Inadequate ultimate fail condition.

[Went]

"Region lost" mechanics is broken, IMHO.

1. There is no way to slow down or revert region losing if you have no base near it. At the same time, there are insufficient money to cover sufficient part of the world with bases (on insane level). Though, perhaps, I just miscast money.

2. When I lost region below my base, my base continue to work, consume money, but it became useless because no UFOs appear above it anymore. May I ruin or sell my base in this case?

3. When 4 of 4 regions lost you just got "game over" screen and no more. Enough that it sounds like a bombshell, so also does not provide any opportunity to defend or parry this problem. My soldiers are unbeatable, my 2 bases around the world hit down any UFO entering their radar range, any terror or alien base immediately solved, I have enough money to keep all my personnel and structures, my scientists are near to find the solution of alien problem... and then I lost entire game! Any attack of my base, just "game over, guy, you wasted two days of your life because we don't implement some smarter ultimate fail condition".

[KevinHann]

Well what would be a "smart fail condition" for you, mate?

[Solver]

If you lose 4 regions with 2 bases, you're doing something wrong in the air. With 2 bases, it's possible to give 9 out of 10 regions decent coverage, enough not to lose the regions if you shoot down UFOs.

You also have to note that the game is not intended to be easily beatable without losing regions. Much less on Insane difficulty. Winning without losing a single region is the highest possible achievement in the game, not something you should expect every time that you play.

[Chris]

You knew what the fail conditions were, though - why didn't you make more effort to avoid losing those territories?

It doesn't sound like you were giving the air war enough priority (which might explain some of the reason why you think the ground combat is too easy).

[ViniJones]

Ok, ok... you seriously lost 4 regions?

I mean, it was hard with the 3=lose, but the new rule makes it easy, you dont have to care about whole continents.

Edited June 26, 2014 by ViniJones

[Went]

Well what would be a "smart fail condition" for you, mate?

Fail condition must be... "smooth", "soft", "analogous", rather than "immediate and binary". Adequate fail condition is obvious: player lost all of his bases. How can it happen? 3 conditions come to my mind:

1. Base captured by alien or collaborate forces due ground assault.

2. Base destroyed by alien or collaborate aircraft due aerial assault.

3. Base sold due player's bankruptcy.

(Conditions 2 and 3 may not kill base instantly, but lead to lose of some structures).

How region lose related to this? Aliens create at controlled area strong surface bases, rapidly launching strong aerial superiority and ground bombardment missions, especially on XCom bases placed nearby. Can player parry this? Yes. He can counterattack and destroy enemy bases until region return to calmness. So we get a lot smoother, adequate and atmospheric fail condition that occurs observable for the player.

[kabill]

But the funding nations withdrawing *is* a smooth mechanic, in two senses:

1) You can see funding falling. You can tell in advance whether a country is at risk of dropping out completely.

2) Assuming you don't lose all four countries in one go, you can see the countries falling away over time as well.

I'm not sure how that doesn't fit with the criteria you specify.

[Went]

You knew what the fail conditions were, though - why didn't you make more effort to avoid losing those territories?

It doesn't sound like you were giving the air war enough priority (which might explain some of the reason why you think the ground combat is too easy).

Probably this is not balance issue. May be I didn't play well enough for insane difficulty (I was able to build only two bases, but region below second base had rebelled despite the fact that I started to shoot down there all the UFOs above). But this is game experience issue. Unexpected, humiliating defeat "because rules" rather angry me than throwing a challenge to try again.

Edited June 26, 2014 by Went

[Went]

1) You can see funding falling. You can tell in advance whether a country is at risk of dropping out completely.

How I can do this? Build one more base? It's take many time and money, whose never enough in insane.

2) Assuming you don't lose all four countries in one go, you can see the countries falling away over time as well.

Yes, I see funding withdrawal, but look at "paragraph 1" - I have lack of funding, so I unable to build one more base, so I unable to intercept UFOs, so funding withdrawal will continue. This downgrading spiral is very easy to enter and I don't see any way to leave it.

May be I just a bad player. Perhaps I had to build a second base in the first month, and not wait for the second, extending the zone of radar detection in the first. So the player must guess the path of progress, rather than choose it to his own?

[kabill]

Well, folks upthread have said that it's possible to provide sufficient coverage with only two bases, so base placement might be something you could look at.

Equally, it may well be possible to divert funds towards bases/radar coverage rather than other things, so as to be able to combat more UFOs. If you're good at ground combat, you should be able to skip Jackal armour entirely and could probably avoid/hold back on Laser weapons. This will allow you to keep only a small staff of scientists and engineers early game too, which will save you money in terms of maintenance and wages. That's starting to sound like the cost of a base, to me.

(In the final analysis, Insane is hard-mode. Taking a number of attempts to get it right seems entirely reasonable to me.)

[llunak]

Well, did you read the description of the difficulty when choosing it? It's called Insane. It's not meant to be winnable by mediocre or even merely good play.

This is a bit like complaining about getting beaten badly after entering World Boxing Championship just for the fun of it.

[Solver]

Of course you don't have much money in Insane. It's the hardest difficulty for a reason. Alien activity does more funding damage. Aliens are harder to keep up with. To win on Insane without losing any regions requires almost perfect play.

And where were your bases located? With one base somewhere around Egypt/Suez canal, and another base around Guatemala, you have some coverage of every region except Australia. Especially with 2 radars in each base, it gets to be good coverage. With that base placement, I rarely lose 2 regions, and the only way to lose more seems to be by failing to shoot down quite a lot of UFOs.

[Went]

I have placed first base at Arabia and second at Panama. Next month South America and Latin America rebelled But I want to repeat: I'm not complaining that the game is too hard on insane. Yes, it's hard, but this was my first try after release, so it is normal to be defeated such easily. My claim to the game mechanics itself, to the win/lose criteria, and not to its settings. Victory and fail - this is weakest sides of the game. Trivial mechanics, lack of special content, any movies or even comics in reward. Just a screen "Game over, you win/lose".

[Solver]

I do not think the conditions are wrong.

There is no other loss condition that makes sense, really. Losing all bases? That is quite unlikely and would make the game drag on forever before you could technically lose it. As for a victory condition, it again somewhat makes sense - complete the tech tree and then win a difficult combat mission.

Yeah, a static game over screen feels quite dated, but this is one of the inevitable consequences of a low-budget game. A rendered quality cutscene costs a surprisingly large amount of money!

[StellarRat]

I've found that three bases provides very good coverage and my funding usually increases throughout the game (playing on Veteran.) I agree with the other posters here: I think you're not spending/planning your air campaign correctly. You need at least 4 - 6 aircraft per base and three radars installed at those bases. Once you get to Marauder technology you can reduce the number of aircraft somewhat. The first two to three months you must focus on getting those air resources built up. After that you have about three months where you can use Corsairs and Foxtrots to handle anything. Your goal should be to shoot down 75% - 100% of the UFOs that come into range. You don't have to run a ground recovery on all of them (just airstrike them), but you do need to shoot them down. Granted I haven't played on Insane, but it's got to be somewhat similar to Veteran.

As far as the failure conditions...yeah, they are abrupt, but they certainly aren't invisible and you can easily see where you have problems well ahead of time.

Edited June 26, 2014 by StellarRat

[Solver]

4 aircraft per base can do it. You eventually figure out that a Corsair can down a Landing Ship, and yeah, it's quite doable with four. But my big strategic mistake for a long time has been underspending on air defenses, and instead overspending on ground combat. Though I am not sure if I like the balance - I'm not a big fan of the fact that a second ground assault team seems not to pay off financially even if handled well.

[StellarRat]

4 aircraft per base can do it. You eventually figure out that a Corsair can down a Landing Ship, and yeah, it's quite doable with four. But my big strategic mistake for a long time has been underspending on air defenses, and instead overspending on ground combat. Though I am not sure if I like the balance - I'm not a big fan of the fact that a second ground assault team seems not to pay off financially even if handled well.

I've always gone big on air and the other stuff is secondary. The funding nations only care about dead UFOs and no terror. Good air defense addresses both of those. Doing enough recoveries to keep up with the tech is relatively easy specially if you make a point of getting to all landed UFOs possible.

[Solver]

Which still leaves me with an ambivalent feeling overall. It makes sense that the air combat is more important for funding, but the meat of the game is in the ground combat. Where it's sufficient to secure just a few UFOs of each type and do one alien base. Though this issue has already been discussed.

[StellarRat]

Though this issue has already been discussed.

Yep, but like I always tell everyone, "You can't win the game without doing ground combat." So, strategically, it is absolutely necessary.

[Went]

Granted I haven't played on Insane

This. I have played Veteran not so much time ago and haven't any problems not in air, nor on the ground.

I've found that three bases provides very good coverage. You need at least 4 - 6 aircraft per base and three radars installed at those bases.

Lol. I want to have 3 bases and 6 aircrafts on each too. But there is no money for it. If you want to have some science advance, some armor and some lasers, you would have two bases with 3-4 planes and two radars on each. Yes, you would able to shoot down almost all UFO's in your range, but this will not be enough.

And one more remark about terrors. It is much better for relation to allow terror to happen and neutralize it rather than to intercept carrier in the air. Terror site cleaning gives huge relation boost (+150.000$ or something like this), while carrier interception gives ordinary about +10.000$

[ViewThePhenom]

Why are players complaining about the difficulty of insane mode? It's called insane mode for a reason, read the description.

[ventuswings]

People have difficulties with unmodded Geoscape? I saddled Flying Circus mod for my Insane mod run because it's easy to keep Earth happy once you know what you're doing. Looking around some Insane LP floating around youtube and twitch, I don't seem to be the only one who have significant trouble with the funding either.

[Lightzy]

I don't know, it only happened to me that I lost on my first run, after that I figured that you do one base in Israel, the second base on the islands of indochina right as the game starts, and you're covered

[Max_Caine]

ventuswings, wow, you actually put Flying Circus on to boost the challenge? Did it?

[MrPyro]

I don't know, it only happened to me that I lost on my first run, after that I figured that you do one base in Israel, the second base on the islands of indochina right as the game starts, and you're covered

I normally do US second and Indonesia 3rd base, but yes, Indonesia is a great place for a base as it covers most of China and gets Australia as well if you put 3 radars in.