Geoscape Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 2

[GizmoGomez]

Now, I have a question:

About the alien corpses and unneeded live aliens captured at the end of the missions:

Why are they destroyed and not sold?

The aliens killed in battle have bullet holes, shrapnel, burns, etc, so they'd be sold for a fair price, but the live aliens captured should be executed via lethal injection, or suffocation, or something non-destructive so the corpse is in perfect condition, allowing it to be sold for more money.

This would give the player some much needed cash as a reward for doing well in the ground combat, and it would get rid of the silly explanation that all the corpses and extra live aliens are destroyed at the end of the mission. I mean, why would you destroy what could be sold for a lot of money? It's not because we want to hoard alien tech, we sell the weapons and can sell the alloys and alenium. Why not sell the corpses, ripe for autopsies?

Thoughts?

[Gauddlike]

It wouldn't make any difference to the cash income as that would be balanced to take into account all items sold.

If you make more items get sold then you would need to reduce how much all of the items are worth to maintain that balance.

[svidangel]

Having made it to January, some comments:

Changes in invasion timing have lead to a spread of the tech tree in the earlier months, with a massive jump in scientists required in December. Next time I'll have to plan on starting a lab around November 13th or so. Maybe that could be ramped up a little more slowly.

Changes in invasion sequence have changed the weapons we have available to combat each UFO type:

Previously Scouts showed up in the first month, allowing us to research both laser weaponry (craft gatling) and alenium explosives prior to Fighters showing up.

Currently Fighters show up alongside scouts, making alenium explosives a tech to research for... downing medium ships with torps?

Similar timing changes with Heavy fighters and Plasma explosives.

I am wondering if fighters are intended to be balanced around being fought with basic weaponry or alenium/lasers, etc.

Cash flow has been a bit tighter... not sure what the player's expected base expansion is expected to look like but...

Previously I had three bases around mid October.

Currently I am going into January with only three bases, maybe building a 4th early Jan.

Alien bases:

Previously I had plasma weaponry from landing ships prior to seeing my first alien base

Currently: alien bases show up concurrently with the landing ships, so the troops assaulting them are using mostly laser weaponry. Do bases get harder? Are they balanced for laser or plasma weaponry? (The sebillian base was a breeze, I have a feeling if it had been caesan with snipers popping around that might have been different).

Air combat:

Previously: Condors felt like they had some utility throughout the game, and Foxtrots were nice to have around for larger ships.

Currently: Condors are all but useless except for downing solo heavy fighters by January, maybe once I get Magstorm and mass produce those I can use the condors as bait/fodder. Most of the time they are too slow to intercept, would slow down foxtrots sent with them... maybe this was a good way to phase them out? Still not enough encouragement to go to the expensive and slow to repair Corsair.

Edit: Well, they are still good as bait to draw in interception wings for shorter foxtrot refuel times still, but meh.

Edited July 3, 2013 by svidangel

[DNK]

I like that idea, although it would be difficult to have a prewritten letter for each situation that could come up. Perhaps prewritten snippets of letters would be stitched together, with specific numbers and figures being added in the correct places?

That is exactly what I intended to say.

[Solarius Scorch]

DNK, your letters are absolutely fabulous. However, your balancing ideas are quite sound too, and I feel that's more important to the discussion.

[GizmoGomez]

That is exactly what I intended to say.

Yeah, I figured. Yours is an awesome idea, I really like it.

[thothkins]

I liked the letters DNK. However, it might be a bit crowded seeing them at the end of the month. You could always select them by region form the funding by region end of month map. It would be nice to see them come up if you pass certain levels during the month to add a little more flavour.

[Knightpt]

Yeah, I figured. Yours is an awesome idea, I really like it.

Same here. Perhaps the letters are a little hard to implement but the feedback from the funding countries is realy realy realy nice and makes perfect sense.

[DNK]

@Knightpt

I think they'd be fairly easy. I'm guessing the game already keeps track of the various factors for funding. This system is basically:

1. Take raw monthly data, analyze for various levels of success for each region
   
2. After creating a "score" for each factor, lookup a premade letter fragment for that region\factor\successlevel. Have a few random choices to add variety for each. Also have overall success ratings decide the opening and closing of the letter to give the overall tone and do the same lookup.
   
3. Each letter fragment has a few spots that might need to be filled in with a number/percentage/etc. Use the raw data to fill them in appropriately.
   
4. Stitch it together based on a few randomized forms.
   
5. Profit?
   

The coding for the actual system should be very straightforward and light. Adding the GUI elements might be the bigger task, which itself isn't too much I think. If you have, say, 5 levels of success for 6 different factors and 2 variants per level for 10 regions, that's 600 fragments. Seems like a lot, but if each fragment is just 1-2 sentences, it's not too much (but still a good bit of writing).

I liked the letters DNK. However, it might be a bit crowded seeing them at the end of the month. You could always select them by region form the funding by region end of month map. It would be nice to see them come up if you pass certain levels during the month to add a little more flavour.

Yes, selectable but not forced to be seen. Something like having tabs at the top for each, but having the overview tab (current screen) as default.

Yes, and realtime updates are great, too.

[Mytheos]

Variable progression is something that will go back in, I'm just unsure what should control it right now - previously, the extra progression was caused passively by UFOs while they were on the map. While I'm not ruling out still using that it does have the disadvantage that it is a negative feedback loop - the player does worse in the game, therefore intercepts less UFOs, therefore the ticker advances more and brings more/better UFOs while the player falls further behind etc... Maybe that is actually desirable, in that it puts a player that has fallen too far behind "out of their misery" faster, but I need more convincing.

Another alternative that currently seems attractive to me is to make shooting down UFOs and engaging in ground combat missions advance the ticker - this is a positive feedback system, so a more active player escalates the invasion faster until they are almost overwhelmed, at which point it starts to level off (as a result of the players rate of missions going down due to casualties/repairs) - a less active player will find the invasion advancing at a more sedate pace, but will be starved of the resources they need to fight it if they take it too easy. I find the elegance of this particularly appealing as a control engineer

Ok, I thought about it some more...

Without knowing exactly how the game works its difficult to really comment.

However creating a "Gas Pedal" and expecting good players to go through cycles of being crushed and recovering will be a rough thing to balance, and Pros will just put the game on "Cruise Control" and sub perform to avoid being overwhelmed.

And rewarding a player by crushing them in the face makes them stop playing, until they see a you tube video that teaches you how to set the cruise control.

I agree though the Aliens should adapt to the player.

(Again I have no idea how things work, and if any of this is helpful cool, if not I owe you 5 minutes of your life back)

If Aliens run different types of missions, and those missions add to their point totals with each Funding Nation...

(Example: Scout Mission the UFO flies around, and gets points per second, the points added to whatever funding country they are flying over. So one successful (You didnt shoot it down) scout mission could give them points with several Funding Nations, depending on the flight path.)

And the different missions give a range of points from Highest to Lowest and they were ordered like this for example:

Infiltration - Highest Point Value

Base Creation

Terror Mission

Harvest

Abduction

Research

Attacking Targets of Opportunity (Military Bases, Passenger Jets, Cruise Ships etc.)

Scouting - Lowest Point Value

The Aliens would have to score so many points in order to "Unlock" Missions and would start with Scout, and Research. (So they dont start an Alien Base or send a Terror Mission on day 1.)

This would be the main factor for Alien Progression, and the AI would adjust to the player in order to maximize its point gain.

Horrible Player = AI Adapts and starts sending less Fighters, Bombers, Mission Ships with Escorts, and more lone mission ships that Land, giving a player with a crushed Air Force a chance to Ground assault a few landed UFOs, and a "chance" to recover.

XCOM Veteran = AI Adapts and since it is having trouble getting points, sends more Fighter, Bombers, Missions vessels nearly always sent with escorts. The player gets an opportunity at more Funding Nation Points, more UFOs to shoot n Loot, but also has more opportunities to make mistakes.

This would create the "Gas Pedal" Effect.

However there should be a "speed" limit based on difficulty and other variables involved.

A superior player should be able to play without suffering cycles of crushed/recover/crushed.

But the Aliens could have more variables to work with such as...

-Missions Times (How long a Scout sticks around before escaping to space as an example)

Long Mission Times = More Points but gives the player more time to shoot them down.

-Alien Crew Types and Numbers

Aliens configure and adapt their crew based on the player. A Research Mission might have a limit of 6 Aliens, and if they send 6 Scientist Aliens, they do better research and the Aliens get more points. However they will send more Guard/Warrior types if the player is successful at ground assaults. So they might send 3 Scientists and 3 Warriors.

-Variable Craft for Missions

They get more points for larger craft, but they are slower and more easily caught, and give the player more reward. The Aliens might send more smaller, faster well guarded craft and more of them if the player is more successful. (More fights = more overall reward but more opportunity for mistakes and losses)

-Craft Landing % chance and Time Spent "Landed"

If a research vessel lands, and lands for a longer time it gets more points as it does its job better. However this increases the chance the player can ground assault it. So a Good player will see craft land "slightly" less often and spend less time "Landed" and will perhaps go a further distance between landings. (Further distance means you have a greater risk of your dropship being attacked by fighters if you didnt shoot them down first)

-Rampages

The better a player does the better chance the Aliens send a Rampage Wave, which is essentially the Aliens attempting to "Force" through a couple of missions with heavy Air Support. These are dangerous and must be handled carefully and the player has a sense of "You cant save em all Hasselhoff".

-Alien Retaliation

The better a player does the more focus the Aliens put on Destroying your bases, requiring you to better defend them.

This will create a situation where New Players will have a greater opportunity to recover but the Alien Ticker will advance more quickly, which also means the player gets new Tech "sooner" but if they dont start getting it together it wont matter much as the Aliens are getting more Funding Nation points thus quickening the End.

The Veteran will stem the tide of Alien Progress, but have a harder time doing it, they may not get new tech as quickly, and will have more time to outfit their soldiers and build their bases and have a better increase with Funding Nations...however they will have to survive many more and harder fights and get thrown more curve balls.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Mytheos

[Solarius Scorch]

It's all sound thoughts, Mytheos.

I believe we are looking at two discreet problems here:

1) Global AI for the alien command. This is generally how they react to the changing circumstances, especially to Xenonaut performance. Mytheos' post and similar posts earlier (notably DNK's) are all about this.

2) Ticker: what ships get unlocked when and how aliens can win the game. This was discussed earlier in this thread, including my recent post.

I feel that in order to balance (and generally finish) the game, both questions should be addressed - and separately, since they are only loosely connected to each other. I'd love to hear what the devs have to say on this, since there is nothing more important in this project.

[DNK]

Agree that it's probably best to separate these two things a bit. The ticker has it's own logic to determine both available craft and overall difficulty, and the actual mix of available flights and missions is more flexible and responsive to player actions.

Regarding the ticker, one point: all older ships shouldn't disappear outright when newer ships come into play. This is going back again to that variance theme - it helps keep the gameplay from getting repetitive/boring. For example, I'm in the "carrier phase" and basically every single craft is either (A) air superiority or (B) carriers. Scouting, research, whatever, all have been totally phased out. Additionally, older craft no longer show up, like basic fighters or such.

This is both boredom-inducing and a bit unrealistic. Real-world militaries continue to use older designs and less powerful ships in campaigns. Like, despite how old the A10 and B52 are, they're still used regularly alongside the F22 and late-generation F15s/16s/18s. If a ship was good enough for the start of the campaign, it's certainly good enough for the later campaign, especially when those light scouts and other craft have highly advanced air-superiority fighters and bombers supporting them.

Additionally, a point on waves. It's a great idea, but it would be nice to have some non-wave flights as well. I understand wanting to avoid the unending attack late-game in XCOM, but just keep the frequency of non-wave flights steady. Put a hard ceiling on how often you can have them to prevent it from becoming excessive. Again, variety and balancing instead of all-or-nothing and on/off.

Also, for losing nations, given how expensive it is to set up bases in the early game right now, it's way too easy to lose nations to the aliens. I would suggest either making it harder OR making it reversible. Say, if you destroy all alien bases in a region AND have your own base there, you can flip it back once it's been lost. I never liked that "permanent region loss" of the original, and would find it a really good way to include an offensive element to the player's strategy. Currently, it's pure defense.

Edited July 5, 2013 by DNK

[Aaron]

I think many of you are approaching that suggestion I made from the wrong angle in a couple of ways:

Firstly, a player who tries to intercept every single UFO regardless of type is not a "superior" player to one who picks their targets more carefully and performs fewer missions, they are just a player with a greater tolerance for grind. At the moment the player with the higher tolerance for grind will quickly break the game, because they will run through dozens of missions against UFOs and build up huge reserves of cash, alloys and and alenium and then snore their way through the rest of the game. That is an exploitable flaw in the game that exists now, and it needs to be alleviated in some way. I understand of course that some of you enjoy playing the game like that, which is why I want to make sure it remains a viable option - but there's a big difference between allowing it to be a viable option and leaving it as the best option, which it currently is.

Secondly, remember that the approach I suggested will also lead to a commander who is more selective about the missions they go on to being starved of those same resources the commander mentioned above will have an abundance of. The ticker will still be counting up for this commander too, so that lack of resources could lead to too few scientists, interceptors, weapons etc... which then spur them to increase the tempo of their operations (or lose, of course). It's not just "take it easy mode".

As for the objection that increasing the ticker with successful Xenonaut ops is unrealistic, that seems a bit of a stretch - you honestly can't imagine the aliens might escalate their invasion plans faster if they started taking heavier losses to their less advanced troops/ships?

Edited July 5, 2013 by Aaron

[svidangel]

Heh, reserves of cash from doing more missions are only the geoscape part of the balance problem. The player with more missions under their belt also ends up with far stronger Xenonauts, provided they can keep them alive long enough.

Are you aiming to prevent the player from managing to do more missions by damaging planes to cause repair times/refueling times at the moment? Or planning on designing the waves to prevent multiple ground combats?

Maybe a fatigue/ground combat cooldown on troops on a wave-length basis might allow players to try to pew pew as many UFOs as they can, whackamole style, but still pick just one or two to actually run ground missions for each wave.

Though it might have the effect of just making soldier purchase a higher priority for multiple ground combats... but it would also reduce the power of single squads when it comes to balancing ground combat (In January my main squad is all over 100TUs with 90ish reactions and good accuracy. Second squad has a few over 60 TUs. Any ground combat balanced for one is either going to slaughter or get slaughtered by the other even with equivalent tech gear).

[svidangel]

And I can easily see how either advancing the invasion ticker or increasing the number of fighter flights to give their craft more air cover would both work for balancing the increased resources gained from running a lot of missions, but I think most players are going to try to shoot down as many UFOs as they possibly can, especially if they don't know the mechanics behind the invasion.

It would be very frustrating for new players to try to be very successful in early waves at shooting down everything that moves, only to get swamped because they weren't experienced enough to build up the aircraft and infrastructure to handle the alien response first. Or maybe that could be reserved for harder difficulties, with a more or less standard invasion path for easy and normal...

Hmm, maybe if you just want to cut down on ground missions, you could have alien reprisals (basically air superiority missions with a very tight geographical area) where if more than one UFO were downed in an area at the same time, one of the sites would get swarmed by a few waves of fighters, making it very difficult to land troops?

[DNK]

Firstly, a player who tries to intercept every single UFO regardless of type is not a "superior" player to one who picks their targets more carefully and performs fewer missions, they are just a player with a greater tolerance for grind.

They're not necessarily more "skilled", but I would say in terms of defending the Earth they're "superior" all else being equal. And grinding should be rewarded. If grinders want challenges, that's exactly what the difficulty levels and personal "house rules"/modding (eg 'no Foxtrots' or 'lasers only' or '5 man teams only') are for.

It also can be a crutch, grinding, in that if someone starts getting behind they can make up for it by grinding more to catch up. How else can you catch up without spontaneously becoming more skillful? I thought that was exactly what grinding was supposed to accomplish in any game where it's a choice.

I would suggest: auto-resolve for ground missions (the anti-grind choice). If you grind through successfully playing it out, you keep the ticker from advancing. However, if you use auto-resolve (which would have its success formula adjust for player performance in previous missions) then the ticker goes up anyway. Usable for both air and ground combat, it would allow players to "snooze" a bit after grinding/succeeding up, but eventually finding themselves behind again as the aliens' advancement notches up significantly.

It shouldn't be too hard to implement in terms of coding (a GUI addition and a formula), just hard to fine-tune the formula. Like, "how valuable is a laser rifle over a plasma carbine" and "how much does having 25% more troops add to success" are hard to really quantify (but doable, perhaps with some *science*), but if it can be done, that's the real challenge of adding the feature, right?

A final point: players may not realize this ticker effect, so having auto-resolve carry some parallel penalties like lowered loot would make it both intuitively known as a "lazy, costly measure" for players AND make it further "anti-grind". You could frame it as "letting local forces command the Xenonauts", and those local forces then have to be allowed to take some of the loot as spoils.

In terms of game design, I think it's important to remember that Xenonauts is definitely a "cleaner" type game, in which clearing out aliens and keeping the Earth 'clean' is sort of the intuitive and subconscious goal of the whole enterprise (as much as progression, strategic/tactical success, and management are). Including an auto-resolve feature allows players to feel the reward of "cleaning" without having to go through the grind, once they've figured out the strategy and tactics necessary to be successful in battle. It also allows strategy gamers to avoid ground combat and focus on what they like, and visa-versa. It's such a win-win-win-win feature, it has to be included at some point.

Edited July 5, 2013 by DNK

[Mytheos]

I think many of you are approaching that suggestion I made from the wrong angle in a couple of ways:

Firstly, a player who tries to intercept every single UFO regardless of type is not a "superior" player to one who picks their targets more carefully and performs fewer missions, they are just a player with a greater tolerance for grind. At the moment the player with the higher tolerance for grind will quickly break the game, because they will run through dozens of missions against UFOs and build up huge reserves of cash, alloys and and alenium and then snore their way through the rest of the game. That is an exploitable flaw in the game that exists now, and it needs to be alleviated in some way. I understand of course that some of you enjoy playing the game like that, which is why I want to make sure it remains a viable option - but there's a big difference between allowing it to be a viable option and leaving it as the best option, which it currently is.

Secondly, remember that the approach I suggested will also lead to a commander who is more selective about the missions they go on to being starved of those same resources the commander mentioned above will have an abundance of. The ticker will still be counting up for this commander too, so that lack of resources could lead to too few scientists, interceptors, weapons etc... which then spur them to increase the tempo of their operations (or lose, of course). It's not just "take it easy mode".

As for the objection that increasing the ticker with successful Xenonaut ops is unrealistic, that seems a bit of a stretch - you honestly can't imagine the aliens might escalate their invasion plans faster if they started taking heavier losses to their less advanced troops/ships?

I would put forth that yes, if a player managed to shoot down every UFO, and had a larger, more experienced team and greater earned resources, that they would indeed be a superior player to one that was "unable"

If a player "chose" not to shoot down every UFO because they felt it too grindy then that is an aspect of game balance I would imagine?

(Keep in mind the more combat you see the greater chance of loss you are exposed to, and being able to successfully repeat something is the difference between a Rookie and a Veteran...hit one home run, who cares? Hit 80 in a season, welcome to the Hall of Fame)

And would the Aliens Escalate if they started taking heavier heavier losses?

I dont know, that depends on who is in charge pulling the strings, with the final mission not being in the game we dont know how it ends.

Is it a Giant AI Brain like in XCOM94? Is it a race of Aliens (Ethereals) like in XCOM2012?

Is it a human, a Vulcan or a Klingon?

How the war was fought would be dramatically different depending on what was controlling it.

From what we know, they seem to have cloning technology, genetic engineering and so forth. Therefore I can assume they can replace their losses quicker than the 18 years it takes us to replace ours.

Logically they would win a war of attrition.

So the question is why dont they just slam us and be done with it? Why drag it out and give us the opportunity to adapt and win?

Originally it seemed like they wanted our planet for resources and us for food. Therefore it would make sense they would not want to just nuke us into oblivion.

Do they have cruisers in the first month? Or are they assumed to be developing better ships because we're doing a good job and destroying all their corvettes?

If they wanted us for food, and resources, and they were lead by an AI, I would assume the AI would want to expend as few resources as possible, but would also realize that the way to get the most resource from us would be to kill as few of us as possible and win.

A full scale invasion would make humans fight to the death and start nuking the crap out of the planet. Which would be a loss of resources for the Aliens.

So if they start slowly, grind us down, infiltrate our major nations, they can take us over with minimal human casualties (Loss of food) and minimum damage to the planet...that seems like a logical way to go.

I would assume the AI would be cold calculated and consider losses fodder that can be easily replaced, and would not suffer from anger or seek revenge it would know that it will win.

So it calculated the chance of us building a Ship with abilities comparable to theirs, and being able to find and assault their stronghold and kill the Hive Mind AI Brain thing and thus ending the war within a span of 1 to 1.5 years would be...insanely low.

In reality I would agree with it...

(Lets face it doing what the humans do in this game in all reality would be impossible...you couldnt hand a modern laptop to people in the 80s and have them replicate the technology in a week)

[ThunderGr]

I think many of you are approaching that suggestion I made from the wrong angle in a couple of ways:

Firstly, a player who tries to intercept every single UFO regardless of type is not a "superior" player to one who picks their targets more carefully and performs fewer missions, they are just a player with a greater tolerance for grind. At the moment the player with the higher tolerance for grind will quickly break the game, because they will run through dozens of missions against UFOs and build up huge reserves of cash, alloys and and alenium and then snore their way through the rest of the game. That is an exploitable flaw in the game that exists now, and it needs to be alleviated in some way. I understand of course that some of you enjoy playing the game like that, which is why I want to make sure it remains a viable option - but there's a big difference between allowing it to be a viable option and leaving it as the best option, which it currently is.

Making it difficult for a player to dawn every single UFO will do the trick in a more realistic way, IMO. This was the way it was in the OG. Whenever I was detecting a dreadnaught in TFTD it was a very difficult decision whether to intercept it or not, and I had lost many subs to such ships. Battleships and supply ships were hard targets as well. Make it make sense, instead of making it easy and manipulate the ticker according to player style.

Secondly, remember that the approach I suggested will also lead to a commander who is more selective about the missions they go on to being starved of those same resources the commander mentioned above will have an abundance of. The ticker will still be counting up for this commander too, so that lack of resources could lead to too few scientists, interceptors, weapons etc... which then spur them to increase the tempo of their operations (or lose, of course). It's not just "take it easy mode".

Tying the invasion progress in such a way is not good, IMO. Many good ideas have been presented. The player plays the game but we need to have the feeling that the aliens operate everywhere. Focusing on the player's success in the detection range is not good, although I understand it simplifies development. The OG was not focusing on that area and it was one of the things that made it great.

As for the objection that increasing the ticker with successful Xenonaut ops is unrealistic, that seems a bit of a stretch - you honestly can't imagine the aliens might escalate their invasion plans faster if they started taking heavier losses to their less advanced troops/ships?

No, they could not escalate faster because that breaks the backstory, as well as the gameplay. If they have the ability for a full-scale attack from the beginning, why had they not done so? The aliens should become stronger and advance faster depending on the amount of bases they have managed to establish and the amount of nations they have conquered. Not depending on how fast you bring UFOs down.

[Mytheos]

@Aaron

But lets get to the point.

There are 3 type of players as you see it? Those that choose to shoot down every UFO, those that choose not to due to it being too grindy and those that are unable.

So...Hardcore, Casual, and Newbie?

The question is, how can everyone have their cake and eat it too?

I would put forth, let the players choose the pace/progression.

Make the player select the difficulty, then select the Alien progression/pace when starting a new game. With the pace/progression determining perhaps how many things advance the ticker and how much.

I understand the problem with a new player getting a harder game as they go on, and a pro getting an easier game as they go on...

But you shouldnt be punished for hard work, dedication and a greater expenditure of time.

Thus why I suggested making things trickier and harder for the Hardcore crowd as the Aliens adapt everything from crew compositions to mission times to landing times...throwing them more curve balls so they dont get bored and are still given challenge.

The more trouble you give the Aliens the more cards up their sleeves they place on the table.

But you still need to avoid escalating the game to the point that it is impossible for a player to not be crushed and then spend a long period of watching the clock tick by until they can rebuild and get back to actually playing the game.

Edited July 5, 2013 by Mytheos

[Mytheos]

They're not necessarily more "skilled", but I would say in terms of defending the Earth they're "superior" all else being equal. And grinding should be rewarded. If grinders want challenges, that's exactly what the difficulty levels and personal "house rules"/modding (eg 'no Foxtrots' or 'lasers only' or '5 man teams only') are for.

It also can be a crutch, grinding, in that if someone starts getting behind they can make up for it by grinding more to catch up. How else can you catch up without spontaneously becoming more skillful? I thought that was exactly what grinding was supposed to accomplish in any game where it's a choice.

I would suggest: auto-resolve for ground missions (the anti-grind choice). If you grind through successfully playing it out, you keep the ticker from advancing. However, if you use auto-resolve (which would have its success formula adjust for player performance in previous missions) then the ticker goes up anyway. Usable for both air and ground combat, it would allow players to "snooze" a bit after grinding/succeeding up, but eventually finding themselves behind again as the aliens' advancement notches up significantly.

It shouldn't be too hard to implement in terms of coding (a GUI addition and a formula), just hard to fine-tune the formula. Like, "how valuable is a laser rifle over a plasma carbine" and "how much does having 25% more troops add to success" are hard to really quantify (but doable, perhaps with some *science*), but if it can be done, that's the real challenge of adding the feature, right?

A final point: players may not realize this ticker effect, so having auto-resolve carry some parallel penalties like lowered loot would make it both intuitively known as a "lazy, costly measure" for players AND make it further "anti-grind". You could frame it as "letting local forces command the Xenonauts", and those local forces then have to be allowed to take some of the loot as spoils.

In terms of game design, I think it's important to remember that Xenonauts is definitely a "cleaner" type game, in which clearing out aliens and keeping the Earth 'clean' is sort of the intuitive and subconscious goal of the whole enterprise (as much as progression, strategic/tactical success, and management are). Including an auto-resolve feature allows players to feel the reward of "cleaning" without having to go through the grind, once they've figured out the strategy and tactics necessary to be successful in battle. It also allows strategy gamers to avoid ground combat and focus on what they like, and visa-versa. It's such a win-win-win-win feature, it has to be included at some point.

I disagree with auto resolve missions.

I feel that the challenge isnt do a good job once, its do a good job repeatedly...if you do something once, maybe you are a master, maybe you just got lucky?

If you repeat the same thing a thousand times with a very tight level of success I would say you are a Master, and obviously luck was almost an insignificant factor.

If you base auto resolve off past performance, was that performance luck?

Maybe you just have your squad adapted to previous encounters but when new/better equipped Aliens show up and starting using different tactics, you would fail.

So if lazy you'd hit auto resolve and save load it if you didnt get the result you wanted...and if the auto resolve didnt have a RNG factor, you'd say hmm, not good enough so I'll do this mission myself...if it did you are expecting lazy people that hate grinding to either accept mediocre results, or save load repeatedly.

I dont see enough weight being given by anyone having this discussion to the obvious fact the more battles you go through the more likely you are to have a death, as even great players get over confident, or think they have the game down and start to rush things and end up dieing.

We all play and think, man I was over aggressive there, I rushed too much, I was lazy, I knew that was too great a risk....and fighting the Soul Wearying effect of a long war, maintaining your cool, and keeping your game face on...thats all part of the battle.

[Mytheos]

And honestly as far as grindy goes...

Lets see how it is when it's more finished?

We still are missing Alien specific stat differences, Alien AI Behaviors, and a large number of maps (to the point you rarely see the same one twice) or randomly generated maps.

So I feel its hard to balance or adjust the grind, when we really cant get a great feel for what it is going to be like.

Yeah it seems more grindy now due to repeated maps, and seeing Chryssalids (Reapers?) have the same stats and behavior as every other Alien...

But when Chryssalids end up having alarmingly high TUs and walking a scary distance to melee our troops and start a cycle of death and zombies....instead of them just walking behind a box and letting us murder them from a distance with zero threat...

I think the fun factor, the newness factor, and the requirement for the player to adapt and adjust their tactics and soldier equipment...will take a large bite out of the grindy feel people may be currently experiencing.

[Mytheos]

On a side note...

I love this conversation on Alien Escalation/Progression...its like watching a TV show and dieing to find out what happens next.

"Will the Devs side with the Hardcore players and attempt to stave off their forums being lit on fire by a small, angry army of 30 year old neckbeards?"

"Or will they side with the casuals to prevent forum threads popping up such as "Alien Rape and Soul Crushing Defeat : A Xenonauts Tale" and "What the ()(*&*^ is wrong with you DEVS??!, you are all bunch of sick sadistic *&*(^* and I hope you all die in a %^$$@! FIRE!!!"

"Or can they find a way to please everyone?"

"Tune in Next Time to Find out!!!"

[DNK]

I disagree with auto resolve missions.

I feel that the challenge isnt do a good job once, its do a good job repeatedly...if you do something once, maybe you are a master, maybe you just got lucky?

If you repeat the same thing a thousand times with a very tight level of success I would say you are a Master, and obviously luck was almost an insignificant factor.

If you base auto resolve off past performance, was that performance luck?

Maybe you just have your squad adapted to previous encounters but when new/better equipped Aliens show up and starting using different tactics, you would fail.

So if lazy you'd hit auto resolve and save load it if you didnt get the result you wanted...and if the auto resolve didnt have a RNG factor, you'd say hmm, not good enough so I'll do this mission myself...if it did you are expecting lazy people that hate grinding to either accept mediocre results, or save load repeatedly.

I dont see enough weight being given by anyone having this discussion to the obvious fact the more battles you go through the more likely you are to have a death, as even great players get over confident, or think they have the game down and start to rush things and end up dieing.

We all play and think, man I was over aggressive there, I rushed too much, I was lazy, I knew that was too great a risk....and fighting the Soul Wearying effect of a long war, maintaining your cool, and keeping your game face on...thats all part of the battle.

I elaborated more in another thread, but the idea is that after like 8 missions the auto-resolve is available. It would then compare the expected score on the missions (as calculated by its formula) and compare it with the player's actual scores, then create an average "player multiplier" effect of some sort. If the player chooses to auto-resolve before doing 8 missions, then it would weight his success with whatever the default success rate is (likely lower unless the player is worse than AI).

It gives players a choice in both grind/casual and in focusing on strategy/airwar or groundwar for their gameplay time.

[Mytheos]

@DNK

I can see that and I believe I understand where you are coming from.

But different Aliens have different tactics and if the player is unaware, it can radically change results on player success.

And the weaponry evolves quickly, as well as numbers of Aliens, and the types, and tactics.

I mean seeing a Chryssalid for the first time in XCOM I know killed many people's entire squads where they hadnt even taken more than a loss or two up to that point.

And if you dont know how to deal with certain new Aliens, it can be...a painful learning experience.

I dont think you could get any reasonable data beyond the past 2-3 missions really. And a couple of lucky missions would be a weird way to award success or failure.

But more to the point, if someone finds this game so grindy they can still get points for shooting them down even if you dont clean up afterwards.

But I have to believe that for Auto resolve missions and Air Combat to be in the game, and be a welcomed feature...worthy of the Dev's time to do such a relatively tricky thing...that the problem would stem from the overall pace and number of missions available to the player to take in the 1st place.

[Korgath]

You shouldn't be penalized for doing more in the game at any point. If you progress the aliens quicker due to the player being 'better' you are treading a very thin line between challenging them and making sure only the true masochistic amongst us will play.

I think instead we should aim to implement a difficulty curve so that new players to the game and genre can win the game on easy most of the time without being beat into the dirt and then have the other difficulty options multiply the negative impacts that effectively speed up the 'ticker' that governs what weapons and ships/alien races the Alien commander has available to use. You are then effectively saying that on the harder difficulties there is less room for error. Once you get that nailed as a base level of difficulty then you can alter the tactics that the aliens use on the other difficulties and fine tune things for each difficulty. Such as working on the triggers at which the aliens will assault your base (they should be required to successfully scout it first!) or send out air superiority mission and the number of active UFO's that can be in play at a single time.

On a total tangent.. how hard would it be to let the player play as the aliens? Maybe you could track data from that and use that to help build the AI?