Escalation: Controlling the difficulty threshold of monthly abductions

[Zybertryx]

Hey guys,

 

I'm working on an overhaul based on Long War 1.08 for personal use and there's not much that remains un. . .molested** (I left Long War's interception mini game stats/dynamics alone - I like them a lot and I have no clue as to what's what there :D) but after reworking the getpossiblealiens tables I've realised that what I'd also like to do is find out how to tweak the mission difficulty probabilities so that they too 'escalate' as the game progresses.

 

What I mean is that in the first month I'd like most missions to be "Easy" with a small chance of "Standard" difficulty missions also being possible.

 

Month 2/3 would have a greater weighting of the "Standard" missions and month 4-6 would introduce "Hard" to the possibilities, and so on, up to "Extreme."

 

I'm not sure if it's because I always use the SW option "High Stakes" but what happens currently is that regardless of the month abduction missions can be wildly varied, from "Easy" to "Hard" with no clear discernible trend.

 

I ask because my tactical game is really brutal and unforgiving while using a timescale which takes its inspiration from Long War. . . A string of "Hard" missions in a single month can utterly cripple my soldier pool (if any survive at all, it's a month in the infirmary). I'd also like to make Ironman or Total Loss games actually playable at some point. I know how to tweak the number of pods and aliens present per threshold (and have done so) but I really like that "Hard" actually is Hard, so I just want more control over when in the campaign timeframe "Hard" missions (etc) become typical.

 

Also, are Terror missions the only "Extreme" rated missions which use the tables concerning the number of pods and aliens per threshold in XGStrategyAI.DetermineAbductionSquad? So, basically, is "Mission Difficulty 3" exclusively used for Terror missions here?

 

Thanks.

 

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**Major props to JohnnyLump for cramming so many must-have modlets and tweaks into Long War.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Zybertryx

[johnnylump]

The function you're looking for is XcomStrategyGame.upk >> XGStrategyAI.GetAbductionDifficulty()

 

Difficulty ranges from 0 (easy) to 3 (very difficult).

 

First it sets difficulty based on the game's "act"

0 = game start

1 = Interrogate an alien (I think?)

2 = Defeat Base

 

Then it adds 0 to 4 based on the number of panic blocks in the country minus 1.

 

I've modded the function here, so my memory of what you are working with isn't certain, but I think it has a 50/50 chance of adding 1 more. Then it automatically adds 1 more if you are playing impossible difficulty.

 

Then it clamps the range to 0 to 3.

 

So the month has no direct impact -- it's panic that tends to drive missions into more difficult realms. You could probably recode the function to make it month-dependent, but that isn't a simple matter of replacing some numbers, I'm afraid.

 

Terror Missions are not set through the abduction functions; they are in XGStrategyAI.DetermineTerrorSquad()