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Chris' Amazing Geoscape Balance Patch Pre-Discussion!


Chris

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Much like I did with the ground combat recently, I'm planning to put together an experimental balance patch for the Geoscape in an attempt to improve the gameplay experience. The changes may sound quite radical, but the idea is to test them to see if they make the game more fun - not all of them will make it into the final game, and perhaps none will.

This thread is so people can post up unbalanced / boring bits of the Geoscape they think I should look at, or suggest alternative amendments to gameplay systems. Please don't dismiss any of the changes until you've played them. There's no reason why we shouldn't at least try things out.

This work is mostly balance work, so changing the numbers in existing systems rather than creating new ones. However, there are a few systems I may give a more thorough working-over because I think they need the attention.

Problems I see with the current Geoscape:

1) Air combat is too dominant. If you get enough interceptors up into the air, you can almost completely shut down the invasion. No alien bases nor terror sites appear, so you hardly need your ground troops at all. Lack of skill (or lack of equipment) in the ground combat should be just as detrimental to the game as falling behind in the air war.

2) It's hard to actually lose the game (instead, most players just abandon a game when they realise they are deep in a death spiral). It all feels a bit pedestrian, rather than tense high-stakes command work.

3) There are some locations for bases that are objectively better than others due to the coverage they generate.

Potential solutions:

1) 50% of Alien Bases and Terror Sites will be generated automatically, so will always arrive even if you have complete air dominance. Perhaps one will be generated in the region with the lowest score during the month?

2) Terror Sites will appear earlier and will give a decent relations bonus if completed, but if not dealt with will cause major funding loss from that region. This funding loss should outweigh any potential gains made from interceptions that month. The funding gain may also outweigh any potential losses from the interceptions that month, too (up for debate).

3) Funding will be reworked to make the death spiral more sudden, but also easier to understand. I'd like a system where if a nation reduces your funding two months in a row, they leave the project entirely.

4) I'm also debating a funding system where your base funding from each nation increases by a global % each month, with nations giving you temporary bonuses / penalties to the funding depending on your success in the air war (nations still drop out if they give you a negative score two months in a row). Under the current system, any permanent increase in funding largely comes from shooting down more UFOs than you let through.

5) UFO missions will be randomly spawned based on landmass, rather than randomly assigned per nation. This means multiple regions would be harder to defend with a single base.

The idea is to differentiate between the mission types a bit more. Crash sites should be used primarily for research and resource gathering, while terror sites should be more regular and be more about keeping the nations happy. Alien bases are a bit of both. The auto-generated missions would boost the importance of the ground combat relative to the air combat, meaning the overall game success is not based entirely on how good the Xenonaut interceptors are.

I want to make the funding more "sudden" because it gives the player more hard decisions to make. I think the "two strikes" rule is easy to understand and would give people plenty to worry about, rather than the fuzziness of the previous system. It may force early expansion for extra radar coverage, but hopefully the player may also be able to support a one-base strategy if they win all the terror sites and keep on top of the interceptions around their base.

Making the gains / losses from air combat missions temporary would relatively reduce the importance of the air combat, because as the gains / losses are permanent they snowball pretty heavily under the current system. A steadily rising base income would allow you to maintain higher income than at the start of the game even with less territories, as under the system above I'd expect you to lose some along the way. However, losing one in the late game would result in losing a LOT of funding (so you better win those terror sites)!

Nevertheless, I'm unsure about that one. I think making too many things temporary risks railroading the experience, making each playthrough relatively similar. We don't want to go too far and lose the freeform feeling of X-Com. I'm not sure if the effect would be that extreme or not though...I guess it depends on how strong the bonuses / penalties were. Maybe just consider it as the base funding levels increasing globally by a flat % each month? That doesn't sound so unbalancing for the game.

Anyway, thoughts and suggestions are welcome, but bear in mind that this is an experimental balance patch designed to test radical ideas to see if they work. If your post just says "OMG you're wrecking the game" I probably won't spend too much time reading it...if we've wrecked the game, I'm sure people will tell us that when they play the patch :D

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Do you have any thoughts on the suggestion from other threads about making UFO's land more often, land longer, and generate more relation-impacting events while landed? This was Max's idea to increase the weight of ground combat.

1) 50% of Alien Bases and Terror Sites will be generated automatically, so will always arrive even if you have complete air dominance. Perhaps one will be generated in the region with the lowest score during the month?

How about having the UFO's that initiate terror missions do so much faster after they spawn? UFO's that enter the atmosphere and start a Terror Mission before there is a realistic chance to intercept have essentially the same effect as automatic terror sites, but would possibly feel less gamey and less like the AI is "cheating" on the Geoscape.

With alien bases it's a bit less clear-cut, because if the goal is to make sure that some bases are established, the player could still stop the aliens short if they attack the UFO on the ground before the base construction mission is completed. Maybe that's a good thing, though.

2) Terror Sites will appear earlier and will give a decent relations bonus if completed, but if not dealt with will cause major funding loss from that region. This funding loss should outweigh any potential gains made from interceptions that month. The funding gain may also outweigh any potential losses from the interceptions that month, too (up for debate).

Sounds reasonable.

3) Funding will be reworked to make the death spiral more sudden, but also easier to understand. I'd like a system where if a nation reduces your funding two months in a row, they leave the project entirely.

4) I'm also debating a funding system where your base funding from each nation increases by a global % each month, with nations giving you temporary bonuses / penalties to the funding depending on your success in the air war (nations still drop out if they give you a negative score two months in a row). Under the current system, any permanent increase in funding largely comes from shooting down more UFOs than you let through.

I'm iffy on how this would turn out without other radical balance changes. This gives the player two months to get full global air superiority, or lose any parts of the globe that you haven't yet secured. I think you would rapidly lose any regions that you can't cover from your first two bases. Will just have to see how it plays out and if your other proposed changes will counterbalance the severity of it.

5) UFO missions will be randomly spawned based on landmass, rather than randomly assigned per nation. This means multiple regions would be harder to defend with a single base.

I don't think I can condemn or condone this on theorycraft alone. Will just have to wait and see how it plays out in practice.

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Possibly one of the most stressful part of XCOM:EU, in fact, probably the most stressful part of the game is when it's started and your nations get randomly hammered by abductions that you have no chance of stopping and the panic meter ticks up and up without pause or mercy. Every conceivable effort in the early game has to be pushed towards building enough satellites, satellite uplinks and workshops to do nothing else but stay in the game. While Engineering and Research bleat about how you have to build "top priority" things like alien containment, you know that the actual top priority is squeezing out satellites like a constipated man with a full load. If the "two strikes" rule were introduced to Xenonauts, that sense of panic and stress would be introduced and never go away. "OMG OMG I HAVE TO GET BASES BUILT GET AIRCRAFT BUILT NOW NOW NOW" would be the order of the day,because you can only afford to let a country's relations dip once before they're on the verge of leaving. Screw research! Screw Engineering! I gotta get bases up! Gotta get radars built! Hurry up! Hurry up! 25 days until a working interceptor base? ARGH.

While I agree that the death spiral should be less drawn out, I don't think making the geoscape a bottom-clencher where every event caused by a UFO is a major cause for concern BECAUSE MY RELATIONS ARE DROPPING HELP HELP HELP is necessarily the right way to go. But then again, it may be enjoyable? Who knows until we try it?

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Hmmm...I think there is a problem with this approach as far as "two strikes and you're out". I've NEVER had enough money to setup more than two bases with aircraft before month three or four. It takes three bases to cover around 2/3's of the land mass on the globe. With your proposed system it seems to me most players are going to lose about 1/2 or more of the funding nations by the end of month two or three. I realize the increase in terror and base missions is supposed to offset the fact that you can't provide air cover to some areas, but most players can't afford two completely outfitted teams for a long time specially if they have to build armor/weapons.

What if your team gets wiped out/shotdown and another terror mission spawns before you can get replacements?

What if a terror mission spawns before your team has returned and rearmed from the last one?

Are we still going to have to worry about aerial terror missions? Those are often in "un-coverable" areas due to funding and/or that you don't have aircraft capable of dealing with them. I can think of several times when an aerial terror mission appeared in the US or Iceland and there simply was no way to get there with my jets even though I had Europe and Asia well covered. I needed to get a third base up and more advanced AC, but there simply isn't that kind of money until at least the third month, IMO.

I'm a little concerned that areas may be lost due to bad luck in timing under this new balance. If I lost regions simply due to bad timing no matter how well I did with air combat and ground combat I'd be tempted to rage quit. I suggest that you consider a way to bring a region "back" if you plan to go ahead with this.

Edited by StellarRat
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It might - dare I say it - might be time to bring back more interceptors. If there's an issue where the Xenonauts can truly rule the skies, then possibly the response to that is to make interception missions a "special case" mission outside of the normal wave structure. How interception mission might work best is as an alien aggro response to Xenonaut effectiveness - the more successful the player is in downing UFOs, the more aggro he pulls and the more interception missions that player is going to trigger. Perhaps that could measured by some kind of a bar at the bottom of the screen? Something in the ocean section, perhaps an "alien hostility" bar which decreases naturally over time. Have interception misions themselves pull no aggro, and have landed UFOs pull no aggro if intercepted by a ground team, but have UFOs shot down pull aggro.

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Can we please have faster chinooks? I'm happy to take any number of nerfs if it gets me faster chinooks. More limited range, longer downtimes, whatever. Yes, it used to be annoying in earlier versions of Xenonauts when I couldn't reach the terror site, but if terror sites are going to be more common, I don't think it'd be so bad to miss some.

I don't know if I like the idea of alien bases appearing as a last resort. On the one hand, the player gets a cool, special mission to save a nation. On the other hand, I like alien bases cropping up as wild cards, since it differentiates playthroughs.

It might - dare I say it - might be time to bring back more interceptors.

What did I ever do to you, Max? What did I do to deserve this.

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You were too successful! You went too far, plumbed the depths and learned things man was not meant to know! Now you must pay for your transgressions, in blood!

But seriously, how it would work would be interceptor mission would be in addition to the "normal" wave, so you still get normal ufos to shoot - it's just going to be more difficult with interceptors flying about.

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1) 50% of Alien Bases and Terror Sites will be generated automatically, so will always arrive even if you have complete air dominance. Perhaps one will be generated in the region with the lowest score during the month?

2) Terror Sites will appear earlier and will give a decent relations bonus if completed, but if not dealt with will cause major funding loss from that region. This funding loss should outweigh any potential gains made from interceptions that month. The funding gain may also outweigh any potential losses from the interceptions that month, too (up for debate).

3) Funding will be reworked to make the death spiral more sudden, but also easier to understand. I'd like a system where if a nation reduces your funding two months in a row, they leave the project entirely.

4) I'm also debating a funding system where your base funding from each nation increases by a global % each month, with nations giving you temporary bonuses / penalties to the funding depending on your success in the air war (nations still drop out if they give you a negative score two months in a row). Under the current system, any permanent increase in funding largely comes from shooting down more UFOs than you let through.

5) UFO missions will be randomly spawned based on landmass, rather than randomly assigned per nation. This means multiple regions would be harder to defend with a single base.

The idea is to differentiate between the mission types a bit more. Crash sites should be used primarily for research and resource gathering, while terror sites should be more regular and be more about keeping the nations happy. Alien bases are a bit of both. The auto-generated missions would boost the importance of the ground combat relative to the air combat, meaning the overall game success is not based entirely on how good the Xenonaut interceptors are.

I want to make the funding more "sudden" because it gives the player more hard decisions to make. I think the "two strikes" rule is easy to understand and would give people plenty to worry about, rather than the fuzziness of the previous system. It may force early expansion for extra radar coverage, but hopefully the player may also be able to support a one-base strategy if they win all the terror sites and keep on top of the interceptions around their base.

Making the gains / losses from air combat missions temporary would relatively reduce the importance of the air combat, because as the gains / losses are permanent they snowball pretty heavily under the current system. A steadily rising base income would allow you to maintain higher income than at the start of the game even with less territories, as under the system above I'd expect you to lose some along the way. However, losing one in the late game would result in losing a LOT of funding (so you better win those terror sites)!

My Opinions:

1. Don't think this is a good solution to the problem. I think a better one would be to have some sort of randomly determined "time" for the ship instigating a terror site to fly around before it starts terrorizing. Therefore, some ships will have a very short amount of time in which they can be intercepted and be effectively un-interceptable. If I have total global radar coverage and somehow magically the aliens are causing terror sites without sending ships down, I would be pissed.

2. Rewards for terror missions should be much larger then for interceptions... but maybe not that large. I have no problem with terror missions starting earlier though, it will probably help spice up a sometimes dull early game.

3. BAD IDEA imo. That almost means a certain loss of any country you don't put your first or second base in. If you want country surrendering to feel more sudden, give it a % chance, for example: on the second month of negative funding, bloc has a 15% chance to surrender to the aliens. On the third month it is a 25% chance etc....

You could also weight the chances by AMOUNT of negative funding. I think it's pretty dumb that if I get two months of -5,000$ funding that the nation automatically surrenders. But if I have positive funding for russia for 3 months, and then they get hammered or something the next month and I get -200,000$ funding, they have a 60% chance to surrender. But north america who received only -20,000$ only has a 5% chance to surrender.

You could also bring back alien infiltration missions like in the OG, but those would probably be a lategame thing.

4. This sounds great in all honesty. I always thought it was dumb to lose funding the first few months when I was shooting down UFOs. Comparatively to the lore I was doing amazing, and yet my funding didn't reflect that.

5. This is much needed, but it still doesn't change the fact that some areas are massively better then others for starting base locations. In order to balance them you are going to have to give some nations more funding then others.

For example, even under your proposed system the middle east is still the best base location because it covers the middle east, north africa, europe, and parts of russia and indochina, potentially affecting the funding of 5 nations.

EDIT: You can also do what the original X-COM did and have an "overall rating" along with the nation funding changes. Have three months in a row with "bad" rating and your project gets shut down.

Edited by legit1337
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Chris, another reason why air combat is too dominant is that there aren't many options for a GC-heavy strategy. You know I've already requested more landed UFOs. Well, if UFOs from the very start of the game were commiting to more landings, that helps steer the game towards more GC-friendly strategies which sucks resources away from an AC-heavy strategy. If it's established form the outset that landed ufos can present problems like air ufos do, then the emphasis is on a mixed approach from the outset, rather than teching to max air as quickly as possible.

EDIT: Another solution might be to have UFOs attack a target en masse. If all the mediums in a wave head towards the same target, then it's much harder for a player to take everything down before a UFO attacks the target.

EDIT 2: And because this is for discussing things other than the points you've raised, I've also pointed out elsewhere that resources you get from bombers and fighters need severe toning down. It needs toning down from fighters because it's reasonably easy to harvest fighters, and bombers are really, really, easy to shoot down.

EDIT 3: Hey hey! On a roll! Can I talk about air combat a little? It's in need of changing up. Orangehat44 commented on how easy autoresolve is, and I have to agree with him. Autoresolve is quite often a case of click, click, job done. And the acutal air combat itself is both samey and easy to game at the same time. I personally would like to see air combat radically shaken up, but even small changes would make a world of difference. It's not hard to shake things up using the existing ruleset, and after lots of tweaking I have a pretty good idea of how far you can push things either way. I also think that if things aren't going to be changed radically, then why not make aircrafts a straight upgrade path? It would fit with the upgrade paradigm that pervades the rest of the game. Let the Foxtrot be a semi-upgrade to the Condor - faster, more HP, but no cannon or dodge. Let the Corsair be the GT model - everything that the Foxtrot can do but better (heavy missiles included) with the optional extras of a cannon and dodge. Then let the Maurader be the GTX model - something you drool about in magazines, go to shows to see and watch Jeremy Clarkson take for a test drive on telly, but not something you'd buy unless you had a lot of wonga going spare.

Edited by Max_Caine
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1) 50% of Alien Bases and Terror Sites will be generated automatically, so will always arrive even if you have complete air dominance. Perhaps one will be generated in the region with the lowest score during the month?

Well, lore wise it's possible (aliens have some teleportation technology or can use drop pads), but not sure that 50% is ok. Probably faster Terror Site creation is better idea. Because it's strange when Dropship enters atmosphere near North pole and slowly flying to Cape-town to crate a Terror Site.
2) Terror Sites will appear earlier and will give a decent relations bonus if completed, but if not dealt with will cause major funding loss from that region. This funding loss should outweigh any potential gains made from interceptions that month. The funding gain may also outweigh any potential losses from the interceptions that month, too (up for debate).
Good idea, but early in game you probably will have only one base (initial) with soldiers and Charlie. Not sure but as far as i remember Charlie don't have a world wide coverage. So if that Terror Sites will appear out of range for your first base that will be an awful situation.
3) Funding will be reworked to make the death spiral more sudden, but also easier to understand. I'd like a system where if a nation reduces your funding two months in a row, they leave the project entirely.
As already stated by mostly everyone this is an awful idea. Basically that means every region you don't cover in first 2 months potentially lost to you.
4) I'm also debating a funding system where your base funding from each nation increases by a global % each month, with nations giving you temporary bonuses / penalties to the funding depending on your success in the air war (nations still drop out if they give you a negative score two months in a row). Under the current system, any permanent increase in funding largely comes from shooting down more UFOs than you let through.
Good idea (without that 2 strikes rule). Also maybe adjust initial funding of region according to it's territory? For example you can cover whole EU with just one base (somewhere in Italy) plus you will have almost whole Middle east and North Africa covered also some part of SU. While it's just impossible to cover SU with just one base. So base location can be more viable: you can choose to go after one big region like Indochina or North America (full cover) that pays well or few smaller ones (with equal funding). Well, that don't go well with real world (EU, SU and USA should be most wealthy), but game balance wise is a good idea i think.
5) UFO missions will be randomly spawned based on landmass, rather than randomly assigned per nation. This means multiple regions would be harder to defend with a single base.
Can't say anything without testing that. Edited by Newfr
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3) Funding will be reworked to make the death spiral more sudden, but also easier to understand. I'd like a system where if a nation reduces your funding two months in a row, they leave the project entirely.

Hmm, are we playing to the idea you need to lose all nations to lose the game?

Because can't i just choose one or two nation and just protect them? i mean i lose money but I also lose ground i normally have to protect, means less money spent on bases and more aircraft on the other side of the world.

If it played you can only lose 4 or 5 nations it might be a lot harder. (Or change the amount of nations you’re allowed to lose on difficultly)

Also i think losing a nation should be something that happens. If people can get from start to end of the game losing none then i don't think it’s enough of battle against time and a dread looming over the player but more a minor annoyance.

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You were too successful! You went too far, plumbed the depths and learned things man was not meant to know! Now you must pay for your transgressions, in blood!

But seriously, how it would work would be interceptor mission would be in addition to the "normal" wave, so you still get normal ufos to shoot - it's just going to be more difficult with interceptors flying about.

I don't have any blood to give. I'm a carrot. ):

It depends how early on the interceptors come along. If they're present in Sep/Oct, maybe Nov, it's going to screw with a heavy GC strat. I'd rather see stuff put in to make GC-heavy viable first and then play around with the alien interceptors to stop GC heavy being too good.

On the topic of alternative strategies, I'd like to see the weaker research topics touched up with powerful passives or the like. Alien analyses, for example, need to give better rewards. They could be race flavoured one-offs (Sebs improving Medical Centres or something) or improve the quality of rookies (Caes increasing rookies' minimum ACC by +5, Sebs minimum END +5, Andron disassembly giving +5 BRA) or something more than the +10% damage boost. I should feel like I'm giving something up if I invest in the bare minimum for science, otherwise how is it really different from having the OG's Alien Entertainment and the like?

---

Thinking about terror missions, I'd rather keep them as they are, but introduce a new alien mission: harvest. Basically, it's a UFO mission where the UFO doesn't spawn. Give it a yellow triangle on the map to distinguish it from a typical landed UFO. Why do I suggest this?

1) Terror sites can be kept special. They only have two tilesets compared to the five for the UFOs, so making them too common is going to risk samey-ness. It's also really cool to have missions that have higher stakes than normal, which is why I like aerial terror missions. You failed? Well, there goes thousands of people. Terror sites feeling routine would be a shame.

2) It's extra coding and work, I can't deny that, and might be out of the scope of your Amazing Balance patches. But it's not a huge new game mode requiring new AI and maps. Official maps have multiple spawn points for UFOs, so you wouldn't have to edit the maps to account for empty expanses of land.

Or you could give them their own maps if you want. It'd be easier to make maps for this game mode since you don't need to worry about the size of UFOs.

3) Harvest missions can be tuned with funding requirements in mind, while terror sites can continue being more of a wild card, making different playthroughs, well, different.

Hmm, are we playing to the idea you need to lose all nations to lose the game?

Because can't i just choose one or two nation and just protect them? i mean i lose money but I also lose ground i normally have to protect, means less money spent on bases and more aircraft on the other side of the world.

If it played you can only lose 4 or 5 nations it might be a lot harder. (Or change the amount of nations you’re allowed to lose on difficultly)

Also i think losing a nation should be something that happens. If people can get from start to end of the game losing none then i don't think it’s enough of battle against time and a dread looming over the player but more a minor annoyance.

I've never checked to see if it actually works, but this is in the game files already, in gameconfig.xml:

<!-- LOST CONTINENTS LIMIT --><!-- Game ends if more than this continents (depending on difficulty setting) are lost to aliens --> <lostContinentsLimit>   <Easy value="6" /><Normal value="5" /><Veteran value="4" /><Insane value="3" /> </lostContinentsLimit>
Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Thinking about terror missions' date=' I'd rather keep them as they are, but introduce a new alien mission: harvest. Basically, it's a UFO mission where the UFO doesn't spawn. Give it a yellow triangle on the map to distinguish it from a typical landed UFO. Why do I suggest this?[/quote']

Not sure about this "harvest" mission. Harvest what? Or why? But one of the stretch goal of KS was "indoor missions". Since Chris should do that anyway maybe we can invent some type of mission for that indoor environment with that "harvest" mission parameters (spawned without UFO, high risk/high gain mission)?

Edited by Newfr
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Well, harvesting humans. I guess they get broken down into useful components or something. I don't deal in lore, but I'm sure someone who does could come up with a good reason to murder and scoop up a bunch of farmers. I would've suggested "abduct" but that's taken. I guess we could call them "mild panic" missions? (:

If these missions had their own type of map then the map author can make them almost entirely indoor. They'd just need a place for the chinook/shrike to land.

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Missions that autospawned with no ability for me to interact/prevent them was one of my biggest complaints about EU, so I'm quite opposed to seeing a similar mechanic here. That seems like it would take us from our current state where air combat is too important, to invalidating air-centric strategies. Changing those UFOs to execute their missions more quickly after spawning seems like a more measured change. Ideally I'd like you to have a chance at preventing them if you catch the ship in your first sortie of the wave, but not being able to wait until the second or third round of sorties. That alone would greatly increase the amount of ground combat an air-centric strategy would see, but I'm not sure how easy that change would be to make.

Terror missions already appear at Corvettes, so they come pretty early in the game. I'm not entirely opposed to them coming sooner, but they'd need to be balanced for taking on with 8 men armed with ballistics. They already cause pretty severe funding hits (120k I believe?) if left unattended. Making them cause a larger swing in funding than an entire month's worth of air operations seems like overkill, and seems like it might possibly invalidate an air-heavy strategy (I can invest a couple million in setting up a base for air control, or I can stay on one pimped base, and protect the rest of the world via running terror missions, especially if I can't intercept them anyway). It seems like that would create very unintuitive gameplay, but I can't say for sure.

Two strikes would mean you probably lose everything that isn't covered by your initial base, with a reasonable chance to save a couple more regions if you rush a second base on day 1. Under this rule, anything but rushing for air play seems like it would be a large mistake.

#4 I'm honestly not sure about. My off the cuff reaction is that it would feel wrong to not have permanent impacts from standing gain/loss, but it might work as a game mechanic. It's really hard to discuss it too heavily without even some rough numbers. In order to offset the loss of a couple regions, it seems like the monthly auto-increase would have to be quite substantial. If you lose two regions at the end of month 2 (reasonable under the two strikes proposal), then to break even you'd have to be up 20% from the start of the game, so overall you'd need to gain at least 10% per month regardless of your actions. It just doesn't sound very XCOM to hand the players free money, or remove permanence from the consequences of their actions.

Oh, and IMO adding more interceptors would actually be a buff to air-heavy play (one way or another, they can generally deal with them easily), not much of a punishment.

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Wasn't there some discussion previously about Aaron adding a new ground combat mission type for more variety in the early game, before the player is ready to handle terror missions?

Yeah, but I got the impression abduction missions are coming further down the line, if they even make it in at all. They have new game mechanics and the rules were up in the air. I'm hoping that my suggestion - a UFO mission without a UFO, essentially - is less demanding to create. It might be truly outrageous to put it forward; I have no realistic idea how hard it would be to implement.

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1. I am against a system that can still punish a player for having the 'perfect' game. The player should always have a chance, no matter how small of stopping terror or alien bases from popping up.

The best solution as others have suggested is to allow alien ships to land faster after spawning, thereby lowering the interception chance and making terror sites, or bases much more likely.

If you did go down your 50% route. Why not put the attack in a region with the highest funding. This would be sound tactics by the Aliens points of view, is likely in a location you can easily respond to and won't cause a death spiral if you lose it.

2. This basically makes Terror sites the be-all and end-all of the game then? I can't for-see how you could avoid a death spiral if you start to miss one or two terror sites in the early months?

Either you make Terror sites punishing as you said but move them till month 3 or 4, OR you make them have a smaller impact but happen more often.

I happen to think that if I somehow managed to shoot down every aircraft in a wave, and clear every crash site that I should not be punished so much by a single terror site.

3/4. This sounds like its getting on the right track, but the two strikes system is really harsh. I mean sometimes a nation only drops its funding by $5,000. That nation probably only had one or two aliens flying over it and yet it leaves after 2 months? I'd rather see faster drops in funding from nations you are not covering BUT compensated by faster rising funding from the nations you are covering well. Nations should only leave the program when they hit $0.

5. Interested to test this.

The AI on the Geoscape doesn't appear to have any plan which is part of the issue. I would say a plan would be to spend the first months scouting as they do followed by an air war against one country followed by another.

I'd also like to see a country chosen at random that the Aliens pretty much beat the **** out of from month 2/3. If somewhere like South America, South Africa, Indonesia, Indochina or Australia was under the cosh I might consider putting my second base there.

The understanding being that only then could you stop the negative spiral of funding AND you would also want to stop the Aliens planting a base there.

There should also be more deception. I like the way alien interceptors wait until you launch before appearing.

I would also like to see UFOs acting as decoys (running around before escaping to space) to stop me intercepting a Terror Site or base plant.

I remember in the original game, sometimes you would see a UFO literally streaking across the sky so fast that you couldn't hope to keep up. They always flew in a direct path, instead of a zig zag and I remember always been excited/worried at the thought of its seeming purpose. Was it going to base that already existed? Was it just escaping to space? Had it just abducted the president of the United States?

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1) Air combat is too dominant

&

2) Terror Sites

I see a few possibilities there.

  1. Terror mission UFOs are specialised stealth versions of regular UFOs.

    They are hard to detect, slower, fly without escorts, and suck in an actual fight.

    They glide to the target city on a nearly direct course rather than flying and creating all kinds of funny emissions.

  2. An UFO on a terror mission has 2 choices to succeed.

    • Fly to the target city and land.

      Best case.

      Immediate and full terror mission.

    • If interceptors are detected nearby, the UFO tries to do a flyby near any city - more than one city if possible - and release "life pods", and continue doing this for as long as possible.

      The alien terror crew on the ground may not be at full strength but especially on a terror mission, I'm sure they'll find a way to remedy this.

      If the player sends a Skyranger (Bah. You know what I mean!) to a city where he suspects such an alien covert team - but comes up empty - country relations become a little worse.

      No one likes heavily armed soldiers doing a house-to-house in their neighborhood.

      If the player lands a Chinook (hah!) in a city with a "still hidden" terror mission, he gets a terror mission prompt.

      Except that it will be a weak alien force.

      Still - weak is relative if you're neglecting your ground combat...

      If the player doesn't find the hidden crew, he gets a nearly full terror mission in that town a few days later.

[*] With a "developing" terror mission, the player should occasionally get a hint.

These could be "alien sighting" news ticker messages (but there need to be false reports =) or a slight decline in country relations.

Option 2 is pretty much how alien infestation worked in XOM:Apocalypse.

Both 1 & 2 are harder to stop completely and with air combat alone.

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Problems I see with the current Geoscape:

1) Air combat is too dominant. If you get enough interceptors up into the air, you can almost completely shut down the invasion. No alien bases nor terror sites appear, so you hardly need your ground troops at all.

Having done A LOT of playing this weekend I'm not convinced this premise is true Chris. It's difficult to scrape up enough cash to build more than two well equipped airbases (counting your starting base) at month one. With my two bases and good radar I can cover Europe, part of Africa, Asia and part of Indochina pretty well. By December, I've managed to get a base going in North America, however, that still leaves most of Africa, South America, and Indochina without aircover.

I usually airstrike most sites after I've captured the first one or two ships of each type. I'm in January now and I'm finding that lack of Alenuim is keeping me from building new aircraft. In fact, I have the money to build two Corsairs or Marauders, but I don't have nearly enough Alenium. Meanwhile, I'm having to deal with Cruisers and Heavy Fighters. This is a strategic mistake on my part. I should have done more recoveries earlier on, but I think it shows something about the amount of ground combat you HAVE TO DO. It might be more than you think.

I'm going to have to run several recovery missions to build up my Alenium inventory. With a landing ship only giving me 10 Alenium and the Alenium required for a Corsair or Marauder being 30+ I'll need to do at least 10 recovery missions to upgrade my air force. I don't think I agree with your assessment that you hardly need your ground troops.

I've done 4 terror missions, 6 recovery missions, and 2 base captures so far. Now I'm going to need to do at least 10-15 more recovery missions. My guess is that I'll do well over 30 ground missions to get to game end (if I survive.) I guess my question is how much ground combat is enough?

Edited by StellarRat
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I´ve had the same experience as Stellar Rat. I run out of Alenium for upgrading my air force because I don't do enough recovery missions in the early game.

Thats also why I think the idea of having some ufo´s land earlier and stay landed longer (while generating negative funding events) has a lot of merit.

- it gives more incentive to ground combat

- it gives a high risk / high reward mission to acquire Alenium. (rather than having to do a multitude of crash sites)

I'd also like to see a country chosen at random that the Aliens pretty much beat the **** out of from month 2/3. If somewhere like South America, South Africa, Indonesia, Indochina or Australia was under the cosh I might consider putting my second base there.

The understanding being that only then could you stop the negative spiral of funding AND you would also want to stop the Aliens planting a base there.

The idea of having the Aliens focus on some randomly selected country/region is really good! It would diversify games and give incentives to locate second base in different locations.

If you are really cruel with the geoscape AI, then in month 2/3 you let the aliens select a random country that is out of range of your first base. And then in month 4/5 you give them a new priority target that is out of range of the bases you have operational at that time…

On top of these priority targets you would still have to deal with the standard waves of UFOs...

Edited by Frakel
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Sorry for not replying to this earlier, I've been ill / busy this week.

Yes, I think UFOs that land should land for much longer than they do at the moment. I'm not sure about them generating events when they're on the ground though.

Regarding the materials recovered from UFOs that have been shot down but don't spawn a crash site, for the purposes of this balance patch I'm just going to remove them. Initially it was added to make it worthwhile shooting down those UFOs, but that doesn't seem necessary any more and crash sites should be the only source of those resources imo.

I don't want to rebalance the air combat in this changeset. I will probably have a look at it prior to release, but I don't want to change the niches of the planes either. I'm up for tweaking the relative stats and armaments of the UFOs, though.

Yes, regarding the "two strikes" rule you're expected to lose some territory. The idea isn't that you can play a perfect game and protect every nation, you just need to accept you'll lose some and try not to lose many of them. The "loss" conditions are that if you lose a certain number of nations, the game ends. The number is lower on higher difficulty settings.

Remember with these changes that you'll often WANT terror sites to spawn, as they'll give you relations boosts to the nations that you're losing the air war above (dropships do have global range these days). Hence why I've set the 50% autogenerated number so high.

However, I can see the argument that it's a bit "gamey". Reducing the length of time before a terror UFO spawns a terror site seems an equally good solution, because it it spawns over protected territory then you have a chance to shoot it down and if it spawns over distant territory you don't - which means you'll get a chance at the ground terror site to boost relations.

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Glad to see you agree that the air combat is too dominant. But I again have to insist that the core problem is that funding is tied to your air missions. That is what lets air combat dominate, and that way of course you only need ground troops for capturing tech, so it's enough to do 1-2 missions per UFO type. Just revert it already to relations mostly coming from ground sites.

I don't like the idea of the "two strikes" system because you will lose some lands definitely. It should be hard, but not impossible, to maintain all funding. Instead, I think a much easier solution is to accelerate the rate of relations loss so you would actually lose nations through normal events.

To make the game more possible to lose, tweak base defense missions! The code that selects the base to attack does not work. Aliens prioritize your main base so much that it's always your first base that gets attacked. Spread it out, so that it would be possible to take a serious hit by losing your 2nd or 3rd base!

I really, really, really dislike the idea of auto-spawning terror sites and bases. To me, part of the original game's magic was that there weren't any of these things that just happened arbitrarily because the game had this arbitrary rule. Every UFO had a purpose and a mission, and successful alien missions would lead to appearance of bases, terror sites and nations quitting the X-Com project. Just make terror mission ships choose a city and beeline for it, like ships used to beeline for your base. That way, you may be able to protect cities very close to your bases (which makes sense), but most of the time you'd simply have to duke it out in the actual terror mission.

The best proposal I have is, reintroduce alien infiltration UFO missions from the original, just tweak them slightly. For anyone who does not remember, an alien infiltration was a few scout UFOs flying over a country, and then, in a fairly short timeframe, the appearance of several medium and large UFOs. That led to the country being lost. Now, it needs a tweak so that it would be actually possible to stop - by shooting down all scouts, or by taking out a couple UFOs in the main infiltration wave. But this would make a great addition and balancing change to the whole relations system.

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Glad to see you agree that the air combat is too dominant. But I again have to insist that the core problem is that funding is tied to your air missions. That is what lets air combat dominate, and that way of course you only need ground troops for capturing tech, so it's enough to do 1-2 missions per UFO type. Just revert it already to relations mostly coming from ground sites.

Don't have problem with most of your points, but since landed UFO missions do give relation bonus (I think?) I'll wait to see what changes extended landing time will bring before another massive revamp.

Also I think I stated this on another thread, but Geoscape should automatically pause if the landed UFO the dropship is heading toward departs.

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