Scoring

[Bromley86]

UPDATE

Played loads of L. Scout and Scout missions, and with the below they all came in at 100-135. Couple of Corvettes which came in at 120 & 135.

Played 3 terror missions that came in at 380, 320 & 305. Those were played with the Xeno casualty penalty set to -5. I've increased that to -10 and added the escape alien penalty to failed missions to avoid positive terror scores when you lose.

Changes from original suggestion in italics:

50 UFO

100 base attack/defence

150 terror site

10 Aliens killed

15 Aliens captured

5 Local Forces surviving

15 Civilians surviving

-10 Xenonauts killed

-20 Vehicles lost

-5 Local forces killed

-10 Local forces killed by Xenonauts

-5 Civilians killed

-20 Civilians killed by Xenonauts

-10 Aliens escaped

------------------------

ORIGINAL POST

Had a look, but couldn't see a discussion on score.

At the moment, it's all very samey. There's also no reason to place your chaps in danger in order to save civilians (civilian dies, you lose a couple of points) and little penalty for going Rambo with the rocket launcher in a school. At the end, your score will be 11X.

The UFO recovery is important, but there should be some recognition that killing 9 aliens is a little tougher than 3.

50 UFO

15 Aliens killed

25 Aliens captured

5 Local Forces surviving

20 Civilians surviving

-5 Xenonauts killed

-20 Vehicles lost

-5 Local forces killed

-10 Local forces killed by Xenonauts

-5 Civilians killed

-20 Civilians killed by Xenonauts

-?? Aliens escaped

Take a typical small scout mission with 3 aliens, 1 LF & 1 civ, aliens all killed and everyone else surviving. Current score 111, score using above 120 (50+45+5+20). So higher than the current level, but with a greatly increased downside.

Each Xenonaut killed costs you 5; each civilian killed 25; each local force killed 10. The cost of losing your guys is relatively low because you're already taking a massive hit when you lose one (all that experience and £10k to hire a replacement).

If a civilian at risk of imminent death next turn, at 25 points you might risk your fellows to save them. If there's nothing you can do to save them though, you'll have an incentive not to mow them down yourself as that'll increase the points loss by another 15.

I've never seen an alien escape, so I don't know how that should be scored. I'll revisit this once I've played a terror mission to see is it massively unbalances the score there.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Bromley86
Update

[crusherven]

I could have sworn someone else had a thread or post about this but I can't find it. Can aliens actually escape? I didn't know that was possible.

Otherwise I generally agree that actual performance in missions should matter a lot more than it does now.

[Moxar]

UFO recovering don't grant point anymore.

[Bromley86]

UFO recovering don't grant point anymore.

It does in mine (v18.4). Perhaps you reloaded during combat, as there was the reload score bug in v18.3?

Can aliens actually escape? I didn't know that was possible.

Perhaps if you lose or abort a mission?

[Moxar]

Indeed I reloaded, because of a crash after I finished it the first time.

[Sathra]

I think they're meant to escape if you finish the mission though the objective system, which I don't think actually works at the moment.

And its a known bug that reloading a ground combat save or GC autosave will remove Securing points.

[crusherven]

I think they're meant to escape if you finish the mission though the objective system, which I don't think actually works at the moment.

Ahh, that would make sense. I've never actually had the patience to sit in the UFO for 5 rounds to even test it.

[Waladil]

Yeah, I've tried chilling in the UFO for a lot of turns, mostly when I couldn't find the last guy (damn night missions...). It doesn't work, you gotta kill 'em all.

My standing question about the scoring system is... "What's it mean?" The points don't seem to correlate to anything back on the geoscape, at least nothing I can find. Maybe I'd be more proactive about protecting civvies if there was an actual apparent benefit to it, like increased local funding or something like that. All it appears to do is give a little shoot of endorphins when you see lots of green and no red. Endorphins are nice, though.

[Max_Caine]

crusherven - that was me! In the beta ground combat discussion thread

I'd argue very strongly against giving civvies a high negative score. What happens in the first few turns of a terror mission? ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh" ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh" ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh". Even with an enhanced AI the aliens are scattered sufficently that they'd rack up a high negative score very quickly.

Waladil. Checking gameconfig.xml, each funding bloc has a "relation value" (starting at 200). The funding bloc pays out at the end of the month relation value * $1000 * multiplier. (So, for example, North Africa has a multiplier of 0.8). The scoring system modifies this relatonship value somehow, as does shooting down UFOs. There's a clear relationship with shot-down UFOs, but it seems a lot murkier with ground combat.

[Bromley86]

My standing question about the scoring system is... "What's it mean?" The points don't seem to correlate to anything back on the geoscape, at least nothing I can find.

Looks like that's a bug; in theory, perform well in your missions and the counties pay you more, whereas at the moment they actually don't care what you do once you've downed the UFO.

I'd argue very strongly against giving civvies a high negative score. What happens in the first few turns of a terror mission? ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh" ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh" ZAP ZAP ZAP "urgh".

All light scout missions with vanilla scoring come in at 110 +/- 10. In the 8 light scout missions, using the updated scoring suggestion in the OP, I'd have scored:

100/135/110/105/115/100/135 and that outlier 180 (due to 4 civilians rather than the usual 1-2).

Excluding the outlier, that's a mean of 114. So there doesn't appear to be a massive change to score in the long term.

The terror mission I ploughed through would have scored 153 vanilla (out of a maximum of ~180). I toyed with reducing the terror site element to 50 or 100, but in the end it just seemed wrong that recovering a crashed scout from some hick farm gives ~2/3 of the score that rescuing a city from tactical nuking does. Remember that the 215 was close to the minimum for a successful mission, as I'd lost most of my team and all but 1 of the civs. A good run through would give 255.

The maximum, if the aliens forgot to shoot anyone, would have been 335 (although, as you say, that'll never happen as 2 of the civilians will always die, reducing it by 40 straight away).

[crusherven]

I'd dramatically increase the base for completing a terror mission. IIRC in the OG you could gain/lose around 800 points on a terror mission (or lose 1000 for ignoring it) whereas a small scout would only be a couple hundred.

IMO terror missions should be worth several times what a small ship recovery is worth, even with heavy casualties. After all, the alternative is losing the whole town. That said, successfully saving most of the civilians should also be worth significantly more than letting them die.

Max_Caine, I'd say losing all the civilians but still winning should net a score of a couple hundred. Keeping [all] the civvies alive should be quite valuable; worth several hundred points. That's the objective of terror missions, after all. The trouble would be to make sure you don't lose points from civvie deaths in UFO recovery.

[Bromley86]

The trouble would be to make sure you don't lose points from civvie deaths in UFO recovery.

Yep. Given the random nature of civilian death in a UFO mission, increasing the points difference between the states civilian_alive and civilian_dead beyond 20-25 is a problem. A way around that might be to greatly increase the number of civilians in terror missions from ~5 to ~20. That'd increase the max available points in my example from 335 to 560 and make for a more eventful mission.

EDIT: Just had a look at this in missiontypeprops_gc.xml. Little confused, as my last terror mission definitely had 2 LF an 5 civs, but the file says it should have been 6 LF & 14 civs (assuming soviettown refers to the terror mission map). Presumably something is dividing this by ~3?

Edited May 10, 2013 by Bromley86

[Max_Caine]

Civvies and friendly AI are controlled by the map loaded, I believe. If you go into the level editor, you can set the number of both per map, along with the spawn locations for friendly AI and civvies.

EDIT: To confirm this, I opened up the soviettown terror map in the level editor and behold! It has 5 civvies and 2 friendly soliders.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Max_Caine

[Bromley86]

Thanks!

EDIT: Increasing the civilians up to 10 seems to make the terror mission far more buggy. I normally don't have any problems with terror missions; can't remember any CTD and only once has it hung on Hidden Movement. After this change though, I get something like a 50% chance that it'll CTD before the mission info screen opens and also CTD or hangs after a few turns.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Bromley86

[crusherven]

Thanks!

EDIT: Increasing the civilians up to 10 seems to make the terror mission far more buggy. I normally don't have any problems with terror missions; can't remember any CTD and only once has it hung on Hidden Movement. After this change though, I get something like a 50% chance that it'll CTD before the mission info screen opens and also CTD or hangs after a few turns.

So civilians are doing something that causes a crash...