morro123

exalt cultist with robes or alien armor? finally! let's just hope we don't get our mandatory xcom nudity mod first. no, seriously guys, if you manage to replace or even add some meshes all we need to do is to recruit some of the community artists and we are up to a truly epic modding experience. please keep trying!

Hi everyone, Nice to see some new nationalities onscreen, variety is grately appreciated. :smile: Just wanted to suggest a small change - I believe that the vanilla name for this country is wrong; should be "Colombia" not "Columbia" which AFAIK is not a country. Also, spanish names and hispanic race should be ok for most Central and SA countries except for Brazil; it is ok for this country to share the same name list that the one for Portugal as hobbes77 suggested and wghost implemented. Thanks and keep the great work

I agree that incouraging the player to make intelligent decisions and to build a long term strategy should be the aim of the FC request dynamic rather than the "semi-random" short-term strategy. However, i'm not so sure if that means that we must turn the FC Request system into a binary decision making model. I think Amineri is aming at a different direction when he suggests adding more variables to the FC Request *game* other than the inmediate bonus cash/sci/eng the request gives in vanilla. I may be wrong, but I believe the new FC Request system will be best giving you a different decision making model, maybe complex or even standard, but not binary. Of course, as you well point it out, in a long term decision model *visibility* becomes important, and it's currently difficult to make those variables much *visible* to the player -specially without a UI mod. Another thing I am concerned is the balance between abuctions, gray market an requests, specially with good amineri's modlet that lets you put almost every item you manufacture in the GM. In fact, I'm not attracted at all by the model chosen in vanilla, where I think you could receive quests over some items that you could also sell in the GM (corpses, for example). Why would a country make a request and offer more $$ for an item if they could buy them for less $$ in the GM? I don't see the point of it; unless, of course, XCOM doesn't have stock at the time of the request.

The new FC Request system you are planning looks good! How it would work in day life? I've thought a couple of examples to help. Example 1. After one of the first abd mission, 3 new requests pops up simultaneosly: 3 countries request the same item: country 1 requests 10 wf offers $20; country 2 req 12 wf offers $24; country 3 req 5 wf offers $10. This option means the item value (always above gray market price) will stay the same for each nation, but demanded quantities will change. Example 2. Same as example 1, but now all countries offer different values; e.g.: country 1 req 10 wf and offers 20; country 2 req 12 offers $ 36; country 3 req 5 offers $20. You could make this option fit with the nation's richness; the richer the nation the highest the price it would offer to pay. Example 3. The same as above, but now all countries request the same item and the same amount of it and offer the same price. While taking the decision to satisfy the requests, the player should consider: a) how many offers can be satisfied before expiration; b) which country should be favored according to panic, funding and tech levels; c) availability of item (research purposes). In example 2 some requests are far more profitable than others, however, panic, tech level, research or funding should still play a part in the player's final decision against the short term reward. I feel this one could be the most interesting option to mod the FC Request system.

I know you seem to be moving to another direction, but I feet that I should nevertheless share some ideas in your thread. I think you could tie governmet's opinions to several additional variables: 1) infiltration levels; 2) request fullfiling (also affecting tech level, may require a request system design); 3) casualties (soldiers of same nationality); 4) council missions not affecting panic levels; 5) random events (alien related or not); XCOM activity in general. I agree that opinions should at the very least influence funding and/or trigger some kind of penalty/reward in order to attract your attention even if you already have a satellite lauched over that country. That way you will hopefully prevent "moral hazards". However, you still have to find a way to make the player "decide". Random or scripted events showing the alien growing hostility could also add to the feeling of "global invasion". Military defeats, continental economic crises, energy or food shortages, massive vandalism, curfew and coups should become more frequent as the months go by and should certainly have a direct impact on the government attitude towards XCOM. Choosing to act or not to do it might appease some countries while infuriating others. I've posted more ideas under the XCOM: Funding and Council Grades threads in the XCOM Requests subforum, feel free to check them out (sorry I dont know how to post a link!) :blush: :ermm: Really eager to see interceptor patrols make it back to XCOM!

While pondering over the game's funding system (check my XCOM Economics thread) I suggested that a possible way to enhance the gaming experience could be to tweak the country contributions depending on many factors, one of those being council grades. Currently council grades do not appear to have any impact on the game other than assesing your overall monthly performance. Personally, while getting an "A" or a "B" for not losing countries, intercepting UFO's, or not falling behind research, might feel somewhat "rewarding", I'd like to propose a more consequential approach to this feature. So, while we can discuss about the way to introduce a new pattern in the function that calculates your grade to reflect some sort of more complex kind of Scorecard, I'd prefer to start discussing about what are the possible aspects of the organization that could be impacted with a possitive or negative grade by the council -as stated in other threads, without laying hands into game balance yet. 1. XCOM Proyect Terminated. The most obvious and logical way I see countries will react to a poor XCOM performance should be termination of the proyect. I feel that if you get two "F" grades in a row, or a total of three "F" within the year, nations wont wait to loose everyone to alien pacts and will try something different than XCOM instead. 2. Commander resignation. Alternatively, bad grades could force you to resign; that way XCOM will not be terminated and could be handled by someone more capable. Second worst scenario. 3. Financial. The second most obvious and logical way we can expect countries will react to a poor or excellent XCOM performance should be monetary. This possibility raises a new question: if countries already reacts individually by raising or reducing funding, how can they then react collectively raising or reducing funding according to council grades? Possible answers: 3.1. Total funding suffers progressive 'deductions' according to grades; 3.2. Good grades grants you bonus income. 3.3. Good grades grants cost reduction for items, planes, facilities. 3.4. Depending on the XCOM EConomics model, skeptical nations may join the proyect if you get good grades. 4. Personnel. Good grades could benefit the proyect with bonus staff: scientists, engineers, soldiers -apart from sattelite goodies. 5. Research, manufacture and Foundry. Could be a bonus in researching certain technologies, manufacture items or foundry proyects? or perhaps unlocking new ones, only available after a top grade? 6. Tactical. Will boost or minus depending on grades; will-related ability only available during the month you got a high grade.

Well, seems an opportunity for modding. Thanks!

Can anyone explain how do exactly council grades work and if they have any actual effect in gameplay? Thanks in advance.

Another element of XCOM economics, country funding in vanilla evolves from playing a key role to being a side note in later stages, when you begin making big profits out of the gray market. Beyond balancing issues, my interest here is to propose different ideas in order to create a more inmersive way to handle the idea of managing the budget of an international organization -and particularly, a secretive one. I'm far from being an expert on the matter, though, so I'll just be stating some ideas that seems reasonable to me. Again, balancing issues aside. First off, international organizations like the UN seem to have at least a regular budget and voluntary contributions for specific programs. About the regular budget, apparently there is a payment structure that sets a maximum of 22% (to prevent a nation from overtaking) and a minimum (supposedly based on the ability to pay - GNP/GNI with adjustments). We can imagine many variables impacting those numbers: each country economics; world wide reccessions; country expectations; political alliegances; attitude towards the organization; manipulation purposes; and probably many others we don't even imagine. Voluntary contributions mean countries donating to programs they bear a special interest in; that would usually mean money for their own national purposes. From the very basic approach stated above, we could propose the following attitudes a country could show regarding the XCOM budget: 1. Pay the asessed contributions just to be able to demand an XCOM intervention in case of alien activity (see amineri's "all countries contribute" modlet and XCOM OG); 2. Raise individual asessed contributions subject to XCOM more willing to counter alien activity in their nation more than the others ('prefered nation clause during abductions' mod/ reward abudctions interception by raising asessed contributions); 3.a. Pay voluntary contributions applied to R&D programs that benefits them exclusively (vanilla - "country requests"); 3.b Pay voluntary contributions after council mission fullfillment (vanilla); 4. Raise in addition to 3.a./Reduce asessed contributions if country request is fullfilled or not (to be modded); 5. Raise/Lower individual asessed contributions due to country economics or other non alien related events (random event-mod); 5.a.Raise/Lower individual asessed contributions due to standard alien related events = +/- infiltration/panic ('results driven'); 5.b.Raise/Lower individual asessed contributions due to council mission fulfillment (to be modded); 5.c. Raise/Lower individual asessed contributions by performance if you counter standard alien activity within their borders successfully by the end of the month (alla 'results driven' but tied to performance, not to panic as in 5.a); 6.a. Raise/Lower global asessed contributions due to global recessions or other non alien related events (random event-mod); 6.b. Raise/Lower global asessed contributions due to unusual alien related events (e.g.: first ufo shot down/first terror attack/etc, to be modded); 6.c. Raise/Lower global asessed contributions depending on Council Grades. 7. Abandon XCOM funding due to alien pact (vanilla); 8. Do not join XCOM due to lack of faith in the proyect, being able to begin funding XCOM if alien activity is countered succesfully within their borders (similar to vanilla, but not necesarily with satellites, could be after a successfull mission); 9. Timed global drop in asessed contributions due to war weariness. Note: As you may have noticed, I'm not in for the idea of linking funding directly to satellite coverage. Note 2: I really miss the alien score system's role in funding implemented in the OG, could have been improved in EU. Note 3: In case any of these is implemented funding graphs/statics mod highly recommended!

Just a part -although an important one- in XCOM Economics, I believe that the Gray Market is an interesting premise. Being able to make transactions with shadow customers over alien objects you recover from the battlefield seems like a nice touch for an international organization that is desperate to increase its funding to fight the alien threat...or to make profit. Unfortunately, the full potential of this narrative and strategic element of the game is eclipsed by a crude implementation in the game. I propose the following concepts to improve realism or inmersion. 1. Using current market mechanics. 1.1. Market artifacts/bodies pricing may change over time given one or more of the following variables. This rule can be applied to all alien objects or just some of them. Many variables could be more intense than others depending on the product, some may not apply to certain items. 1.1.1. Research. Researching artifacts/corpses increases their price. 1.1.2. Time/novelty. After its first time in the market, price slowly begin to drop. 1.1.3. Demand. Timed or random events (could be announced in the council screen or in the gray market ui) may increase/decrease the potential uses/demand of alien objects, thus increasing/decreasing price. 1.2. Storage. 1.2.1. Decay. E-115 currently degrades with a second wave option. You could make that happen to other alien materials, as well as corpses or weapons. 1.2.2. Store room. You may have limits to the amount of each object you may stock. 1.2.3. Offer. Too many objects of the same kind may lower their price. 1.3. Country Requests. 1.3.1. Money. Cuasi-randomize monetary rewards instead of just duplicate their production cost. 1.3.2. Consequences. Delivering/Not delivering a request may affect your relationship with the country (e.g.: increasing/reducing funding). 1.3.3. Competition. When a country requests an item, other countries will request it too, and you may need to choose which demand you satisfy. Consequences apply. 1.3.4. War strain. After a long time fighting the aliens, buyers will deplet their budgets for casual shopping. 2. Using new market mechanics. 2.1. XCOM auctions. 2.2. Council 'donations'. 2.3. Council deductions or 'taxation' on items you sell. 2.4. Sometimes you get a 'No buyers' notice and you are not able to sell an object. 2.5. Country 'offers' of strange alien devices. 2.6. Inmersive/proper UI for shadow transactions. 2.7. Buyers pay upon item delivery, which can take some time. 2.8. Marketing info/graphs. 2.9. SHIV production/aircraft weaponry available for trade.

Allocating scientists to research autopsies is a game mechanic that presents a big opportunity for improvement. Here are some ideas. Researching an alien corpse currently unlocks: 1. aircraft armament modules (sectoid, floater, cyberdisk) 2. foundry proyects (thin man, muton, sectopod, drone) 3. items (chryssalid, berseker) 4. facilities (sectoid commander) 5. credits (muton elite, heavy floater, ethereal) New options may include researching more than one alien corpse type instead of selling them in the gray market or manufacturing modules after the first one. If this was the case you may have: 1. Fixed rewards for each autopsy, up to a limited x number of autopsies after which you may not get more usefull info from the body. 2. (Limited) random rewards for each autopsy. 3. (Limited) incremental rewards for each autopsy. 4. Failed autopsies. 5. Corpses that decay/selfdestruct(cybernetic), cannot be subject to autopsy, gray market or modules and dissapear from stock. 6. Incremental gray market pricing after discovering true value through autopsy. 7. Slower, faster or random research times for subsequent autopsies, depending balancing issues. 8. Countries trading corpses for resources chances raised depending of autopsy breaktroughs. In addition to vanilla rewards, you may add: 1. Alien weaknesses, wich may turn out as: 1.a. Soldier attack bonus against that species in combat. 1.b. Soldier defense bonus against that species in combat. 1.c. Weapon enhancements, requiring foundry proyect or not. 1.d. Armor enhancements, requiring foundry proyect or not. 1.e. New combat items or combat item enhancement (eg: medikit in vanilla), requiring foundry proyect or not. 1.f. New combat tactics, requiring officer training school proyect or not. 1.g. Alien attack penalties in combat. 1.h. Alien defense penalties in combat. 2. Bioenhancements and cybernetic augmentation, wich may require new facility, research or foundry proyect or not, and could turn out as: 2.a. New soldier abilities available in the perk tree. 2.b. Permanent soldier attribute upgrades. 2.c. New soldier abilities independant of the perk tree. 2.d. Reduced healing times for that soldier. 2.e. New armor sets. 2.f. Armor enhancements. 2.g. Alien attributes for human soldiers. 3. Clues and trivia regarding the alien genetic manipulation plot. 4. A combination of more than one of the above at the same time.

Amineri: Sorry to resurrect this thread...but while you are out there improving the gaming experience rescuing defeated nations and making multiple alien bases raiding possible, I thought I could give you some feedback on this one. a) on interrogations: I highly favor the repeteable interrogation option. I'm not sure about the reward though. I guess the prisioners may have a random chance to reveal: 1. Nothing. 2. Alien plans. 3. Alien tech. 4. Alien physiology info. 5. Alien psi info. 6. XCOM weaknesses. About the game mechanics you describe, the cummulative knowledge option seems more reallistic to me than the temporary boost. I like more the first one than the latter. Ohter options you may consider as well: 3) Revealing alien plans may trigger special missions 4) Revealing alien plans may lower panic levels 5) Revealing alien plans may reveal alien base (new!) 5b) Revealing alien plans may stop alien infiltration 6) Revealing alien tech gives a small permanent bonus to research (stackable?) 7) Revealing alien tech may reduce research times on next tech 8 )Revealing alien tech may give new tech or foundry proyect 9) Revealing alien physiology info may give bonus (?) against that alien species in combat 10) Revealing alien physiology may improve further interrogation techniches by reducing interrogation times. 11) Revealing alien psi info may give bonus (?) against that alien species in combat 12) Revealing alien psi info may improve further interrogation techniches by reducing interrogation times. 13) Revealing alien psi info may improve soldier's statics (Will/Psi resist) 14) Revealing XCOM weaknesses may improve SHIVs statistics (?) ... b) on corpses/autopsies: I'd love to ponder carefully before selling corpses instead of just selling them madly for money. The rewards of continued research on corpses could be: 1. Nothing. 2. Alien physiology info. 3. Reduced autopsy time. 4. Bioenhancements for your soldiers (eg: berseker-chryssalid/claw; thin man/poisonresist, etc) (consumable). Combine all these goodies with managing scientists to research more than one tech at a time and spend a good amount of testing in balancing issues, and I guarantee you'll get a big replayability boost...

I've seen so many amazing improvments this community has achieved so far that I keep on dreaming of new mods... I'd really like to see some attention payed to research. Maybe we can begin with something 'simple' (not that I believe that word really exists in this XCOM:EU modding world)... such as managing scientists to research more than one tech at a time. You know, like the old times... PS: Amineri's job on the multiple bases mod looks so promising...thank all of you people for your work!!!

Sorry guys, I just read you and felt the urge to post that any effort spent in making research less deterministic simply sounds like heaven! Thanks for trying this!

Many of the ideas look nice. Resource Management "The Gray Market is back and in full swing, the more important and powerful the material the more the countries funding you will pay for it". I think it would be great if prices in the Gray Market decrease over time. "A great focus has been put on resource management, you will not be able to build everything all the time, and priorities need to be made". Would it be possible to vary facility pricing/building time depending on the number of engineers in your staff? "All the good stuff, Plasma, Titan Armour etc will require lots of the elusively powerful Elerium" Great idea UFO combat "The scouts for the alien invasion need to be taken down with 2 maybe 3 Interceptors with Avalanche Missiles" Sounds good to me. Research Changes "Every time you research an item the standard material cost of the item will be half of the research, engineer availability will also affect the price" VERY nice, this should aim to make your decisions in research count. Is there a way to create the possibility of interrogation fail?