Positive Random Events

[Scorpion]

When playing on Normal I has several positive events like "Military planes shot down a UFO" which then created a bonus UFO Crash site. This seemed to only happen with light scouts (So only the first 4-5 waves) and it was rare.

I have since been playing on Veteran and have never had this event happen, I assume it is disabled above Normal.

It would be nice if this type of event could happen on Veteran and Insane as well. While an additional light scout crash site will not in my opinion change the difficulty much, it would be nice to every once in a while you get some sort of lucky break especially in the first month where regardless of your skill level so much of the world is beyond your range.

-Scorpion

[Shadow86]

There is perhaps something wrong with the funding system in that random events tend to be negative (exclusively so for Veteran and Insane, apparently), and you can only reverse that damage actively inflicting losses upon the aliens. However, in the original X-COM, countries were also happy simply not having UFO activity in their airspace, and I can't see why that couldn't be the case in Xenonauts as well.

It's probably too late to implement something like that officially, but would it be possible, through modding, to create positive events which provide a funding forecast boost in a given continent periodically, every X days of no incidents?

I mean, just like alien attacks are blamed on Xenonauts' ineffectiveness, a lack of them in a given region over a certain period of time could improve the local government's opinion of the organization. Even if they aren't explicitly seeing Condors shooting down UFOs over their territory. No news is good news, right?

[kabill]

Sadly, I don't think it would be moddable. The only way of changing relations is through UFO events (which are obviously negative) and shooting down UFOs. I do agree though that it would be a good idea, though, having funding inherently go upwards, but then have negative events cause it to go down.

[Max_Caine]

I think that's possible, as there was a bug where air superiority events were causing positive events. It might be worthwhile seeing if giving negative values to various eventPenalties to see if that could change anything.

[kabill]

I did think about suggesting something like that, but you basically lose that mission type to implement it and I'm not sure it would be worth the cost.

[Max_Caine]

If you take a common event - such as Airliner - you could adjust that and alter the equivalent wording in strings.

[HammerHead]

Yeah, but those events are still caused by UFOs. And any positive activity would be pretty hard to justify realistically, unless we're talking about "UFO sighted giving candy to children" or something.

[Max_Caine]

Well, that's exactly it. As you can change the wording of an evenr in strings, you could.. say... change this:

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Events.Airliner.Land2</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Local fighter squadron engaged and destroyed by alien craft, %3% airmen KIA.</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

</Row>

To this:

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Events.Airliner.Land2</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Local fighter squadron driven off UFO, %3% civilians saved.</Data><NamedCell

ss:Name="_FilterDatabase"/></Cell>

</Row>

As there would be a mix of positive and negative events that a UFO could generate, it would look like the UFOs win some battles, and loose others.

You know, I think I might just actually go and do this if kabill or mikhail doesn't beat me to it first.

[kabill]

As there would be a mix of positive and negative events that a UFO could generate, it would look like the UFOs win some battles, and loose others.

You know, I think I might just actually go and do this if kabill or mikhail doesn't beat me to it first.

Trouble is, even the 'positive' events would be causing negative funding damage.

That said, I do like the idea of mixing up the events a little bit, though. The vanilla ones can be a bit dull (e.g. the Ground Attack ones, which are pretty much all "[noun] strafed"). It's a shame there's not a way to add in some more events, actually.

[Shadow86]

Trouble is, even the 'positive' events would be causing negative funding damage.

Negative relations damage = relations boost.

Unless the game doesn't like it and crashes instead.

But the intent of my last post was to ask about the possibility of UFO-unrelated events boosting relations/funding (via scripts, if nothing else), mentioned only in the event log as opposed to spots on the map. For example, after several days without alien attacks, "Clear skies over South America. Local governments pleased with Xenonauts."

Local forces doing things to deter UFOs wouldn't really be something that'd encourage governments to fund Xenonauts further.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Shadow86

[kabill]

Negative relations damage = relations boost.

But the effect of events is constant for events of it's type. If you wanted a UFO event to produce positive results, *all* of those event types would do it (i.e. all air superiority attacks, or all ground attack events).

As for scripting, I'm not sure. Most of the LUA scripts which are accessible deal with UI related things. The only exception I can think of is the one which is called when you build your first base (which unlocks certain tech/xenopedia articles). I seem to remember there being a script for the event mentioned in the OP, but I can't seem to find it now and it may have been UI related anyway.

It might still be possible, but you'd really need some documentation on what the functions are and how you might get them to work in game.

[Scorpion]

As I said at least one positive event is already in the game (Friendly forces shoot down a UFO which you can recover or air strike).

So its not like they would have to add more coding.

It just seems to be turned off for difficulties above Normal, which is a shame because I feel most people play at Veteran after the first few games.

[Max_Caine]

The positive event you refer to was deliberately introduced in normal and easy quite a while ago so if a player didn't get UFOs in the first few waves, Caesan and Sebillian UFOs would be provided for the player so they don't get bored and suffer a setback due to lack of UFOs. This event only occurs if the player is unable to shoot down a UFO.

-------

EDIT

kabill, that's not quite true. Mission types are composed of events, and while most mission types only have one event, some have more. Take the ground attack mission which is composed of groundAttackGAEventChance and groundAttackAirlinerEventChance. If groundAttackGAEventChance (the event which is unique to ground attacks) could be made positive, then the ground attack would generate a mix of events the chance of which could be modified without affecting other mission types.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Max_Caine

[Shadow86]

But the effect of events is constant for events of it's type. If you wanted a UFO event to produce positive results, *all* of those event types would do it (i.e. all air superiority attacks, or all ground attack events).

The effect isn't constant. Check this out, from gameconfig.xml.

<!-- GEOSCAPE EVENTS PENALTY --><!-- Penalties applied to the region relations of the continent (or nearest continent, if over sea) when one of the following events happens --> <eventsPenalty><Abduction land="12" sea="12"/><AirlinerShotdown land="15" sea="15" /><MinorCivilianAttack land="15" sea="15" /><MajorCivilianAttack land="35" sea="35" /><MajorMilitaryAttack land="40" sea="40" /> </eventsPenalty>

In theory, adding a minus to any of those values would make the effect negative damage, and therefore a positive impact on funding forecast. In theory. Needs testing.

[kabill]

@Shadow: the problem is that those events are called by specific UFO missions.

For example, UFOs on research missions call "abduction" events. So if you changed the abduction impact to negative, Research Mission UFOs would *always* produce a negative effect. It would only ever be worth leaving them to fly around, since all they'd do is make your funding go up.

Max has a good point, though, that Ground Attack missions were changed very recently to be allowed to call both Airliner events and Ground Attack events. I'd not thought of that.

(I guess, as well, you could actually do a similar thing with bombing missions by giving the bombing event chance a positive modifier but significantly increasing the chance of an areal terror mission.)

(Another thing you could possibly do is change the modifiers so that land events cause damage, and sea events cause bonuses. With events like "Fighter jets engage UFO and deter it from attack" (but better written). That way you could have it split over more mission types).

[Max_Caine]

See, I'm giving you ideas now.

[kabill]

You've definitely persuaded me that it could be workable. I wasn't especially take with the idea at first (this probably helping me overlook ways it could be implemented) but I'm quite taken by it now and am interested to see it in practice.

[Max_Caine]

Mind you, it all hinges on if an event given a negative value gives a bonus rather than a malus.

[kabill]

Yup. It would be an easy enough test, though. Just set all the events to negative values and see if money goes up.

EDIT: Yes, negative values give positive funding changes. (Not that I'm supposed to be at work or anything)

EDIT 2: Just thinking about balance, one of the issues at least with using the land/sea idea is that it could be advantageous to the player to leave shooting down some UFOs until the last minute to maximize funding bonuses. However, if this idea was combined with UFOs causing ticker increases, there'd still be an incentive to shoot down those UFOs or, at the very least, a cost to leaving them flying.

Edited June 16, 2014 by kabill

[SyDaemon]

Having non-Xenonaut affiliated aircraft shoot down UFOs could be seen as the local government being unhappy about doing the shooting themselves and thus be less generous with funding. i.e. If I'm shooting down UFOs for you, why am I paying you so much for (not) doing it?

[kabill]

It's true, but there's still room for an in-game lore explanation. If I were going to do this, I'd probably assume in the background that the Xenonauts project is collecting data on UFOs, feeding tactical information to funding nations, and so on. As such, successful actions taken by funding nations' own forces could still be attributed to the Xenonauts project in some ways.

E.g. "UFO flight data leads to successful skirmish with UFO. The alien attack is deterred and many lives saves."

But again, better written than that!

[kabill]

Out of wonder, is anyone interesting in pursuing this idea in practice? I'm at risk of trying to knock something together when I get home this evening, but if someone else is wanting to work on this in the future I'm more than happy not to do the work.

[Max_Caine]

I'm fiddling about with it now, actually. However, this is more of a collab thing anyway. Want me to go start a thread on it?

[kabill]

Yes, go for it.

[Max_Caine]

Magic and Sparkles for everyone!