Challenging save system

[Safe-Keeper]

I honestly had no idea what to call this suggestion when I was making the thread.

So, when playing games like this you basically have to make a choice of how much you want to "save-scum". Some choose the ironman approach, which has even become an official setting in newer games, while others choose to reload missions and even turns if things don't go as planned.

So I've been thinking -- how about an option to allow the player to save the game, but to regenerate certain things each time they do so? I'm primarily thinking of ground attack missions here -- you would be able to save the game, but each time you load the save game, the placement of aliens, civilians, and so on in the fog of war is generated again.

This means that you would be able to "save-scum" by loading a mission if it goes badly, but that you couldn't do this to "learn the scenario by heart" to perfect your approach. Each time you reload, you're playing the scenario for the first time, especially if you were only allowed to save at the beginning of a ground assault mission when playing with this system. The map itself would be the same, but 

Of course players could use this system to repeatedly generate missions to make things easier for them by for example reloading if they find an alien in a good position, kinda like how you can start new games of Civ to get that perfect city spot with the exact resources you want and whatnot, but I think that it could also present a nice challenge to players who use it seriously, so to speak .

[Chris]

I think that sounds like a lot of work to cater to players who lack a certain amount of self-discipline

[spam1]

It'd be much simpler solution if the game engine simply allowed to retain RNG seed in a save game, instead of reseeding on each reload (HoMM3 & OpenXcom have taken this approach, amongst others).

[RustyNayle]

I think if you're thinking of retaining the RNG seed like nuXCOM does, you should at least have the option of being able to disable that (i.e. "enable save scum"), rather than assume all players want this.  The flexibility to choose such an easy tweak in the game does make a big difference to many players' enjoyment, rather than assuming everyone wants to play iron man, etc