Simple Flavor Requests

[Zekram Bogg]

Hello there all, just bought the game and after a few hours of an initial run, I'm digging it, I really am. That said, I also see you're taking suggestions, and while I realize the vast majority of the work is done on Xenonauts already there does seem to be some room for improvement, and I figured I'd toss some cents in the ring.

So . . .

1) Why are Caesareans (? I realize that's not the right spelling . . . so let's call them Sect-, er, Greys) wearing loafers? It just seems . . . odd. I realize it might be too much work at this point, but can you recolor or re-texture just their feet? I started my first mission and didn't even realize the first alien was an alien at first, and after I thought about it for a bit I realized why: it's that they're wearing shoes.

Also, red upper shirt patterned into total black? I know you're not worried about being shut-down by the X-Com guys, but maybe you should worry about Paramount and the standard Star Trek TNG uniform instead.

2) Something that shouldn't be expensive in the asset dept. but will add a bit to the flavor - hand signals. Basically:

> Pick the highest ranking/highest experience soldier on a ground mission. Give them added sub-designation of "Captain".

> "Captain" has no extra stats or anything since balance is hard and we don't want to break it at this point with a bunch of extra stats etc.

> All the "Captain" designation does is that whenever player makes move actions with NON-Captain soldiers, the "Captain" makes hand signals in the general direction of the moving soldier. This is to simulate the silent "go there" tactical commands real soldiers use.

> To save on animation budget, just use the throw animation/ half a throw animation.

> If "Captain" dies, new "Captain" is autopicked from next highest rank/ experience level.

Boom! Now you have a little flourish that makes the game look a bit nicer, fits with the military aesthetic, and is mostly programming, not art asset heavy.

3) A Records page would be nice. I'd really like to be able to see my total stats on missions, how many Xenonauts have been killed et cetera.

4) I get that this is primarily based on the original X-Com with some extra tweaks here and there. But I also get you guys are making this your own thing, and I really like some of the added touches, like all the news reports of what's going on around the world. That's neat. It also leads to a neat idea that fits the cold-war theme: G-Men.

Basically, it seems odd to me that in setting this game in the 1960's/Cold War era, you have not seemingly added anything to do with spies. You know, that thing that happened like ALL THE TIME in the Cold War?

But then I realized, "Well, it's still about aliens, after all." Which led to the "Cold War Spies" of classic alien Conspiracy: The G-Man.

Essentially, I think it'd be a cool Geoscape feature if you could hire G-Men (or just . . . "Agents") in addition to Scientists and Engineers. So, they cost money to hire, you need housing for them, and they have upkeep, so they have some set costs (though they should be fairly low) . . . so what's their benefit?

Basically, you can assign them to territories the way you assign engineers to projects or scientists to research, and what they can do is cover up alien activity that the player cannot reach on the geoscape in the early game, and can act as "scouts" for ground missions. Here's how:

> Say you have six G-Men. You have your first base in North America, so you have a tough time protecting Russian, European and Asian interests and they get all sorts of abductions, events, et cetera. So, to keep from funding drain (again, at a cost, so this is really just a mitigation factor for long term strategy) you assign 3 G-Men to the USSR, 2 to Europe, and 1 to Indochina.

> Like Scientists, each G-Man in a region produces a chance (on a fixed percentage per Agent relative to the "size" of the region their assigned to, with their effectiveness reduced in larger regions) to generate a result. The main result is that if they proc, when an incident occurs that you have no control over, the G-Men can intercept it before the government of the region does and can attempt to cover it up, preventing the player from losing the monthly funding that region provides for that incident. This is on an incident by incident basis, and there are plenty that they can miss, AND they can fail in the cover-up, so we're talking two dice rolls here. But the big benefit is pretty rad when they hit: saving yourself some funding money AND keeping relations with a region more stable.

> Obviously, in the late game, this functionality would be useless, since you most likely are going to have a bunch of bases by then (at the very least, a couple radar bases to track UFOs), so their secondary ability becomes valuable then: scouting field missions. Essentially, if the coverage with these Agents in a region is set at least the "Average" rating, then when you arrive on at the drop zone, the map is pre-drawn for the player (there's still fog of war, but you get the terrain layout). If the coverage is at "Good" then the G-Men are able to remove civilians from the battlefield (by preventing them from getting into it ostensibly) from crash site missions and at "excellent", they remove civvies from Landing missions and you get an enemy headcount going into any mission.

> Now, these guy's take 3-5 days to transfer regions when you assign them to a new locale, so they have gaps of non-usefulness and they can be killed if they fail a cover-up, so there are some risks with them too. If you wanted to get fancy, you could probably come up with interesting little mini-missions with such a concept, but that's probably going to far for what should hopefully be a mostly asset-less suggestion (they just need a Xenopedia page and a base UI tab as far as I can see).

So basically, the agents act as a meta-game Geoscape strategy tool the player can use as an early game stop-gap if they're willing to spend extra cash in a different way than normal, thus diversifying our larger strategy options while both fitting the Cold War Era theme you got going on AND separating just a smidge more from the original X-Com so you get that extra little bit of "not a total clone you haters".

With that, I'm done.

Thanks for taking the time to read all my rambling.

[GizmoGomez]

Cool, thanks for posting.

1) The caesans (think Caesar (kai-czar), Caesans (kai-zans)) have shoes because they don't want to wear out their feet. What's the big deal with that? (Is it the color?)

Also, the red shirts are kinda a joke, as they are the uniform of the non-combatant caesans who can do little more than be killed by you in droves once you have the skill and the tech for it. Personally, as a Star Trek fan myself, I enjoy it immensely.

2) Personally, I'm against the hand signals, if only because it would honestly just look weird in my opinion. If it had been implemented from the start with the coding and assets, then maybe it wouldn't look so odd, but the throwing animation wouldn't look right at all. I'd be looking for a grenade or something every time it went off, and you wouldn't even be focused on the "captain" soldier most of the time anyway, so you wouldn't see it.

All that being said, it's not my decision after all, it'd be Chris's, but frankly I doubt he'd go for it either. Sorry mate.

3) Everyone and their dog wants a records page, it's been on the wish list for a long time. Maybe with the new UI update that's due to come out in v20 (I think, don't quote me on that one, it could be v21) we'll finally get our records page and memorial wall for Xenonauts fallen in the service of humanity. (And so we can remember who got shot in the back by their own comrades. )

4) There have been similar suggestions concerning the Geoscape before, and Chris is going to spice up the UFO behaviors to make them more interesting, but adding a whole new element to the game probably isn't going to happen at this point, though if implemented right I would totally be digging the G-Men vibe.

[Zekram Bogg]

Cool, thanks for posting.

1) The caesans (think Caesar (kai-czar), Caesans (kai-zans)) have shoes because they don't want to wear out their feet. What's the big deal with that? (Is it the color?)

Also, the red shirts are kinda a joke, as they are the uniform of the non-combatant caesans who can do little more than be killed by you in droves once you have the skill and the tech for it. Personally, as a Star Trek fan myself, I enjoy it immensely.

Actually yeah, I really do think it's just the color, to be honest. I look at the autopsy photo for those guys and am just . . . completely put out of the game because they look exactly like some old loafers I own that I would wear to funerals and such.

I notice in that piece of art it's really more of a boot anyway, starting around mid "calf" (who knows what an alien calf is REALLY called, not me!). So I tend to think if you altered the color of the entire boot it would remove this effect. Perhaps just make it the same red on the top half of their uniform? Or even silver/chrome-ish metallic color?

I realize it's not a priority or anything, but from an art design standpoint I do think having the top and bottom of this alien all be a matching "grey" would some extra symmetry in their color scheme too. Their heads and hands are already, so if their feet matched, I think it'd look pretty sharp.

2) Personally, I'm against the hand signals, if only because it would honestly just look weird in my opinion. If it had been implemented from the start with the coding and assets, then maybe it wouldn't look so odd, but the throwing animation wouldn't look right at all. I'd be looking for a grenade or something every time it went off, and you wouldn't even be focused on the "captain" soldier most of the time anyway, so you wouldn't see it.

All that being said, it's not my decision after all, it'd be Chris's, but frankly I doubt he'd go for it either. Sorry mate.

Yeah I realized after typing that, it might look odd without a bit more of a specialized animation, and that's extra asset creation, so more time, more work, and for a rather small effect. Though I do think the effect would be neat, and it doesn't seem terribly complicated to program, it's probably a little too much, too late.

Honestly I sort of thought the "throw" animation might be fine though since it seems that's what you're using for the medpack use, which . . . is that going to have a unique model, animation, or at least sound effects (like the sound of gauze being applied)? That'd be really sweet. One of the things that bugged me about the original X-Com was that the medkits had no real animation to them.

3) Everyone and their dog wants a records page, it's been on the wish list for a long time. Maybe with the new UI update that's due to come out in v20 (I think, don't quote me on that one, it could be v21) we'll finally get our records page and memorial wall for Xenonauts fallen in the service of humanity. (And so we can remember who got shot in the back by their own comrades. )

Sweet. Thanks!

4) There have been similar suggestions concerning the Geoscape before, and Chris is going to spice up the UFO behaviors to make them more interesting, but adding a whole new element to the game probably isn't going to happen at this point, though if implemented right I would totally be digging the G-Men vibe.

Yeah, I realize that this is a late stage idea and that's the biggest thing going against it, but I do think it would add a lot to your game, because like I said, it's an almost zero asset production cost thing - you add a new tab to the UI in the personnel screen to hire agents, and you'd need an agent management tab for the base along with your research and engineering tabs and a subsequent background, a couple of text modifiers for their effects if they proc when you go into missions, and a xenopedia page, (which would naturally show shadowy Men In Black preventing hippy press from getting into an investigation site). The bigger costs on such a feature would be a lot of extra strings for all the little messages they can respond to and creating a the systems so they of course, function, though most of their functions are really add-ons to existent functionality - they trigger when a "news item" triggers or they don't, and they trigger right before a ground mission or they don't, and they're another value to calculate for the budget.

But the biggest issue I can already foresee is one of game balance: such a feature would obviously require figuring out where they fit into the game's overall geoscape and financial balance and they would have to theoretically be cost-effective on the average, if managed well, while being a costly drain if poorly managed. This means they'd have to probably be pretty cheap to hire and/or maintain individually - cheaper than a scientist or other staff - but I don't know what the exact values would have to be off the top of my head.

But I am heartened to see that at least the vibe is appreciated! So thanks for that

Honestly, that's one I think I'd program in myself, if I was better at programming. Unfortunately I am a noob in that regard.

EDIT:

OH! and this might be more helpful as a bit of first time user feedback.

So, I started the game on normal and picked Ironman mode, then played for about 4 hours and forgot I even picked the mode, so when I went to quit I tried to save first but the option was greyed out. Which makes sense, as I had picked Ironman mode so I'm guessing it autosaves all the time. But at first I thought it was a major bug, and I realized a little extra messaging there would probably be helpful. Rather than just greying the "save" tab out, maybe do a little "Redacted" crossing out in pure black then have a hand-written "Ironman" art over it? That way you remind the player that they picked that option without them freaking out thinking save functionality doesn't exist (because I seriously spent five minutes thinking you guys had forgotten to include save functionality, which I realize is ludicrous.

Also, a tutorial would be REALLY helpful for first timers. Or at least some sort of introduction or something. I know that this is a game meant primarily for those fans of the original X-Com: UFO Defense, and that they should know what they're getting when they start, but at the same time, even the original X-Com had an introductory movie, and the game does have enough differences in at least how it's controlled and stuff, that a simple tutorial mission would assist greatly for first timers (also, then you can get some NEW players I think!).

Finally, it'd be really sweet if I could manually smash windows similar to how I can open doors so I can shoot through them. I mean I realize that once bullets go through the portal is clear already, but if I smash first, then I can get my LOF to be accurate when I aim. Plus you already have gun melee attacks in, so it shouldn't be an animation problem.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Zekram Bogg
Forgot something

[thothkins]

Things like G-Men/Intelligence Agents or my preference of MIBs would fit in nicely with being able to influence funding blocs. The player invests in their MIBs and:-

Early Game - reduces the impact of mission losses.

Mid Game - Promotes countries on the verge to stick with the Xenonauts that little bit longer. They'll get a base "soon" too.

Late Game - Enables nations controlled by the aliens to come back on board, in conjunction with a few well placed base attacks.

So, all for that if not so bothered about hand signals and galactic footwear. Everyone knows that socks with sandals is the in thing in Sagittarius this parsec anyway.

[GizmoGomez]

First off, I'm not a developer, I'm just a regular forum-goer. You know, just in case that wasn't known. I've had people mistake me for a dev in the past (though I have no idea why. haha).

(You saying "your game" just made me wonder. It's not my game by any means. )

First off, I don't see the need for their shoes to change color. I don't have any issues with black footwear. *shrug*

We will have a manual eventually, but since things are changing so frequently they're waiting to make one until things have stopped changing quite so much.

I can't really comment on much else, though I can say that there aren't actually animations for the melee attacks. You just hit M and the damage numbers pop up above the enemy. Perhaps you could break windows with melee, I've never tried it.

[Zekram Bogg]

Oh OK. You kept saying "we", so I thought you were on the development team.

And that right there, about hitting the M key to do a melee attack, THAT'S why we need a tutorial. I had no idea that was how it functioned, I just read on these forums that it was in the game.

[Zekram Bogg]

Things like G-Men/Intelligence Agents or my preference of MIBs would fit in nicely with being able to influence funding blocs. The player invests in their MIBs and:-

Early Game - reduces the impact of mission losses.

Mid Game - Promotes countries on the verge to stick with the Xenonauts that little bit longer. They'll get a base "soon" too.

Late Game - Enables nations controlled by the aliens to come back on board, in conjunction with a few well placed base attacks.

Ooooh I like that! Being able to bring a nation controlled by the alien through covert agents of your own would be awesome! Plus it'd be risky, as operations like that would likely cost money and have chances of death for your MIB's Field Agents, whatever they're called.

Maybe some concepts from Crusader Kings could be worked in with such agents, like assassinations and the like, in addition to info-control? I dunno, I think that's just one more way such a resource could be really useful.

So, all for that if not so bothered about hand signals and galactic footwear. Everyone knows that socks with sandals is the in thing in Sagittarius this parsec anyway.

[GizmoGomez]

Oh OK. You kept saying "we", so I thought you were on the development team.

I think I only said we once, and that was when talking about myself, everyone, and our dogs wanting a records page.

I really would like a G-Men, Agent, MiB, whatever system put in, it'd be pretty awesome. I don't know how likely it would be though.

[thothkins]

well every now and again there's a mention of being able to get a funding bloc that's fallen into the clutches of alien tentacles back on your side. It's hinted that this would be a single mission, but the mechanisms for such things haven't really come up (ie how friendly those nations become, could they fall back under alien control etc) Perhaps there's some further thoughts that can be added, before such things appear.

[Zekram Bogg]

well every now and again there's a mention of being able to get a funding bloc that's fallen into the clutches of alien tentacles back on your side. It's hinted that this would be a single mission, but the mechanisms for such things haven't really come up (ie how friendly those nations become, could they fall back under alien control etc) Perhaps there's some further thoughts that can be added, before such things appear.

Well, how about we start designing this system a bit then, eh? Like a preliminary way to figure out how such a system could be implemented for the devs.

So let's see, the first thing's probably the "Effectiveness" ranges for MIB's to determine maximum numbers required for territories, which first means we need to figure out how to create some values for territories I suppose.

So let's say, at base, each MIB in a region gives the player a 15% "Interception" chance. Interceptions being when they proc (i.e. "trigger") to affect either an alien incident, a ground mission, or possibly subversive missions to break a country/region out of alien control.

Which mean in a region with absolutely no other modifiers, or modifers that are nullified out, you need 7 MIB agents in the region to gain full coverage of the region at the "Excellent" rating for maximum coverage.

(BTW, for coverage values of a region, we just use the same designations we have fore Scientists and Engineers, so there are 5 - None/On Hold, Poor, Average, Good, and Excellent)

However there are modifiers for regions which affect the effectiveness of MIB agents.

So, there are 10 regions: North, Central, and South America, Europe, USSR, Indochina, The Middle east, North and South Africa, and Australasia. Depending on the relative geographic size of these regions we can create a few size modifiers.

So, there are "small" regions - Central America and The Middle East primarily, and for those, I say a +5% bonus to Agent effectiveness. There are the "Average" regions - Europe, Northern and Southern Africa, and Australasia which don't effect Agent Effectiveness, so +0%. There are the "Large" regions, North America, South America, and Indochina, which negatively affect Agent Effectiveness at -5%. Then there's the "Huge" region, the USSR, which lowers Agent Effectiveness at a -10% rating, which means for full coverage in the USSR, you would need 20 Agents there, which would get REALLY expensive!

Another obvious modifier is In-Region Bases, which I think should add +10% to the effectiveness of MIB Agents in the field, as they can coordinate with the Base staff and radar tracking. This may only be useful or activated if the Base in the region has radar though, as a way to keep this bonus from being auto -effective if you simply want to make a research station or factory type base.

Then there's relations, which since the MIB agents are supposed to assist in (partially, their task is primarily a defense against lowering relations, not improving them, which is what successful ground missions are for), the status can't affect the Agent Effectiveness too much. It needs to, since MIB agents naturally have to work with local forces to get access and all, but if the relations were too strong a modifier, they would make MIB agents useless at their primary tasks.

Now, the game starts with all relations being set to "BAD", which is harsh guys, but makes sense. The world is being invaded after all. "BAD" status is when the Relations score with a region is at 500. So I assume the shifts here are fairly incremental.

As that's the case, the effect on Agent effectiveness should be too, so, let's say, "BAD" relations give a MIB Agent a -2% effectiveness, and moving steps above and below goes by 2% increments in either direction.

So, for a concrete example, of all this in action, let's say you have set up your base in North America and have 1 MIB agent there at nearly the start of the game. His effectiveness will be base 15%, +10% due to the base, -5% due to the large size of North America, and -2% due to the relations being at "BAD" level, so the effectiveness per agent in this region ends up being 18%.

Which means that if an alien ship is not intercepted in this region, this single Agent has an 18% chance that he can cover up the news of what the alien craft did and prevent the accompanying hit to the relations with region.

If the player transfers this agent to the USSR though, the Agent's effectiveness drops substantially, to 3%, due to the lack of Base, the Huge size of the region, and the "BAD" relations.

Now, how does this Agent play out?

Well, I think the 3 primary missions for MIB agents are - Alien Event mitigation, Scouting and Zone control on Ground Missions, and Resistance to Alien Authority in regions whose Relations have dropped to Zero. Let's look just at the first one - Alien Event Mitigation.

So, when an alien event triggers, by not being able to intercept an Alien Craft in a region (even a region in which you can track and intercept a craft, I assume) the total MIB Agent effectiveness gives the local MIB a chance to get on scene before the local authorities/media. Thus a dice roll is made with their total Effectiveness. If the roll is a success, the Agents get there and you get a new pop-up on the Geoscape. This pop-up gives you a message of what happened at the event like normal, informs the player of how much relations damage it will incur, and gives the player a choice - "Cover-Up, Ignore, Bribe".

If the "Cover-Up" Option is chosen, the Agents attempt to cover-up the event using the resources they have on hand. A Second roll is made versus their effectiveness, with modifiers based on the type of event (which in turn is based on the type of ship the aliens have used there, but I won't get into these modifiers here). If successful, the Agents cover up the event completely, and there is no associated penalty. On the geoscape screen, the text that pops up on the event location gets a little "Redacted" style black marker cover up of the event name. If unsuccessful the event is not covered up, the penalty to relations occurs as normal, and another roll is made in secret to determine if the Agent's activities are discovered. If they are, then there is an additional penalty to relations equivalent to the number of agents in the field of the region.

If the "Ignore" option is chosen, the Agents do not act at all. It may seem like this defeats the purpose of these agents (And it does sort of) but always having the option to opt out is important too.

If the "Bribe" option is chosen, then the Agents don't try to cover up the event, but rather just mitigate the relations hit by paying the regions leaders, at a financial cost to the Xenonaut organization. Bribe always cuts the relations hit in half, so if the hit is 2, then the Bribing makes it 1, if it's 10, then Bribing makes it 5 and so on. The cost being determined by the amount of points to relations the penalty would be, multiplied by $500. It has a 100% success rate, but it costs money and is only good in a pinch to keep your funding from drying up. On the plus side, you only need one agent in a location to do it.

Next, let's look out MIB Scouting & Zone control -

Basically, scouting should be fairly simple, since we're generally talking about a fair amount of information the Xenonauts already have available, like coordinates of the crash site. So Agent effectiveness is +20% to whether they can scout a crash site before the drop team gets there, and +10% for landings (and something stupidly high, like +30% for terror missions).

When the agents get to a location, then the player again gets a pop-up from the MIB agents on scene and a set of choices to make.

The two primary choices are "Scout Location", or "Control Zone".

With Scout location, the Agents again make a roll of their effectiveness, and if successful then the entire map is seen when the player loads into the ground combat mission, and a total of the number of Aliens, Civilians, and Local Forces is given to the player at the start of the mission (perhaps even as UI that appear during the mission?). If they are unsuccessful, then they are intercepted by the aliens while scoping the locations out, and at least 1 agent is killed.

If the player selects "Zone Control" then the Agents attempt to keep out civilian interference. There are degrees of success here, where if the Agents are 100% successful, they keep everybody out, and the player doesn't have to worry about any interference, and if they are 100% unsuccessful, they effectively do nothing. However, on minimal success, they cut the number of random useless civilians by 50%, on an average success, they remove all useless civilians from the scene but not local forces with weapons of their own.

The other choice I think would be ideal to add here, but would require the MOST work to accomplish is to have the Agents provide assistance in the actual battle itself. So that the player gets a few friendly NPC MIB agents fighting the aliens on-scene with their Xenonaut squad. These would basically be like Police forces in terms of normal effectiveness, as the MIB guys would get handguns (possibly shotguns?), but they'd have much better stats in accuracy, and the AI for them would be fairly conservative, trying to get shots in when they can, but not sticking their necks out there too much. They'd also look like fricking MIB agents! with their Black suits and black shades and all that! So that'd be cool.

Still, that would be fairly resource intensive, and considering this suggestion is about mitigating asset cost while providing neat functionality, that's probably too much. But one can dare to dream . . .

Anyway, as to the last function of MIB agents, Resistance, well, I've only just started, and haven't gotten to the late game yet, so I have to frame of reference here. Someone else would have to fill in for me until I do.

But that's a start at least to how such a feature could be implemented.

[thothkins]

I will read it. I pwomise

For more fun with funding blocs there's always this thread

[Zekram Bogg]

Neat.

[thothkins]

We’ll call it Diplomacy. Through bribery, blackmail, assassination, rebel funding and arming, spying and sanctions the Xenonauts can try to influence funding blocs to stay with humanity, rather than join the aliens.

To keep it X-Com based, we can say that such actions, when targeting alien assets, are carried out by the Men in Black. Shadowy operatives, steeled against the worst excesses of alien cultures, as well as their own.

There are rumours that some of them have undergone operations, based on the biotechnology sold by Xenonauts to the funding nations, to improve their effectiveness.

In game, it comes down to using funding to finance these operations. Things the player can do:-

Boost a funding bloc from TERRIBLE to BAD

Boost a funding bloc from BAD to POOR

Boost a funding bloc from POOR to AVERAGE

Boost a funding bloc from AVERAGE to GOOD

Boost a funding bloc from GOOD to EXCELLENT

The amounts would be modified by the bloc’s funding variable. This is a check to add additional costs to changing relations of funding blocs that provide extra revenue.

Current funding variables are:-

1.5 – Central America, Europe, Middle East, Australasia

1– South America, North Africa, South Africa

0.75 - Indochina

0.5 – North America, USSR

Notes:-

The costs should be fairly prohibitive, as this is a last gasp measure from Xenonauts primarily to prevent nations going over to the other side.

As such, perhaps only TERRIBLE through to AVERAGE nations should be influenced, or even just TERRIBLE. However, just having TERRIBLE looks a little isolated and not part of an overall system. It’s more like a panic button. It’s an alternative to doing the last gasp mission though.

Ideally , there would be bonuses to resources across the funding nations, but that’s not in the game. The only bonus between GOOD and EXCELLENT is the funding boost. Xenonauts shouldn’t be able to get their money back just by quickly boosting regions. It should be long term, if at all.

Blocs would be boosted to the lowest value of the next highest tier. This would be regardless of the value held in the previous tier. So, it would cost the same whether the bloc was 2 points away from the next tier or 100. An alternative is to give the bloc a +x boost, that would take it into the next level at varying points.

Alternative 2

A slightly more advanced system would be the build up of Men in Black across each funding nation as the game proceeds.

Instead of a single payment to boost to the next relations tier, each funding bloc has an Influence rating from TERRIBLE to EXCELLENT. Players use funding to buy Influence. Its impact is modified by the nation’s funding variable, as above. The effects of Influence are:-

Propaganda – Adds a modifier to alien scoring. The effects of alien attacks in the funding nation are dampened/suppressed and Xenonaut activities are enhanced/fabricate. It reflects the huge amount of propaganda, suppression, disinformation and general skulduggery that occurred as a matter of course in the cold war (and now for that matter)

Espionage (Infiltration prevention)- An increased chance to spot alien bases. This represents local intelligence agencies being able to spot alien doppelgänger and rogue MIBs, thus keeping countries free for their own manipulations post invasion.

This system won’t prevent blocs falling to the aliens, but it will help to halt the slide for as long as possible. It’s another Cold War based front in mankind’s desperate struggle.

As per my earlier post the effects should be:-

Early Game - reduces the impact of mission losses.

Mid Game - Promotes countries on the verge to stick with the Xenonauts that little bit longer. They'll get a base of their own "soon" too. “Promise”.

Late Game - Enables nations controlled by the aliens to come back on board, in conjunction with a few well placed base attacks.

Notes:-

Other Influence based items such as secondary mission objectives (protecting VIPS/ assassinating alien infiltrated politicians/Investigative missions), aren’t supported by the game, but would also add to this idea.