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More complex political map and diplomatic relations


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Hello,

In Xenonauts-1, there are 9 regions or "major powers". They are clearly assumed to not reflect any cultural, diplomatic or economical bonds, and just here to allow for a limited choice of action (where to take down an UFO, what mission to prioritize), and the possibility to gradually loose funding. However, we have the URSS (more a Eastern Block, actually), Oceania, and North America all making sense.

Will this kind of arbitrary separation still be used in Xenonauts-2? As we all know, another X-COM game, UFO:AI, spends much efforts to justify a new world with several geographic blocks. But they have half a century of Sci-Fi politics to set this on (the other purpose of this is to better explain how alien tech can be harnessed, and how the initial stage of invasion is not a total disaster). If the Xenonauts-2's settings are a Second Cold War in present day, then we have to start from existing situation and then go fictional for a very short duration (say from 2010 or 2015 on).

  1. Regions (or major powers) should be more historically-sourced, and could, why not, by split between continents. "Middle East" could expand to North Africa and sub-Sahara (an Arab League?), Russia Federation would loose the Pact's countries. Europe would regain Greece, India and China wouldn't be in the same block (they would represent more than one third of the total population)... You tell: "That would come close to UFO:AI map!". Not necessarily: Mexico could stay  tied to a Latin America, Russia would keep its Muslim republics and could ally with India, there could be a dispersed alliance in the Southern hemisphere (like there is a Commonwealth in UFO:AI, wherein India, Australia, and South Africa are allied). Also, the total number of regions could change upwards or downwards (UFO:AI has 7 regions instead of 9). Let's be imaginative but historically-sourced.
  2. Regions could be defined by the sum of their components or sub-regions. Not necessarily countries (except for some large geographical entities, nearly sub-continents, like India, Indonesia, China, Australia, and Brazil). For example, to begin with, Maghreb, Central America Isthmus, Western Africa, (real) Southern Africa could be candidates. To add distinctive flavors, some regions could be made of large components, while other would be made of a number of smaller components (again, without going down to country level). Moreover, regions wouldn't have to be a single geographical block, they could be split and interpenetrate (see point 1). Now, a region wouldn't succumb to the invasion as a whole, but chunk by chunk (or both way). Conversely, it would be retaken chunk by chunk. On the other hand, loosing a sub-region would be easier than loosing a whole region. The defeat condition should obviously be adapted (number of remaining sub-regions based on population, number of remaining formal regions, etc.). I think that this added level of complexity would help setting a feeling of a potential "mess" happening to the planet. More so, right at the beginning of the Campaign, several sub-regions could have already surrendered to the invaders, making it an excuse for an "imaginative", alternate, political map.
  3. Sub-regions could change their allegiance. This was already introduced in point 2 as regard to Alien subjugation. But things could be more interesting (or become less under control), as sub-regions could decide to leave their region and join another one (whatever they want, theoretically). The condition could be that a majority of the original region is too subverted (or makes wrong choices) and they want to remain free (or think differently), the neighbour region is already subverted and they opt for peace (because it looks like peace, and they suffered a lot), Xenonaut defends better a neighbour region (and they suffered a lot), or simply because of a revolution if all the neighbour sub-regions get crazy... As you can see, there's room to add a layer of strategy, without being too much unforgiving or over-complicated, as much of this would be transparent and so logical (you'd only reap the fruit of your actions, or your non-actions, plus a little bit of randomness). Perhaps, to add to the motivation of keeping defend whole regions, instead of waiting for them to disappear and seduce their remnant, there could be a flat funding bonus for each region, independently of the number of their components. As well, in a Europa Universalis way, when retaking a sub-region, you could decide to recreate a lost region or include your territorial "gain" in whatever remaining allied region (or simply let the game decide).
  4. ... (please, go on)
Edited by Rodmar18
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I'd say there is a fair bit of potential for making the map more interesting. It could add to the atmosphere of the Cold War, if the USSR or the US had their influence in various countries/regions around the globe, and those allegiances fluctuated with geopolitical events (as far as I'm aware, this is pretty much what was happening in the Cold War). Redrawing some familiar boarders would be a neat way to emphasise an alternative-fiction universe.

As for your second point in particular, I can see that increasing the number of areas by using sub regions could make for a better geoscape, one that feels more like a world, but I think that it might stretch some of the gameplay mechanics. If you have 10 regions, each split into 2 or 3 of sub-regions, then it is not inconceivable that one or two of them might never see a splashed UFO or otherwise spawn a mission. It depends on how you want the regions to function I suppose. On that note, I am all for making the geoscape game a bit deeper too, as well as just the map itself.

Edited by Ninothree
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With regards to Xenonauts-2, the Geoscape is more complex in terms of interactions you can have with nations, but because of that there are less regional blocks (a total of six). If you have too many then the screen quickly gets messy with the UI required for each of them, given it's also displaying all the bases and aircraft and UFOs and ground missions.

What I'm experimenting with at the moment is allowing the player to assign one or more soldiers to a region to act as "Agents", who can be told to conduct various actions that each take X days and provide a strategic reward. The chance of failure (and injury/death) increases with the level of alien infiltration in that region. The actions are things like Improving Relations with the region, or conducting operations to Reduce Infiltration, or Boosting Funding etc. 

If the early tests are promising we'll probably add various types of possible action to the game that require various different skills - e.g. maybe Reducing Infiltration is based on pure combat strength, but Improving Relations is reliant on a Communications skill instead. We could add a separate store for each region with certain stuff only available at certain Relations levels, etc. Basically just adding mechanics to allow the player to interact more deeply with each region and to conduct actions that are not purely reactive to what UFOs / ground missions have spawned on the Geoscape.

What I'm less keen on is any territorial control mechanics. I intentionally want to keep it quite abstract because I don't think the territorial control stuff works well with the X-Com mechanics; the way the UFOs and ground missions spawn is random and so it's hard to build territory control stuff on top of that unless you start adding specific missions related to territory control... and that ends up with there being too many missions in the game, and the whole setup being somewhat logically strained (your team of 8 guys taking over the country?) I think our planned setup is a nice mix of adding new depth but fundamentally changing the game into something else.

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1 hour ago, Chris said:

assign one or more soldiers to a region to act as "Agents"

Could this relate to rank, so you can only send multiple soldiers if one of them is an officer? I've been thinking that the rank system could be made more significant if it actually related to a soldiers ability to command other soldiers.

Alternatively, the case could be that sending a higher-ranked soldier as an agent would permit them to conduct advanced operations - such as leading local forces - whereas dispatching a squaddie as an agent wouldn't effect so much authority. I'm sure that there is a lot of room for using agents as delegates in regions around the globe: less like an x-number-of-days-covert-action and more like a continuous interaction using soldiers as a resource.

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The idea is that experienced soldiers are more likely to succeed at an action - so if you're operating in a region with a high level of alien infiltration, rookies are much more likely to get caught and killed than your veterans are. But if the region has low infiltration, it's kinda a waste to have your best guys in there.

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4 hours ago, Chris said:

What I'm experimenting with at the moment is allowing the player to assign one or more soldiers to a region to act as "Agents", who can be told to conduct various actions that each take X days and provide a strategic reward. The chance of failure (and injury/death) increases with the level of alien infiltration in that region. The actions are things like Improving Relations with the region, or conducting operations to Reduce Infiltration, or Boosting Funding etc. 

What I'm less keen on is any territorial control mechanics. I intentionally want to keep it quite abstract because I don't think the territorial control stuff works well with the X-Com mechanics; the way the UFOs and ground missions spawn is random and so it's hard to build territory control stuff on top of that unless you start adding specific missions related to territory control... and that ends up with there being too many missions in the game, and the whole setup being somewhat logically strained (your team of 8 guys taking over the country?) I think our planned setup is a nice mix of adding new depth but fundamentally changing the game into something else.

Developping terrain agents would complexify Geoscape's layer for sure. It's a good measure that they aren't anonymous (like scientists) and like "expendable cards" (getting X agents per region per month, spending Y agents  to increase some numbers, keeping Z agents in store, in case something wrong arises with this region). Also they could gain develop their diplomatic skill, and this would contribute to their ranking (and increase of HP), the same way as other skill increases. Their addition would put in more life and be consistent with the current agents'activities (detecting alien bases, earning money when a crash site is raided by their region's air forces).They could have "origin" bonuses (e.g. Chinese soldiers more efficient in East Asian region), at least for intelligence missions, and survival chances.

As for the territorial control mechanics, I don't mean actual gain or loss of territory, nor do I expect any "Xeno Republic"; I only means to shift what is currently taken care at the regional level down to sub-regional level: "loss" of funding territory, "retake" of lost funding territory (as examined by X:CE or X-Div mod). The only goal is to make things a little more complex to add interest to this part of the game. I figure that tailoring sub-regions so that they each get enough towns to be attacked should address somewhat your concern about having parts of the world not enough raided. Anyways, having less populated raided less often would also have logically less impact to regional funding, thus having less positive impact if kept allied instead of being lost. More raided areas would be the more populated (more towns) and would impact more negatively in case of loss. To be precise, the only difference in introducing sub-regions would be that the loss (and retaking) of allied regions would be more gradual: instead of having a regional funding degrading from 400 k$ down to 0 $, and loosing the whole region all of a sudden,  you'd have this region loose sub-regions, with the ensuing degradation of funding. This could occur more or less quickly depending on whether given sub-regions would be heavily struck or not, but anyways, a completely undefended region would still be ultimately lost, even if the Aliens don't strike it in all of its sub-regions (except if you implement my point 3 above).

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  • 1 month later...

Perhaps a sub-region the player is about to expand into could actually change their allegiance from their original country region (which the player had good relations with) to a neighbouring nation which is controlled by the aliens / clandestine government.  This could have been through conventional terrestrial invasion, peace negotiation overseen by the UN, or political upheaval.

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