airstrike and grind factor

[legit1337]

Chris said 40 ground missions was the average he wanted for a playthrough.

Airstriking is supposed to give less money/materials then doing the ground combat. That is only fair because you are taking risks with ground combat of losing soldiers, or even wiping a squad and losing all of their equipment.

The trick is though, that airstrikes need to provide enough relative to ground combat that most players say "yea i'll just airstrike that one" without feeling like they are gimping themselves moneywise.

If I get 30,000$ + materials for doing a scout mission, and the airstrike gives me 20,000$... I'm honestly not to chuffed about losing 10,000$ because it saves me a half an hour of real-life time. Think about it. Yes you get more money for doing GC constantly, but is spending that much time really worth half a suit of jackal?

There will always be OCD players that feel the need to do every ground mission for the "optimal" playthrough. Trying to incentivize the hardcore min-maxers to not be hardcore min-maxers through game balance is not going to work.

Edited June 29, 2014 by legit1337

[Hokum]

Chris said 40 ground missions was the average he wanted for a playthrough.

Airstriking is supposed to give less money/materials then doing the ground combat. That is only fair because you are taking risks with ground combat of losing soldiers, or even wiping a squad and losing all of their equipment.

I'd be very interested in how many missions peopole take. I'm an OCD min-maxer, and I guess I'm doing 4-5 out of six Ufos in a wave (some mistake themselves for USOs, apparently )

It would be probably be more healthy for me (ond probably a bit more fun) if there was a hardcoded two-missions-per-wave cut. But I see how this is not really a viable option.

Also, don't forget: There's no risk in a ground mission if you don't play ironman.

[ViewThePhenom]

Also, don't forget: There's no risk in a ground mission if you don't play ironman.

False. If you're going to deny yourself that part of the game, Ironman won't make a difference. You can just back-up the save file, then copy over the current save, the same as reloading only with slightly more work involved. There's nothing that can be done about players who want to play without losing a single unit, the risk/reward argument is for players who will actually take their losses instead of reload on every bad turn.

[Fucille]

For all of those wondering, the amount of cash you get from an airstrike can be altered extremely easily by going to aircrafts.xml, scrolling down to the alien ships, and then altering the variable in the very last string of each type of UFO. Going a bit under doubling them gives you 4/5ths of the value of assaulting the crash in most cases (still less than assaulting a landed UFO however) which I think is probably ideal.

Having an airstrike give MORE cash than a ground mission is a bad idea, since it turns the game into doing just enough to get alloys and alenium for a few marauders and gear for your A team, and then striking the rest so you can pay for all the manufacturing. Having it give slightly less is a pretty good balancing point however, since you trade soldier experience for the risk of losing them, and a little bit of cash and materials for the time saved.

I'm still only in mid-February and I've done over 60 crash sites by now. I decided to alter the values after the umpteenth corvette in a row got a little boring. What I'd like to see to mix the game up more would be giving the aliens the ability to build bases, attack your base, or start terror missions without a UFO. Unfortunately, right now if you achieve air superiority early, you'll never EVER see 3 out of 4 mission types since you'll shoot down the UFO about to start them. It'd go a long way towards relieving the grind.

Hell, even just having UFOs land quicker and landed UFOs placing all their aliens outside on the map except for the officer and his guard would be a HUGE step forward. Right now both crashes and landings still come down to scouring the map for a handful of alien miscreants then stacking your guys up at the UFO and clearing it in a single rush. The firefights that break out on the map are barely experienced, while the breach-and-clear gameplay of the UFO assault is massively overemphasized.

[crusherven]

I'll agree that that it's too easy to prevent terror sites. I'm in Feb and I haven't seen a single one.

[Big Z]

Chris said 40 ground missions was the average he wanted for a playthrough.

Oh sweet Mary and Joseph, in my last half-dozen runs since V22 I've done 40 ground missions by mid-November. If that was the intent, something got lost in the translation at some point.

[Saskali]

Yeah, the risk-return sounds good on paper, but in practice the risk of losing soldiers on a ground mission is very manageable.

Seriously mate? What game are you playing . Either you are not far in the game or you use reloads when you get one of your soldiers killed, which basically defeats the games purpose.

Another option would be that you did not choose the right game difficulty for you. Increase the game difficulty by one notch and you will dread some GC encounters.

By the way just got out of a battleship GC encounter with only 5 soldiers alive (had the devil's one luck there only 2 were alive at the end but it appears 3 survived their injuries).

[Fucille]

Seriously mate? What game are you playing . Either you are not far in the game or you use reloads when you get one of your soldiers killed, which basically defeats the games purpose.

Another option would be that you did not choose the right game difficulty for you. Increase the game difficulty by one notch and you will dread some GC encounters.

By the way just got out of a battleship GC encounter with only 5 soldiers alive (had the devil's one luck there only 2 were alive at the end but it appears 3 survived their injuries).

I think he's saying the risk is easy to control, not that there is very little risk. As far as ground combat goes, in most situations, you have nobody but yourself to blame if your squad got wiped out because you figured the odds were in your favour. As long as you have the patience for it, moving all your soldiers as a single unit, very slowly with lots of reserved TUs, scouring the whole map, sticking to cover, taking blind corners as little as possible, engaging aliens one at a time, and liberally using explosives, presents you with a very predictable result with extremely little room for the RNG to screw you over.

[Saskali]

I think he's saying the risk is easy to control, not that there is very little risk. As far as ground combat goes, in most situations, you have nobody but yourself to blame if your squad got wiped out because you figured the odds were in your favour. As long as you have the patience for it, moving all your soldiers as a single unit, very slowly with lots of reserved TUs, scouring the whole map, sticking to cover, taking blind corners as little as possible, engaging aliens one at a time, and liberally using explosives, presents you with a very predictable result with extremely little room for the RNG to screw you over.

I am not saying the player is not to blame about losses. I am just saying that at some point in the game small mistakes are paid hard for. You can be careful as hell. you still have to breach te UFO. If an alpha reapers waits for the right time to go out you cant do anything about it. Same for a casean or a preator mind controlling one of your best soldier. And as soon as you have lost 2 or 3 soldiers things get very very difficulf.

What i am trying to tell you is if you choose the right difficulty GC will provide a challenge. Meaning you have to be very aware of what you do. One mistake and you loose your troops. Which is not what i call a very manageable situation but more like a very tense situation.

ps: i dont really see the difference between easy and litle risk by the way

Edited June 30, 2014 by Saskali

[Fucille]

Easy to control means the level of risk can be easily lowered by taking appropriate measures. Little risk means there is no real risk in the first place so you can go nuts.

You have a point, most definitely, but the risk of losing high level soldiers on any given mission that has been around long enough to feel like a chore isn't something that a competent player generally factors in. By the time you've gotten sick and tired of corvettes and would rather just airstrike them than do ground combat, your men are more than likely well past the point of corvette crews posing a significant threat to them. There is always the risk of losing soldiers against new types of UFOs, yes, which is good because you have to do those to get new tech, and airstriking makes you miss out. Against any given UFO class within a month after they appear, airstrike vs ground mission risk/reward is a real thing. After a month or two however, your guys should have gained enough gear and XP to mean that you aren't losing a man every mission, and thus ground combat begins to feel trivial.

[Hokum]

For all of those wondering, the amount of cash you get from an airstrike can be altered extremely easily by going to aircrafts.xml, scrolling down to the alien ships, and then altering the variable in the very last string of each type of UFO. Going a bit under doubling them gives you 4/5ths of the value of assaulting the crash in most cases (still less than assaulting a landed UFO however) which I think is probably ideal.

Having an airstrike give MORE cash than a ground mission is a bad idea, since it turns the game into doing just enough to get alloys and alenium for a few marauders and gear for your A team, and then striking the rest so you can pay for all the manufacturing. Having it give slightly less is a pretty good balancing point however, since you trade soldier experience for the risk of losing them, and a little bit of cash and materials for the time saved.

I'm still only in mid-February and I've done over 60 crash sites by now. I decided to alter the values after the umpteenth corvette in a row got a little boring. What I'd like to see to mix the game up more would be giving the aliens the ability to build bases, attack your base, or start terror missions without a UFO. Unfortunately, right now if you achieve air superiority early, you'll never EVER see 3 out of 4 mission types since you'll shoot down the UFO about to start them. It'd go a long way towards relieving the grind.

Hell, even just having UFOs land quicker and landed UFOs placing all their aliens outside on the map except for the officer and his guard would be a HUGE step forward. Right now both crashes and landings still come down to scouring the map for a handful of alien miscreants then stacking your guys up at the UFO and clearing it in a single rush. The firefights that break out on the map are barely experienced, while the breach-and-clear gameplay of the UFO assault is massively overemphasized.

I agree wholeheartedly with your entire post. even in v1.07, the AI is still too defensive. there are nearly no unorthodox missions (playing as OCDer, but we're customers too). I'll have to look deeper into the available mods, thanks for sharing this tweak.

Edited June 30, 2014 by Hokum

[KevinHann]

Another step forward would be simply increasing the number of aliens in the respective files in ufocontents folder. I recommend using the ufocontent files from JATOM mod (just them). I'm playing the game this way, plus even additional numbers of the Creepers race extracted from XNT and it is much more of a challenge.

[Fucille]

Another step forward would be simply increasing the number of aliens in the respective files in ufocontents folder. I recommend using the ufocontent files from JATOM mod (just them). I'm playing the game this way, plus even additional numbers of the Creepers race extracted from XNT and it is much more of a challenge.

Not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but more aliens equates to a direct increase in profit from ground missions since there are more weapons to sell off.

[KevinHann]

Not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but more aliens equates to a direct increase in profit from ground missions since there are more weapons to sell off.

Well, if it is that big of a balance breaker you could always tweak selling prices down a bit

[cgerrr]

Solution to the ‘grind’ issue is simultaneously simple and complex: the ground combat should be more varied and interesting to replay. As of now GC is repetitive and stale (reasons were already stated in this thread).

Improving the AI would be a step in the right direction. Reducing tendency of aliens to bunch up inside UFO to be more spread out elsewhere on the map would be great as well.

Additionally increasing the number of aliens while lowering their overall strength would improve GC immensely (more aliens = more possible locations to fight at = less predictable battle outcome = more tactics involved etc.).

I’d love to see a mod of GC with aggressive numerous aliens in unexpected locations throughout the map.

Edited July 1, 2014 by cgerrr

[TrashMan]

I disagree. I would prefer for alines to be stronger, but less numerous.

That would really put the emphasis on teamwork, as you will need multiple soldiers to take out one alien.

[cgerrr]

I disagree. I would prefer for alines to be stronger, but less numerous.

That would really put the emphasis on teamwork, as you will need multiple soldiers to take out one alien.

But it's already like that: same tactic every GC - bunch up and kill aliens one by one. It becomes boringly tedious pretty fast. Anyway it’s preference thing, some people like things that way.

But I’d love to see a mod of GC with aggressive numerous aliens in unexpected locations throughout the map.

Edited July 1, 2014 by cgerrr

[Fucille]

Solution to the ‘grind’ issue is simultaneously simple and complex: the ground combat should be more varied and interesting to replay. As of now GC is repetitive and stale (reasons were already stated in this thread).

Improving the AI would be a step in the right direction. Reducing tendency of aliens to bunch up inside UFO to be more spread out elsewhere on the map would be great as well.

Additionally increasing the number of aliens while lowering their overall strength would improve GC immensely (more aliens = more possible locations to fight at = less predictable battle outcome = more tactics involved etc.).

I’d love to see a mod of GC with aggressive numerous aliens in unexpected locations throughout the map.

That can be managed fairly simply by adding more aliens using the aggressive AI to ufocontents. Aggressive aliens are automatically placed on the map.