Relations as Currency

[Coffee Potato]

Has there been any discussion on somehow using relationsacore as a currency of some sort (Yes. They are literally the currency. You know what I mean.)? Every time I see the raid results thing, it makes me think of what else they could be used for. Will we be able to leverage being a suck up to a region?

[Max_Caine]

Like.. spend relationship score to get extra cash, that sort of thing? 

[Coffee Potato]

3 minutes ago, Max_Caine said:

Like.. spend relationship score to get extra cash, that sort of thing? 

(I know I've brought this up before, sorry)

I mean for anything, to give weight to these guys being more than a bank and low budget gun dump. 

Like say you're about to launch a mission, and can pay some amount of relationship score to double the local army there.  

Or maybe they can speed up some manufacturing/research, lend out some folks for a week or something. 

Maybe you could tell them to launch some Falcons because your own planes are being repaired. 

It just would be awesome to be able to coordinate with all these regions,  even if their help is basic. Or hell, yeah, an early loan on their monthly costs with interest. I feel like it would allow for an immersive safety net of sorts, instead of just bending over as soon as you hit the wrong roll key and lost the last of only two marauders, and a battleship is just there raising hell at 99% damage. (I realise the chasing away mechanic handles that last one, but hopefully that makes sense.).

Sincerely,

Some hyperactive dad that wants to make friends with AIs. 

[Dagar]

I thought a lot about that, too, and while I think this will not find its way into X2 (or we had heard about it by now), I think that a good relationship system has the potential to be the umbrella for everything you can do on the geoscape while also giving a nice balancing puzzle. Let me elaborate:

- You can get influence (standing for good relationship) with a country by helping them. That comes naturally when shooting down UFOs over their territory, going on missions there, saving them from Terror attacks, but can also be done by helping them help themselves, like selling them advanced weaponry for a good price, lending some aircraft for a couple of days or exposing them to the truth about the alien invasion (bold because this aspect to me is very important in the narrative of the game). That also could lead to relaxing the necessity of covering the whole globe with radar and plane hangars; if you give a country the means to defend themselves against the aliens, that could be good enough for them.

- You can spend influence on other stuff like @Coffee Potato already mentioned, but I'd also expand on that a little bit. You could ask more cash from them (or sell them equipment for premium prices), aid in missions or the air game, lend you some scientists, but you could also ask them to support other nations you are struggling with. For example, if I have good influence with Chinba because I just saved Peking from getting nuked after a Terror attack, but now the aliens are bombing russian soil which I can do nothing about, because all my planes are being repaired, I could ask our good friend China to send a few aircraft over to help the russians help themselves. Voila, using one friend to make a second one, and their mutual relationship should increase as well (we are in the Cold War after all).

- That would be all nice and dandy, but also, as already stated in the last sentence, we are in the Cold War. Give your newest technology to Mexico while keeping the USA out of the loop will make certain leaders and generals not too happy, especially when they find the rumors about the invasion doubtful at best. To them you are just some shady agency who helps their neighbours get a sharper stick, and that's not what neighbours like to see. So you'd have to also balance the influence on different nations, you can't just go all out on just saving one part of the globe. In the worst case, that could lead to nations knowingly welcoming the Aliens as a means to balance the scale in the intra-human power struggle, which is something the Xenonauts definitely do not want and could make your campaign go downhill really fast. After all, if the War has to go hot, we want to make sure it's the right enemies they are all targetting.

[Coffee Potato]

2 hours ago, Dagar said:

I thought a lot about that, too, and while I think this will not find its way into X2 (or we had heard about it by now), I think that a good relationship system has the potential to be the umbrella for everything you can do on the geoscape while also giving a nice balancing puzzle. Let me elaborate:

- You can get influence (standing for good relationship) with a country by helping them. That comes naturally when shooting down UFOs over their territory, going on missions there, saving them from Terror attacks, but can also be done by helping them help themselves, like selling them advanced weaponry for a good price, lending some aircraft for a couple of days or exposing them to the truth about the alien invasion (bold because this aspect to me is very important in the narrative of the game). That also could lead to relaxing the necessity of covering the whole globe with radar and plane hangars; if you give a country the means to defend themselves against the aliens, that could be good enough for them.

- You can spend influence on other stuff like @Coffee Potato already mentioned, but I'd also expand on that a little bit. You could ask more cash from them (or sell them equipment for premium prices), aid in missions or the air game, lend you some scientists, but you could also ask them to support other nations you are struggling with. For example, if I have good influence with Chinba because I just saved Peking from getting nuked after a Terror attack, but now the aliens are bombing russian soil which I can do nothing about, because all my planes are being repaired, I could ask our good friend China to send a few aircraft over to help the russians help themselves. Voila, using one friend to make a second one, and their mutual relationship should increase as well (we are in the Cold War after all).

- That would be all nice and dandy, but also, as already stated in the last sentence, we are in the Cold War. Give your newest technology to Mexico while keeping the USA out of the loop will make certain leaders and generals not too happy, especially when they find the rumors about the invasion doubtful at best. To them you are just some shady agency who helps their neighbours get a sharper stick, and that's not what neighbours like to see. So you'd have to also balance the influence on different nations, you can't just go all out on just saving one part of the globe. In the worst case, that could lead to nations knowingly welcoming the Aliens as a means to balance the scale in the intra-human power struggle, which is something the Xenonauts definitely do not want and could make your campaign go downhill really fast. After all, if the War has to go hot, we want to make sure it's the right enemies they are all targetting.

That all sounds about right, I thought I mentioned the plane thing too? That might have been the other post, either way, technically existent minds think alike! Anywho, buying or selling adjustments Morrowind style sounds quite nifty, it would certainly mesh well with the shady nature of the situation.

I kinda feel like it would also be neat if a nation was lost, they would then turn their military against you, to balance out the extra support. 

Lastly, I thought this one took place in the modern day? It says 2018 on the calendar, the tech looks modern, etc.

[Dagar]

29 minutes ago, Coffee Potato said:

Lastly, I thought this one took place in the modern day? It says 2018 on the calendar, the tech looks modern, etc. 

Didn't get that memo apparently. Though thinking about it, it may be that somewhere in the past someone already corrected me in this regard and I just forgot. Age and all...

[Dagar]

As the UFO disassembly thread goes on and @Max_Caine suggested here, it would be really cool if UFO disassembly would be done in situ, i.e. in the country the crash and mission happened in, and you could assign personnel in a strategic op, since it directly would result in more game system interaction (here: Ground Combat - World map - Research / Manufacture system).

To also tie that to relations, I propose the following: The affected nation of course also wants to get the good stuff out of the UFO, especially if its Air Force, Army and civilians were suffering over the course of the mission (entailing UFO appearance, behaviour until engaged and ground mission success and survivors). That means that they just may be glad you handled it so swiftly and cleanly and let you take whatever, or that they may feel overlooked in the bounty phase. That means you could agree with them beforehands on taking just a limited amount and leaving them the rest, or even having your specialists take it apart fully and giving them part of the loot. Or maybe send some escorting soldiers and make it quick, if you really want to make sure you get everything you desperately need, at the cost of relationship, of course.

[Coffee Potato]

True, it would be nuts to start running into some crazy diplomatic situations all Dwarf Fortress style. You looted the jet engines and guns from the UFO, the US feels stymied, and sent a were-tank to attack! (it's just a random night manager that happens to transform into a tank at exactly 3PM every day.)

[Decius]

Now it's starting to sound like the salvage/loot system from Battletech (2018, HBS): A clearly gameplay-centric system that describes itself vaguely as just a complicated contract negotiation.