getting slaughtered to confirm my kills...

You mean the ones that died 50 at a time from "tidal disturbances", or the ones that were apparently taking speedboat trips off the coast of Antarctica?

There's also the people who somehow manage to "die" from a mere UFO sighting, or a strange radio transmission, so I'm really not too sure those events are anything more than radio blips that various nations tried to make into some Gulf of Tonkin/Mukden Incident where they claim people who weren't even there died of some horrible tragedy.

Edited by Wraith_Magus
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Is it just me or does the global death toll count seem fairly underwhelming? I mean, it's an alien invasion, there should be more deaths than the Vietnam War after a year or so. Granted, we're not facing the brunt of the invasion force, but still. It doesn't really make the aliens seem very threatening when the majority of deaths are caused by our own nukes.

Edited by Camador
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You mean the ones that died 50 at a time from "tidal disturbances", or the ones that were apparently taking speedboat trips off the coast of Antarctica?

There's also the people who somehow manage to "die" from a mere UFO sighting, or a strange radio transmission, so I'm really not too sure those events are anything more than radio blips that various nations tried to make into some Gulf of Tonkin/Mukden Incident where they claim people who weren't even there died of some horrible tragedy.

Maye it's like the Triffids, but instead of people going blind, they die after gossiping about aliens.

I think fish dying contributes to the kill count, too. Let's have a moment of silence for our fishy friends.

Camador: it'd actually be a cool piece of fluff if the deaths caused by UFO geoscape events ramped up based on the type of UFO causing them. So a lightscout might abduct a couple of farmers or an unfortunate hermit, while a carrier slaughters a whole host of people.

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OK, having recently cracked open the gameconfig.xml file, I have better data.

Relations for all regions start at 300, with the exceptions of the North American and Soviet regions (600), Indochina region (400), and Europe region (200).

Each region gives you money based upon their relations multiplied by a region-specific multiplier.

  • North America - 0.5
  • USSR - 0.5
  • Indochina - 0.75
  • South America - 1
  • North Africa - 1
  • South Africa - 1
  • Central America - 1.5
  • Europe - 1.5
  • Middle East - 1.5
  • Australia - 1.5

I expect most of this to change later, but as it stands now, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Aussies give you triple the cash as a reward for a mission compared to the Americans or the Soviets. (Build your bases and trail your UFOs over what land accordingly.)

Since 300 relations on a multiplier 1 region means $150,000, that means there's a further multiplier of $500 per point. Hence, every civvie you save (I.E. every point) is worth $500 a month to the governments of that region, with a $500 penalty for letting 'em die (or $1000 difference), modified by their regional multipliers. (Mexico pays $750 for its citizens, but America only pays $250 for its citizens. Go figure.)

Edited by Wraith_Magus
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