Build V18 Geoscape Balance Discussion

[Chris]

Opinions on the strategic balance for V18 go here.

[Beardage]

I may have mentioned this already in the ground combat forum but thought I'd put it in it's rightful place.

With the pre-placed light scout crashes they seem to spawn stupidly far from your starting base, a good few times my chopper ran out of fuel and had to turn back, missing the tech, it might be bad luck on my part but maybe there's a way to tweak them to be a lttle closer to the player's starting base.

I probably just sound very naive.

[Chris]

Nah, valid point. I'll increase the chinook range for the next build, it should be able to reach anywhere in the world.

[thothkins]

Hang on. If no air force in Earth could catch the UFO's the week before Xeno extorted protection from them, how come I get two "Local Forces down UFOs in the first fortnight?"

Industrial Espionage in the Xeno-base?

[Gauddlike]

Suppose it depends how many aircraft they managed to throw at the two enemy craft and how many of those were lost.

If the effort was unsustainable then you start to look like a better option.

[Sathra]

Gotten up to Landing ships in my current game and dunno, the ticker seems a bit fast. Didn't get to see many Corvettes (couldn't expand for a looong time) and I still haven't been able to build a Corsair (alloy AND cash limit). Granted, I might have been able to squeeze out one or two if it wasn't for the disappearing gear problem.

Lots of terror missions too (mostly from the Landing ships).

[Assoonasitis]

Yo, I know it's, like, 17h00 over there and I have no idea if it's something that can be hotfixed, but can we get a fix for inventory disappearing from wounded soldiers? It's usin' up a bunch of my Alloys and I can't build a Corsair and I need a Corsair because I can't handle all these ships, man.

[Max_Caine]

It seems the balance has tipped from there being too many UFOs to being too few. In my most current game, 5-6 days pass between each UFO wave. Not UFOs that I detected, but between UFOs waves in general. The casualties figure climed veeerrrryyy sllllowwwwlly and in 5 game months, so far all I've encountered are Sebbies, Reapers, Drones and Caesans when I should have at least encountered Androns as well.

[Assoonasitis]

It seems the balance has tipped from there being too many UFOs to being too few. In my most current game, 5-6 days pass between each UFO wave. Not UFOs that I detected, but between UFOs waves in general. The casualties figure climed veeerrrryyy sllllowwwwlly and in 5 game months, so far all I've encountered are Sebbies, Reapers, Drones and Caesans when I should have at least encountered Androns as well.

This is super-easily fixed by giving the player more than three (3) Alien Alloys for a Scout and possibly more than six (6) for a Small Scout.

[Max_Caine]

@Assoonasitis, I have found that altering the alienWavePeriod value in gameconfig.xml from 5000 to 3000 now gives me a new wave every 3-4 days, speeding up the game without making it too fast (so far).

[Assoonasitis]

Is it weird that I ultimately have more fun on the Geoscape than in battles? It seems like it should feel weird.

[Beardage]

Is it weird that I ultimately have more fun on the Geoscape than in battles? It seems like it should feel weird.

It is mesmerising really i've spent hours zoomed in watching on the slowest setting my interceptors engaging UFO's with the altitude and speed changes, and for the amount of detail on the geoscape. Geeky as hell I know but it really is quite awesome. It's everything XCOM NEEDED to be in my opinion.

[Assoonasitis]

@Assoonasitis, I have found that altering the alienWavePeriod value in gameconfig.xml from 5000 to 3000 now gives me a new wave every 3-4 days, speeding up the game without making it too fast (so far).

Could I get a copy of that .xml file? Having trouble sifting through because for some reason Office doesn't think it can open the files with Excel.

[Max_Caine]

I can, but it isn't an excel file like other files. You can just open it in say, notepad and edit it there. Still want it?

[Assoonasitis]

I can, but it isn't an excel file like other files. You can just open it in say, notepad and edit it there. Still want it?

I'd appreciate it very much.

[Max_Caine]

Here you go. Since I last posted, I upped it from 3000 to 3500, as UFOs waves were apearing a little too often for me.

[Assoonasitis]

Ta, fine sir.

[Xitax]

The distribution of cities around the globe is odd. Australia and NZ have 8 between them and North America has 6, one of which is Nuuk

[GizmoGomez]

Oh, yeah, I've been meaning to mention that. If possible, I think we should have many more cities listed on the geoscape (you know, when you zoom way in). I mean, I think the USA had, like, two cities last I looked. Obviously we can't list every city ever, and I wouldn't want it that way, but at least major cities, like Chicago, Washington (DC), maybe San Francisco. Also, more countries capitals would be nice. Not all of them, but maybe just some of them, like, more than there are, at least.

[Gauddlike]

Large country capitals and probably the larger state capitals from the US would be nice.

They are fairly easy to add to the game, just a couple of lines in strings.xml and an entry in cities.xml.

Cities.xml:

<City>

<Name>London</Name>

<Country>United Kingdom</Country>

<Population>3271110</Population>

<Location>4104,0875</Location>

<PopupDistance>0.5</PopupDistance>

<DetailDistance>0.7</DetailDistance>

</City>

Strings.xml:

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">United Kingdom</Data></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">United Kingdom</Data></Cell>

</Row>

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">London</Data></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">London</Data></Cell>

</Row>

Maybe make a new thread in the modding forum for people to add some of the important cities so the information is there if someone decides to start adding new ones, or even for Chris when he wants to add more.

Just remember they need to have been present in 1979, have the period specific name, and preferably roughly accurate population count (if that is still used).

Plus it would be nice if they were an actual potential target, I added my house in once but for some reason they never bothered to terrorise it

[Beardage]

Large country capitals and probably the larger state capitals from the US would be nice.

They are fairly easy to add to the game, just a couple of lines in strings.xml and an entry in cities.xml.

Cities.xml:

<City>

<Name>London</Name>

<Country>United Kingdom</Country>

<Population>3271110</Population>

<Location>4104,0875</Location>

<PopupDistance>0.5</PopupDistance>

<DetailDistance>0.7</DetailDistance>

</City>

Strings.xml:

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">United Kingdom</Data></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">United Kingdom</Data></Cell>

</Row>

<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">London</Data></Cell>

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">London</Data></Cell>

</Row>

Maybe make a new thread in the modding forum for people to add some of the important cities so the information is there if someone decides to start adding new ones, or even for Chris when he wants to add more.

Just remember they need to have been present in 1979, have the period specific name, and preferably roughly accurate population count (if that is still used).

Plus it would be nice if they were an actual potential target, I added my house in once but for some reason they never bothered to terrorise it

That's one of the coolest ideas I've read all week.

[Nalca]

I think alien base are really dangerous in this build.

I've got an alien base in North America, out of range of my chinook, and in only one month, i lost the country (and 75k$/m).

I play in normal.

And, one more thing, they still diseappear when you reload your game, then cannot be found anymore.

[crusherven]

Am I the only one who thinks air combat is a little erratic in difficulty? Many battles are foregone conclusions (light scout, corvette, scout), but in others a single error can lead to multiple aircraft being lost (anything with multiple fighters).

[Assoonasitis]

Am I the only one who thinks air combat is a little erratic in difficulty? Many battles are foregone conclusions (light scout, corvette, scout), but in others a single error can lead to multiple aircraft being lost (anything with multiple fighters).

+1

Also, when multiple craft are intercepting multiple fighters, can we have each craft target a different fighter? Sometimes I forget to have my MiG target a different fighter (and sometimes I forget to disable its third and fourth missiles) and so I end up with two fighters instead of one and it's a huge problem.

[Jean-Luc]

(Light) scouts should perhaps have a very high chance of being destroyed if hit by missiles in order to (strongly) encourage the player to use the auto cannon if they hope to get a generate a crash site. Should make the early fights a bit more intense.

Even the later air battles might be balanced around using missiles to bring down UFOs to low health and finishing them off with the auto cannon (or related equivalent) to get better results (more recoverable materials).