No more positive points from ground combat - implications?

[superbob]

I agree you have to come up with some way to reward players for intercepting terror/base/bombing missions before they happen.

My quick idea - higher flat rate for ships that do these missions - penalty once they start the mission (or build a base). Results in closer final score on doing the mission or preventing it, which makes it preferable to shoot down the craft instead of doing the long and risky mission.

A somewhat more in-depth idea - generate a crew count for enemy ships once they appear, reward players a flat rate for shooting them down + body count on airstrike / ground mission. This results in same net scores (unless players mess it up and let aliens escape) for ground combat/airstrike. More important missions have larger crews thus give larger rewards.

[StK]

@superbob

that would shift the focus even more the aircombat then it already is.

[StellarRat]

@StK - But shouldn't that be the reward for discovering the Quantum Cryptology Center? What else would it be useful for? That seems like a logical extension of strategy.

[StK]

In the original game the hyperwave decoder (as it was named then iirc) had a better detection rate (100% i think), better radius, told you the type of UFO, the mission of the UFO and even told you the races that were on board so you could adjust your weaponry accordingly.

So if you saw a supply ship hovering around you knew you should start looking for an alien base if you didn't have it on the radar. If you saw a ship on a base building mission you knew you shouldnt let to many of em through otherwise you would have to deal with a base.

Xenonauts I think already puts a lot of the focus on the Airbattles .. don't start to reward players for not doing groundbattles at all.

[Dranak]

@StK - But shouldn't that be the reward for discovering the Quantum Cryptology Center? What else would it be useful for? That seems like a logical extension of strategy.

Knowing what the UFO is attempting to do is already quite valuable. That knowledge lets you prioritize which UFOs to intercept first/pose the greatest threat.

[squigoth]

I do not like the new change in the mission briefing points system. If I louse a trooper or two and a civilian the mission is now a disaster because I get nothing for the seven aliens I killed.

Just my 2 cents worth

[superbob]

Turns out the money and salvage is still worth the trouble of doing ground missions, and with money being tighter than ever due to recent balance changes, I still feel like I'd be much better off doing every mission. If not for the short experimental version turnaround and saves becoming incompatible, I'd see no reason not to do every mission for the money it generates.

Even though the relations boost might even be larger now for shooting down alien craft than it was for doing early missions, I still wish I could get a good rating at the end. Now I just don't care, because I know it doesn't actually matter, and usually there isn't much I could do about it. Besides, with interception rate being terrible due to air combat changes, even a score of -20 wouldn't mean all that much.

I stand by my idea of giving the points after a battle/airstrike, which effectively works like the current system, but would feel more rewarding and allow players to improve their score by capturing aliens and saving civilians.

[squigoth]

I do an assault on every crash site as well... got to get those alloys and other tech.

Like I said I don't like the current system: I did one mission where all aliens were killed or captured with no casualties of my Charley Team or the friendlies and I STILL got a poor rating. That just don't seem right.

[screeg]

Also the two "local forces" UFO missions ... only appear on Easy / Normal difficulty now.

Why?

[winterwolves]

They are there to give you a leg up, if you don't manage to shoot down a UFO.

Veterans+ get no leg up. To make it harder.

[Mooton]

They are there to give you a leg up, if you don't manage to shoot down a UFO.

Veterans+ get no leg up. To make it harder.

I just played a game where by the end of the first month only two UFOs had ever popped up on my radar. Neither of which I shot down because they never went slow enough for my fighters to catch up over land and I thought it was much more important I do ground combat than simply shoot them down over the water.

Until they make the first UFO waves happen in the area of your base I think it's probably best to keep those in on the higher difficulties just to lower the chances of your game being ruined from the getgo.

[StellarRat]

I just played a game where by the end of the first month only two UFOs had ever popped up on my radar. Neither of which I shot down because they never went slow enough for my fighters to catch up over land and I thought it was much more important I do ground combat than simply shoot them down over the water.

Didn't you get an offer to assist local forces with a UFO they shot down? You're supposed to.

[legit1337]

Didn't you get an offer to assist local forces with a UFO they shot down? You're supposed to.

Those only appear on easy and normal difficulty now. I can see why chris made it that way, its a mechanic to help newbie players.

But on higher difficulties you can really get screwed over with the RNG. One of my games I didn't see a single UFO until the third week of october... My base wasn't even in a remote area, I was in north america FFS. It's just that none of the waves targeted NA, they just flew around shooting up Europe and Africa.

Edited December 12, 2013 by legit1337

[Voidian]

I read 5 pages of this sorry if it was already asked but, why can't ground combat rating increase be slightly better than Airstrikes? Like 15 or 20% better, encouraging ground combat but not making it a necessity so that players won't feel like they NEED to capture that damn 50th scout ship.

Yeah may not be that realistic, or it may, who knows, recovering alien tech is always a plus and I'm sure any nation funding such a project would agree, but above all it would be more fun, remember that in games, realism is a secondary goal, fun is the point of the whole thing.

[crashed97tsi]

I read 5 pages of this sorry if it was already asked but, why can't ground combat rating increase be slightly better than Airstrikes? Like 15 or 20% better, encouraging ground combat but not making it a necessity so that players won't feel like they NEED to capture that damn 50th scout ship.

Yeah may not be that realistic, or it may, who knows, recovering alien tech is always a plus and I'm sure any nation funding such a project would agree, but above all it would be more fun, remember that in games, realism is a secondary goal, fun is the point of the whole thing.

I just want ground missions to count for something, because as of right now across the two builds I played games on (20v7 and 20v8), I have yet to get a funding increase. I just think this is a huge mistake. Maybe make the ground missions count for half or even a quarter of shooting a UFO down, but it is just not fun when I think I am making good progress and the monthly report tells me everyone is lowering my funding due to unsatisfactory performance.

As it stands right now, I am always fighting a losing battle. I am going to stop doing ground missions eventually because I lose more than I ever gain in soldiers and potential relations loss due to civies or soldiers killed.

I just really don't agree with this design decision. I understand the intent, but it is the one thing that is holding this game back right now IMO.

[Aaron]

I just want ground missions to count for something, because as of right now across the two builds I played games on (20v7 and 20v8), I have yet to get a funding increase. I just think this is a huge mistake. Maybe make the ground missions count for half or even a quarter of shooting a UFO down, but it is just not fun when I think I am making good progress and the monthly report tells me everyone is lowering my funding due to unsatisfactory performance.

As it stands right now, I am always fighting a losing battle. I am going to stop doing ground missions eventually because I lose more than I ever gain in soldiers and potential relations loss due to civies or soldiers killed.

I just really don't agree with this design decision. I understand the intent, but it is the one thing that is holding this game back right now IMO.

If that's how your game is behaving then it is a bug. You always get a funding bonus for shooting down UFOs, regardless of if you then attack them via ground combat or just air strike them - doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything!

Do people understand this? It seems like a common misconception which is making this discussion harder.

[Alturys]

If that's how your game is behaving then it is a bug. You always get a funding bonus for shooting down UFOs, regardless of if you then attack them via ground combat or just air strike them - doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything!

Do people understand this? It seems like a common misconception which is making this discussion harder.

For my part, i understand that we loose nothing in term of funding, but i think the actual system is not very clear and somewhat illogical. I think the best way to handle this would be to change the event triggering the relation boost.

Now:

- relation boost is on UFO interception.

- Air strike provide something like 70% of mission cash and no tech.

- Mission provide full cash, tech reward, alloys/alenium... and death for our beloved soldiers.

- Illogical behavior when you assault a grounded UFO. This action should provide a good relation boost...

- Negative only combat repport wich is.. meh.. too negative

I suggest:

- Interception provide nothing.

- Air strike provide 70% of cash AND 80% to 90% of a "standard" ground mission relation boost/funding boost.

- Ground mission provide full cash, tech reward, alloys/alenium AND relation boost. This relation boost should be slightly better than air strike IF the mission is a "perfect" and slightly worse if the mission involve a lot of causalties.

- Mission on grounded UFO will provide the logical relation boost (ie the same than shooting down the UFO and assault after)

- Other terrestrial mission provide funding boost, with a fix part and a variable part linked to player score in mission.

- The positive score is back and doing mission CAN provide a slightly better result than air strike in term of funding boost. But it will be linked to player performance during the mission.

Exemple using completly random numbers.

Light scout mission.

Now:

- 20k$ funding boost on interception

- 20k$ cash if player choose air strike

- Something like 30k cash, tech, xp on ground mission

I suggest:

- Nothing on interception

- Air strike: 20k cash AND 20k funding boost.

- Mission: 20k cash + cash for the recovered weapon (something like 10k) + tech/materials/xp AND a 18 to 22k funding boost, linked to player performance (min 90% of air strike funding boost, max 110% )

By doing such change, i think you will:

- Recover some link between ground combat performance and funding

- Clarify the presence of funding boost in player's mind. Not very clear actually...

- Have a positive and coherent score on ground mission.

Thanks for your implication on forum Aaron and keep up the good work on Xenonauts

Edited December 16, 2013 by Alturys

[Belmakor]

If that's how your game is behaving then it is a bug. You always get a funding bonus for shooting down UFOs, regardless of if you then attack them via ground combat or just air strike them - doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything!

Do people understand this? It seems like a common misconception which is making this discussion harder.

Doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything unless you make even a small mess of it. If you do make a mistake, then you have lost a guaranteed income that comes from nuking a site.

In the second and third months on Veteran I am finding it difficult not to lose 1-2 soldiers per mission (usually due to reaction fire). Yes I can avoid these deaths by using more rockets and such like but then I am destroying the very equipment that makes ground combat even mildly profitable. That's a significant cost in personnel alone, never mind replacing the armour (I am assuming that it still gets destroyed?). I think the normal takings from such missions are usually in the $40,000 region which barely covers the expenditure.

So though you only get $20,000 or something to nuke a light scout or $30,000 for a scout. This can still be potentially $20-$30,000 more than you would get doing a mission anything less than perfect.

It seems to me that it might be a viable play style to actually just build 9 hangars in your first base and just send 3 waves against the larger ships and nuking the crash sites. Yes you will be behind in tech, but that doesn't matter as long as you can keep throwing renewable aircraft at them! This should in theory result in a steadily increasing funding which means when you do have to you can support more bases which means faster research etc.

I am not saying that the devs have got the wrong idea. But I do think that you probably don't have time to play the campaign through with every iteration in the same way the community does to gauge changes such as those currently implemented.

In short, I am strongly in favour or splitting funding increases to some degree. Maybe 60:40 in favour of air combat, but still with potential in ground combat. The caveat being that there is no funding decrease from not doing ground combat. But just that the 'perfect' game will involve tackling every one.

[StellarRat]

For my part, i understand that we loose nothing in term of funding, but i think the actual system is not very clear and somewhat illogical. I think the best way to handle this would be to change the event triggering the relation boost.

Now:

- relation boost is on UFO interception.

- Air strike provide something like 70% of mission cash and no tech.

- Mission provide full cash, tech reward, alloys/alenium... and death for our beloved soldiers.

- Illogical behavior when you assault a grounded UFO. This action should provide a good relation boost...

- Negative only combat repport wich is.. meh.. too negative

I suggest:

- Interception provide nothing.

- Air strike provide 70% of cash AND 80% to 90% of a "standard" ground mission relation boost/funding boost.

I don't agree with these suggestions. Logically, the funding nations really wouldn't care if you took a UFO by ground assault. They would only care that the threat was terminated. Shooting a UFO down and killing the survivors with an airstrike is far better than engaging in a firefight with aliens on the ground causing terror and possibly injury and death for any civilians in the area. If anything, airstrike over water should be the most preferred method (UFO dead, no mess to clean up), but for game play purposes I'm fine with ground assault being a little more rewarding.

[Voidian]

I dunno, they might care if you can recover intact alien technology that humans might not ever be able to put it back together again if they explode everything, specially considering most of it is sold (probably to the nation you were defending) so that they could start their own research and defense programs as well.

[StellarRat]

I dunno, they might care if you can recover intact alien technology that humans might not ever be able to put it back together again if they explode everything, specially considering most of it is sold (probably to the nation you were defending) so that they could start their own research and defense programs as well.

Well, I would agree with you, if the funding nations actually cared about how the Xenonaut research was going i.e. research progress counts toward nation relations. However, there is little that can be learned after you already have recovered the same type of ship a couple times. I've already suggested that a research completion should increase your nation relations, but the idea didn't get any traction with anyone else.

[crashed97tsi]

If that's how your game is behaving then it is a bug. You always get a funding bonus for shooting down UFOs, regardless of if you then attack them via ground combat or just air strike them - doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything!

Do people understand this? It seems like a common misconception which is making this discussion harder.

In all honesty, I clearly don't understand then. So when I do a ground combat mission and 3 civilians get killed, the -6 I get at the end of the round means nothing? If that is the case, then I am truly at a loss as to why I can't maintain an economy of any sort. I usually setup my base in the middle east to get the max amount of country coverage, and without fail I lose $100K to $150K in the first month. I usually intercept 90% of the UFO's in my area.

Now, I understand why the Americas and Australia cut their funding, but why doesn't Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and at least part of the SU increase their funding? I assumed it was because I was doing the ground missions and taking a -2 relations hit at least for every one I did. If that is not the case, then I am at a loss.

Am I the only one who is experiencing this? I may also just be a bad player or something.

[Mooton]

In all honesty, I clearly don't understand then. So when I do a ground combat mission and 3 civilians get killed, the -6 I get at the end of the round means nothing? If that is the case, then I am truly at a loss as to why I can't maintain an economy of any sort. I usually setup my base in the middle east to get the max amount of country coverage, and without fail I lose $100K to $150K in the first month. I usually intercept 90% of the UFO's in my area.

Now, I understand why the Americas and Australia cut their funding, but why doesn't Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and at least part of the SU increase their funding? I assumed it was because I was doing the ground missions and taking a -2 relations hit at least for every one I did. If that is not the case, then I am at a loss.

Am I the only one who is experiencing this? I may also just be a bad player or something.

No, the negative numbers in ground combat still count towards relation loss. You can however edit the numbers in missionscore_gc.xml if you really want.

[Sirinan]

I don't agree with these suggestions. Logically, the funding nations really wouldn't care if you took a UFO by ground assault. They would only care that the threat was terminated. Shooting a UFO down and killing the survivors with an airstrike is far better than engaging in a firefight with aliens on the ground causing terror and possibly injury and death for any civilians in the area. If anything, airstrike over water should be the most preferred method (UFO dead, no mess to clean up), but for game play purposes I'm fine with ground assault being a little more rewarding.

Argh I hate it when people argue for realism when discussing an issue where such realism makes the game less fun.

I'm sorry, but I don't give a damn about how realistic a game mechanism is if the end result of that realism reduces enjoyment. I play games *for fun*. Realism should not get in the way of that.

Edit - to actually add something to this conversation: No score for ground missions is a nerf to make airstrikes more attractive, is that right? And airstrikes are there to reduce grind? Isn't the reduction in grind enough of an incentive to do those airstrikes? I don't see why there needs to be any change to ground combat scoring - if you don't want to grind, the option is there. Solution achieved. If anything else needs to be done, then it needs to be done to the airstrike mechanic, not the ground combat.

Balance the game around those elements which are central to the game, namely the interceptions, missions, and ground combat. Then consider how best to balance any other elements of the game to the central element balance - don't mess with the central elements to try to balance fringe elements.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Sirinan

[harrythevet]

For my tuppence-worth, I hate this change. Unless you have the world's supply of interceptors, you can't respond to all the UFO incursions. Besides, the game is meant to be about the ground contact.