Medal System - Feedback Wanted

[bonds0097]

Another system I want to tackle in the near future is the medals system; essentially I want to make medals more customizable and allow modders to create new medals with specific award conditions:

The Current System

The current system is that there are a fixed number of medals, with fixed names, that are awarded at the end of a mission if certain conditions are met. These medals are displayed in the equip screen. All of this is hard-coded, down to the number of medals.

Externalizing Medals

I want to move medal definitions to a medals.xml that would allow for greater customization. That said, some things have to be hard-coded so it's a balance between flexibility and logic integration. What I'm proposing is that medals be defined by the following:

• Name
  
• Image
  
• Arbitrarily sized list of pre-defined conditions with variable triggers.
  

Explain These Conditions

So a condition would be a gameplay condition that can be customized numerically. For example:

• Kill X aliens. (Career/Single Mission)
  
• Survive X missions of type Y.
  
• Complete mission of type X with less than Y civilian casualties.
  

You get the idea, I hope. What would make this powerful is that a medal could consist of any combination of conditions where all conditions must be true for the medal to be awarded. So you might have a medal that requires:

• Survive 4 terror mission.
  
• Complete terror mission with less than 10% civilian casualties.
  
• Kill 10 aliens. (Single Mission)
  

And if all of those conditions are met, the soldier gets the medal.

Medal Definition

A medal definition would look something like this:

<medal image="foo.png" name="bar> <condition name="surviveMission">10,TerrorMission</condition> <condition name="achieveRank">4</condition> <condition name="killAliens">25,FALSE</condition></medal>

UI Changes

The equip screen would have to change a bit to account for an arbitrarily large amount of medals.

What I have in mind is that the equip screen would only show the last X number of awarded medals and there would be a button that opens a scrollable overlay screen that shows all the medals awarded to that soldier.

What I Would Ship

When I release this feature, it would consist of the new system as well as a default medals.xml that would contain every medal currently defined in the game, with the same conditions for earning those medals. Modders could then create mods that modify medals.xml to add new medals with new artwork and different conditions to earn them.

Alternatively, I might poll the community and get a list of 10 or 15 new medals that people really want and add those as part of the default set.

Stuff I Might Add

• Medal Statistics (% of soldiers that have earned X medal), number of medals per soldier, etc.
  
• Posthumous medals (displayed in casualty list)
  

Feedback

How would people feel about a system like this? Does it sound flexible enough, do people actually care that much about medals? What are some additional features you'd like connected to this? I'd also be interested in condition suggestions.

[Foehammer343]

The system sounds flexible enough, assuming theres enough conditions . As for people caring about medals thats harder to tell, I wanna say yes since its another way to add flavour and 'story' to the game and individual soldiers. And can we get a list of the current hardcoded medals?

As for conditions here are a few (many stolen from here which has a few interesting combinations):

• Stun/Kill N [sPECIES,RANK]. leave rank blank for any, plus add a way to say this rank or higher
  
• Campaign medals, given for surviving, say, 5 missions in a given funding region or possibly even terrain region
  
• Is Night mission
  
• Failing a mission
  
• Surviving/Dieing in a mission
  
• Amount of xenonauts casualties taken
  
• A time, or mission, range to complete requirements
  
• Stunned/Killed X aliens in N turns. Since Im guessing 'a kill n aliens in one grenade/rocket blast/auto fire' would be hard to code
  
• Resisted mind control
  
• Resisted panic
  
• Last N surviving member(s) of squad
  
• Armour and weapon specific conditions (and vehicle specific and 'is tank y/n' if vehicles ever get experience)
  
• Healed X units or Y total damage
  
• Survived N damage, sheilds should be included in this but i can see an argument to separate them.
  
• Distance field, or just simply target was in/out of fog of war.
  
• Hit target N times
  
• Was hit N times
  
• As a modifier, is friendly/civilian/xenonaut unit
  
• Meet conditions without being knocked out/killed
  
• Is dead check, or following conditions happened after death
  
• Is highest rank present or surviving
  
• Only fires once (or N times) modifier, to say only award medals to whoever completes 'storyline' events. Could be tied to research the mission unlocks
  

Sorry for the long list, wouldnt be surprised if many if not most of them are too hard to code in.

[Skitso]

What about bonuses they grant? At the moment it's just +1 bravery per earned medal. I would like to have this moddable too.

[bonds0097]

What about bonuses they grant? At the moment it's just +1 bravery per earned medal. I would like to have this moddable too.

What kind of bonuses do you have in mind? If it's +X to a stat, that's easy peasy and I can definitely do that.

Would that work or were you thinking of something more complex?

[bonds0097]

The system sounds flexible enough, assuming theres enough conditions . As for people caring about medals thats harder to tell, I wanna say yes since its another way to add flavour and 'story' to the game and individual soldiers. And can we get a list of the current hardcoded medals?

As for conditions here are a few (many stolen from here which has a few interesting combinations):

• Stun/Kill N [sPECIES,RANK]. leave rank blank for any, plus add a way to say this rank or higher

This was something I thought of as well, not sure how to handle it exactly because races/ranks are currently hard-coded, which I imagine is a thing we want to be able to expand, so I'd coordinate with the other coders here to see what we're gonna do with alien races/ranks.

• Campaign medals, given for surviving, say, 5 missions in a given funding region or possibly even terrain region

• Is Night mission

• Failing a mission

• Surviving/Dieing in a mission

• Amount of xenonauts casualties taken

• A time, or mission, range to complete requirements

• Stunned/Killed X aliens in N turns. Since Im guessing 'a kill n aliens in one grenade/rocket blast/auto fire' would be hard to code

I think either is doable, (in a single shot/blast/whatever vs. over N turns).

• Resisted mind control

• Resisted panic

• Last N surviving member(s) of squad

That's an interesting condition, I should be able to add that in.

• Armour and weapon specific conditions (and vehicle specific and 'is tank y/n' if vehicles ever get experience)

• Healed X units or Y total damage

• Survived N damage, sheilds should be included in this but i can see an argument to separate them.

• Distance field, or just simply target was in/out of fog of war.

• Hit target N times

In a row, or just ever or what? Don't get this one exactly.

• Was hit N times

• As a modifier, is friendly/civilian/xenonaut unit

Can you elaborate on this?

• Meet conditions without being knocked out/killed

• Is dead check, or following conditions happened after death

• Is highest rank present or surviving

• Only fires once (or N times) modifier, to say only award medals to whoever completes 'storyline' events. Could be tied to research the mission unlocks

Something else I would add to the definition is an 'awardMax' attribute that indicates how many times a medal can be awarded to the same soldier (defaulting to 1).

I could also add a 'limited' attribute so that a medal is only ever awarded 'awardMax' times globally (across all soldiers).

In general I think your suggestions are good and most can likely be implemented in some form.

[Foehammer343]

Sorry for the unclear bits, it was 3amish when i posted, heh.

• Armour and weapon specific conditions (and vehicle specific and 'is tank y/n' if vehicles ever get experience)
  
• Healed X units or Y total damage
  
• Survived N damage, sheilds should be included in this but i can see an argument to separate them.
  
• Distance field, or just simply target was in/out of fog of war.
  
• Hit target N times

In a row, or just ever or what? Don't get this one exactly.

Healing should probably be just total ever, cause I dont see much point to a per mission total.

Damage and hitting a target should be in row and in a mission. Though a medal for taking 10 times your hp in damage over a campaign and not dieing would be pretty sweet.

• Was hit N times
  
• As a modifier, is friendly/civilian/xenonaut unit
  

Can you elaborate on this?

The was hit n time condition is just a general one like getting damaged or hitting something. The friendly/civilian/xenonaut unit modifier would be something thats added to other conditions, to allow stuff like healed N civilians medal, prevent multi kill medals being awarded to particularly bad rocket/LMG burst shot, etc.

And two new ones I came up with were tying a medal to item(s) recovered, including data cores, and causing units to panic, since weapons can deal morale damage its probable that a mod will eventually have a human weapon that does it.

[Reiver]

What kind of bonuses do you have in mind? If it's +X to a stat, that's easy peasy and I can definitely do that.

Would that work or were you thinking of something more complex?

Things I can personally think of:

Improved odds of surviving wounds, so you could eg rig Purple Hearts to grant you a +20% chance of surviving next time (Which would stack if you were allowed multiples, landing up with +200% odds of survival if you did well enough. This may require careful math, but is way cooler than having to cap it!)

Racial or Regional conditional bonuses, eg +10% damage vs cetalids etc, or +x [stat, eg +2 Reflexes] when in a certain geoscape area

Bonuses to melee ('Knife Fighter' achievement, haha)

Bonus night vision radius, perhaps?

Actually, with enough such things you could end up with a minor 'traits' system, where you can become a veteran xenofighter and the like.

Hey, could you rig matters so certain recruits can start with a certain medal? So you end up with South African troops having a shot at getting Congofighter, and running around with +10% TUs in South Africa, or the like? Or certain medals for regional bravery - a German soldier showing up with an Iron Cross (or etc) buffing his bravery before he even showed up...

That'd be kinda cute.

[Theon Greyjoy]

I would add an idea, but this time I paid more attention to reading the OP and it seems that you covered everything I could think of.

But since you are planning to do as much as this, could you consider making anti-medals - reprimands or trauma.

Something that a soldier would get when he shoots his fellow soldier/civilian.

or when he panicks for no reason for the 20th time.

[bonds0097]

Things I can personally think of:

Improved odds of surviving wounds, so you could eg rig Purple Hearts to grant you a +20% chance of surviving next time (Which would stack if you were allowed multiples, landing up with +200% odds of survival if you did well enough. This may require careful math, but is way cooler than having to cap it!)

Racial or Regional conditional bonuses, eg +10% damage vs cetalids etc, or +x [stat, eg +2 Reflexes] when in a certain geoscape area

Bonuses to melee ('Knife Fighter' achievement, haha)

Bonus night vision radius, perhaps?

Actually, with enough such things you could end up with a minor 'traits' system, where you can become a veteran xenofighter and the like.

Hey, could you rig matters so certain recruits can start with a certain medal? So you end up with South African troops having a shot at getting Congofighter, and running around with +10% TUs in South Africa, or the like? Or certain medals for regional bravery - a German soldier showing up with an Iron Cross (or etc) buffing his bravery before he even showed up...

That'd be kinda cute.

While most of the ideas are feasible, I think they present a balance issue.

As it stands, a common complaint I see is that the differential between veteran soldiers and newbie soldiers is already too large and that losing a veteran can be too punishing. Making medals so gameplay altering would further widen this divide while also moving the system away from a fun immersion builder to something more akin to a level-up system. This is not my intent since I assume it is not what GH was aiming for with this system.

I think assigning medals to rookies run counter to the whole point of the system, to make note of achievements your soldiers have accomplished while under your command.

[bonds0097]

I would add an idea, but this time I paid more attention to reading the OP and it seems that you covered everything I could think of.

But since you are planning to do as much as this, could you consider making anti-medals - reprimands or trauma.

Something that a soldier would get when he shoots his fellow soldier/civilian.

or when he panicks for no reason for the 20th time.

I would argue that simply being within a mile of killer aliens is sufficient reason to panic. That said...

With what I have in mind, a 'trauma' or 'reprimand' would simply be a medal that provides a negative bonus. It would not be a huge deal to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' medals so that they are displayed separately in the UI, so I'll think about it.

[Theon Greyjoy]

I would argue that simply being within a mile of killer aliens is sufficient reason to panic. That said...

Yeah, but it still isn't an excuse to go berserker and kill the officer instead of firing at the damn killer aliens. (altough I do imagine it goes along the lines of:

- Private, hold your position, I repeat hold you position.

- Hahaha...no way, Im not dying for you <shoots officer in the back>)

I'll think about it.

Thanks

[Skitso]

While most of the ideas are feasible, I think they present a balance issue.

As it stands, a common complaint I see is that the differential between veteran soldiers and newbie soldiers is already too large and that losing a veteran can be too punishing. Making medals so gameplay altering would further widen this divide while also moving the system away from a fun immersion builder to something more akin to a level-up system. This is not my intent since I assume it is not what GH was aiming for with this system.

I think assigning medals to rookies run counter to the whole point of the system, to make note of achievements your soldiers have accomplished while under your command.

It would still be cool to be able to mod the stat values. Leave the balance issues to modders. I'd be happy with just something more than always +1brv. Could you have it <any stat> +X?

The biggest issue with medal bonuses atm is that it's pretty much the only means of upping your bravery and +1per medal isn't much. This leads to a situation where you choose new troops by their bravery stat only as all the other skills level up faster. So letting that be moddable would be sweet.

And actually after GH implemented the %TU shooting system, there have been complaints that there isn't enough difference between rookies and veterans so this could help there too...

Edited July 14, 2014 by Skitso

[kabill]

While most of the ideas are feasible, I think they present a balance issue.

As it stands, a common complaint I see is that the differential between veteran soldiers and newbie soldiers is already too large and that losing a veteran can be too punishing. Making medals so gameplay altering would further widen this divide while also moving the system away from a fun immersion builder to something more akin to a level-up system. This is not my intent since I assume it is not what GH was aiming for with this system.

I think assigning medals to rookies run counter to the whole point of the system, to make note of achievements your soldiers have accomplished while under your command.

I'm not particularly fussed with giving medals special bonuses personally, but I think that's because I'm not fussed with having a 'perk' system in Xenonauts.

On the other hand, I'd like to see medals have the option of giving higher stat buffs (and to all stats). Partially, this is to do with what Skitso says - Bravery is very hard to level otherwise and medals seem like a good way of doing this through an alternative route.

But more generally, while I agree that giving higher bonuses for medals could be problematic in terms of balance, I'd argue that that's irrelevant with regards to the decision to implement a system which allows the values to be modded in the first place. Balance issues are to be dealt with in the mods where that modding feature is exploited and, since there's all kinds of ways that higher medal-based bonuses could be balanced through other changes, having the option to be able to do that to me seems better than not having it (ignoring the labour cost, of course).

[Reiver]

While most of the ideas are feasible, I think they present a balance issue.

As it stands, a common complaint I see is that the differential between veteran soldiers and newbie soldiers is already too large and that losing a veteran can be too punishing. Making medals so gameplay altering would further widen this divide while also moving the system away from a fun immersion builder to something more akin to a level-up system. This is not my intent since I assume it is not what GH was aiming for with this system.

I think assigning medals to rookies run counter to the whole point of the system, to make note of achievements your soldiers have accomplished while under your command.

As others have said, leave balance to the modders - I was simply throwing out thoughts on what might make for interesting medals/achievements. Any numbers quoted were simply to give an idea of what the bonus might look like (And in the case of 'survival odds', show how the edge case would look re: stacking).

The 'medals to rookies' thing is not intended to be actual medals but rather a way to, if someone wishes to mod accordingly, sneak in a Traits/Quirks system via the backdoor, as it were; something else to ponder on a newbie when you're hiring him beyond his basic stats.

A 'vanilla' bugfix would probably just be +bravery to a bunch of the medals; I was suggesting options that I was reasonably certain could be done and prove a bonanza to the right minded modder... The first step is being able to do it, after all.

[bonds0097]

Those are fair points. I should be clear that I do not intend to make the medals system into a 'perks' or 'trait' system.

That said, I think having medals be able to award +X to <stat> is fine, where X is a fixed number of percentage.

I think it could also be feasible to tie conditions to those bonuses (i.e. bonus only applies on MiddleEast tileset or when X type weapon is equipped or during night missions, etc.).

Bonuses and bonus conditions could then be arbitrarily stacked, just like medal conditions.

I will try and distinguish between actual medals and 'reprimands' (bad medals) or what have you, I haven't decided what a good name or form of representation is.

I will ship this feature with a medals.xml that contains all the default medals (i.e. same conditions and +1 bravery bonus) to replicate vanilla behavior.

I will also ship with a 'mod' that includes 10-15 more medals. I'll come up with some myself but I'd be happy to take ideas from the community.

[kabill]

I think it could also be feasible to tie conditions to those bonuses (i.e. bonus only applies on MiddleEast tileset or when X type weapon is equipped or during night missions, etc.).

Really like that idea.

[Reiver]

Those are fair points. I should be clear that I do not intend to make the medals system into a 'perks' or 'trait' system.

That said, I think having medals be able to award +X to <stat> is fine, where X is a fixed number of percentage.

I think it could also be feasible to tie conditions to those bonuses (i.e. bonus only applies on MiddleEast tileset or when X type weapon is equipped or during night missions, etc.).

Bonuses and bonus conditions could then be arbitrarily stacked, just like medal conditions.

I will try and distinguish between actual medals and 'reprimands' (bad medals) or what have you, I haven't decided what a good name or form of representation is.

I will ship this feature with a medals.xml that contains all the default medals (i.e. same conditions and +1 bravery bonus) to replicate vanilla behavior.

I will also ship with a 'mod' that includes 10-15 more medals. I'll come up with some myself but I'd be happy to take ideas from the community.

Very nice!

Are you able to include night vision and survivability modifiers as well, or is that beyond scope?

[Seafireliv]

A medals system which allowed a basic buff like a `bravery` modifier guaranteeing a soldier won`t shoot his friend, or run into enemy aliens when panicked, would be enough in my view, I don`t think it should turn anyone into supermen though - Everyone has a limit. Also, being able to name the medal was one of the nicest things about Enemy within and so I would be ok with it here as well.

[bonds0097]

Very nice!

Are you able to include night vision and survivability modifiers as well, or is that beyond scope?

That would be less straightforward than simple stat boosts but I will look into it and decide whether or not to pursue it.

[Reiver]

Yeah, that's fair. Good luck!

Aside: If you do expose them, would you be able to have the exposure opened out to general equipment? I'm thinking of, eg, modified kit coming with night vision or something. Just a random thought in passing, mostly.

[prolasis]

Any update on this mod idea? i would like to see just more medals , Stat bonus is just a plus. Ill help code if needed

[Max_Caine]

The man in charge of it vanished ages ago. I may lock this thread.