Difficulty Curve Smoothing

[StellarRat]

the backstory suggests that the Xenonauts keep ahead of the curve when it comes to tech, and pinches a handful of the best personnel available for the start of the game.

But beyond that, remember, you're hiring them from funding nations, so that's where the expertise is. As shown in your initial troops being better than the rookies. No doubt, if they had skills, your starting techs, scientists and pilots would also be better.

But the point above was that local forces should get to don't UFOs for you to investigate. Now as Xenonauts gets funding on the basis that only it can combat the alien threat, it's going to look silly if other people can do it too. "Here and there" is enough in the early game to get a decent start on the research after all.

While they may not have the starting handful of researchers and engineers, going by your ability to hire as many as space allows for in the game, would suggest they have plenty of resources of their own. With some downed UFOs to research, they won't be that far behind,. The question is, will that delay be en0ough to doom everyone?

As for throwing in the odd Sgt or Corporal, I'm not too keen. Going with having the best of the best approach, regardless of previous ability everyone should start their Xenonaut career at the bottom.

Sorry, but that was totally confusing. I think you skipped some words or something. Please re-state.

[TornadoADV]

I fully agree with you, Chris. Though I would suggest a rank cap of Corporal instead of Sergeant. Also, I would like if there was some way to make the Xenonauts more able to interact with the world at large. If we sell our tech and gear to the funding nations, they should logicially be able to pick up the slack in places we can't cover in person. Plus it would really help on harder difficulty levels, because in the end, Humanity is in this thing together. Also, it would be awesome to be under the gun to get to a crash site to recover vital tech and all your own interceptors are in the shop under repairs.

Suddenly a flight of UFO fighters show up on the radar screen, making a beeline straight for your vunerable dropship, only for them vanish when almost within range because the nation who you had generously helped with knowledge and technology had seen the distress you were in and scrambled a CAP of some of their upgraded fighters to protect your dropship!

Edited October 16, 2012 by TornadoADV

[thothkins]

Sorry, but that was totally confusing. I think you skipped some words or something. Please re-state.

miss out words..oops ... so I did. A reprise of my post.. If it's still confusing you can just nod your head politely and we'll move on.

The backstory suggests that the Xenonauts have kept ahead of the funding nations in terms of anti alien technology and training. But it's only for a handful of personnel.

Everyone else, all the people you hire, come from the funding nations. This is reflected in the game by having your initial troops being better than the hired rookies. No doubt, if they had skills, your starting techs, scientists and pilots would also be better. From the stats, the hired soldiers aren't a million times worse.

But the point above was that local forces should get to shoot down UFOs for you to investigate. Since Xenonauts are funded on the basis that only it can combat the alien threat, it's going to look silly if other people can do it too. It won't take many craft to be shot down by local forces before they too can research the alien technology.

While the funding nations may not have the starting handful of expert researchers and engineers, they still have a plentiful supply of others at slightly lower skill levels. This is reflected in the game by your ability to hire as many researchers and engineers as space allows for

I'm not keen on having Sgts or Corporals available from the hiring pool. The Xenonauts are supposed to be the best of the best. Having others come in who are better, especially after your troops have anti-alien combat experience, doesn't work for me.

[TornadoADV]

You're making the assumption that the rest of the world just bends over and takes it, hoping to their deity of choice that the Xenonauts come down from upon high to save them. I never really like that angle of XCOM. XCOM is the tip of the spear, no doubt, but that leaves the rest of the spear to be given some personality besides just throwing money at you monthly.

It would make perfect sense that the Xenonauts commander (IE : You) can influence the rest of the world through what technology and recovered alien artifacts you sell to them. Perhaps eventually the friendly soldiers you meet in a crash site area have LASER weapons and better armor because of what you provided to the world. Perhaps funding nations can make requests for specific gear or technical knowledge in return for funding increase, a cadre of their veteran soldiers (You aren't the only fighting force resisting the aliens!) and down the line they can provide secondary support through geoscape interceptions and improved NPCs in tactical combat.

[GoodGuyEddy]

You're making the assumption that the rest of the world just bends over and takes it, hoping to their deity of choice that the Xenonauts come down from upon high to save them.

That's pretty much the lore.

in a crash site area have LASER weapons

Humans can't reproduce alenium(THE most important thing that makes portable laser weapons possible). So the tech they do get would probably be only enough to equip the presidents guard or something. So we probably won't see armies having those.

Edited October 16, 2012 by GoodGuyEddy

[radister]

Honestly Im not a fan of any of those ideas Chris.

But im just a player who likes things to be as hard as possible and to do things myself, and this choice doesn't give me anything.

but hey, i got over you adding local forces, so im sure i'll get over this.

[thothkins]

You're making the assumption that the rest of the world just bends over and takes it, hoping to their deity of choice that the Xenonauts come down from upon high to save them.

Following a number of utter failures to intercept the UFOs that's pretty much how this game opens. Xenonauts offer protection and possibly hope in return for money. Although, ironically, Xenonauts have been using the resources the funding nations allocated to them way back form the Iceland Incident all along.

I never really like that angle of XCOM. XCOM is the tip of the spear, no doubt, but that leaves the rest of the spear to be given some personality besides just throwing money at you monthly.

There's some further ideas about giving the world some personality in the Geopolitical Mod thread.

[HWP]

That's pretty much the lore.

Lore is what the devs say lore is. If they decide the world doesn't bend over - and why would it, with propped-up Cold War militaries - then it doesn't.

Perhaps funding nations can make requests for specific gear or technical knowledge in return for funding increase,

No, no. It was that way in EU. And it was gimmicky as hell.

a cadre of their veteran soldiers (You aren't the only fighting force resisting the aliens!) and down the line they can provide secondary support through geoscape interceptions and improved NPCs in tactical combat.

You're already getting elite troops, I presume, and as for local support - that's your job. Local militaries are there mostly to hold out before you arrive or in case you never arrive.

It won't take many craft to be shot down by local forces before they too can research the alien technology.

Not likely. Research comes from capturing and studying their artifacts and aliens themselves, not from shooting them down.

You think GI Joe is going to sneak up to an alien and prod him in the back? He's going to tell GI Bill and his four buddies to drop a load of mortar shells to where he saw that thing.

[StellarRat]

A reprise of my post...

Makes sense now. Thanks.

[thothkins]

Not likely. Research comes from capturing and studying their artifacts and aliens themselves, not from shooting them down.

You think GI Joe is going to sneak up to an alien and prod him in the back? He's going to tell GI Bill and his four buddies to drop a load of mortar shells to where he saw that thing.

A number of the early in game research topics come from the craft as much as the aliens, so barring over damage, they would get those. They would also get corpses to research from ground recovery missions, the same as Xenonauts would. They may not quite be as focused as Xenonauts, but they're not stupid. In the end, GI Bill and his buddies follow orders.

[Gauddlike]

I suggested adding in a few higher ranks (with the minimal stat bonuses they would need to achieve that rank) into the hiring pool as the game progresses a while back.

Rather than making everyone you hire better you are just giving the option to pick up a better trooper every once in a while.

If you lose a whole team then you can pick up a new team, with a basic leader, easily.

I don't really like the idea of everyone being generally better just because the game has progressed though.

If their combat record can be set individually I would give these troops alien combat experience on top of the standard experience your normal troops have.

It would explain why they are the higher Xenonaut rank at least.

For ships crashing without player involvement I would take a different route.

Rather than them being shot down by unseen human fighters you could make the initial light scouts land much more often and for longer when completing their missions.

That would give the Chinook opportunity to get you out to missions without your interceptors being needed.

As craft get bigger (and the aliens take losses) they don't stay as long on the ground to complete their missions so you can't rely on catching them on the ground.

That's where the interceptors come in.

If you start to feel that you can't get out far enough to catch the enemy as they start to act more warily then it would be natural to start thinking about expansion I think.

[StellarRat]

If it was my lore...I'd just have the Xenonauts organization working in the shadows because of alien infiltration. The aliens don't have the knowledge or the assets yet to take over with a pure military invasion and are working on ways to accomplish this (better unconventional weapons, turning the population, etc...) You need to protect your plans, capabilities, and assets from prying alien eyes until you can destroy their mothership/homeworld/fleet/main base whatever. Hence the need to hide the operation and keep it small. So, they would be running Ops on your bases, and the general population, and you'd be doing research and running Ops on their assets to slow them down, gather intelligence and reverse engineer their hardware. The UFOs would be undetectable by normal civilian and military means because the aliens know they can't win a stand up battle against large forces, yet. At the start, the Xenonauts would have developed a limited detection capability through long term research and intelligence assets. One would assume this is top secret stuff that was under development since the Iceland Incident. As game progresses the Xenonauts would improve their detection abilities along with everything else. UFO landings would only take place in very isolated areas to collect samples, insert spies, etc... These would be the only areas where both the aliens and Xenonauts could deploy their full capabilities without risking blowing their cover other than base assaults. Terror missions would be carried out by humans that are being unknowingly manipulated and are operating under an assumed organizational name, The Great Sword of Anarchist Reformation, or some such nonsense. The "terror missions" would be designed to undermine government authority in an attempt to get an alien operatives into power. The Xenonauts would respond to these proactively by placing operatives at the suspected target ahead of time dressed in local police and military garb using assumed identities as "anti-terrorist" forces. In these battles only conventional ballistic weapons would be used.

Edited October 16, 2012 by StellarRat

[HWP]

A number of the early in game research topics come from the craft as much as the aliens, so barring over damage, they would get those. They would also get corpses to research from ground recovery missions, the same as Xenonauts would. They may not quite be as focused as Xenonauts, but they're not stupid. In the end, GI Bill and his buddies follow orders.

You know how long it takes in real life for anything to go from research to production, right?

Initial research and experimentation that YF-22 and YF-23 ATF are based on was done in the 1960s, YF-22 was on the drawing boards in the 1980s, it flew in 1990, and only by early 2010s have they seriously deployed the Raptor and finished working out at least the worst kinks.

43 years, that's what it took from Edge Waves in the Theory of Diffraction to an actual stealth fighter based on its principles.

Forget months, in the real world they measure time in years.

But they don't have years. Their existing organization, existing resources won't do - there are procedures for everything and procedures take time. To do it in months, you need to do things quick, outside the bureaucracy, outside the law, outside the box, because it is a race. They'll have to create a special organization to deal with aliens in special ways.

Wait... I think they already have.

[Betuor]

But they weren't under attack by aliens.

[StellarRat]

But they weren't under attack by aliens.

True, but even the atomic bomb which was developed during a war in a crash program that had nearly unlimited resources took four years and it had years of theory behind it.

[HWP]

If we come under attack by aliens tomorrow, I'm not going to instantaneously start working much faster, better and more productively. Are you?

Well, maybe we'll all squeeze in more overtime and waste a little less time on office talk. Actually, doubt that second part, with the alien invasion and all that. If we start rushing work, we'll start screwing it up. So we'll do in, say, 8 months what we normally do in 12. That's it.

Now, reorganize everything, rewrite the procedures, implement a hard hierarchy of sections, repel work safety laws and ban civil lawsuits, eliminate most accounting, relax everything, put engineers in charge and let them do as they please - now you'll get somewhere.

This reorganization will take time. You'll be essentially creating a new organization. Then it will be able to work faster. Not as cost-efficiently, not as reliably, but faster.

And there already is a new organization. One that has existed for years, so it's got all its procedures right already. One that has experience on the matter. One with international resources. It's called the Xenonauts.

[Gorzahg]

1) Keep them rookies. The reason EU has trained up recruits is because the game doesn't really promote rotating troops though the Skyranger. It's easier to "carry" rookies when you have a 12 man team compare to 6.

2) Aren't light scouts practice for when the real invasion begins? Isn't that why they were put in the game?

[Shuichi Niwa]

I don't enjoy the idea of new recruits have better stats late game compare to the beginning and thus vote for a training system where veterans train their new recruits [require facility, personnel and time to train]. It's more realistic and interesting without breaking the game. And even more we can choose which soldier to train in which course that suit his stats best too. It's a nice way to make sure you can always have at least one Sniper candidate waiting for the battlefield...

Also recruiting some high rank soldiers feels off too T_T

[IceVamp]

With personnel I wouldn't like everyone being sergeants in the late game, but maybe a really high chance that there will be a sergeant, and a few corporals. I think taking one of your crew and have him instruct recruits could be a really cool mechanic, instantly having me remember the training sessions in that first Epic book. Especially if what they were primarily trained in depended on the stats of the mentor. Every stat increases, but the mentors highest stat increases a bit faster than the others in the recruits.

So basically you first take your valuable sniper off the drop list to have him instruct for a week, making accuracy increase faster for that week, then you take your most athletic scout (TUs) and have him run them through their drills, increasing TUs a bit faster than the other stats. That would be quite the mechanic, but it wouldn't destroy people who doesn't bother to micromanage it too much.

I'm not fond of aliens being shot down by someone else. I mean, if it's a reasonably rare occurance maybe. It'd have to be stated that by a stroke of luck or sheer manpower involved a nation has managed to shoot down a UFO. If not it kinda cheapens the reason for the existence of the Xenonauts. If you see a lot of activity on another continent, you must build a base there!

[flyingdisc]

1) The quality (stat point average / rank) of the soldiers available for recruitment in the pool should gradually increase as the game goes on, up to a cap. This will cushion the blow of losing soldiers a little, though new soldiers should always be worse than what you already have. Perhaps the new soldiers would max out at Sergeant at the end of the game.

I have just started playing UFO:ET modded with the UNI-MOD mod. This adopts a similar system. Initially you get to recruit from a pool of recruits (with random starting stats, ala xenonauts). As the game progresses, you start to see the occasional lance corporal, corporal or sargeant also appearing in the mix of available recruits. I think this works very well. There is no incentive to ditch your guys who you have been slowly developing and saving from scrapes for the last 12 missions, but, when say your dropship gets shot down with all hands returning from an alien base mission then your replacement squad of 8 men are not all complete muppets again. They are just mostly complete muppets!

Lore wise. If the starting/usual recruits are the best of the best from funding nations, then the occassional higher ranked recruit could be local forcing who have been exposed (aka survived) to a real alien incursion which, by this stage in the game, will have been increasingly happening.

The main change here would be that the dropship will have to have a much longer range in order to be able to deal with the crash sites, but I guess I could live with that.

I find this idea of a globally chopper to be jarring. It is a chopper! I think one of the most important elements of starting ufo:eu was the feeling of impotence. Being a small agent against an overwelmingly greater foe. I love the aspect of feeling that I desperately need to expand to cover all that activity - having chopper ranges becoming global would diminish this somewhat. I am much more in favour of "cheating" a bit - see below.

2) There's an issue with aircraft ranges and game balance at the moment. I want to encourage players to build multiple bases in the game, so the range of interceptors and radars can't be that large at the start of the game or there's no need for them. However, this leaves a situation where at the start of the game the player quite often is not able to intercept many UFOs because they don't enter their airspace. Which means very few crash site missions for people to play.

There's several ways around this - making early UFOs only spawn near the base is one thing we can do, but I don't like that level of "cheating". I like the events popping up across the world, showing you that there's a world outside your radar range that the aliens are attacking.

I think this level of "cheating" is actually a much better solution. You are really only ensuring that 2 of the initial scouting missions (perhaps 1 per month for first 2 months) happen to occur in the xenonauts sphere on Earth. If you you were to adopt some of the suggestions in this thread (that subsequent missions are perhaps more likely to occur near the recently failed one) then the rest would sort itself out. I would personally be fine with this level of "cheating" as long as the rest of the mission evolution was left in its sandbox mode. Lore wise it isn't such as hard sell: "The one thing going for us in the first months of the Invasion was that some of the early alien incursions happened to occur within the earth's sphere being covered by Xenonauts"

[ComMcNeil]

Are abduction/terror missions out of the question in Xenonauts? In the old XCOM, these were basically the missions you did when you could not catch the UFOs because they were out of radar range...That was basically the design idea behind the old XCOM. You start with one base, can only cover so much ground and the aliens were all over the planet. They did stuff, even if you could not see it, and sometimes, this stuff triggered an alarm. You went there because you needed all countries to keep giving you money and sooner or later you extended your radar coverage to cover more of the globe, so you could shoot down the UFOs before they could start missions. Also you needed more space to build workshops and the like...

Is this design philosophy not adequate for Xenonauts, or do you simply want to try something different?

in regards to training, as already stated in the other thread, I would like a direct training facility, either with a teacher/student structure or with a "train-by-yourself" structure (or both, yielding different training speed)

[Shuichi Niwa]

I think this level of "cheating" is actually a much better solution. You are really only ensuring that 2 of the initial scouting missions (perhaps 1 per month for first 2 months) happen to occur in the xenonauts sphere on Earth. If you you were to adopt some of the suggestions in this thread (that subsequent missions are perhaps more likely to occur near the recently failed one) then the rest would sort itself out. I would personally be fine with this level of "cheating" as long as the rest of the mission evolution was left in its sandbox mode. Lore wise it isn't such as hard sell: "The one thing going for us in the first months of the Invasion was that some of the early alien incursions happened to occur within the earth's sphere being covered by Xenonauts"

I personally feel this is nonsense...

[Chris]

OK, a few things need clarifying about the existing game mechanics as are first:

1) @ElTee - the training system in the game is getting cut, so don't consider that when you're thinking about the soldiers levelling up through time.

2) @StellarRat - your soldiers level up through performing actions, regardless of whether they kill aliens or not. There's no EXP boost for killing aliens.

3) @StellarRat - you're never punished for not attacking a crash site (it appears to be a common misconception).

4) @TornadoADV - in the late game, the local AI forces already start spawning with laser weapons.

The point of these ideas is to add general smoothing to the difficulty curve, rather than adding anything too major in the way of new systems. A quick % check if a UFO is shot down is trivial effort, adding a full system for friendly AI aircraft is not. I also don't see the value in adding loads more micromanagement to the game that that would entail.

Regarding the realism of having local forces down UFOs - local air forces would have a LOT of aircraft and they'd definitely be using them even if they're not particularly effective. Presumably they'd enjoy some early success due to weight of numbers. The Xenonauts have three aircraft at the start of the game, so even if they are very effective they're a bit of a drop in the ocean. It's where they go after that that makes them special.

For the training, I'm not putting a training system back in. We played about with the idea for a while, couldn't get it to work, and even thinking about redoing the UI plans to feature a new training system too make me come out in a cold sweat.

The long range Chinook, I think we'd just say it had access to in-flight refueling - I don't think that's too big a leap.

There are terror missions in the game, but they come in later - the Corvette is the first UFO that does them. They're generally missions with more, tougher aliens and more like an outright battle than trying to capture a UFO so it makes sense that the crash sites come first. They have less and weaker aliens in them, so they are a good way for the player to adjust to combat and capture the stuff he needs to start his research before the terror sites spawn. Therefore they're not really a solution to the early-game issues.

[HWP]

If what's stopping you from adding an explicit training system is technical difficulties, then maybe at least the idea of keeping recruit stats at the midpoint between default and current troops could be carried over to the intended solution? Or it could be simplified down as much as possible, maybe have one manage training at recruitment, without a complete system.

Directly copying EU's "better recruits" has some possible issues:

1. In EU, you usually play with just your 6 soldiers and base attacks never happens. In Xenonauts, one team's worth of operatives is not enough, you'll rotate them as they get injured, for your secondary team, as backup for base defense.

Recruits leveling up means that you will be firing combat-experienced troops in favor of recruits. In fact, it probably means that you'll make a regular bimonthly or quarterly event out of dumping your less advanced reservists and replacing them with better recruits.

2. EU is mostly linear. By any point in the game, the number of missions and the leveling of troops is pretty consistent between players. Xenonauts is non-linear. One player will have done 15 missions when another has done 60. This means that either the former will be best served by dumping half or more of his team for recruits, or the latter will find recruits barely improved.

[radister]

reading back at what you said now.

and i can agree to the idea of ufo's getting shot down (seeing they are going to return to space anyway it won't effect the alien system anyway)

Im still abit off about the idea on new xenonauts starting out stronger but hey like you said its a balance issue. and yeah i can think of many ways to abuse a training system.

HWP: about the whole 60 to 15 missions. isn't that why chris is suggesting the more crashed ufo idea? so that the player has a equal chance and the game is balanced?