[V7.0.0 ... V7.3.0 - geoscape] - balance feedback - on commander difficulty, for experienced players, pressure from panic during mid/late game feels low

[fusion-waffle]

Description

On commander difficulty, for experienced players, pressure from panic during mid/late game feels low.

In contrast, doomsday pressure during phase 1 feels very tough (I like it!)

What Happened

Played a 7.x campaign, had fun. Early-late game was v7.0.0 -- v7.2.0, then v7.30 for the endgame.

Some of the perceived difficulty and doomsday pressure during phase 1 may have been due to having to play in a strange way to work around v7.0.0 / v7.1.0 bugs or ground combat balance changes that have already been rolled back (unreliable shields, machine guns were briefly bugged with no x3 burst, one early mission needed to be skipped and failed to work around a crash-to-desktop, etc).

Possible options

1. Do nothing. Leave it as is.  Maybe panic is mainly meant to work as a mechanic to end the campaign if it is not going well?  But if a player is intercepting most UFOs, clearing alien bases & winning 95%+ of ground missions, maybe the panic is meant to be low, and that's OK.
2. Increase the panic inflicted by UOO strikes on the harder difficulties?   Instead of +25 panic in a single region, how about for players who have opted-in to commander difficulty, dial it up to +50 panic in the single region that gets hit, and then +10 panic across all other regions.  Currently, a player who has been winning the strategic game can essentially ignore UOO strikes indefinitely.  On second thoughts, maybe this could unfairly put a player with already high panic levels into an "instant loss" situation when the UOO's function is revealed -- but that's mostly a concern for players on their first campaign, who don't know what to expect, if there's no foreshadowing that they may be about to suffer a huge panic spike.  I'd bet that most players choosing Commander difficulty will have already won a campaign and know what is coming.
3. Something else?   Multiply all negative panic effects by x3?  Nerf security supporters' monthly panic reduction during phases 2-5?  (Please don't nerf security supporters' doomsday reduction, that's likely to cause a high rate of lost campaigns in phase 1)

Edited February 28 by fusion-waffle

[fusion-waffle]

Another anecdote, after a second V7.x campaign, still on Commander difficulty

• Pressure from doomsday in phase 1did not feel so severe.
  • Not sure what the cause of this was, maybe a few things went well
    • Better strategic decisions? (I focused on getting security supporters, and also got a couple of security supporters) 
    • Better luck with early security supporters being priced on sale at a discount?
    • Better results on average in early ground missions for incremental economy & OP bounties?
  • By day 68, doomsday was reduced to +0.5 / day with 3 security supporters & a couple of intelligence supporters
  • By day 81, doomsday was reduced to -1.5 / day after also picking up the elite security supporter at a bargain price.
    • Looking back, getting the elite security supporter late in phase 1 is probably not necessary, might have been better to pick something else.
• Similarly to the previous campaign, there was basically no Panic pressure
  • a few causes
    • primarily: xenonauts did well at the air war & ground combat. basically shot down nearly all the UFOs & won all the ground missions
    • the strategy of recruiting many security supporters during phase 1 to avoid losing to doomsday has the consequence that you then have large negative monthly panic income for the rest of the campaign

 

New thought re: balance

• Security supporters being both useful in phase 1 (doomsday reduction) & still somewhat useful in phases 2+ (panic reduction) makes recruiting them in phase 1 a simple decision.  Maybe the decision could be made harder (more interesting) for experienced players if doomsday-reduction security supporters were somehow made worse in the mid & late game. So, you want to recruit just enough doomsday-reduction security supporters to not die in phase 1, but not so many that you over-invest in surviving phase 1

 

All that said, the campaign does already have difficulty sliders, when I try a new campaign I might dial up some of the economic/difficulty strategy settings so its even harder than the Commander preset.  Taking a step back, it's probably better to tune the balance of Commander to be challenging but winnable for players who have won a campaign or two on moderate difficulties (say after 80-100 hours in game) rather than trying to make Commander a serious challenge, with a significant chance of losing, for folks who already have won multiple Commander campaigns.

Edited March 5 by fusion-waffle