Strategic defeat of the player

[Komandos]

Instead of an orbital laser, I would suggest the following mechanism of strategic defeat of the player:

At the end of each month, the aliens make a massive raid and land terrorist landings, which the player must eliminate within one day. (If the player ignores the mission, the panic on the planet increases). However, with each new month, the number of simultaneous terrorist operations of aliens is increasing.

And one day there comes such a massive alien raid when the player is forced to ignore some of the terrorist missions that have arisen (since the player physically cannot have time to visit all the tasks within one day). For example: it can be 10-20-30 simultaneous terrorist attacks in different parts of the globe. 

Even if by this time the player will have 6 bases and each base will have one tactical team, the player can have time to visit only 6-12 terrorist missions during the day. The player will have to ignore all other terrorist missions. As a result, the panic will increase, and the player will lose all regions and funding.

The principle of the game "Tetris": with each new level of the game, the number of combat missions (terrorist missions) that the player must complete at the same time increases! And it doesn't matter if it's night or day - the player will have to fly to eliminate all threats in the allotted time.

 

 

 

For example: at the end of the first month of the game, aliens commit 0 terrorist missions.

At the end of the second month of the game - 1 terrorist mission.

At the end of the third month of the game - 2 terrorist missions. (Table)

1 Month of play - 0

2 Month of play - 1

3 Month of play - 2

....

....

12 Month of play - 11

...

...

24 Month of play - 23

...

...

36 Month of play - 35

...

...

It will even be possible to arrange competitions - who will be able to last the most days (months) in the game.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Komandos

[SoulFilcher]

I think the logic behind the orbital strikes is that you can't prevent them by using interceptors. If you manage to obtain aerial superiority increasing the number of (attempted) terrorism missions won't have a real impact. It becomes a matter of "lose if you were already behind, but change nothing if you were ahead" and the devs are trying to hit players that stay ahead.

[Komandos]

46 minutes ago, SoulFilcher said:

If you manage to obtain aerial superiority increasing the number of (attempted) terrorism missions won't have a real impact.

Do you think that several player fighters can easily shoot down any number of UFOs within a few hours of combat? Without refueling, without reloading weapons, without repairing damage?

Edited August 16, 2023 by Komandos

[SoulFilcher]

If you have max number of bases with most of them dedicated to hangars and detection, which is what most players do when they get enough money, then yes you can have enough interceptors to shut down most if not all UFOs. Increasing the number of UFOs will eventually break the player, but that could take a lot longer allowing a player to stay in that end game situation where it should have ended already. That is the exact phase of the game they want to change.

 

In my opinion orbital strikes are a good idea, but after a strike we should have the option to go fight the ship and it should be extremely hard to take down, at the cost of losing interceptors most probably. If you don't take it down then the next strike happens sooner.

That being said, harder UFOs for that phase could also work.

[Komandos]

1 hour ago, SoulFilcher said:

Increasing the number of UFOs will eventually break the player, but that could take a lot longer allowing a player to stay in that end game situation where it should have ended already. That is the exact phase of the game they want to change.

Only the monotony of the gameplay can break the player. 

If we bet on tasks (combat missions) that will differ very little from each other, then sooner or later there will come a time when tasks (combat missions) they will not be interesting to the player.

If we are betting on difficult tasks (combat missions), then sooner or later there will come a time when the player will get tired.

The "final terrorist tasks" (waves of terrorist attacks) should not be complicated and monotonous.

On the contrary: "Final terrorist waves" can be very, very easy (like gambling) and, like gambling, periodically bring the player fantastic winnings!!! Fantastic victories !!! Give the player a lot of different and diverse victories and trophies.

But with all the pleasure for the player - there should be so many of these "final missions" (one day), and the response time to them should be so short that the player will not be able to visit them all. 

Panic will reach the limit and the player will lose strategically. It will be a strategic defeat of the player, (time pressure), even if on each tactical task the player will receive so many trophies and variety that he will be ready to die of happiness.

[Dren608]

On 8/16/2023 at 11:35 AM, SoulFilcher said:

I think the logic behind the orbital strikes is that you can't prevent them by using interceptors. If you manage to obtain aerial superiority increasing the number of (attempted) terrorism missions won't have a real impact. It becomes a matter of "lose if you were already behind, but change nothing if you were ahead" and the devs are trying to hit players that stay ahead.

So do well you still lose, do poorly you lose sooner? Don't like those choices from a Game Play perspective.

I like the concept of increasing alien missions - not just terror missions but throw in abductions, base building, etc. ones as well. The Original X-COM (90's version) worked that way, you got to a point you HAD to do the final Mission because you were getting Swarmed. In Xenonauts have all those UFOs escorted and some roving Alien fighter groups hunting you and you won't be able to handle them all. That is when you realize you have to take down their main HQ/Base.

Orbital Bombardment doesn't make sense if they are trying to "conquer" the planet. That is just going to Destroy some cities and then one "madman" will decide if we can't have the earth then the aliens can't either and start a total Nuclear War destroying the planet.

There needs to be some more thought into "endings" as The Orbital Bombardment thing Always felt Artificial, just a way to force the end of the game. There should be more ways to force the player to decide it is time to end this. Once Orbital Bombardment starts, you know you have to go do the final mission whether your Tech tree is where you want or not. I want to play an individual Campaign Longer, rather that playing the Campaign More times.

The Best solution (which probably can't be implemented at this late Stage) would be have different Alien "Plans" one involved Orbital Bombardment, Another is subversion (trying to take over Regions, until they control enough of the earth for their purposes), another could be outright occupation, Several landings across the globe (unable to stop by Xenonauts) disables All nuclear weapons, then the "swarm" mechanic starts to kick in. There are probably a couple more I can't think of ATM. Something like this with the various Alien Researches helping to Reveal what the Alien Goal is. It would add Massive Replay-ability as you are never sure what the Enemy is up to until near the end.

I don't know the code hurdles involved but I would help to have something like this

[SoulFilcher]

On 8/18/2023 at 3:19 PM, Komandos said:

Only the monotony of the gameplay can break the player. 

And that should not happen, we are preventing a global-scale invasion, or delaying it if you will. Being able to stay indefinitely in the late game until you get bored of it is not the intended result. You should be pressured to "win" until the very end.

 

On 8/18/2023 at 4:11 PM, Dren608 said:

So do well you still lose, do poorly you lose sooner? Don't like those choices from a Game Play perspective.

No, do well and you should be able to win long before they can defeat you. That is the logic.

[Dren608]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:48 PM, SoulFilcher said:

And that should not happen, we are preventing a global-scale invasion, or delaying it if you will. Being able to stay indefinitely in the late game until you get bored of it is not the intended result. You should be pressured to "win" until the very end.

 

No, do well and you should be able to win long before they can defeat you. That is the logic.

Because the Panic will rise ridiculously due to the orbital bombardment you can do well and suddenly just get overwhelmed, and you have no other choices to end the game you must go do the "end scenario attack" - I would prefer to have a better delaying choice to allow all the tech to get up to speed. Those out there that are not well versed in this game and ones like it are going to have a very bad experience when that happens. 

Now have  the aliens have different goals for their end game. For instance, annihilation (orbital bombardment), "you are good lab rats" more abduction missions, maybe something like a Harvester mission where rescuing Civilians out of a Space craft before it lifts off, "You are the slave race we need to exploit the planet", more emphasis on base building, abductions, seeing Civilians turning on Your troops as they are "programmed" by the aliens, with probably a resurgence of the "cleaners" with better weapons, And then "Fear Us and Obey" the aliens concentrate on Terror type missions to force panic to rise in regions so they can Control us through fear. How do you tell which "mission" the game is working on, we add research hints to the "interviews" maybe a special mission type for intel gathering to discern their plans. Put something like this in place and you will have the desire to do another play through to see "what happens this time".

Currently you have to play nearly perfect to have enough leeway in panic and tech upgrades to complete the final mission. The above could all lead to the final mission, but getting there would be a different journey and story line each time. You could even have the final mission have alternate defender types based on how you controlled their "plan" i.e. adding in cleaners, or civilians with guns, Local forces type etc. The possibilities for a truly epic game abound, and what it takes is alternate pathing through various mission types, etc.

My son put it to me a few days ago, He doesn't much care if the Graphics are "snazy" and so on. He Asks is there a branching or alternate story where you actions will affect the game as you progress. I think just having the aliens acting differently based on "plans" like above would do wonders for the immersion factor. Not truly an "open world" obviously, but it would be nice to be able to be "misled" as to their true purpose in coming to earth.

Just my dreams I know but maybe someday...

Edited August 25, 2023 by Dren608
spelling

[SoulFilcher]

5 hours ago, Dren608 said:

Because the Panic will rise ridiculously due to the orbital bombardment you can do well and suddenly just get overwhelmed, and you have no other choices to end the game you must go do the "end scenario attack" - I would prefer to have a better delaying choice to allow all the tech to get up to speed. Those out there that are not well versed in this game and ones like it are going to have a very bad experience when that happens. 

If that is the case then maybe bombardments should only happens after players reach certain tech requirements, to confirm they are able to finish the campaign.

[ooey]

Hmm. I wouldn't like to be pushed to a quick ending. I would like to savour the game for a while, and be in a position to strike if need be. It seems that if you do badly initially then you won't have much of a chance at the end (and people always make mistakes). 

Perhaps the research of a particular artefact activates it and sets a countdown for a significant ramping up of alien activity, the object also benefiting your aim (so you have to research it). That's a difficult balance to get right.

Edited November 18, 2023 by ooey

[Komandos]

6 hours ago, ooey said:

That's a difficult balance to get right.

"The right balance" is what balance? What are the main properties of this balance?

For example: In the game of chess, the right balance is when you and the opponent have the same set of pieces at the very beginning of the game, and these pieces obey the general rules. But if you are good at playing chess, it will be easy for you to play against inexperienced players, and against very experienced players the game will be difficult. Is this the right balance?

Edited November 19, 2023 by Komandos

[ooey]

For most games, the "right balance" seems to be that if you reach a certain milestone (i.e. advance a tech milestone from, say basic ballistic weapons to lasers) the enemy jumps to the next level with more powerful weapons. I'm not saying this is the right way to balance difficulty, but  it seems to be what Xen1 did. Perhaps this is something to do with the set objectives in Xen2 (i.e. the aliens hit you harder if you complete the current given research objective). Perhaps if you shy away from doing that the ailens won't hit you as hard until you complete it. 

I would say a good way to do this would be that if you kill all the aliens in a mission, word cannot get back to the enemy that you are using new advanced weapons against them. However, if you fail a mission they can report back about the weaponry used against them and deploy more destructive weapons against you, for instance. But again, that has its own caveats doesn't it (i.e. if you keep winning the aliens will fall badly behind your capabilities)?!

[Dren608]

On 11/21/2023 at 2:57 PM, ooey said:

For most games, the "right balance" seems to be that if you reach a certain milestone (i.e. advance a tech milestone from, say basic ballistic weapons to lasers) the enemy jumps to the next level with more powerful weapons. I'm not saying this is the right way to balance difficulty, but  it seems to be what Xen1 did. Perhaps this is something to do with the set objectives in Xen2 (i.e. the aliens hit you harder if you complete the current given research objective). Perhaps if you shy away from doing that the ailens won't hit you as hard until you complete it. 

I would say a good way to do this would be that if you kill all the aliens in a mission, word cannot get back to the enemy that you are using new advanced weapons against them. However, if you fail a mission they can report back about the weaponry used against them and deploy more destructive weapons against you, for instance. But again, that has its own caveats doesn't it (i.e. if you keep winning the aliens will fall badly behind your capabilities)?!

Not really just build in if you win say 3 in a row, the up their tech a step, so you can't completely out strip them, but might be able to keep a little ahead of them for a time.

[Dren608]

On 11/18/2023 at 9:59 PM, Komandos said:

"The right balance" is what balance? What are the main properties of this balance?

For example: In the game of chess, the right balance is when you and the opponent have the same set of pieces at the very beginning of the game, and these pieces obey the general rules. But if you are good at playing chess, it will be easy for you to play against inexperienced players, and against very experienced players the game will be difficult. Is this the right balance?

I don't know that balance works that way in a computer game like this. IT is a matter of the Computer MI (Mechanical Intelligence I refuse to use the term Artificial Intelligence) needs to give the player a challenge. So the more experienced the player, they can up the difficulty and the Routines used in program can be more "intelligent" on using their own assets. That's a lot harder to program than to say

 

The point I brought up earlier was on "story path". Once I played X-1 I knew what was expected and it soon devolved into a not fun experience after a couple of plays because there was no variation on the story being told, or the events sequences. Having the MI have different goals from Game to Game in order to get it's "WIN' condition, makes it a challenge for the player to figure out which "set of rules" this game is using, and thus having to come up with alternative solutions. The Best option would be that those conditions can be influenced by player action, thus forcing the Game to change the path forward. The Original Game from back in the 90's sort of did this. There were several "Mission Types" that generated a score for the computer side and as long as they scored points they pretty much kept doing those. I thing depending on difficulty it would try up 3 times and if it didn't "score" positive in x tires it randomly chose another mission type. This led every game to being a different experience even if you had the "meta" down pat, because it could still choose the mission type that just "failed", I distinctly remembering a game where there was something like 8 or 9 "terror missions" in a row. IF the computer opponent had run one more I likely could not have stopped it, and their score would have soared leading to more of the same. A mechanic like that would prevent the "prefect build" procedure since you have to have enough versatility to mach the opponent's possible objectives.

Wish I had the experience in modern Game engine coding to create a game like that. Also my 49+ years of coding was in other areas of IT...

[Komandos]

The global mistake of the game mechanics (X1-X2) is that the opponent gets experience in the game from successful actions. If you change the mechanics of gaining experience (experience in the game is calculated from the number of unsuccessful attempts), then the player winning 3 battles in a row will not get any experience for him, and his tactics will not move forward. The aliens, having lost 3 battles in a row, will gain experience and improve their tactical performance. The ratio of the opponents' forces in this way will naturally tend to 50/50.

[Komandos]

3 hours ago, Dren608 said:

Not really just build in if you win say 3 in a row, the up their tech a step, so you can't completely out strip them, but might be able to keep a little ahead of them for a time.

The aliens must constantly win in ground missions, then the development of the player's technology will be justified. In order for the aliens to win constantly, it is enough to create this type of combat missions (tasks) where the player needs to have TIME to capture important alien technologies BEFORE the MOMENT when the aliens will be able to destroy their most important UFO technologies. For example: if the player does not have time to destroy the aliens inside the UFO in 5 turns (moves), then the most important secrets will be lost. The solution to this problem (capturing UFOs in 5 turns (moves) becomes possible for the player only at the final stages of the game, after the player improves his technology and his soldiers.

[ooey]

20 hours ago, Dren608 said:

Not really just build in if you win say 3 in a row, the up their tech a step, so you can't completely out strip them, but might be able to keep a little ahead of them for a time.

That would be the opposite of what I was saying, but in favour of the aliens! You could look at it either way I suppose.

 

Take this example.

General Montgomery was known as a cautious commander. You could give him an 80% chance that this is the way he will treat his units if an AI in a war game. For each battle a die is rolled. If <80 he behaves as assumed. But on occasion it will be >80, meaning perhaps he throws caution to the wind and goes "all in", as Gen. Patton would do. Most if not all randomisations work using the internal clock as a seed. AI is so very very difficult and time consuming to get right, and there isn't any right way to do it I suppose. Depends on your point of view. But getting it 'right' makes for a far better game. Making the AI omnipotent is actually an easy thing to do, but feels very unfair (and it is). You feel you are constantly being cheated.

I would suggest that it would be in the interests of the player to try to succeed in the mission rather than fail for the initial reason given, which may mean failing it, but then a mixture of mine and your suggestion may indeed be better.

  

Edited November 24, 2023 by ooey