Design Brainstorming : More Country Detail

[Amineri]

 

What if you used a color bar that converted the 0-100 scale into color? For instance, 0 would be the pure XCOM blue, then as panic increased it would slowly change into green, then yellow, orange and ending up in bright red. The player wouldn't know the exact value but by comparing two different lue bars it would be possible which country had more panic. It would also add a little more element of uncertainty not knowing the exact value rather than having it displayed the whole time.

 

Definitely a better plan then mine of having only 5 discrete panic colors like vanilla. Will update my description of the rework plan for XGCountry.GetPanicColor. Make it scale from 0 to 100.

 

I think I'll put in a discrete color step change when panic goes from 99 to 100.

 

Then I can put off some of the messy Situation Room UI re-coding unless it turns out to be necessary.

 

Here is the vanilla GetPanicColor:

function Color GetPanicColor()
{
    switch(m_iPanic)
    {
        case -1:
            return MakeColor(100, 0, 0, 255);
        case 0:
            return MakeColor(0, 225, 255, 255);
        case 1:
            return MakeColor(255, 255, 0, 255);
        case 2:
            return MakeColor(255, 175, 0, 255);
        case 3:
            return MakeColor(255, 100, 0, 255);
        default:
            return MakeColor(255, 0, 0, 255);
    }
}

The -1 value is for countries that have left the XCOM project, and looks like a dark red.

 

Otherwise panic starts off as a Cyan (green + blue), then shifts to yellow (red + green), gradually shifting to magenta. At max panic there is a discrete shift to red.

 

I think magenta is preferable to orange since magenta is a primary subtractive color while orange is a tertiary color (so a little tougher to scale). I think the scaling of yellow to magenta will hit some orange-ish colors along the way.

 

Could work like this:

panic 0 = cyan = (0, 255, 255)

linearly scale from cyan to yellow (scale up red and scale down blue)

panic 50 = yellow = (255, 255, 0)

linearly scale from yellow to magenta (scale down green and scale up blue)

panic 99 = magenta = (255, 0, 255)

panic 100 = red = (255, 0, 0)

 

panic -1 = dark red = (100, 0, 0)

 

From a UI perspective the only problem I see is for color-blind players, who would really only be getting the much-coarser bar information.

[Amineri]

So, the next part is the most complex so far : The detailed design for the country 'agent' code that updates funding and enters FC Requests.

 

This is still a bit of a work-in-progress, as I'm thinking of ways to considerably simplify the design to reduce the amount of hex-code changes required.

 

The first part is how the funding is handled. At each PayDay event, each country splits its total funding. One part to XCOM and the remainder kept in its Treasury. This treasury is used by the Country for various purposes. This pretty much assumes that abduction mission rewards are removed (or at least drastically reduced).

 

 

5) Store excess Country funds each month

a) Rework XGWorld.PayDay to call new function to give remaining funding (XGCountry.m_kTCountry.iFunding - XGCountry.GetCurrentFunding()) to each country.

b) Options for storing current country funds:

byte pack into XGCountry.m_iFunding

store in unused variable XGCountry.m_kTCountry.iEngineering

c) Stored funds can be used to make FC Requests or can be converted directly into tech level

 

I'm leaning toward storing it in the iEngineering variable.

 

 

Next up is a really big set of changes. It details how each country's funding level is adjusted and how the FC Requests are generated:

 

 

2) Implement Country 'agent' code to adjust XCOM funding and generate FC Requests

-- add Country agent update in HQ().Update, which ticks every 1 game hour.

-- Add to World().m_kFundingCouncil.Update(); function

-- XGFundingCouncil.Update currently triggers FC Requests and FC Missions

-- FC Requests

-- rebuild DetermineFCRequest -- determines timings of requests and will contain loop over countries (called from Update)

-- every 10 days (configurable), every FC Country can enter a FC Request (so up to 16 requests at once -- need to only trigger one geoscape alert!)

-- requests last for 10 days (Requests expire just prior to the next round of requests being entered)

-- expired FC requests refund cash back to originating country

-- expired requests cause funding to drop by 1% point

-- fulfilled requests cause funding to increase by 1% point

-- average balance maintained by fulfilling ~8 of 16 requests

-- generally this causes funding to go down, which is offset by shooting down UFOs

-- call XGCountry.BeginPaying() to refresh funding amounts after each FC Request cycle

-- unsure how geoscape interruption is accomplished

-- current geoscape interruption displays a particular request (likely needs to be changed)

-- rebuild XGFundingCouncil.BuildRequest -- Builds Request for given country (called from BuildFCRequest)

-- Countries prefer to offer cash if they have it

-- Cash is immediately subtracted from country 'treasury'

-- value of offer set between gray market price of item and direct tech upgrade cost

-- If insufficient cash then country can offer sci/eng/sold if available (depending on current panic/tech level)

-- each country has limited number of sci/eng available per campaign (stored in bytes 1 and 2 of XGCountry.m_kTCountry.iScience)

-- Need to determine how many items are requested, item type requested, and reward offered

-- Countries prefer to request items XCOM has (XGStorage.m_arrItems), but will request items from XGStorage.EverHadItem otherwise. Else will request interceptor transfer.

-- Will request satellite with probability based on current panic (if Roll(100) < XGCountry.m_iPanic)

-- Each request type has a minimum and maximum allowed tech level

-- Weapon fragments are allowed at every tech level, but requested amount increases with tech level

-- Number of corpses requested scales with tech level

-- Checks for tech level upgrades for each country

-- Can spend cash for upgrade : 50 + new tech level cash as default

-- 51 to 150 cash per upgrade

-- would require 100*100 = 10000 cash to full upgrade -- for rich country with 200 cash/month would require minimum 50 months (4+ years)

-- Check in BuildFCRequest with 10 day (configurable) cycle time

-- if Country has 2x required tech upgrade cash (after entering FC Request), then it will spend cash on tech level upgrade

-- possibility of adjusting this based on current funding, current tech level and/or current panic

-- might require actionscript UI update to add scrollbar to FC Pending Requests dialogue (looks likely to not need it)

-- In Command128.swf is the pending requests actionscript : PendingRequests

-- package contains XComScrollbar, and test data includes 7 pending requests

-- list is built with PendingRequestsList, which calls this.listMC.enableScrollbar(); during OnLoad

-- Add funding increase/decrease in XGCountry.SetSatelliteCoverage

-- add 20% points to funding level for satellite added

-- subtract 20% points to funding level for satellite lost

-- Add funding increase for shooting down a UFO in XGStrategyAI.OnOnUFOShotDown

-- Add 2% points to funding for UFO Shot Down

-- Alternately can scale this based on UFO size/type

-- Add funding decrease for UFO Escape/Ignored in XGStrategyAI.LogUFORecord

-- Subtract 1% point for UFO Escaped

-- Subtract 2% point for UFO Ignored

-- Country has X% chance to increase tech level every 10 day cycle if it has satellite coverage

-- chance can depend on difference of XCOM vs Country tech level, and number of scientists/engineers country has remaining

 

 

The biggest set of changes revolves around the FC Requests.

 

These involve a series of trade-offs :

1) 16 Requests come in every 10 days (or so), making it impossible to fulfill all Requests

a) the more Requests fulfilled, the fewer artifacts XCOM has for research/items

2) Fulfilling Requests grants access to extra cash/scientists/engineers and eventually reward soldiers

a) Each country has a limited number of scientists/engineers available per campaign

3) Fulfilling Requests increases tech level of country

a) increased tech level unlocks requests for more item-types requested

b) increased tech level reduces panic increases for country

c) increased tech level increases chance and level of reward soldiers

4) Fulfilling Requests slightly increases funding from country

5) Unfulfilled Requests slightly decreases funding from country

 

Richer countries have more funding, so initially will jump ahead in tech. However richer countries are earlier targets for satellite coverage, reducing monthly treasury increases. Various strategies are possible to induce countries to give up scientists and engineers.

 

Ideally this will prevent "excessive artifact collection", which is particularly bad in Long War. Gray Market sales should drop to almost none. Should prompt more care in tactical missions to recover artifacts.

 

I haven't yet figured out how the FC Mission Rewards would fit in with this.

[dubiousintent]

Just a thought: How about enabling the player to select from a set of possible results each country has available for the FC Mission Rewards? Being able to pick something YOU desire at that time would then make such missions more desirable.

 

-Dubious-

[morro123]

 

The biggest set of changes revolves around the FC Requests.

 

These involve a series of trade-offs :

1) 16 Requests come in every 10 days (or so), making it impossible to fulfill all Requests

a) the more Requests fulfilled, the fewer artifacts XCOM has for research/items

2) Fulfilling Requests grants access to extra cash/scientists/engineers and eventually reward soldiers

a) Each country has a limited number of scientists/engineers available per campaign

3) Fulfilling Requests increases tech level of country

a) increased tech level unlocks requests for more item-types requested

b) increased tech level reduces panic increases for country

c) increased tech level increases chance and level of reward soldiers

4) Fulfilling Requests slightly increases funding from country

5) Unfulfilled Requests slightly decreases funding from country

 

Richer countries have more funding, so initially will jump ahead in tech. However richer countries are earlier targets for satellite coverage, reducing monthly treasury increases. Various strategies are possible to induce countries to give up scientists and engineers.

 

Ideally this will prevent "excessive artifact collection", which is particularly bad in Long War. Gray Market sales should drop to almost none. Should prompt more care in tactical missions to recover artifacts.

 

I haven't yet figured out how the FC Mission Rewards would fit in with this.

 

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.

[Amineri]

My hope is to make how the FC Requests are generated as configurable as possible. There's quite a bit of space in the BuildRequest function (4497 hex bytes), although the enum handles up to 27 FC Requests.

 

I was originally thinking of trying to limit the number of countries making requests at once, but I couldn't think of a reasonable (and simple) way to put that in, so I switched to just having every country make a request every time. Instead of the number of requests being the limiting factor (as is the case pretty much in both vanilla and Long War), my thought is to make the number of artifacts be the limiting factor.

 

When requests are the limiting factor, the rewards end up being randomized (you take what you can get). If the artifacts are the limiting factor then more choices come into play as the player has to evaluate the various pros/cons of the different offers, considering both short-term and long-term costs/benefits.

 

The default settings I'm thinking of would:

1) Slightly randomize the offered country rewards (simulating countries bidding against each other)

2) Scale the number of requested items off of the country's current tech level

3) Prefer to pick items the player currently has

4) Remove limits on asking for items the player has researched

 

So the first batch of requests would be for Sectoid corpses / weapon fragments. All countries asking for the same item type would request the same number, but might offer slightly different rewards. After tech levels start to diverge there would be more diversity -- and the player can influence how the countries' tech levels go up.

 

The other factor is that countries are limited in how much they can offer -- basically just what cash they have left over after previous requests / XCOM funding. I'm still trying to think up good ideas about what the triggers might be for a country to offer up a scientist or engineer instead of cash. In general I'm thinking that each Request would only offer a single such scientist or engineer.

 

----------

 

As to the FC Mission Rewards, to make them be selectable rewards would require some definite UI jiggering.

 

With this design, all of the other missions are about panic/funding changes/artifact collection. So having the FC Missions hand out rewards starts to feel a bit odd. I suppose it kind of would need to happen on a case-by-case basis.

 

Plus, with EW there are going to be up to two council story arcs -- Slingshot and Progeny.

 

Some of the FC Mission changes may get wrapped up in a separate design (not made public yet ;) ) which is reworking missions in general.

[johnnylump]

I'll throw this out as a provocation. If it comes across as critical -- apologies; it's more to stimulate discussion. My concerns are twofold:

 

- The player doesn't have enough information available to make informed decisions about which requests to accept. May take significant UI alterations and long readme guidance to provide it, so I guess it can be dealt with.

 

- The bigger one is that player doesn't have a large enough choice set (really, set of choice sets) to manage all the variables countries have in an interesting way. In other words, I'm worried there isn't enough of a game there that allows the player to address all the added complexity. The main choice here is which FC request to accept. I suppose the *game* is whether to forestall a perceived immediate need to invest in a particular country, to ensure they give more interesting requests, more money every month, and possibly control panic. With so many requests, and the exogenous stimuli created by alien behavior and technological advances, It seems like the outcomes will be either 1) a dominant strategy ... pick the request that helps with most obvious immediate need, like pull a country back from the brink of leaving over panic issues, or 2) a nearly random mixing strategy, when there's no obvious need, picking requests in a semirandom fashion (eh, feels like I need scientists more than engineers atm, or I'll just keep taking what Germany offers).

 

So I guess I'd ask how this design will lead to visible and nasty cut points in which the sense of opportunity cost is heightened no matter what you choose. If Long War's FC requests are uninteresting and no-brainers, due to too few requests or an overabudnance of resources, it seems a simpler solution would be 1) a few more requests 2) smaller rewards per request and 3) better balanced request amounts, rather than adding a bunch of variables the player doesn't have much ability to manage.

 

Again, this is a speculative analysis of what I've read so far, and meant to focus on what the game really boils down to -- choices.

Edited October 31, 2013 by johnnylump

[morro123]

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.

[Amineri]

I'll throw this out as a provocation. If it comes across as critical -- apologies; it's more to stimulate discussion. My concerns are twofold:

 

- The player doesn't have enough information available to make informed decisions about which requests to accept. May take significant UI alterations and long readme guidance to provide it, so I guess it can be dealt with.

 

- The bigger one is that player doesn't have a large enough choice set (really, set of choice sets) to manage all the variables countries have in an interesting way. In other words, I'm worried there isn't enough of a game there that allows the player to address all the added complexity. The main choice here is which FC request to accept. I suppose the *game* is whether to forestall a perceived immediate need to invest in a particular country, to ensure they give more interesting requests, more money every month, and possibly control panic. With so many requests, and the exogenous stimuli created by alien behavior and technological advances, It seems like the outcomes will be either 1) a dominant strategy ... pick the request that helps with most obvious immediate need, like pull a country back from the brink of leaving over panic issues, or 2) a nearly random mixing strategy, when there's no obvious need, picking requests in a semirandom fashion (eh, feels like I need scientists more than engineers atm, or I'll just keep taking what Germany offers).

 

So I guess I'd ask how this design will lead to visible and nasty cut points in which the sense of opportunity cost is heightened no matter what you choose. If Long War's FC requests are uninteresting and no-brainers, due to too few requests or an overabudnance of resources, it seems a simpler solution would be 1) a few more requests 2) smaller rewards per request and 3) better balanced request amounts, rather than adding a bunch of variables the player doesn't have much ability to manage.

 

Again, this is a speculative analysis of what I've read so far, and meant to focus on what the game really boils down to -- choices.

 

Definitely a fair critique, and I take no offense :smile: Critical review is absolutely essential, IMHO.

 

I've been pondering myself whether or not the selection of which FC Request(s) to honor would actually lead to much real decision-making. Sort of an internal debate about where the choices would fall in the spectrum from "meaningful" to "meaningless" decisions.

 

I'm going to couch my thoughts in somewhat game theoretic terms -- primarily in terms of the breadth/depth of the search tree generated by the move/countermoves in a game. My intuition is that to have more "meaningful" choices (or at least choices where the consequences of the decision are immediately apparent) means reducing the depth of the search tree.

 

I think of this in terms of a game like Chess, or Go. Any individual move (should I open with king's pawn, queen's, pawn, etc) may not have immediately obvious consequences, but these decisions DO end up resulting in consequences that have a long term effect on the game. In Go the span of moves between decision and consequence can be so long that computers are unable to play the game with any effectiveness. Typically human players play these games based on heuristics or analogous pattern-matching. However, I don't really want just a single aspect of the strategy game to be quite as involved as one of these games. (hence the design's state-space is much smaller than Chess)

 

Really part of my goal for the prior-mentioned design for the FC Requests/tech level/etc is to add a portion of long-term strategy where the end effects are slowly built up from a series of decisions, each of which has a small individual impact on the final state.

 

------------------------

 

I feel there are two big questions :

(1) Would such an addition to the base XCOM game be "fun"? (and to how many people?), and

(2) Does the design actually accomplish the goal?

 

The biggest most immediately obvious downside (in terms of fun) would be too much micro-management. This is what influenced the design of having FC Requests come in "waves" every 10-15 (notionally) days. At the simplest the player gets the FC Requests, goes in and fulfills according to strategy, and then continues to advance the strategy game. The FC Requests persist for a bit allowing the player the option of fulfilling a particular one later, but a new wave of requests will come in again soon, so this isn't too essential.

 

Otherwise the question of "fun" is kind of subjective. I think it might be fun, but really the only way to tell for sure would be to code it up and try it out.

 

This leaves the second question of whether or not the design actually accomplishes the goal.

 

The primary stat being added to countries for players to manage in this long-term is the tech level. Notionally tech level provides a couple of advantages to the player. The main one would be adding resistance to panic gain. Secondary advantages would be additional FC Requests and access to reward soldiers.

 

The primary mechanic for influencing a country's tech level is via fulfilling FC Requests. Since possible requested artifacts would depend upon tech level (coarsely simulating how XCOM's research works via the techtree), the rate at which new aliens appears provides some limitations on how fast an individual country's tech can grow.

 

My motivation behind providing so many FC requests each 'cycle' is to provide a series of choices akin to the abduction blitz mechanic, but with lesser/more delayed consequence and to create a persistent demand for collected artifacts. Creating a persistent demand for artifacts creates a greater tactical pressure to collect more artifacts, reducing incentive to use explosives as casually.

 

Ignoring for a moment the "immediate rewards" motivation, long-term investment strategy in countries could follow several patterns. I vaguely modeled this system after the technology system in Crusader Kings II. Nothing changes very quickly, but the end state does matter.

 

Then of course the long-term investment has to be balanced against the shorter-term immediate needs and the current strategic situation. Is it worthwhile to invest in a country with high panic to try and give it a chance to be saved? Since the incremental save chance is small, this would require coordination with prioritization of interceptors and satellite coverage. The alternative is to invest more in countries that are easier to save, which would allow the longer term investment a greater chance of reach higher levels of tech, making that country easier to defend with fewer resources.

 

One aspect of how tech level would interact with the game I don't think I've stated clearly enough. Reward soldiers. A common issue in vanilla XCOM is that the power differential between veterans and rookies is so high that Rookies are near-useless close to end-game. This makes replacing killed troops quite difficult. I expect this to only get worse in Enemy Within.

 

The availability of reward soldiers (and their rank) would scale with each country's tech level. This represents that their troops have better weapons/armor and so have better chances to survive their own encounters against the aliens. Toward later game these reward soldiers would become a signficant replacement source for killed/seriously injured soldiers, reducing dependance on training up "useless rookies".

 

Part of the design is dependent on the interaction with the reworked panic system, and assumes that abduction/terror mission will cause at least small panic increases if the UFO lands. Total panic prevention requires more substantial investment of resources in terms of interceptor purchases/technology. The panic design also generally means that a few countries are going to be lost due to choices made at the strategic level. Currently XCOM only allows loss of countries due to failure at tactical missions. This change could mean loss of countries even on success of a tactical mission. Effectively it de-weights the tactical missions a bit to place more weight on strategy decisions.

 

In terms of winning a mission but losing the country -- such missions can still be worth going on for a few reasons : (1) artifact collection, (2) soldier experience, and (3) lost missions create continent-wide panic increases. In this model winning abduction/terror missions is more about slowing the bleeding then healing the patient.

 

So I guess I'd ask how this design will lead to visible and nasty cut points in which the sense of opportunity cost is heightened no matter what you choose.

 

Going back to this question to summarize.

 

My thought is that this design doesn't lead to immediately obvious decision points with immediate consequences.

 

Instead the design (deliberately) has a series of decisions, each of which has a small immediate (cash/sci/eng/soldier gain and artifact loss) and a small long-term (increased tech level of country) cumulative effect. There are many possible paths that can lead to the same end-states, reducing the impact of each individual decision in favor of a focus on longer term strategy.

 

1) It turns every collectible artifact into a resource to fuel this aspect of the strategy game (including UFO parts, corpses and captives).

2) It provides a strategy mechanic for the player to influence panic gain (over the long term) in individual countries -- but one that is less binary then the "perfect defense" of a satellite in vanilla

3) It provides a mechanic for providing experienced replacement soldiers in mid/late game, reducing dependence on hiring/training up rookies (but these soldiers still "cost" alien artifacts). This could even allow the re-purposing of the "New Guy" OTS upgrade into something else.

[Amineri]

 

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.

 

I did think a bit about how the highly increased number of FC Requests would affect the grey market.

 

Narratively I'd re-categorize the grey market into sales to non-FC Countries (could be countries such as, say, Spain, or could be to private corporations/individuals).

 

In terms of game mechanics I'd expect to see pretty much all grey market sales of alien artifacts to halt. FC Countries will in general pay above grey market rates for artifacts, so a player wouldn't be gaining anything by selling on the grey market. In order to eliminate the odd narrative issue that artifacts would sell for less on the grey market then via FC Requests, I think it might be possible to remove such artifacts from being sellable via the Grey Market. I wouldn't put it at a high priority, however :)

 

However, with the mod that allows sale of manufactured items on the grey market, the GM would turn into a way to 'recycle' now-obsolete manufactured items back into cash.

 

I am assuming that the FC Requests are modified (as they have been in Long War already) to eliminate all manufactured items in favor of collected artifacts. There are 27 request types and there are more than enough collectible artifacts (UFO parts, alloys, elerium, plasma weapons, corpses and captives) to make up 27 request types.

 

[Krazyguy75]

Make the grey market entirely supply and demand, where prices rise over time, and lower when you sell to them. It could be used to dump large numbers of corpses, but for little money. It'd also get rid of things like Alien surgery and entertainment. However, sometimes it'll help EXALT's research, as they use it too.