Some thoughts on strategic war mistakes, bad luck, and recovering from them

[Hiawata]

So, in another thread (here) I wrote about the only major thing I dislike about ground combat. Here I wanted to share my thoughts on the game design of the strategic war.

I'm playing an Ironman, Veteran game. I am really finding it very enjoyable - as I wrote in the thread I link to above, both those things force you to really engage with the game and play it carefully, and it feels like there's real reward for playing well.

But, I have an issue with the strategic war. It feels like if you make a mistake, or you just get unlucky, it is really next to impossible to get back on track. For example, if I make my second base at the beginning of month 2 in area X, and the aliens just happen to get active in area Y, then that will mean that I'll lose both a lot of funding and relations, and that might make the third base impossible to set up appropriately in month 3, which by the end of the month seems to send me in irreversible decline. Or, if I send a dropship somewhere, and I decide to take the risk and send it without an escort (and you almost have to do this at least some of the time, because you need the cash, and you can't always send escorts), and that just happens to be the time a fighter shows up, it feels like I can't really recover from that mistake. No dropship for 3 days while it's recovered, plus repair time, plus the cost for new soldiers, foregone income from ground missions I couldn't do, and again I feel like the decline is irreversible. I could sell the dropship and buy a new one, which would speed things up, but then I'd have even less money. The same if an interceptor or two get destroyed. Or, right now (in a restarted game), I decided to start my 2nd base at the beginning of month 2 and build a barracks and a dropship there as well, so that I can do more missions, get more cash and train more soldiers, and also for protection in case of an alien assault. But, if the aliens happen to avoid the area, I've just wasted a couple of hundred thousand dollars upfront, plus the maintenance. And, if I can't make the investment pay for itself, I think I'm done for, because I won't be able to set up my third base properly. I really don't see any way of repairing a mistake like that, except through reloading or replaying a whole month. Even if I weren't playing an ironman game, that would be boring.

Don't get me wrong - I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge in this game, but I feel like there should be some ways, tough perhaps, but still some ways in which you could potentially repair a mistake you've made or recover from a stroke of serious bad luck. As it is now, if, for example, it's November or December, and the aliens attack a base that you haven't managed to set up defenses for yet, or whose interceptors are being refueled/rearmed/recovered/are away, then that's it. You can just restart the game. There is no way whatsoever, at least that I can see, to recover from that. Because, you won't be able to set up a base again until the next month, and then it would be most of that next month before the base became functional, and, for that matter, it would be less functional than the previous destroyed base because you'd have less money to set it up, and all the time you'd be losing relations, and funding, and the chance to train soldiers and earn cash, while the alien invasion would be advancing.

In truth, I think most games don't really do a good job of integrating into gameplay the repairing of mistakes and recovering from serious bad luck. But, it would be amazing, for example, if you could have the following situation. You see a UFO that's escorted, and it's the first time you see that. You carefully send three interceptors, but it's the first time you're fighting like that. So, you make some mistakes, and lose two interceptors. Afterwards, you can't shoot a number of UFOs for a while, so you lose some income and relations, and then the aliens attack the base, and you lose it. As it is now, that's it, you're done for. But, if there were some way to make up for that learning-mistake and string of bad luck, then it would feel like you're growing with the game and the alien threat, and learning and adapting.

How exactly that could be accomplished, I don't know. Perhaps you could be accumulating some variable called "favor" with the funding blocks for saving civilians (I'm aware that would require hashing out the whole civilian aspect of the ground combat) or for every UFO you shoot down, which you could then spend on a cash boost or some other boost when in a tight spot? In any case, this isn't a feature request, but just the first idea that came to my mind about how you could give the possibility of repairing mistakes and bad luck, but one that would not be a magic wand, but rather would be tied to how well you play.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Hiawata

[NuclearStudent]

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it, but it is true that Xenonauts is absolutely unforgiving.

FYI, I recommend setting up living quarters in secondary bases even if you don't have a dropship based there. A garrison to defend your base would help tremendously with your problem. Give the garrisons obsolete equipment left over from your main dropship force.

[Hiawata]

Yup, I learned that the hard way - the missile batteries are there for a reason, as is the possibility to have soldiers in all bases.

The thing is, it seems like a sensible thing to do - you set up a second force, send it to missions to help with paying for maintenance, and also to train it up in case of an assault, but it can still happen that you lose the base. The soldiers could be away, the interceptors could be out of action for some reason, or you could just get unlucky or play the base defense badly and lose the base. And that's perfectly fine. Except that you can just restart the game if that happens.

As I said, if there were some way to potentially repair mistakes or strokes of bad luck (though certainly not in the form of mana from the sky that you get as a compensation for bad luck, or as a reward for screwing up) it would be way better. Right now, it feels like selling buildings to reduce maintenance, losing a base, your dropship getting shot down, totally screwing up a base assault or a terror site, or whatever, should be a part of the gameplay, but in truth, in most cases these things seem to me more like the beginning of an irreversible loss, that will play out over the course of a couple of months.

[Dranak]

In terms of bases/aircraft, you pretty much need to just have a set plan of more or less follow it regardless of what the aliens do. I don't think it's feasible to do any sort of reactive base building (that, and you only ever need 2-3 bases anyway).

Missing two waves worth of crash sites and a handful of troops is not an unrecoverable event. Nor is getting poor ROI on a newly built base for a month. Anything that doesn't cause you to outright lose multiple territories (pretty much requires losing a base or multiple terror missions) is recoverable, it's just hard. I lost two territories and a full laser/wolf/buzzard equipped squad in a month (losing half a team into double night terror missions, it was a bad couple weeks) but managed to eventually recover and win on Insane Ironman. I wound up doing some silly things like running Predators with ballistics along the way, but it could be done.

You basically should never launch your dropship before the wave is cleared, just to avoid the possibility of losing a base.

[Hiawata]

Hmmm... Fair enough. I might have misjudged the severity of losing a dropship or of the force in a second base not paying for itself. The second force not paying for itself thing was actually more of an assumption - I haven't had the chance to continue that game yet. (And, by the looks of it, I won't be able to continue it anytime soon. )

But losing a base would be a game-stopper, right, at least in the initial several months? Or have I misjudged that as well? If it's true, it could happen that through sheer bad luck, you have to restart the game. As I wrote, it would be great if there were some mechanisms that would allow you to recover from things like that.

[Dranak]

Losing a base is probably a game ender. But it's also pretty much the only way to truly lose the game.

[StellarRat]

You can win with two bases. I always set up three bases, so if I lose one it's not the end of the world. As far as recovering from strategic mistakes, well it's possible depending on how big the mistake is. Obviously if you lose your main base you're toast. I'm not sure I understand the OP comments about placing a base in the wrong spot when activity is else where. I've never failed by placing my bases to cover the most land possible. The UFO's seem to spread themselves out well enough that every region will get plenty of action therefore any well located base is not a waste of money. As far as sending a dropship out without an escort, well, that's easy to address, just don't send them anywhere while UFO's are on your radar or into places where you don't have radar coverage. I hardly ever use an escort I just wait until the UFO attack wave is over before I begin any recovery missions. You can just airstrike any sites created in the middle of a wave. Being patient and selective is one of the keys to success in Xenonauts.

[Hiawata]

I see. Well, as I said, it feels like having a stroke of seriously bad luck, or just making one big mistake, should still be a part of gameplay, not a game ender. To repeat, I wouldn't like a magic wand that would get the player out of a tight spot, just because, but some way that is at the very least tied to how well you've played up until that point.

[inRain]

It's kinda like club level chess - if you blunder a pawn or a two, you can still win, though you might have to adjust your play to go for a knockout punch, knowing you will lose in a technical endgame, being down two pawns. If you blunder your Queen against an opponent roughly your level - resign, you have lost. End of discussion. So it really boils down to the size of your mistake. Most games have the possibility for a game ending blunder somewhere in there. You can come back having a squad wiped out. You can come back from multiple blunders in the air war. Losing a base early probably means resigning.

[Hiawata]

OK, so I should probably clarify what brought me to write my original post.

I built my first base in Northern Africa, so it covered the whole of the Africa, Middle East, Europe (except Iceland), and a chunk of the Soviet Union.

I built my second base at the beginning of month 2, in Indochina, so that it could cover most of the rest of the Soviet Union, all of Indochina and a bit of Australasia I think. While the base was being built, there was a lot of UFO activity there and around Central and South America. After the base finished (with two radars, a Foxtrot and two condors there), the aliens didn't do any activity there, so I didn't get the chance to improve relations and funding, and obviously I couldn't do that in the Americas either. There was a wave around my first base which I dealt with, and I sent a dropship to a crashsite after all the UFOs were gone, but a fighter appeared out of nowhere and shot it down. I didn't escort it because the crashsite was far off, and my condors couldn't have flown that far. (I don't remember why I didn't send a foxtrot.)

Come month 3, I started building my third base in Cuba, but the same thing happened again. There was a lot of activity around it while it was being built, but none after it was done. There was also little activity over my first two bases, but there was a lot of activity over Australasia. So, again, I lost funding and relations. At the end of month 3, I lost South America.

In month 4, I realized that a foxtrot per base wouldn't do, nor would one radar in base 3 be sufficient. But, since I both didn't get to do a lot of ground missions in the first three months, and I lost funding and relations, there was precious little I could do about that due to a lack of money. And then, to top it all off, while my interceptors were being repaired in my second base (with a foxtrot and two condors, you will likely get some damage when attacking corvettes) the aliens attacked it, and I lost it. I didn't continue after that. I didn't think there was any way to recover.

The point is, I had a stroke of serious bad luck with being attacked exactly when my interceptors were being repaired. I also lost South America due to bad luck - the aliens could also have done mission above my completed bases. But, fair enough, bad luck is a part of the challenge. I also realized I made a mistake in putting just one foxtrot per base and one radar in my third base, but there was nothing I could do to repair it. Among other reasons for that was the the bad luck about where and when the aliens were active.

I think that making mistakes (of the type I described) and finding ways to recover from them should be a part of the gameplay. So should losing a base. I don't know, perhaps I played things badly, and perhaps I had seriously bad luck that happens rarely? Perhaps I could have recovered?

Edited January 8, 2015 by Hiawata

[inRain]

Sometimes bad luck just runs over, and that is all there is to it. I had great success with a super fast expansion strategy, where I started building my second base on day one, and had the third one operational at the end of the second month, and radar coverage pretty much maxed at the end of month 3. Building a base 500k, a radar 250k, two hangars 50k, two foxtrots 400k plus a hangar to main 25k still leaves some money for research during the first month - this affords you two bases at the beginning at month 2, when you can build two more radars, and found the third base. In my latest game, this worked miracles.

Edited January 8, 2015 by inRain
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