Difficulty Curve Smoothing

[TrashMan]

1) I'm not a fan of this one at all, as I feel it minimises the effort you've put into advancing the soldiers you started with. If rank progression is stat based, then this is also mocking the effort you've put in. Having a ranking cap on them though is also forced.

So militaries around the world having competent people makes your competent people look bad?

I really don't get this resistance to the idea that you can get better trained soldeirs later.

Waht's so hard to understand?

The countries give you better soldiers sicne you've proven yourself.

Their miltiaries have been fighting, so hey - experince fighting aliens.

Also, your own veteran soldeirs can help moderinze training regimes.

It's so easy to explain why you get better soldiers.

2) As the back story suggests that Xenonauts are the only one to bring down a UFO, having local forces do it all of a sudden seems odd. If I were POTUS, why would I be funding Xenonauts, if my own airforce can now do the job? I'd only have local forces involved in such things if there was a game mechanism in which to release the R&D to them for extra funding or some knowledge of their air capability improvements.

The inital Xenonauts airfleet is standard human fighters, modernized. But not my that much.

If a single F-17 can brign down am alien scout, then so can a fleet of F4 phantoms or watever.

So yes, the miltaries of the world SHOULD be capable of brinign down ufo's. That doesn't mean it's easy to do so. Or that investing into Xenonauts is stupid.

Increasing Chinook ranges (again) reduces impact of later craft & reduces requirements for additional bases. Having UFO conveniently appear near your bases is also far too forced.

Randomness is part of the charm.

Sometimes you can't can't help that country.

I do see a possible solution. When out of range you can use a alternate travel method (large tranport plane that carries the chinnok + refueling), but it's slow. Slow enough that you can arrive too late.

[Jean-Luc]

It's so easy to explain why you get better soldiers.

The arguments against recruitable non-rookies has nothing to do with the realism of it.

[Shuichi Niwa]

Personally I don't think the thing about the early game radar coverage as a problem at all. In the original game it was perfect. It makes even the starting base location a difficult choice, Europe with a bunch of relative high paying nations or American with the most paying and some others, or Asia with Japan, etc... and surely if you don't do your best to build new base and extend your coverage you're gonna eat dust. It's that kind of perfect feeling and atmosphere. Why should we care if we detect too few UFO in the early game because our radar coverage is low ? That's the truth and that's what should happen !

[StellarRat]

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

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).

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.

Thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't aware that performing actions was the requirement for moving up. I assumed it was successful actions like killing aliens. I still think my bell curve idea will solve your recruit issue though. You could easily change the curve based on how tough the opponents are on a given map.

As far as punishment for not going on a mission I was thinking more of terror missions you can't reach. Those can occur fairly early in the game.

What do you think of having cheaper radar/refuelling depots as an alternative to full bases?

I'm really not in favor of the long range Chinook for the reasons I already stated. In fact, I think you should return it to real world range and speed. I wouldn't be opposed to just dropping Xenonauts into terror site using jet transport and parachutes. They could lease it on a mission by mission basis for some $$ charge. They could easily be transported anywhere in the world this way. You've already got a jet transport sprite and the ability to move it between bases, so I'm thinking that sending it to a site shouldn't be too much extra work or you could allow the Xenonauts to buy a transport jet as another drop ship option. You wouldn't even need to do seating assignment, etc... as parachuting in makes that pointless. The penalty would be no vehicles could be used. This would encourage players to build more bases so they could use the Chinook instead.

Edited October 17, 2012 by StellarRat

[StellarRat]

I do see a possible solution. When out of range you can use a alternate travel method (large tranport plane that carries the chinnok + refueling), but it's slow. Slow enough that you can arrive too late.

Any type of fixed wing transport is going to faster than a Chinook at any significant distance even counting load and unload time. The Chinook is a sub 200 mph aircraft that requires a lot of maintenance and refueling while most jet transports can average at least 450 mph and have much greater range. Even propeller fixed wing transport is going to be much faster. Edited October 17, 2012 by StellarRat

[Chris]

Shuichi Niwa - having the player being severely handicapped (or bored) by the early part of the game simply because they've had bad dice rolls is bad design, because they can't do anything about it. It's particularly important early on because the game only really starts when you've got something to research.

For the soldiers, I think you guys are right that the better solution is that there's more chance of a good soldier being added to the pool rather than all the rookies getting a blanket upgrade. I understand that the game is a bit different to EU, but I still think this is a good thing overall as it does mean losing your elite troops isn't an automatic instant game over. It'll just make life harder for you. I don't intend this to be a major upgrade, but it should give you leeway to lose a few troops each month without having too much operational efficiency loss (unless they're your really senior guys).

For the training system, it wasn't technical issues that made me drop it. I didn't like there being a major method of training up soldiers outside combat, so it got limited to upgrading Rookies to Corporals. But at that point, it was barely worth having it at all, so we cut it to prevent bugs, simplify the design and reclaim the UI space. This method does the same thing as the training, but does it passively so gives the player less pointless crap to worry about.

[Jean-Luc]

For the soldiers, I think you guys are right that the better solution is that there's more chance of a good soldier being added to the pool rather than all the rookies getting a blanket upgrade.

Yes, do this please. You could even scale it for different difficulties.

[Voidfoam]

What about Voidfoams idea at the bottom of page 2 in this thread. It didn't get addressed and i feel it was quite interesting

Its at least a different approach to the problem of late game rookies.

And on the interception part, as it is now i am defiantly not bored, i am having my hands full.

And i liked scouting around the globe the first months for the odd UFOS in X-com.

But it feels like in Xenonauts the scale and strategy of the alien invasion is more like an quickly enveloping military attack. So in that case it would be plausible that the conventional military succeeded in downing the odd smaller UFOS either with AA or Airforce.

[Gauddlike]

If you want early missions that are within the reach of the player why not have some light scouts that are deliberately in the right area?

As part of the early research (alien invasion maybe?) state that the aliens have started sending scouts to locate specific organisations or military facilities (area 51 etc).

If they are hunting the Xenonaut HQ then it makes perfect sense that they would be in the right area for the player to hit them back.

These missions should probably not lead to an actual base discovery, although that could be possible I guess if they come in with the crew of a light scout.

When the early missions fail to find and eliminate the player then the aliens decide to move on to phase two.

It can also be used to explain why so few effective forces are available if the initial strikes of the alien scouts were targeting them.

[Buzzles]

Shuichi Niwa - having the player being severely handicapped (or bored) by the early part of the game simply because they've had bad dice rolls is bad design, because they can't do anything about it. It's particularly important early on because the game only really starts when you've got something to research.

There's an entire genre called Rogue-likes, with many fans, that disagrees with that statement Chris. FTL is a good example if you have played it. Losing isn't always bad.

On a completely different point, I still thinking giving the Chinook longer range straight up isn't the best way to make life "easier" at the start. StellarRat is also right it'll mean the later dropships are less of an upgrade as well.

I feel *not* being able to perform a ground combat on every crash/landing site adds quite a bit to the tension in the game.

[GoodGuyEddy]

There's an entire genre called Rogue-likes, with many fans, that disagrees with that statement Chris. FTL is a good example if you have played it. Losing isn't always bad.

WOW , WOAH! Rougelikes are a comepletely different genre from regular TBS. Chris's statement is completely right.

I mean after someone says "well generally cars don't need a very high suspension to use roads", you cant say "But tractors have big wheels", come on.

[Jean-Luc]

I'm not a fan of the increased Chinook range nor the base centralization it seems to bring but aside from making expansion cheaper/easier or copy/pasting x-com's strategic balance I've no other practical ideas.

[sledge]

1) Sounds reasonable. I remember reading something about late game local forces with laser weapons, so an improvement of sorts concerning late game recruits is somewhat consistent.

2) Leave it as it is. A second base is doable for everyone. The "boring beginning point" is alleviated by the time controls plus I personally would rather be bored by too much early game missions then too little. In all my games I had the scientists occupied and was even shooting down UFOs over water intentionally to skip the well known 1-3 alien that don't even remotely get a chance to shoot back early game ground missions.

Maybe implement the cheat like solution for beginner mode. Every xeno and xcom veteran should enjoy or at least not be bothered by a little randomness.

[Agent Dark]

I like the idea of the higher chance of getting a better soldier in the hiring pool makes up for the removal of training should a high level soldier die.

I have not had any long stretch of no alien ships so I do not know what would need to be fixed. Maybe some percent chance for ships to scout where the last base was built of the location of the last ship that was shot down?

The idea of more bases would be hard to balance so that it does not make the player too powerful or too strapped for cash.

[HWP]

I just have a concern that our secondary teams, on secondary bases and backups will be lagging behind the recruits.

Currently I have 18 guys on my main base and rotate them just a little due to injuries and such, 10 on my second base. But there's clearly the primary team and everyone else. If recruits have more advanced guys among them, of course you'll only recruit the best ones. So the effort put into developing the secondary teams will go to waste.

[Gorlom]

Chris is evening out the recruits experience really necessary? wouldn't the weapon and armor already be stronger meaning that you don't start over from nothing if everything goes south?

I'm personally not against a long range chinook. but I'm still wondering about your thoughts on how the player is supposed to protect it on long flights. Should the player be able to do that? should the player ahve to risk it or will it simply not be something the player needs to worry about?

[Jean-Luc]

If recruits have more advanced guys among them, of course you'll only recruit the best ones. So the effort put into developing the secondary teams will go to waste.

The idea is for these experienced soldiers to never appear in such numbers that would allow you to replenish your numbers by only recruiting them. Also they'd appear later in the game so you'd still need rookies to sustain yourself.

Of course, this all depends on difficulty, frequency of save scumming and such but reloaders are always going to keep all of their best troops anyway and have them in large numbers so it's mostly a moot point for them.

[HWP]

The idea is for these experienced soldiers to never appear in such numbers that would allow you to replenish your numbers by only recruiting them.

So why not cycle hiring-firing? I always order a lot of soldiers to pick the best and fire the rest as it is.

[GoodGuyEddy]

So why not cycle hiring-firing?

Because Chris said once you fire some-one they go back to the recruitment list to prvent cycle hiring-firing.

[HWP]

Aha, got it, so... minimize recruitment in the early game, then build +1 lebensraum module for each recruitment drive to get more Sgt's.

[TrashMan]

I just have a concern that our secondary teams, on secondary bases and backups will be lagging behind the recruits.

Currently I have 18 guys on my main base and rotate them just a little due to injuries and such, 10 on my second base. But there's clearly the primary team and everyone else. If recruits have more advanced guys among them, of course you'll only recruit the best ones. So the effort put into developing the secondary teams will go to waste.

Just how much better do you think the recruits will get?

And by that point the game, you can fix that by having a training program that trains all of the solider you select up to rank X.

So you can jsut train your secondary team if it's below (which it should be unless they have jsut been camping in the base)

You already have soldeir training as an option anyway. This just extends it. Could be a research too. "Advanced training protocol". Your best soldiers with the most field experience devise a new trainign regime. The train button can now be used to get soliders up for a specific rank (not too high)

Of course, this make the training longer.

Edited October 18, 2012 by TrashMan

[TrashMan]

Any type of fixed wing transport is going to faster than a Chinook at any significant distance even counting load and unload time. The Chinook is a sub 200 mph aircraft that requires a lot of maintenance and refueling while most jet transports can average at least 450 mph and have much greater range. Even propeller fixed wing transport is going to be much faster.

I mean slow comparatively to the world map ufo and timing.

Of course a helicopter is slower. If anything, the chinnok is too fast.

[XenoMask]

WOW , WOAH! Rougelikes are a comepletely different genre from regular TBS. Chris's statement is completely right.

I mean after someone says "well generally cars don't need a very high suspension to use roads", you cant say "But tractors have big wheels", come on.

I'd like to point out that while he is right about that losing isn't always bad, roguelikes don't work like that I mean, yeah, you can screwed by luck or win because of luck, but it ultimately is up to skill or more accurately, skill to wight risks vs gains and manipulate luck so that you win. So in a way, its still "fair" even if you don't get particularly uber good item early on, its difference from starting with bad conditions leaving you bored.

[HWP]

You already have soldeir training as an option anyway.

Isn't it slated for removal?

[Buzzles]

Isn't it slated for removal?

Yes. Chris has said multiple times it's going to be removed.