Strategic Layer Improvements

[Hobbes77]

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?

[wghost81]

Terror Missions

Terror squad is chosen differently for the very first terror mission: it consists of 2x3 packs of Floaters + 1x3 pack of Chryssalids (on Impossible). Do you plan on keeping that rule, so you'll get those Floaters and Chryssalids in the very first month and a full squad of 5 packs in second month? Or you plan to scale the mission difficulty based on current month number? April terror in March will be almost guaranteed defeat and +1 defecting country and easier terror with Sectoids will actually help you to lower panic and keep countries from leaving.

 

UFOs

More UFOs also mean more XP for your soldiers, i.e. faster level-up. Do you also planning to add an ability to win back countries, lost due to Infiltrate missions? Because randomly loosing a country is not fun at all, especially if you can't re-take it.

 

One of the reasons I don't play LW is a bigger than vanilla "Slippery Slope" effect. So if you're playing perfectly, everything is OK, but if you'll make even one mistake - you're doomed. I'm not afraid of difficulties :smile: but still, I don't like "Slippery Slope" in vanilla and I'm sure I won't like a mod, that adds to that even more.

[Amineri]

Long War's basic premise is actually not really "it's longer", although the title suggests it :). The initial decision made by JL back before I'd even started XCOM modding was to do away with the Abduction Blitz mechanic. So instead of 2 swarms of 3 abductions there are 4 to 6 abductions spread throughout the month. This has remained a core part of Long War, and has driven a lot of the subsequent decisions (for good or bad).

 

@Hobbes :

 

Instead of focussing on "how you can make the strategy layer harder", you might consider instead what sort of meaningful decisions are being made in the strategy layer. Currently there aren't many decisions, and it's a little difficult to add more.

 

Things that aren't decisions in vanilla, as best I can tell :

- Whether to go on a mission -- it seems to me that in vanilla it's always advantageous to go on every mission

- Whether to try and shoot down a UFO -- again, this should always be done

 

Things that player decides but don't have much impact :

- Where to launch satellites -- other than cash / continent coverage, there's little distinction between countries

 

Fairly meaningful decisions :

- Tech decisions

- Facility decisions

- Perk selection for soldiers

 

However even these seem to be mostly boiled down to just a few options.

Perk selection without TrainingRoulette is somewhat problematic due to (a) not very many perks, (b) unbalanced perk choices. I think this is why Training Roulette is such a popular option.

Facility decisions seem to mostly come down to whether to go for Satellites for or for Alien Base first, and are fairly coupled with the Tech decisions.

 

In general our experience with working with Long War is that making things harder without providing any tools to the player to affect the outcome leads to quite a bit of frustration. Providing tools basically means providing a mechanism which has choices. If there are tools but no choices, then I feel it's less a game and more just "busywork".

 

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@ wghost

It's definitely the case that it's possible to lose in Long War, but the design goal is to plan around a certain number of losses. The alien squad roll-up is a bit more randomized than in vanilla, which makes it possible (especially given more missions) to come across missions that are unwinnable or so costly (in terms of casualties) that it's not worth trying to win. In these cases our expectation is that the player will retreat instead of "going down in a blaze of glory".

 

We've tried to incorporate a couple of "negative feedback" systems in order to make it easier to recover from "something bad", but they may not be strong enough. The problem is that if too strong they (a) penalize the player for success, and/or (b) create a moral hazard by rewarding deliberately poor play. The two mechanisms are (a) Higher alien resources generates more alien missions, but also more meld per canister, enabling more Genemods/MECs/Quickbuilds/FC Requests, and (b) Poor Mission performance changes the alien mission suite so that fewer missions are directed against XCOM, giving a bit of a respite. At least, those are the goals ;)

[Hobbes77]

@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.

[wghost81]

I might have exaggerated a little when I was talking about one mistake. I once was able to come back and win I/I campaign after I lost all my good soldiers and got stuck with sergeants and rookies in September. That was the first time I used SHIVs. :smile: But anyway, XCOM has this pronounced effect of things getting much easier when you're winning and much worse when you're loosing.

 

In LW when you loose a mission, aliens get more research points (or whatever) and next mission will be even harder to win. IMO, it's a perfect example of "Slippery Slope":

For example, imagine that every time your team scored in basketball that the opponents team lost a player. In that game, falling behind is doubly bad because each basket counts for score AND it makes the opposing team less able to score points of its own.

And I don't really see how LW adds more real choices. It forces you to fight more battles with worst soldiers, so is seems harder. To be able to win you need more soldiers and more rookie training in the first month, so no real choice here: use more rookies while you still can win with rookies. It's slightly counter-intuitive: you want your best soldiers on the mission, but you can't do it. And on a strategic layer you need to advance aircraft tech to be able to shoot down UFOs. Because with more UFOs salvage amounts from each one are scaled down and you need to ride more of them to have enough resources. And, again, to have more experience for your rookies. :smile: So I don't see any real choice here either. And satellite deployment strategy is counter-intuitive too: you don't want to launch more satellites, as you will get more UFOs and you won't be able to shoot those down. So expanding a satellite network actually gives you more disadvantages than advantages. Eight classes may seem like more choices, but, again, with so many perks it's hard to balance things out, so each class has its best tree branch and in the end it's just 8 different soldiers, like in vanilla (because selecting different branches in vanilla actually gives you very different sub-classes).

 

So, in my opinion, in the end LW is just longer than vanilla game. In vanilla you get less missions, but they're more different because you're soldiers are different (with different abilities), your equipment is different and aliens are different. In LW you get more missions, but they are similar: you can't take your newly promoted soldiers, because they're tired, you didn't had time to research new weaponry, because last mission was only a day ago, and aliens are still the same for the same reason. That might not be so bad, as many people like prolonged war, but personally I vote for short and intense conflict. :smile:

 

Vanilla game is about choices. They got rid of annoying micro-management and made it more intense. And they build strategic layer around choices.

 

First choice is your starting continent and it matters. With Asia you're going for quickly improving tactical battles, with North America you can postpone aircraft upgrades, Africa gives you more money but kinda forces you to go money-wise with first satellites to be able to fully utilize that advantage, etc...

 

Choosing abduction site matters too, because if you go for more scientists and research Arc Throwers you can get bonuses from interrogations and get access to "safety valve" to control panic worldwide (base assault). So engineers on first mission is not actually a mandatory choice for me. :smile: And later on you have to consider panic levels and money.

 

Having two choices on a perk tree and one small item slot is a part of that game design too: you can't have everything, you have to choose. Do you want to bring a grenade to blow up covers? or vests to boost survivability of that assault? or scopes to be able to actually hit something from the distance? With EW you can have both and it's no fun anymore.

 

Of course, vanilla doesn't have an ideal balance, so perk trees sometimes have "ultimate" choices. But even by adding a small change of "Rapid Fire" vs "Lightning Reflexes" you can bring back that "hard choices" experience. :smile: Satellite rush also takes hard choices away, but, again, it's a balance hole and it's not actually fun to play.

 

In XCOM strategical and tactical layer are closely inter-connected. Strategical choices affect your tactical performance and tactical performance affects your ability to conduct research and make new items. IMO, strategic choices should affect your play-style and not be "hardcore" decisions of win vs loose.

 

BTW, Julian Gollop admitted that original game adjusted it's difficulty based on player's performance: it generated harder missions if you were winning. And no one ever complained about that. :smile:

 

PS Just want to add one thing: despite that I don't play LW, I still think it's amazing modification. So many things done without any tools available to developers. It's truly amazing.

Edited May 2, 2014 by wghost81

[Hobbes77]

I might have exaggerated a little when I was talking about one mistake. I once was able to come back and win I/I campaign after I lost all my good soldiers and got stuck with sergeants and rookies in September. That was the first time I used SHIVs. :smile: But anyway, XCOM has this pronounced effect of things getting much easier when you're winning and much worse when you're loosing.

 

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.

 

 

PS Just want to add one thing: despite that I don't play LW, I still think it's amazing modification. So many things done without any tools available to developers. It's truly amazing.

 

 

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]

Hobbes77, each time I'm trying to mod strategic layer I end up leaving it exactly as it is. :smile: It is not perfect, but all my ideas turn to be bad and unbalancing after careful consideration. :smile:

[dubiousintent]

Dang, I really wanted to stay out of this discussion, but hope the following helps people in thinking about their approach to the problem.

 

Strategy is 1) "the science and art of military command as applied to the overall planning and conduct of warfare", and 2) "A plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal". [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/strategy]

XCOM is a game that (on both the Strategic and Tactical levels) limits us in what resource options we have in overall planning and conduct to accomplish the specific goal of defeating the Alien Invasion. This is quite reasonable and realistic given the premise of an unexpected and unknown enemy.

Due to the restrictions in what we can mod, we can't really add new resources. We can alter some parameters affecting those resources, such as how rapidly they can be made available, and quantities, but simply altering such parameters in favor of the player will substantially unbalance the game very quickly. And as a general rule, such modifications are generally sought only when 1) the initial play-through is felt to be too easy/difficult to complete successfully, or 2) more "replayability" exploring other potential options for success are desired.

 

The latter reason seems to be driving the desire to find ways to tweak the Strategy component of the game. So, what Strategic resources do we have available and control over (perhaps via mods) to leverage in achieving that goal?

* Base layout (Power plants, Access shafts, construction and grouping of similar facilities for bonuses)
* Research (Labs and Projects)
* Engineering (Workshops and Factory Projects)
* Funding (Gray Market, Satellite placement, and FC Missions)
* Recruitment and training (Barracks and Perks selection)
* Deployment of reaction forces (Interceptor bases)
* Intelligence (Satellites, Geoscope/Situation Room updates)
* Mission Management (acceptance and deployment choices)

What are the current perceived problems in vanilla?

* The "Satellite rush" strategy is too reliable a winner. This can be attributed to it being one of the only two strategic resources that can directly reduce panic on both a country and continent level. ("Mission Management" is the other, and it's effectiveness is heavily dependent upon the tactical level outcome.) This affects funding, which directly affects the ability to manage all other resources except "Mission Management", and can indirectly affect that.
* Limited viable alternative strategies (Workshop or Lab or Interrogation rush), with a definite ranking in their difficulty (in that they are not equally difficult to achieve success when employed).
* No real variability in the length of the campaign at any given level of difficulty.
* Because certain events are tied to the calendar, on replay the player can anticipate events that appeared as a surprise the first time. Knowing what is going to happen when, and not having the ability to react strategically to those events, vastly reduces the tension of the strategy game. Once you decide on a particular strategy at the beginning of the game, you are pretty much "locked in". You can't even conduct a delaying action in order to switch strategies.
* Once the R&D process has started to reduce the technological differential and increase the force multipier, the campaign becomes easier. The aliens only increase in the (limited) number and "durability" of specific opponents, which is an additive rather than multiplicative effect.

Now that we have identified the issues and strategy resources available to us (and I make no claims to have covered all of the issues or even all of the resources), what means are available to us to address each of these problems, within the constraints of the existing game assets?

(I'll have to leave that to those digging into the code.)

Once the means have been identified as achievable, we should then order them in priority based upon balanced impact and ease of implementation. "Easy to implement" might also equate to "easily unbalancing", which seems to be the conclusion so far. Which is why I thought that this "strategic review" of the issues might be helpful to producing a strategy action plan.

Long War attempts to address many of these issues, but is a more homogenous approach. Everything is rather tightly bound to the changes required in other aspects of the game, so it is not really possible for anyone other than that (very busy) team to separate the Strategic elements from the rest of the mod. What I believe Hobbes77 is calling for are mods to specific elements that can then be mixed and matched to produce customized Strategic aspects. (Interoperability of mods is a whole other discussion.)

 

-Dubious-

Edited May 3, 2014 by dubiousintent

[Zyxpsilon]

Things that player decides but don't have much impact :

- Where to launch satellites -- other than cash / continent coverage, there's little distinction between countries

 

To me, this is exactly where the whole Gaming roll is found.

 

The ruleset is quite clear; you lose eight countries - it's over.

 

Then, there's the additional challenge i always set for myself on every games; obtain full-council or nothing else. One reason why i play Classic and not Impossible, btw. The panic curve is too steep on Impossible and even some absolute huge Luck doesn't guarantee a full-council results over time.

 

As for "little distinction between countries", i would tend to disagree somehow.

 

I'll try to explain in deeper details.

 

1) At a minimum... play with these two second wave options -- New Economy & Results Driven.

2) Then all your continents *AND* countries "value_ratio" become randomized enough so that the actual gameplay decisions are extremely hard to take and tightly linked with a good strategy plan.

3) Satellite coverage is slightly more meaningful. Go figure, but the trick here is not to rush (at times!) and yet, balance has to hit the exact right pace until mid-to-late game status when its events (Overseer, etc) start crumbling.

4) So, the distinction becomes more obvious once the edgy orange-to-red panic bars MUST be kept within range of some proper intervention(s) to (again) keep full-council possible.

 

This game is extremely well designed except for the late path where getting to the Temple-Ship seems a bit "too" easy (on Classic or Impossible too, btw).

 

Thus, It's really not about the quantity of features during any given months but rather, how and why such elements can enhance a certain way to win or lose. I would KILL (a dev!) to have a proper sand-box mode to experiment with a few technical things; layers of (new) micro-management aside, it would be rewarding to simply experience a number of various conditions different from Firaxis' Vanilla choices.

 

In general, i think this is the next step in modding the game. Hobbes looks to be on a good path with some basic reasoning and yet, i feel the entire project *should* rely on a key terminology -- custom power!

 

Conclusion; Replayability factor is the elephant in the room. You (or we) either create another game altogether or its previous design simply needs some slight adjustments in specific areas. As to *What*... your guesses are, then, as good as mine. Between wishes and good choices, the mice can scare up the elephant -- just enough to make such a game feel fresh again or even better.

[wghost81]

Zyxpsilon, although I can win Impossible with all countries in (in EW it is easier, btw), I rarely do this. Because it's no fun. And loosing 3-4 countries is not so bad, as many people think. Furthermore, loosing 7 countries is not bad and and you can still win the game. BTW, in my current I/I EU playthrough I skipped abduction mission due to miscalculation. Three countries panicked, but I was able to save the world by assaulting alien base. :smile: Of course, in the first month it would be a disaster (because of the resources lost, not because of panic).

 

Base layout and research are a most difficult things to balance in the mod. For example, increasing research time drastically will force player to build labs. But this will be a bad thing, because it will not add more choices, but will simply force player to use otherwise useless facility. BTW, Labs are not so useless for me: if I can stun enough aliens in the first months I usually rely on research bonuses and if I fail to do this, I start building labs. 2 labs are usually enough, but there is just one base and many other facilities, so IMO if you're building at least one - it is already useful.

 

I can't agree about strategy being decided prior to campaign start. Sure, your starting bonus will have a huge impact on your early game strategy, but then too many things can go not according to plan. You can fail to capture enough aliens, you can get support instead of engineers as a reward, abductions can happen too early or too late, terror can happen on the "wrong" continent... you can loose your A-team... And you sure need do adjust your strategy in these situations.

 

Another thing about research is it's not really an option: it is mandatory. With no research conducted you will fall behind and loose. So any real choice here is between different research branches. In EU it usually means early captures vs weapons vs armor. EW added one more choice: early genemods/MECs. One thing I would love to do about research is an early SHIV option. EU research tree is very close to the OG, but OG didn't had Foundry and by introducing Foundry projects devs pushed SHIVs too far, making basic variant almost useless. I think by allowing immediate research of Experimental Warfare and immediate build of Foundry with immediate SHIV unlock after Experimental Warfare is completed can add another choice to early game, as SHIVs are good supporting units and can often save a soldier's life.

Edited May 3, 2014 by wghost81