Jump to content

Doing Every Mission - Solution?


Chris

Recommended Posts

I don't get the idea of making the game easier for everyone because this option does make the game easier. A better option is to have multiple levels of difficulty with differences in how these mechanics work (on easy for example all the aliens never wear gas mask thus they're all knocked out, on normal the ones in powered armour are immune and if the UFO is largely intact the ones without gas masks only take a few loses due to the gas thus requiring you to send a team in anyway but against better odds and at hard difficulty you do not have the gas option or any easing option at all, you either go in or you do not).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't get the idea of making the game easier for everyone because this option does make the game easier. A better option is to have multiple levels of difficulty with differences in how these mechanics work (on easy for example all the aliens never wear gas mask thus they're all knocked out, on normal the ones in powered armour are immune and if the UFO is largely intact the ones without gas masks only take a few loses due to the gas thus requiring you to send a team in anyway but against better odds and at hard difficulty you do not have the gas option or any easing option at all, you either go in or you do not).
I totally disagree with changing the game mechanics to control difficulty. The best way, IMO, is to either increase or decrease the number of alien forces and if that isn't sufficient to change the pace of the alien build up. Changing the mechanics is the most complex, confusing, and programming intensive way to change the game difficulty. Additionally, it adds much more testing and balancing time to the development.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally disagree with changing the game mechanics to control difficulty. The best way, IMO, is to either increase or decrease the number of alien forces and if that isn't sufficient to change the pace of the alien build up. Changing the mechanics is the most complex, confusing, and programming intensive way to change the game difficulty. Additionally, it adds much more testing and balancing time to the development.

So you suggest artificial difficulty instead of organic difficulty? (IE making the enemies more numerous, thus as a whole more tough, not more intelligent or more capable with increases in difficulty) Remember this is a single player game, balance comes down to fairness and not having any difference between "I will murder you and make you into a hat!" difficulty and "lets just all be friends! yay ! magic!" difficulty being how hard it is to finish the game, not more content, nothing. Having the gas option available for everyone actually only offers one side a option because people who want to have a challenging and deep game will just avoid that option as it cheapens their enjoyment so why not just have the gas option change with the difficulty to reflect the difficulty you're playing at? It isn't changing core mechanics in any significant way and there's nothing to balance anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is that any different than giving them different behavior? It's not artificial at all. Being outnumbered is a situation every military strategist has to think about. All other things being equal, you have to be/play smarter to defeat more numerous enemies therefore the difficulty can be increased or decreased very easily by controlling the number of opponents. If this were not true it would be pointless to send reinforcements to a battle in real life. Commanders don't suddenly have "smarter/better" troops in real life they only have MORE troops (in general) because the people, equipment. and training is uniform in most organizations. Non-uniform divisions (of the same type) proved to be a liability in WW II and were pretty much done away with. Granted you can have "elite" troops and special equipment for special missions, but that certainly isn't necessary to win a war. You can win with sheer numbers. Look at the Chinese in Korea. The Russians in WW II. Unless the aliens operate completely differently than humans same would apply to them. It's bad enough they have uber classes of the same troops. Your argument about fairness makes zero sense to me.

#1 Priniciple of military strategy is getting the most forces to the most critical place when they're needed.

Edited by StellarRat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

How is that any different than giving them different behavior? It's not artificial at all. Being outnumbered is a situation every military strategist has to think about. All other things being equal, you have to be/play smarter to defeat more numerous enemies therefore the difficulty can be increased or decreased very easily by controlling the number of opponents. If this were not true it would be pointless to send reinforcements to a battle in real life. Commanders don't suddenly have "smarter/better" troops in real life they only have MORE troops (in general) because the people, equipment. and training is uniform in more organizations. Granted you can have "elite" troops and special equipment, but that certainly isn't necessary to win a war. You can win with sheer numbers. Look at the Chinese in Korea. The Russians in WW II. Unless the aliens operate completely differently than humans same would apply to them. It's bad enough they have uber classes of the same troops. Your argument about fairness makes zero sense to me.

#1 Priniciple of military strategy is getting the most forces to the most critical place when they're needed.

Wait, wait, did you just pull a "The Alien AI in this game is so good Alien soldiers act exactly like real life ones do!" ? Because if you just do that you kinda shot yourself in the leg because that implies the AI is actually a bloody AI otherwise your parallel falls apart the moment you consider that the enemy soldiers you are facing in-game are leagues less competent then the worse of the livestock loving russian soldiers of the Red Army in World War 2 to say nothing of the fact that you're not fighting a group that is being directed by a commander level intelligence thus you are in fact facing, in-game, the following situations using your way of difficulty increase:

Easy: Small disorganized group attempting to stick together while killing your guys.

Medium: Somewhat larger disorganized group attempting to stick together while killing your guys.

Hard: Large disorganized group attempting to stick together while killing your guys.

As you can see that's pretty much a linear, artificial, difficulty progression. Most people want difficulty to be more organic and unexpected, it's more challenging, less predictable, makes you wanna shut down the computer pissed as fuck and then 15 min later come back eager for revenge (most decent chess players won't get that in a game with linear progression of difficulty).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe also to add "auto resolve whole game" button, depending on starting position and some random seed for people who think this game is boring in general? It will be less rewarding but they still will be able to win.

And why you cut out transport plane? It was nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wait, wait, did you just pull a "The Alien AI in this game is so good Alien soldiers act exactly like real life ones do!".
Hold on there! What I'm saying is that a commander has mostly has the option to send more troops to a situation not suddenly smarter troops. Who cares what the base level of intelligence is? The commander would still only have a choice to send more stupid aliens to fix the problem. No computer AI is going to be better than an experienced human player unless you spend a lot of time and money developing the AI and in all likelihood the hardware would not be able to handle your wunder code even if you could write it. That only leaves increasing the number of opponents or their stats/weapons as a viable solution. Even if the humans were only fighting giant ants that could only charge and do melee attacks to vary the difficulty you would still only have the choice to add more ants.

Chris is going to give us the best AI he can afford in time and money. It's still not going to be better than a mediocre human player. I think most players would much prefer to fight an enemy that is acting as intelligently as possible from the get go even on "EASY". That supports the suspension of disbelief way better than completely moronic AI that leaves you wonder how the aliens even managed to build spaceships. To "de-tune" the AI further to accomodate easier levels of play is the wrong way to go about changing the difficulty. That only leaves numbers of aliens, alien/human stats, and taking away/adding resources from aliens/humans to play with.

If the computer AI was actually much better than an average human then I could see varying the intelligence of the AI to accomodate the difficulty level. This is often done in chess programs and it works in those. But Xenonauts is not chess and would require a FAR more complex AI system to get to the level of an expert human.

Edited by StellarRat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hold on there! What I'm saying is that a commander has mostly has the option to send more troops to a situation not suddenly smarter troops. Who cares what the base level of intelligence is? The commander would still only have a choice to send more stupid aliens to fix the problem. No computer AI is going to be better than an experienced human player unless you spend a lot of time and money developing the AI and in all likelihood the hardware would not be able to handle your wunder code even if you could write it. That only leaves increasing the number of opponents or their stats/weapons as a viable solution. Even if the humans were only fighting giant ants that could only charge and do melee attacks to vary the difficulty you would still only have the choice to add more ants.

Chris is going to give us the best AI he can afford in time and money. It's still not going to be better than a mediocre human player. I think most players would much prefer to fight an enemy that is acting as intelligently as possible from the get go even on "EASY". That supports the suspension of disbelief way better than completely moronic AI that leaves you wonder how the aliens even managed to build spaceships. To "de-tune" the AI further to accomodate easier levels of play is the wrong way to go about changing the difficulty. That only leaves numbers of aliens, alien/human stats, and taking away/adding resources from aliens/humans to play with.

If the computer AI was actually much better than an average human then I could see varying the intelligence of the AI to accomodate the difficulty level. This is often done in chess programs and it works in those. But Xenonauts is not chess and would require a FAR more complex AI system to get to the level of an expert human.

My suggestion towards the AI is to have it layered and the difficulty levels split into :

Easy: Disorganized group of competent alien AIs.

Normal: Organized group of competent alien AIs, organized and commanded by a rudimentary commander level AI.

Hard: Organized group of competent alien AIs, organized and commanded by a competent commander level AI.

The commander level AI would basically make sure that the aliens wouldn't get overwhelmed so easily (it'd retreat aliens that have made contact and aren't in sufficient numbers to combat the guys you have fighting them) or stand in cover inside the ship while you open and close the entrance door of the UFO (it would make sure to move them towards the door on either side to make your life more fun) and this on rudimentary level on competent it does all that but also has a few strategies under its belt (like withdrawing his troops to draw you in or using aggressive group tactics in a wedge formation later on, or taking on a scorched Earth policy when you're pushing up, things like this, I know would probably be allot of work but still... a guy can dream :D ).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although I'm sure the thread has kind of moved on, I have an alternate suggestion for how to solve the problem of players doing every mission by changing how characters gain stats after battles (by making it between battles, not after battles). I put it in its own suggestion thread, but think it deserves mention here, as well, since it's really also trying to solve this problem. It could be used in conjunction with the current "airstrike" idea.

Essentially, if players have to have downtime in order to gain their stats, it prevents players from wanting to send out troops after every UFO just for experience. They could build more bases, and have more missions overall, but if they don't want to screw over their troop's growth, they would need to send different sets of troops (which would be dividing out kills across more troops, rather than having a few super-troops, and cost more money, even if taking those missions lets them loot more money,) which would reduce the negative impact of having players capable of doing 50 missions more than they are "supposed to" and creating super-troops.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about this

Every time a crush site is generated, the local government gets to decide whether or not they want the Xenonauts to send an assault force.

They might be able to clear the site themselves based on how much damage the UFO has suffered during the crush landing. So in general, they want you to assault those minor damaged ones, and save heavily damaged crush sites for themselves.

You can still decide to do the crush sites the local don't want you to do, but tank a relationship penalty depends on the size of the UFO. On the other hand, completing a requested crush site gives you a bonus in relationship, while ignoring it causes penalty.

This way, you can have a large amount of total crush sites, and also have control over the amount of missions players do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I knew that when auto-resolving air combat came out this would be next.

Airstrike is a good idea. You kill the surviving aliens and get some Alien Alloys and Alieum. Maybe the nation doesn't approve and your relationship doesn't improve. Or let the local forces deal with it when the token disappears naturally and get the boost in relations as they revel in the alien technology that the Xenonauts always toss in the trash.

But a player that goes through the whole ground mission by themselves should get all the benefits. They should get the nation's praise, the stronger soldiers, the teeny bit of loot, and all the regular rewards. Don't penalize players who are not skipping missions just because others think it's boring. That's not fair to the players who want to do the missions because, I dunno, they think they're fun?

I hate to sound like a dick but I'm beginning to think this game is losing sight of its goal of being an alien defense simulator if you just auto-resolve everything. I liked playing house and designing my base and just running the affairs of X-Com in the OG too but there was far more to the game then just that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I definitely agree that it very easily can become a slippery slope.. "Well maybe some people don't want to do this, or that" and before you know it you have XCom: Enemy Unknown. Don't lose sight of the original goal of the game, if I can auto-resolve my way through most of the game (just doing 1 mission for each thing you need for research) then I think that most of the feeling you get from achieving something when you win is lost as well.

I also think that needing to do air combat added to the game, it's a fun and important mini-game and being able to just auto-resolve that detracts from the game as a whole in my opinion (others probably disagree on this)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, for air combat at least, the auto-resolve is almost always a bad idea since you can do so much better running it manually - and I'd be okay with something similar for crash sites. Simply the benefit of giving my soldiers more time to rest and get geared up or respond after a major setback would be nice, and even if the actual benefits of the ground recovery were less than handling it manually I'm willing to take the hit sometimes just because I really don't want to run another mission of that sort.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I think the best solution is to add a roll dice after an UFO have been shot during air engagement. Something like :

1- 60 UFO is destroyed -> No mission

70 -> 80 Only some garbage, can be collected by Xenonaut but without soldiers being engaged -> Here is your "Auto resolve". As there is no alien alive, you don't need to find a reason for the xenonaut passivity, or a local military force intervention.

80 -> 100 Survivors ! Xenonauts required ! -> Full mission with xp, tech recovery...

Some modificators should be applicated on roll dice:

+ X% Big UFO, no missile used for interception (this one will lead to an intersting interaction with air combat as player can choose to keep his missile for preserving the UFO...), not a lot of UFO recovery mission done recently, slidder in option game

-X% Small UFO, powerfull weapon torpedo used during combat, lot of ground mission recently done, slidder in option game

Should be an easy implementation, nothing is really added to the game except a screen with some illustration for the result... And this solution could lead to interresting gameplay modification:

- Aerial combat with preservation goal

- A slidder in starting option game. Something like: +10%/+20%... to have an intact ufo but -10%-20% chance for an auto resolve. This way, farming players should have their full operation game. Idem for the opposite side, for players who prefers more straightforward gameplay.

- A time element should be added to the crashing dice roll. The more time have passed without any intervention, the more likely a UFO will land intact. Something like +10/20% per week of inactivity. This modificator should also be added to soldier xp (in form of a chance to have a second point of stat boost. This way, players who don't like doing all missions will have some correct soldier. But, players who do all mission will always have better soldier...)

- A "UFO type" modificator should also be added for the first or two first crash of new UFO, to insure player have opportunity to gather all they need for campaign.

I think something like this crash roll dice would add some gameplay diversity, player custumisation option and is an elegant (and easy for coding !) way to resolve this problem.

Edited by Alturys
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I think the best solution is to add a roll dice after an UFO have been shot during air engagement. Something like :

1- 60 UFO is destroyed -> No mission

70 -> 80 Only some garbage, can be collected by Xenonaut but without soldiers being engaged -> Here is your "Auto resolve". As there is no alien alive, you don't need to find a reason for the xenonaut passivity, or a local military force intervention.

80 -> 100 Survivors ! Xenonauts required ! -> Full mission with xp, tech recovery...

That's actually a pretty good idea and simple to implement.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Only read four pages, but support Chris' idea as it stand so far. In fact, I find it ingenious. Either try to do a crash site and get research items, points, experience and so on, or skip it and get money instead. Will do a lot for gameplay.

Don't like the idea of having to tie up a chopper, though, half the point of this is that it's an option for when you don't have a helicopter available in the first place :P .

But a player that goes through the whole ground mission by themselves should get all the benefits. They should get the nation's praise, the stronger soldiers, the teeny bit of loot, and all the regular rewards. Don't penalize players who are not skipping missions just because others think it's boring. That's not fair to the players who want to do the missions because, I dunno, they think they're fun?

I hate to sound like a dick but I'm beginning to think this game is losing sight of its goal of being an alien defense simulator if you just auto-resolve everything. I liked playing house and designing my base and just running the affairs of X-Com in the OG too but there was far more to the game then just that.

Maybe you should re-read the OP. Chris clearly states he wants two different options with two different rewards. No one is penaltizing anything, nor do I see how this will lead to players "auto-resolving everything". Fact of the matter is, even as a completionist you won't get to do every crash site, either due to range issues, enemy air superiority, or other problems. Edited by Safe-Keeper
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see why it's an airstrike and not just regular military turns up, that way the government gets the stuff, and that explains why it pays out to the player. It wouldn't be too unfeasible for the locals to turn up with a company of soldiers and a few IFVs and just swamp the landing site, maybe taking some casualties, but securing everything for themselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did 2 small ufos crashsites. I have earned 2 x 50k $+ 20k predicted fund level change. Airstrikes seems to be undervalued. In comparison they give 20k per small ufo (There is no predicted fund change). Its only one third of original value! - It's motivate to do every crash site mission again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did 2 small ufos crashsites. I have earned 2 x 50k $+ 20k predicted fund level change. Airstrikes seems to be undervalued. In comparison they give 20k per small ufo (There is no predicted fund change). Its only one third of original value! - It's motivate to do every crash site mission again.

I agree with Gromitek. In V20 experimental 1, doing every mission is always the right choice...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm fairly new to this, but I read the first few pages, and the last few pages, and direction doesn't seem to have changed.

It sounds like V20 has an "airstrike" option that doesn't work out, and still has the RP type concerns everyone has been talking about since the start of this thread.

It seems to be that the problem is to many crash sites get generated. Why don't you address this problem, instead of trying to work in a work around mechanic, that isn't easily explained/justified/balanced?

Wouldn't it be easily explained if there's a chance a alien ship breaks up upon crash landing? Aka, no surviving aliens? Maybe there's some recoverable salvage (alenium/alloy) but nothing a team of soldier's needs to be dispatched for.

You make the chance of this based on how damaged the ship is, and type of ship. (So more advanced weapons against smaller ships "kills" them more often). You also guarantee the first of any ship type always causes a crash landing, so you don't miss research opportunity. This gives a believable mechanic to limit crash sites, and later in the game gives players a bit of choice if they want more crash sites (use lower power weapons -> more risk to the flight crews). The percentage of crash vs kill can be balanced by the development team.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems to be that the problem is to many crash sites get generated. Why don't you address this problem, instead of trying to work in a work around mechanic, that isn't easily explained/justified/balanced?

Wouldn't it be easily explained if there's a chance a alien ship breaks up upon crash landing? Aka, no surviving aliens? Maybe there's some recoverable salvage (alenium/alloy) but nothing a team of soldier's needs to be dispatched for.

All these options have been discussed (a lot) and there were reasons why they didn't work. The airstrike is a compromise really, but it's the best solution to a complicated problem. The big thing is that it's really nearly completely based on each person's style of play.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...