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Chris' Amazing Geoscape Balance Patch Pre-Discussion!


Chris

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Why should it be impossible to play a perfect game? If I am good enough to save every nation then that's how it should be. Arbitrarily making it impossible to save every nation is (forgive me) bad game mechanics aimed at artificially increasing difficulty. And yes, the two strikes plan would make it impossible to save every nation, and imo would make the early game's focus on rapid expansion even more prominent then it is currently (which is a VERY bad thing). Eventually you have to expand sure, but making it so that you HAVE to put bases down as fast as humanly possible is railroading every early game into one strategy (see paragraph 3 for more on this).

I also don't get why if a nation has as few as -$5,000 funding for two consecutive months they just up and leave the program. The two strikes idea just makes no sense. A percentage chance of leaving the program based on AMOUNT of negative funding would be much better.

Also, different funding levels for different nations to balance starting locations needs to happen soon. "Soon", as in as soon as humanly possible. I feel it is the one "big" thing missing from geoscape at the moment. Maybe if you had a base covering the "big spender" funding nations it would be viable to have a one-base strategy at least for the first one or two months.

Edited by legit1337
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The game would be balanced around not having every funding nation, so I'm not too concerned about losing some. It makes the geoscape more tense.

I do agree about the two strikes system. It's not as intuitive as the current system and I'm not really sure it solves any problems. The reason why not many funding nation go red is because of the UFO spawning system and lack of alien strategy, not because the current system is flawed. Maybe if there was a chance each game for most of the waves to focus on one area of the map, some countries would be turned, since the player happened to set up on the other side of the planet.

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Personally I find alien bases and terror missions happening regardless of how many you stop is unusual and unfair. If I keep stopping the aliens, and if they REALLY wanted to do a terror mission, then they should keep sending more ships. And if I stopped those ships, well then they should send even more! I don't enjoy aliens randomly overwhelming me with dozens of ship once a week or so. However, if they kept trying to do terror missions in Europe (on a smaller scale with less ships invading) and I kept stopping them, I'd think the aliens would:

Send a bigger wave (if that wave died they'd send an even BIGGER wave!)

Start looking for my base.

This could even add another (tiny) layer of depth to the strategy. You don't want to poke the aliens too hard or else they'll poke back so hard you might lose. Something along the lines of: It's month 3 and in the first wave of UFOs, you shot down all 4 (for example) corvettes over euro/middle east/USSR/north african airspace. So now the next wave in these areas is doubled, and there are 8 corvettes zooming around each with it's own mission. Now you make the mistake of shooting down all eight corvettes. A week later there's 12 corvettes flying around and 2 landing ships looking for your base. There might even be 3 terror missions. You shouldn't have gone and made them mad.

I don't actually want this in the game all that much but to me it seems like a better alternative than 'hey we know you stopped ALL the aliens but they're still magically here somehow." Just my thoughts :P

*Edit (now that I'm reading the thread)*

Possibly one of the most stressful part of XCOM:EU, in fact, probably the most stressful part of the game is when it's started and your nations get randomly hammered by abductions that you have no chance of stopping and the panic meter ticks up and up without pause or mercy.

The most stressful part of XCOM: EU was the god damn RNG and it's nonsense xD

Hmmm...I think there is a problem with this approach as far as "two strikes and you're out". I've NEVER had enough money to setup more than two bases with aircraft before month three or four. It takes three bases to cover around 2/3's of the land mass on the globe. With your proposed system it seems to me most players are going to lose about 1/2 or more of the funding nations by the end of month two or three.

Maybe cheaper bases are in order? When you build a base, you have to build at least 6 hangars (maybe less after the geoscope patch but I doubt it), at least one living quarters, radar, defense systems, medical center, and that's just for the first two months. Then you need at least 2 production facilities which means another living quarters for more engineers (i find it impossible for one base to build enough planes/guns/armor to distribute across the globe, even with 3 to 4 production facilities. So each base has to supply itself, which is a-ok, but damn is it expensive, which brings me to my point...). Maybe bases should be cheaper? Or base maintenance costs should be cut? I find after I build a second base it is impossible to build another base because even in games where I've shotdown every UFO with both bases and made every country happy, I make a $50k profit from the counsel funding and that $300k I got from shooting down UFOs is going toward a corsair.

Edited by RuskiVolkov
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This could even add another (tiny) layer of depth to the strategy. You don't want to poke the aliens too hard or else they'll poke back so hard you might lose. Something along the lines of: It's month 3 and in the first wave of UFOs, you shot down all 4 (for example) corvettes over euro/middle east/USSR/north african airspace. So now the next wave in these areas is doubled, and there are 8 corvettes zooming around each with it's own mission. Now you make the mistake of shooting down all eight corvettes. A week later there's 12 corvettes flying around and 2 landing ships looking for your base. There might even be 3 terror missions. You shouldn't have gone and made them mad.

This sounds more frustrating than fun. The player shouldn't be punished for doing well.

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This sounds more frustrating than fun. The player shouldn't be punished for doing well.

That's what it sounds like the current system is doing...I'm just adding sense to it so that it's cruel and not cruel and unusual. Like I said, I don't want to see it in the game but I want to see forced missions even less.

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Maybe cheaper bases are in order? When you build a base, you have to build at least 6 hangars (maybe less after the geoscope patch but I doubt it)...
Actually I was talking about bases ONLY for aircraft. That's just six hangers and three radars. Only my main (first) has all the other facilities. But if you think about it, just an air base is about $1.6 million counting the jets. That's a lot of money.
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Chris, I remember your surprise when a sizeable portion of the forum came out and told you they would grind every UFO, even if it was SUPER BORING. I think you'll find it just as surprising to learn that players will strain every muscle to try and protect every nation come hell or high water and they will get... upset... when the game is all "nope! not gonna happen!"

Edited by Max_Caine
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Chris, I refer you to something that you wrote in Thoughts and Lessons from XCom: Enemy Unknown.

Why can't I buy a second Skyranger and attack more than one abduction site each turn? Why can't the aliens attack my base? Why does ignoring an abduction site in a country raise panic in the entire continent, but completing one only reduces panic in that particular country?

You wrote about the restrictive strategy layer funneling the player down a pre-set route. I submit to you that not ever being able to protect every nation (regardless of how hard that would be in practice) would be considered as restrictive. I'm not saying it shouldn't be hard. If players want to protect everyone it should be really tough going, even into the mid-late game. But the option, no matter how far away, should be there.

And also please bear in mind what you wrote about panic in XCOM2012. legit1337's comment on the small dip in negative funding equalling one strike resonates very strongly with what you wrote about how restrictively panic works in XCOM2012.

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Surely allowing people to be able to protect all of the world means that we have to ensure that no nations are able to leave the funding pact before the Xenonauts have time to set up at least three bases, then? Setting the game up so that good players are able to win without ever losing a continent would make it kinda easy for everyone, no?

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I wouldn't say so. It's not necessary to force the situation where no nation leaves in the first 3 months. Let me explain. In EU2012, if you wanted a perfect defence you could do it - so long as every effort was strained towards building satellites and even then it wasn't a sure thing because the RNG might decide that the same nation get hammered twice in a row and if you're playing on classic, that was it for a country. It required smart managing of panic so no one country ever tipped over completely. I didn't do it in my first playthrough - I only managed to do it in my third.

Like EU2012, Xenonauts has the tools to encourage the smart managing of relations. You've already written about it in your opening post: terror sites appearing earlier, terror sites possibly being being the swing vote in any funding bloc staying in, and the smart management of terror sites making early expansion not the go-to strat. Managing and minimising the effect of terror sites requires either a very early total expansion strat OR a fewer base strat with stronger emphasis on ground combat. You could have several terror sites appear in a wave and unlike EU2012, the player has the possibility to respond to more than one depending on where he sinks his assets and like EU2012, it's not a sure thing. "Well, I tried my best" is far better than "Which one do I write off".

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It's a matter of balancing, Chris. If you look at the Firaxis game, your ability to keep all nations on board was literally dependent on random luck (above Normal difficulty). Depending on which random panic levels the countries started at, in the first month, and depending on the generated missions, you could end up in a situation where losing a nation became unavoidable even if you did everything perfectly.

Losing a nation in Xeno is too difficult as you basically have to ignore them for months. It should be easier to lose nations, especially failing terror missions should be a huge relations boon, but it should also be possible, if very difficult, to keep them all.

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Surely allowing people to be able to protect all of the world means that we have to ensure that no nations are able to leave the funding pact before the Xenonauts have time to set up at least three bases, then? Setting the game up so that good players are able to win without ever losing a continent would make it kinda easy for everyone, no?

No, I wouldn't say you need to go so far as guaranteeing that all nations stay in for three months. But I'd like to see it be possible. To use EU as an example, it is possible to keep all nations in the game through the early game but it requires a combination of a focused strategy and a little help from the RNG. As a player, I would much rather face a system that makes it possible but hard as opposed to one where I know from the outset something will happen regardless of my actions. Otherwise, you may as well just start us with bases in Central America and Middle East, and remove Australia because that's what will happen in pretty much every single game.

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Of course we could also counter the possibility of a nation turning on the Xenonauts by allowing a reclamation operation (this could be limited only to a limited number of countries that the player failed. I seem to recall that their was some discussions about such ops some time after/during the kickstarter (I could be wrong about this, my memory is horrible and i'm to lazy to forum search this properly). Regardless, it could always be a special kind of mission (like a base attack or alien base) that would be insanely hard with the civs/local security actually turning against the Xenonauts together with the aliens.

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What I love about Xenonauts so far, is that it presents itself as a defence simulator.

The solution to the issues with geoscape balance should be to improve the simulation.

I´ve thought about 3 suggestions based on ideas put forward by others on these boards:

1) Change the rules for region withdrawal from Xenonauts

2) Change the rules for funding in general

3) Change alien behavior on the geoscape

1) Change the rules for region withdrawal from Xenonauts

Two intuitive rules:

a) A country withdraws if it reaches zero funding

b) If a country suffers negative funding change, there is a chance that it will withdraw based on previous relations and how large the negative change is.

The chance is calculated as (funding change)/(funding prior to change).

If this percentage is below a certain threshold (e.g 10%) it is counted as 0%. (To avoid loosing countries due to freaks of RNG)

(examples in excel sheet below).

That being said, I would also like to change the rules for loosing the game…

If a player is able to reach the final mission, with only a few regions still funding him, that would be an awesome story about endurance against all odds… Why should you loose the game because an arbitrary number of regions leave the project?

2) Change the rules for funding in general

Funding is calculated as (base funding level) * (relations modifier).

Soviet Union and North America has a substantially higher base funding level than other regions (they are superpowers).

These two regions also get a boost to relations (they are founding members of Xenonauts).

Events that effect relations, increase or decrease the relations modifier by a set amount.

I´ve tried to make en excel sheet that exemplifies the result of these changes:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9g3282832dqi8rl/Screenshot%202014-01-25%2018.52.15.png

These rules have a lot of implications for gameplay...

Regions with high relations becomes more resilient to funding loss. They are less likely to quit if you have negative funding change.

Regions with low relations becomes really vulnerable.

If a player want to pursue a one base strategy (or two base strategy), he could place his bases in North America and Sovicet Union and still manage to pull decent funding, even though the rest of the world crumbles around him.

If, on the other hand, a player want to play a game where no regions are lost, he should place his bases in regions with the lowest relations. But doing so is gonna cost a lot of funding, since negative events in North America or Soviet Union are more costly than similar events in regions with a lover base funding level.

Where to place your bases thus becomes a meaningful choice between different strategies.

3) Change alien behavior on the geoscape

Divide alien missions into general disruptive missions and missions targeting xenonauts.

The following rules regards only general disruptive missions.

Assign a weight to all regions based on landmass. The weights affect the likelihood that a UFO on a given mission will target that region.

Whenever a UFO on a mission is shot down by xenonauts over a region, reduce the weight of that region for that type of UFO only.

When a region abandons the Xenonauts, its weight is reduced to zero. It will no longer be a target of the regular raids.

However, if a region is lost, the Aliens will send UFO´s to construct bases in it. If successful, these bases will spawn UFO´s ON TOP of those already being generated by the game. Thus the loss of several regions should speed up player decline.

If a xenonaut base is successfully destroyed by the aliens, increase the weight for that region for all UFO´s. (The Aliens rush to take down the now unprotected region).

Taken together, these rules ought to have the effect, that the aliens gradually shift their focus away from regions where their UFO´s are successfully intercepted.

But when the larger UFO´s enter the fray, they may target that region with equal likelihood again.

Unprotected regions will be increasingly targeted speeding up their withdrawal.

When a region is lost, all other regions (including those closer to the player) will experience an increase in UFO´s (due to the Aliens resifting their focus).

This ought to give an ebb and flow to the game, where consistent successful interceptions will require the player to stretch farther and farther away from his original bases.

Again the player has a meaningful choice of wether to pursue this with more bases, or consolidate his position and wait for the resurgence in nearby regions or the appearance of larger UFO´s.

If a player looses a base, he is in for a very difficult time. The loss of a base will be a prelude to a rush from the Aliens and thus probably the loss a region.

-----

Well this is just some ideas… They might need some tuning and tweaking and rethinking… But I wonder if they might allow for different player strategies, increase tension, and allow for faster plunge into despair if the balance tips. Thus less need for arbitrary rules and more room for simulation.

Ultimately this gives rooms for different experiences or stories…

- Do you want to pursue the story of how the Xenonauts took upon themselves to protect the entire human race? (Even though their original founders in NA and SU looked with dismay at it…)

- Or do you want to pursue the story of how the Xenonauts held fast, dug in, and endured to the end - even though half the world turned against them and started serving the alien masters?

Very different stories… The choice is yours!

Edited by Frakel
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The problems mentioned are definitely there - I always put my base on north Africa due to coverage

Regarding the proposals:

- UFOs generated by land mass is ok, makes sense

- Differentiate missions per effects - Great, that would be nice, just make it so that it is obvious what the effects are. I am thinking on a relationship metric and clear numbers on each event in which direction and how much they affect relation and funding for which region.

- Random mission: I am not a fan of the idea. They have done that in EU and it did not work for me - it was frustrating how little effect I have on the geoscape and in the overall events. The 2 abduction missions per month were outright funny and void of fun. I knew they weer coming and they wore more annoying than fun to deal with.

- Two strikes: Not a fan. Causes a rush to build bases and planes which hurts the ground missions. If something like this would be implemented I would imagine to have a 3-4 strikes rule and have the number of strikes clearly visible for each region

I think the game would benefit from a more intensive attack by the aliens that could simply not be stopped by planes. Ground missions would thus be inevitable, and if someone is that good with planes then he/she does not have a good ground team and thus also looses in the air battle sue to obsolete tech.

Another important thing would be a more dashboard view of all regions - maybe even color code the regions themselves showing their relationship and funding values clearly with large numbers and the trend (has it increased and how many strikes it has). Current numbers are rather small and the GUI offers little analysis options. The original also had some nice graphs with historical data, and EU had them color coded according to panic level. We need more intensive invasion but better analytical options to decide which regions to protect with the limited resources.

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I would have a lot less problems with the two strikes system if it possible to win a nation back by heroic actions of some type like destroying an alien base(s) or something.

I like this idea and maybe 3 strikes rule instead of 2 for a country, if you have to have a 2 strike and out at least let us try and win that country bad even if it is a very hard mission or 2,maybe destroy a base and then a mission to stop them infiltrate a building and taking over (you win if you save a certain npc he or she just staying in their office).

Or what about you get intel about a country leaving and to make them stay you need to build a base there and get their rating above a certain lvl in a certain time frame if you don't they leave?, this idea would throw a spanner in the works of a players plans where to build their next base and at least give them a chance of stopping the country from leaving if they want too.

I like this idea as well.

I think the game would benefit from a more intensive attack by the aliens that could simply not be stopped by planes. Ground missions would thus be inevitable, and if someone is that good with planes then he/she does not have a good ground team and thus also looses in the air battle sue to obsolete tech.

Another important thing would be a more dashboard view of all regions - maybe even color code the regions themselves showing their relationship and funding values clearly with large numbers and the trend (has it increased and how many strikes it has). Current numbers are rather small and the GUI offers little analysis options. The original also had some nice graphs with historical data, and EU had them color coded according to panic level. We need more intensive invasion but better analytical options to decide which regions to protect with the limited resources.

Edited by Queamin
added a quote
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at least let us try and win that country bad even if it is a very hard mission or 2,maybe destroy a base and then a mission to stop them infiltrate a building and taking over (you win if you save a certain npc he or she just staying in their office).

Or what about you get intel about a country leaving and to make them stay you need to build a base there and get their rating above a certain lvl in a certain time frame if you don't they leave?, this idea would throw a spanner in the works of a players plans where to build their next base and at least give them a chance of stopping the country from leaving if they want too.

I disagree with the idea that you should be able to win back a lost region.

On the contrary it ads to the suspence and mood of the game that a dead soldier stays dead and a lost region is lost for good.

But of course the player should receive the necessary information to be able to predict when a region is at risk of being lost. A dashboard view of the regions - or simply the ability to call up the monthly funding overview at any time could do the trick. (Obviously it should then show changes in funding for current month).

I am also quite sceptical about the two or three strikes system - to me it sounds arbitrary and gamey.

Rather I would recommend keeping the current system - if a region reaches zero funding it is lost (this is intuitive for the player and the information is readily at hand.)

In addition add the risk of a region leaving if a particular month has been sufficiently bad - compared to current level of support. The system I proposed a few post ago would mean, that a region which eg. looses 25% of its current funding in a given month, also has a 25% risk of leaving. I think this would also be intuitive for the player to understand, and the information could be displayed with some qualitative labels when viewing the region on the geoscape ("small risk of leaving", "moderate risk of leaving", etc.)

And if the idea of a probabilistic approach to region withdrawal seems unappealing, then you just set a rather high threshold for when the risk is actually rolled. Eg. risk below 20% or 25% is never rolled to avoid too much randomness. On the other hand, I find it a very plausible simulation, that a region might leave after a single really disastrous month (rather than allways leaving after two or three slightly negative months in a row - as would be the consequence of the Two/Three strikes rule).

You know - region behavior should be like the story about boiling frogs...

The story goes, that if you put a frog into cold water and only heats it slowly - then the frog wont really react to the slowly worsening conditions and it wont jump away before it finally dies.

But if you put a frog into very hot water, it will react on the sudden change and jump away from the pot immediately...

Edited by Frakel
Added a story about boiling frogs...
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The way I look at it is that when a country leaves it would be because of alien control of a few top people, the country wouldn't turn 100% for the aliens they still hate them, so clear out the aliens in control it should go back into human control.

When Germans invaded France, they didn't welcome them some tried to fight them for their freedom and wanted them gone, yes some helped the Germans instead of refusing and going to prison or getting shoot, but most people weren't in a position to do anything about it anyway.

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I would be happy if the player got intel about a country leaving and then at least they had a choice of letting them leave or screwing up their plans to try and save a country, for me it would add another layer to it, as you cannot plan everything out and trying to save a country could change the direction of the game instead of having a same plan for bases each game this makes you change what you do as you might have to give something up for that base.

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