Air Combat Difficulty Option AND Ground Combat Difficulty Option

[Belmakor]

Dear Chris

Any thoughts on whether we might get different difficulty sliders for geoscape (e.g Air combat) and then one for ground combat?

I am sure you can see the advantage that this would have in terms of making balance easier. I.e you can make air combat really easy (with free replacements) at easy and normal, and make it like it was in v19-3 for hard.

Then again if you want to play old-school on the aircraft but like your ground battles to not be too punishing then you can select a different level for them too.

Maybe this would be too much work, but seeing as your at balancing stage anyway it might make some sense if you introduced it as the balancing can just continue as is but ultimately it gives players more ways to tailor their experience.

Disclaimer: Not sure how viable this is, though on paper it sounds like it would just be a case of splitting up the modifiers into two files.

[DNK]

Here's shots from a game with good options settings and multiple sliders:

For the second, you could easily switch the sliders to "invasion progression rate", "air combat difficulty", "economic difficulty", "ground combat difficulty".

[Gauddlike]

You wouldn't even need the options to be in different files, just the adjustment controls clearly assigned to different sections of the UI.

Indestructible interceptors won't be one of those options though as Chris would need to be convinced to dedicate the time to balancing the whole financial side of the game twice.

Harder air combat would mean that your fighters sat on the sidelines more rather than being destroyed.

If an official option is provided then it needs to be fully supported.

That is especially true if you were to include it as part of the difficulty level system.

That is an option that Chris has no interest in supporting.

[DNK]

You don't need to balance the game twice. You just balance it once and then allow players to unbalance it to taste (either way).

Generally, sliders in games adjust a variety of values to make them harder. So, for air combat, reducing HP for friendly jets, reducing missile distance, speed, whatever, finding a few variables you can +/- 10% per slider tick. Same for ground combat: you don't need a whole new AI program, just make them a bit tougher with each progression, a bit more accurate, their weapons get a slight buff, whatever.

It's actually really simple. You set up a "perfectly" balanced game for "normal" and default checkboxes, and give the player the ability to move sliders around however they want if that's not easy/hard enough for them.

[Gauddlike]

I agree with most things but I was specifically talking about the interceptors working to very different systems on different vanilla difficulty settings as suggested in the OP.

you can make air combat really easy (with free replacements) at easy and normal, and make it like it was in v19-3 for hard.

If normal is balanced for indestructible, and therefore free to replace, interceptors then hard would need the financial side completely rebalanced if it used another system.

A single payment of $500,000 per aircraft with a time penalty for losing a craft would not swap seamlessly with adding a $500,000 penalty on top for each time you lost an aircraft, more for high tiers.

That is not the same as having enemy weapons do 10% more damage or your interceptors move 15% faster.

Those are tweaks to the difficulty which deliberately adjusts the balance to something more individually challenging and therefore are outside of the vanilla game balance.

Changing a core feature for another one absolutely requires that both of those features are balanced.

[henri5]

Of course those nice sliders would have to be explained, because I have serious doubts about sliders like "flight model". After all this is not a flight simulator. I would like simple things like planes turning faster when they are flying slower, and bombers turning slower than fighters. Remember that turning radius and speed are the bread and butter of air combat.

[DNK]

Dude, it was a flight simulator. I'm not suggesting we get all the same options as a flight simulator ?

It's just a good example of a game with checkboxes and sliders that gives the player a lot of choice in how their game plays out.