Hobbes77

Yesterday I was playing and while looking at the stats box displayed when the mouse cursor hovers over the soldier's name I noticed that mobility is missing and there's an empty space where it could fit. I've been trying to find the function that decides what goes into the stat box but so far no success, so I would ask either if someone could point me to the right direction or change it. Thanks.

Quoting from the XCOM2Mods_LevelDesign.pdf (on the Documentation folder)

Yup. With the AWC you can train the character for the class you want, although any characters already assigned to a class can't be reassigned.

Amineri, thank you for the detailed explanation of the history of the current perk system, your answers to my questions and the future plans. I realize it may not seem fair for you guys at this point of LW development to hear someone saying: "the class/perk system is too complicated" and I appreciate you taking the time to read this. :) I'll be brief on my reply since you mentioned right away the main issue behind all this when you said: "The Long War "8 class" system grew sort of organically in fits and starts, and is actually largely based on player feedback." My question here is: but when does it stop growing? If you look at it, there will always be 1 more perk/class/weapon/rule that could be added. There will always be another player with a great idea for something new. And if you're an artist and love what you do, nothing is ever perfect - there's always something that could be changed. But, in life, there's always a point when creating great works where you need to decide: it's enough. Usually there's a manager and/or deadlines to help with that. Here you guys are working on LW as a hobby and you probably haven't considered that there will be a time when you'll want, or have to move on and do something else in real life or because LW isn't so appealing anymore. Isn't it better to start thinking and planning for this moment by setting up goals? To have a time to stop adding new features and focusing instead on balancing and fixing bugs on what exists and removing unnecessary features? To me replayability isn't just about adding new features (and LW already has a ton of those, I'm loving the additions to the Strategic Layer) but as a player to feel comfortable with the system and know the rules and that requires time to try everything out. If new features are constantly added then I will not have time to try everything and I'll have to be constantly relearning the ground rules. This said, I don't have a magical solution of my own to the class/ability/weapon system but I do feel it has gotten a bit complicated. I think the most important things to consider are: when do you stop adding new stuff? And is it really needed to add weapon/ability xyz? Does it really add something new or is it merely a variation of what's already present. If you have the time, read that Civilization modders manual I've posted before, specially the section Design Philosophy. It has a ton of interesting insights about mod and game design (they even interviewed Civ 4 and 5 developers for it).

This is going to be a long post so I apologize in advance but I've given a lot of thought in the past days about the class/ability system on Long War, which has been one of the features that in the past had made this mod less appetizing. But now that I'm playing LW and really enjoying the other features I might as well share what I think about the class system, even though I realize I might be in the minority here. In short this is the idea I'll try to show: the 8 class system is good for playability, but the amount/type of ability choices for each class/rank is confusing. Now getting into detail, the 8 class system roughly follows the division present in vanilla, where you'd have left/right side abilities. Choosing all left side abilities for a vanilla Heavy would make it a Rocketeer class build, while picking the right side turned it into a Gunner build. You'd also have the straight forward builds, like Sniper, Medic or Assault but some roles were deliberately split up between classes. A Sniper with Battlescanner, an Assault with Lightning Reflexes or a Support with Sprinter could all be Scouts but this role wasn't as straight forward when choosing and using those units. The same applied to an Infantry/Marksman role: usually it was done by Snap Shot Snipers but it could also be assigned to an Assault with mostly left side abilities or a Support with mostly right side perks. There would be variations according to personal preference but the design into left/right builds made the choice very straightforward. In LW these roles are clearly defined as the 8 class system: Sniper, Scout, Infantry, Assault, Rocketeer, Gunner, Medic and Engineer, making it easier to choose which to bring for every mission (on vanilla usually I gave them specific call signs to know their skills). One could wonder why there isn't a Marksman in LW (left side abilities Sniper on Vanilla) or if there's a real difference between an Infantry or a Gunner but there's only 8 classes and more you add, the harder it is for each to have a meaningful distinctiveness. Taking the example of the Sniper, with the LW changes made into Squadsight keeping it on the back of the map isn't as effective anymore so it makes more sense to only have 1 type, and also give to the Scout the possibility of using a Sniper Rifle and giving it exclusively the In The Zone ability for those who like dropping mobile Snipers. However, regarding the different abilities for each class, the LW system has two aspects that need to be improved. The first is the amount of possible builds for each class in LW. In vanilla, for each class you'd make a total of 5 choices between 2 abilities by the time it reached the last rank. That's 2*2*2*2*2 or 32 possible final builds for each class, with a total of 160 (4 vanilla classes + MEC) possible configurations in the whole class system. However, of those 32 theoretical choices only a minority of 50% or less were optimal (I actually have made before a spreadsheet listing all 32 possible configurations to mark the most effective for each class), so the player choice is made simple by practice and design. But in LW, for each class you can made 6 choices between mostly 3 abilities, so you have a total of 2*3*3*3*3*3 or 486 for each class. Multiply the 486 value by the 16 existing classes on LW (8 + 8 MEC classes) and you get a staggering total of 7776 possible class builds. So, in vanilla there's a total of 160 builds for each class and around 80 are the most effective and used, and me as player I'll have 2-6 favorite ones per class that I'll easily choose from memory since those are the ones I use. In LW there's a total of 486 builds for each class... bu then how do I even know/remember which ones are the most effective when promoting soldiers, not to mention how to quickly choose a soldier with a critical skill just by looking at the available Soldier list? The design makes the choice confusing so you end up choosing by practice, which brings me to the 2nd point regarding the abilities available for each class: since they are so much repeated the redundancy built into the system reduces both the importance of the class and the value of choosing that ability. Example: Infantry and Gunner classes have a total of 19 possible abilities each. Of those, Covering Fire, Executioner, Ranger, Suppression, Tactical Sense, Will To Survive, Sentinel, Extra Conditioning, Bring 'Em On, Rapid Fire and Resilience are shared between both classes (a total of 11). How much is a Gunner different from an Infantry then? Does it make sense to have 2 separate classes if they share so much? Gunner by itself has no unique ability that isn't available on other classes, unless it is the only class that can use a LMG (btw, it would be nice to have listed the weapons available for each class). Scout and Infantry have almost the same problem since they only have 1 unique ability each (In The Zone and Light 'Em Up, respectively). I suspect here it will be said: "but the amount of missions/fatigue/casualties makes it important to distribute important abilities to more than one class". Well, but isn't the whole point of the added missions/fatigue/casualties to make the player to take hard choices and sometimes not be able to bring what he/she wants, rather than helping the player out? And, isn't it possible for the player to train more soldiers to a specific class so that he'll have a chance of always having 1 soldier of that class available? And regarding the value of each ability, in total there are 58 class abilities (excluding MECs, I haven't considered them) and of those, 18 are unique to a class, 15 are shared by 2 classes, 13 are shared by 3 classes and 12 are shared by 4 or more classes. If I want to bring a Battlescanner, I can either pick a Scout or Engineer or equip 1, if I want Smoke Grenades I either bring a Medic/Engineer/Rocketeer or equip them, Lone Wolf would be really nice on my Assault, wait it's only available for Snipers or Scouts, oh by my Assault actually has Grenadier but none of the other classes have it except Engineer? And my Sniper can actually choose Mayhem? (unless Mayhem has been changed, I'm still scratching my head to understand this one). Quoting from the Modders Guide to Civilization regarding the 'Danger of More': "Is it needed? Would it be missed if it was taken out? Is it functionaly unique? If the answer to these is no, it should be considered for removal." To end this post, I think at least a few tweaks are necessary to address the questions I raised on this post, if you consider them important. But IMO, it would be better to rework this whole system to make it more practical for players by using a version based on vanilla's Training Roulette: I think it's possible for each of the 8 classes to have 4-6 unique abilities, and the rest of the choices for the class being between abilities that complement their unique ones (unlike Training Roulette where you can gets lemons like Snipers with Grenadier), and these general abilities are shared with some other classes but not all. If you're interested, I'm working on a draft system for this.

Johnnylump has already written some code that does this (and it does cause some feedback to us ...) He's added resource-gathing missions, which are landed UFO missions. If the mission is successful, the aliens gain resources. Resources determines what types of missions they can undertake in a month. Repairing damaged UFOs and replacing destroyed UFOs costs resources, as does building an alien base in an country lost to XCOM. The amount of resources gathered depends on the size of the UFO, so the AI picks the resource gathering UFO size based on its resource needs. Anyhow, the country for these missions is chosen randomly (although not in alien-occupied countries, since the aliens get resources from them automatically each month, kind of like XCOM and satellites). This means that occasionally a player will get a large landed UFO in the first month, which is extremely difficult (some would say impossible) to beat. Also, he's set up the strategy AI to be able to proactively launch Hunt missions in countries that may or may not have a satellite at the time of Strategy AI monthly planning --- because the player might launch one there. In Long War we added a new type of UFO Mission called an "Air Raid" that functions somewhat like a terror mission, but has not tactical mission associated with it. Basically the UFO just flies around shooting up stuff on the ground. If it completes the mission, then panic in the target country goes up. These missions also can happen in countries without satellites. JL has created an adjacency map for the countries, and in general the AI attempts to spread out to adjacent countries from their starting country (which is chosen at random). So many of the things that you are describing are possible. One thing that I want to add is that many of the things that we've added to the strategic layer in Long War wouldn't be possible without changing the panic scale over to a 0-100 scale. I'd definitely want to try Long War because of all this but right now I not really up to the changes made into the tactical layer. Too many changes at the same time to be able to properly test it but I guess I will need to get the time to try it out :smile: Wouldn't it just force player to use satellite rush strategy all the time? Personally, I view satellites as an equivalent of "radar bases", everyone used to build around the world in OG. The main problem of the first month was to detect some UFOs, as more missions equal to more money in all aspects (loot and funding). So it was vital to actively search for contact and to build radars and additional bases. Simultaneous abductions are direct equivalent of "something happened out of my sight and panic raised". If you don't have satellites over some country, aliens are free to abduct people. And if you do — you can see/down their scouts and prevent those abductions from happening. Concerning the rush satellite question, to me the answer is yes if the panic system isn't changed. But the condition of losing 8 countries causing a game loss is removed and replaced instead by your score on the monthly score (as described on a previous post), then its impact would be minimized. You'd still need to expand the satellite network to detect UFOs and be able to recover salvage from capturing them but delays wouldn't be so decisive. Regarding the simultaneous abductions are an equivalent (choose one and let the others die) but not being able to detect UFOs on Harvest or Scout missions would be even a more ominous threat. The only way to deal with those would be to expand the sat network but that would also mean having to decide between which countries to cover now and which ones to risk being lost.

To me this is a prime example of an idea that needs to be carefully considered before being implemented. If a system was designed to potentially double or treble the number of countries to look after, what meaningful decisions it would add and what would it take away from playability? As you mention, you'd have to keep an eye on 15 countries just in Europe, and potentially the decisions would have to be made considering all the 5 continents. It would definitely enlarge the scope of the strategic layer, but wouldn't it just multiply the number of chores a player has to do rather than adding something new? ---- One thing that I've been wondering about is how the game lacks a proper score and true randomness regarding alien/UFO events in Council nations when compared to the original game. On the OG the aliens would generate most missions regardless of whether XCOM had a base/radar on the continent (with the exception of retaliation missions). It was entirely possible for a base to spend a month without detecting a single UFO and you'd have to use the alien activity graphs to figure out where they were operating and sometimes even send an empty Skyranger to loiter and try to detect UFOs on areas that had no radar coverage. On EU, the way the UFO generation is scripted, you'll only detect flying or landed UFOs in countries with sats, in countries without sats you'll only get Abductions, and Terror/Council missions can happen in both countries with and without sats. This is a simple (and effective) system of generating missions but what if it was tweaked to mimic more of the OG? For instance, what if Abductions could happen in countries with sats (which already has a mod for it) and Flying/Landed UFOs could also be generated in countries without sats? This would make the game more unpredictable (and harder) since you couldn't take for granted that you'd see UFOs during the first months. The UFOs would still generate panic, which would be the only indication for the player that something had happened and the way to respond would be to ignore it or try to rush the sat coverage.

That's true but on the other hand, currently you automatically lose when 8 countries leave the Council, but with 0 funds you still got some fighting chance, depending on the situation. It isn't too hard to live with 0 funding, if you have played with the War Wariness option, although with that Second Wave option your funding only gets to 0 about September/October and you should already have built nearly everything you need and the salvage can sustain you until the Temple Ship.

First, thank you all for this discussion, it has been very informative. :smile: I had no idea how far Long War had progressed and these are 2 very interesting lists, specially the first one. I'd love to actually see the changes made to the UPK files to have an idea of how this has been done. Something else I have been thinking is the panic system, which ends up being one of the main factors that affect the strategy game, since if 8 countries leave the Council you automatically lose. Having such a clear metric is useful to track progress, but at the same time makes everything too focused on controlling panic. This is particularly visible when you consider the Council Report at the end of the month, which is almost useless when playing. But at the same time, what if you use the Council Report as the determinant winning metric, just like the original game? I've had a look before at XGFundingCouncil.DetermineMonthlyGrade to understand how the Council grade is generated and it looks pretty simple: * The game gets a iPositive value by adding all the numbers of AbductionsThwarted, TerrorThwarted, SatellitesLaunched, iUFOsShotdown, iAlienBasesAssaulted and.iCouncilMissionsCompleted * If the credits available are on the red (negative values), it adds 1 to iMismanagedFunds * It then calculates an iScore using the values for UFOsEscaped, TerrorIgnored, TerrorFailed, iAbductionsIgnored, iAbductionsFailed, iMismanagedFunds and iSatellitesLost * If iScore <= - 6 or iScore < 0 and iPositive = 0, grade is F * If iScore <= - 4 or iScore < -1 and iPositive = 1, grade is D * If iScore <= -2, grade is C * If iScore <= -1, grade is B * Else, grade is A If you take this and use it for something similar to the victory system of the original game, then the conditions for losing the game would be: * Getting all 16 countries to leave the Council. Or, in alternative, after 8 countries leave the game continues, but all the remaining countries in the Council stop funding XCOM and use the funds instead for their national forces. * 3 F results (either in sequence or separate) on the monthly Council Report. Also add here two additional factors for calculating iScore: the number of countries that left the council during the month and the number of any active alien bases on the planet. * Losing the HQAssault mission * Possibly also apply the condition of 3 consecutive months with iMismanagedFunds will cause losing the game. If anything, this might be an even better way to start than adding more Terror missions and more UFOs as I mentioned on my original post since it changes the victory setting. The condition that you'll lose all funding after 8 countries leave sounds interesting since the player would have to live from selling salvage and Council requests. And this use of the Council report might make the end of the month more exciting, specially since the introduction of additional negative factors should cause for more negative scores.

There is one very important distinction to be made regarding strategy and the strategic layer. While I agree with the definition of strategy being "A plan of action made to achieve a specific goal", I prefer the definition of strategy being composed of means, ways and ends. Ways are essentially tactics, what squad to deploy, what weapons for interceptors, etc., while the objectives are essentially to defeat the alien invasion through completing key storyline missions. But when you look at means, then you're thinking specifically not about tactics or strategy, but about the operational level of warfare, which relates to getting the means to achieve your objectives. Things like running Research, Engineering, Base Layout, Recruiting, etc. are not a part of the strategic layer but they are a part of the HQ layer (or operational level), and their management is required for any strategy. So if you remove the operational and tactical (meaning weapons, firing mechanics, explosives, etc.) layers, what is the strategic layer? To me, the first aspect is that there are two factions opposed: the player and the AI, both with competing means, ways and objectives and the strategic layer consists of the interaction between both. And, IMO, if the general game setting is of an invasion by an advanced alien force I find it a bit lacking that most of the time it is the human player has all the initiative, while I'd expect that it would be the aliens dictating the pace. The second aspect of strategy is choosing your battles and where to deploy your forces/satellites to help achieve your objectives (and also secure more means) while denying to the enemy it's own objectives and means. Here there are at least two player (Alien Base or Satellite Rush) strategies and two AI strategies: have XCOM get the Volunteer to Temple Ship or have 8 countries leave the council. Now, like wghost81 has said on her previous post, making any chances will have unintended consequences. So what I would focus would be to slightly increase the number of possible UFOs per month from 2 to 3, while deploying larger UFOs to increase the difficulty of air missions and increasing the odds for retaliation UFOs. This would give more means to the aliens, without large changes such as modifying craft weapons stats, etc., and could possibly make Firestorm research even more important on mid game for interceptions. The 2nd chance is to increase the probability of the 8 countries leaving the Council, and thus of the AI fulfilling this objective and winning the game. This is done by increasing the panic increases from certain events and by adding the Infiltration missions. This would essentially change the AI factor but the player's tactical and base levels remain the same. As for player strategies, that would be up for testing to see if anything worthwhile happens with these changes.

I call that pattern "riding the wave" - if you are winning then you can take more risks (and mistakes, 33% shots, etc) than when you're losing. The trick is being able to figure out when the situation has changed for the worst but you're still being affected by a "victory disease" that clouds your judgement. I also feel this about Long War. I've kept my eye on it since I started using these forums and I now I'm starting to realize the amazing amount of work that its developers have done. But I also disagree from how the class/ability trees have been changed in LW, with the 8 classes and the 3 choices per rank. I feel that it is simply too many choices. On vanilla EU/EW you can have 32 possible combinations for each class by the time they reach Colonel. On Long War you have around 729 Colonel combinations for each class, and the twice as more classes than vanilla. And my opinion is that having all these additional choices doesn't add but instead removes the meaningfulness of the decisions regarding perk selection due to it being too complex and too many choices available. Meaningful decisions may times are not the ones we plan but we are forced to respond because they usually require taking a risk or choosing between the lesser evil. This applies to Training Roulette because sometimes you'll get amazing ability combinations but also have to bite lemons like having to choose between Lightning Reflexes or Grenadier for your Squadsight Sniper. But the downsize of Training Roulette is that it is rare to get some of vanilla's perk combinations such as Field Medic + Revive + Deep Pockets + Savior or Holo-Targeting + Suppression + Danger Zone + Mayhem. And the most annoying thing about TR is not being able to choose the ability you get at Major rank.

@wghost81 Hadn't thought of changing the alien deployment on Terror missions (although I got some ideas of a few changes on pod composition) since the mechanic of 1 Terror mission per two months until the alien base assault remains in place. That means that the 2nd Terror mission takes place in May, if the 1st happens in March. Now, for the March mission, it will be a challenge having to face Floaters and Chryssalids so early on but I believe it is winnable, even on Impossible. And if you end up losing an additional country on March... I think it isn't game deciding but it would need to be tested. As for the extra XPs from missions, I hadn't considered it. Overall, you can get about 6-7 missions each month, so a single extra UFO mission will provide additional XPs but at the same time the casualty rate may increase. As for the slippery slope...from my viewpoint I takes quite a bit of mistakes to lose the game. @Amineri You raise a valid question with the issue of meaningful decisions during the game or the lack of them. But from my point of view there are some possibilities on a strategic level. * Which continents to retain and defend? * When to assault the Alien Base? The more you wait the more equipped both sides will be, and afterwards there will be Sectoid Commanders instead of Outsiders. * When to build the Firestorm? Until you build it it is impossible to deal with Overseers/Battleships but at the same time it can be very rare to face retaliation missions during the vanilla game and the Overseer ends up only being used for the Storyline mission, even though it is one of toughest UFOs to face, which to me is a bit of a waste. * There are missions that can be ignored, such as crashed Supply Barges or Battleships, to avoid difficult fights, or even landed Barges, if you can deal with the follow up Battleship. What if ignoring those crashed missions now has a panic cost? But again, the real meaningful decisions are those related to soldiers, techs, facilities and perks, as you said. That's one of the game's biggest strengths and almost everyone agrees that a few changes may be needed, but the system works. With the strategic layer it really isn't possible to add new meaningful choices unless the whole system is overhauled, something which would require a lot more. However, I believe it can be possible to tweak the existing system and change the game's progression: right now the player can control nearly everything about how to the game progress. If you reduce that power, then all the meaningful decisions usually become even more important.

To me the strategic layer of XCOM has been the underdog of the game, specially when compared to the original game. Several ideas seem to have been considered, and some implemented on other mods, such as Long War, where it is possible to have several alien bases being generated (and other changes). From looking around on the code regarding the strategic layer, I'm starting to have a few ideas for some changes that I'll present below for discussion. I have a few goals: * Overhaul only the strategic layer of the game - no changes affecting units, weapons, abilities, etc - and as least as possible. * Increase the difficulty level of the strategic layer (how much is a hard guess) by making it a bigger challenge to handle and increase the odds of losing the game. This also means to me increasing the randomness factor of certain missions/UFOs. Some ideas considered: Terror Missions *1st Terror mission happens in April and then every 2 months, until the Alien Base is assaulted, when it changes to 1 mission every month. Changes * 1st mission happens either on March or April, determined randomly * After AB is assaulted, there's a 50% chance of a 2nd mission * To keep players uncertain of when a Terror mission can pop up. And getting one right away on March can be really bad news. UFOs * Maximum of 2 UFOs generated each month (on Hunt and Harvest missions) ** 50% chance for the 2nd UFO, 100% chance if 2nd Abductions mission isn't added during the month, before the AB is destroyed * If a UFO is ignored (not intercepted or ground assaulted), a UFO is generated up to 5 days afterwards, on a Destroy Satellite mission * Ignored UFOs raise panic by 2 points, Escaped UFOs by 1 point * Game introduces specific UFOs each month * There's also a pool of UFOs to be used, usually for the 2nd UFO or if no new UFOs were introduced that month * Up to 3 Overseers are added separately each month, until the Psi Link is captured. They are only detectable with the Hyperwave Relay and their flybys don't cause any panic. Changes: * Maximum of 3 UFOs generated each month * Add UFOs to the pool with Hunt objectives to generate Destroy Satellite missions without the need for the 1st UFO to be ignored. * Ignored UFOs generate a Hunt mission and raise panic by 2 points in the country and 1 point in the rest of the continent * Escaped UFOs (intercepted but not shot down) generate a Hunt mission and raise panic by 1 point * Crashed UFOs (intercepted and shot down) that aren't assaulted raise panic by 1 point * Assaulted UFOs cause no panic or retaliations * The separate Overseers are removed. 1 Overseer are added to the UFO pool instead, starting on May, with 2 different objectives - Scout and Infiltrate (country signs pact with aliens and leaves XCOM). After September/October 2 Overseers are added to the pool. * Reduce salvage ratios from UFO items to balance the additional UFO missions. * Reduce Psi Link salvage percentage from 100% to 50% and allow them to be destroyed during an Overseer mission. * UFO Pool is changed by adding more Large UFOs, so that as the game progresses it will be more likely to encounter Abductors/Supply Barges/Battleships through the missions Any comments?

Hello all, I've been taking a look at XGStrategyAI with the main propose of understanding how everything works regarding UFO and mission generation at the Geoscape level. I've started to collect my observations (and also using the content in posts made by several users here like Amineri, whghost81, drakous and others) at the UFOPaedia but I decided to move the contents to the Nexus wiki to a specific http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/XGStrategyAI page. I've only got about 30% of the class figured out but I think I've gotten the basics of how the AI generates objectives and UFOs. My main motivation for this project is to understand the logic followed by the AI to explain it to players and later to be used for AI mods to enhance the strategic level of the game, which is the least developed when compared to the original game. Keep in mind that I've never formally learned coding, so some of my interpretations can be completely off. I could use a little feedback since in many cases I'm simply guessing things up based on my empirical experience and what I've been learning of C++ from my own research.

Great job so far guys :smile: My suggestion for the generic insignia would be the XCOM skull. It was used on the animation of explosions on the original game and it was reused on the MEC Troopers insignia: http://ufopaedia.org/images/1/17/Explosion.gif http://ufopaedia.org/images/thumb/8/80/XCOM_Enemy_Within_Icons.png/450px-XCOM_Enemy_Within_Icons.png I've taken the skull from the insignia used on the MEC Trooper's left shoulder and edited it a bit, changing the color into white for better contrast: http://static-1.nexusmods.com/15/mods/151/images/373-1-1395066371.png Below is the actual insignia worn by MEC Troopers on their armor, extracted with TexMod. MEC Troopers don't use national flags so there wouldn't be a repeat of insignias: http://static-2.nexusmods.com/15/mods/151/images/373-1-1395066868.png