Strategic Layer Improvements

[Hobbes77]

First, thank you all for this discussion, it has been very informative. :smile:

JL has done a lot of work (and he's done the lion's share of the coding/design in this area) in reworking the StrategyAI to be more reactive to the decisions the player makes, as well as making decisions based on its own condition.

I've tried to limit the list below to things that are truly "strategic" in the sense that they are alterations to how the Alien Strategy AI makes decisions, and omitting operational things such as training troops and building your base.
- Added Alien Resource model that determines how many and what type of ships the aliens can field
- Added XCOM Threat model that determines what types of missions the aliens launch and whether they are pursuing other goals are trying to bring down XCOM
- Aliens get new "Aerial Bombardment" mission objective in which a UFO flies around a country dealing damage from the air, increasing panic -- essentially a form of airborne terror attack
- Aliens choose terror locations based both on adjacency to existing held countries and country panic
- Increased panic scale from 1-5 to 0-100 to allow finer granularity of panic results from various alien/XCOM actions
- Aliens can spawn Hunt Missions directly instead of only in response to escaped UFOs
- Changed code that makes UFOs flee when engaged to making it so that they flee only when badly damaged
- Aliens get new Resource Gathering mission that increases alien resources if successful -- these can happen in countries with/without satellite coverage
- Aliens spawn Alien Bases in each country lost to XCOM
- XCOM can launch satellites over lost countries to detect Alien Bases
- Aliens prioritize sending Hunt missions so shoot down Satellites over alien-controlled countries
- Added alien "Retaliate Objective" which creates a UFO that flies to XCOM base to initiate HQAssault mission -- this mission is spawned based on resources/XCOM threat perception -- multiple HQ Assaults per campaign are possible -- losing HQAssault no longer auto-loses the game but has significant consequences to resources
- Add MissionResult enum to allow the AI and panic code to distinguish between failed and successful crashed/landed UFO assault missions


There's also a whole host of alterations to how certain strategy mechanics work (which I'm not going to try and be comprehensive about), such as :
- Hunt mission success scales based on remaining UFO hull strength
- Terror Missions increase panic by +3 / +1 for each civilian lost (remember new panic scale!)
- Abduction missions only affect one country at a time, and only grant cash rewards
- Expanded FC Request system to request only collectable artifacts, and more frequently grant scientists/engineer rewards
- Countries get innate defense capability that allows them to resist panic increases -- this is improved by granting a country's FC Request


I've listed these not so much to say that they are "good" or an "improvement" (although JL and I think that they make the game more enjoyable for us), but to point out that such mods are technically possible, as well as to potentially spark discussion about what you want to accomplish.

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.

Edited May 5, 2014 by Hobbes77

[wghost81]

Having such a clear metric is useful to track progress, but at the same time makes everything too focused on controlling panic.

BTW, it is true only for Impossible games, as even Classic gives you way more breathing room.

 

Low grades usually mean you also have high panic levels. Results Driven SW option pretty much does the job of making you suffer like it was in the OG: bad performance, skipped UFO, lost Terror mission — and the game is over. It's a powerful positive loop and I think it's why Firaxis moved it to SW: no chance to recover from losses. Loosing a mission already is punishing enough, as you will have less resources for production and research. If you lost 8 countries, you're probably already loosing a game. Stopping funding at this time will be a positive feedback, which will increase the probability of loosing even more.

 

Actually, simply removing 8 countries leaving condition for loosing a game might take panic pressure away, but still be punishing enough by it's own. With 7 countries lost you're already practically living from selling salvage, as your base is growing and monthly income barely covers your expenses. With 8-9 countries you will probably be loosing money each month. So with more conditions to increase panic and higher chances to loose a country it might be an interesting experience. :smile:

[Hobbes77]

 

Stopping funding at this time will be a positive feedback, which will increase the probability of loosing even more.

 

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.

[johnnylump]

Long War 3 has the loss condition set at 16 countries, not eight; XMarkstheSpot even updated the UI to show 16 red lights.

 

Most of the late game / temple ship mission saves we've seen have people with only a few countries left. The aliens concentrating on adjacent countries really captures a nice domino effect, as well.

[wghost81]

War Wariness is less punishing than Results Driven, as is affects the most difficult part - the first couple of months - less. But Results Driven hurts you from the very beginning, as on Impossible you already start with high panic levels and they keep growing.

 

LW has very different panic mechanics, it is overall harder to loose a country to panic early on.

[Amineri]

 

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.

 

All of our changes are made using UPKmodder (we've even figured out how to adapt the GFx changes to be applied/reverted using it). It is a bit less file-efficient than wghost's PatchUpk tool, as each change to a separate object requires a different upk_mod file. And also each file can only change the object table OR the object itself. It is somewhat handy having it broken down a bit more as it makes some things easier.

 

I have all of my files stored in a single "Long War EW patch 3" UPKmodder project. This includes some deprecated changes (I keep the hex around in some cases), as well as some debug/test hex changes. That said, my current upk_mod count is at 973 files. We really have been busy ;)

 

The files are of course constantly in flux as we fix bugs and add new features. If you are interested in getting read access to the file repository, PM me / johnnylump. I technically control the access settings, but I prefer to get agreement from JL before opening up the repository. JL wrote most of the Strategy AI changes, although I contributed some code and design concepts.

[Zyxpsilon]

Every time i hear someone has intentions to "alter" the strategic layer while looking into a variation of Panic levels (both managed and controlled by ini values or incode parameters) as they apply to any of the 16 council members, i recall an old suggestion i made in the 2K megathread.

 

Continental "zoom-in" to the whole world. Where more than just 16 Nations get into the real action.

 

It always puzzled me to no-end that only major countries (as defined by Firaxis design team, btw) are under Alien threats and their UFOs keep being spotted and intercepted *INSIDE* these regions and territories -- only!

 

I want Spain, SaudiArabia, Cuba, New Zealand, Chile (etc - just name it)... heck even Antarctica (Snow & ice!!).

 

The gameplay dynamics this would open up is incredibly tight and fun.

 

Trick is to make such additional potential relevant to the whole balance. Which is a matter of some type of regional influences by major Vanilla countries, AFAIC. Italy or Greece *ARE* European giants of the Mediterranean sea. Iceland is far enough from Norway or British Isles and yet, they still are in range of some Satellite coverage or "radar stations".

 

Lots of features could be integrated to sustain such complex (your opinion may differ) micro-managing.

 

To me... this is the perfect solution for the mid-to-late game anomaly. A busy world where activity keeps upping the Invasion curve.

 

I might be asking for too much (considering *this* project) and yet, there we are "dreaming" of an opportunity to revise the whole principle already found in the current layer. Might as well go in with a sledgehammer rather than a tiny scalpel. ;)

 

Here's to hoping.

[Amineri]

I've considered adding more Council Countries. Clearly Firaxis did too, because there's 36 countries defined, although only 16 are Council countries -- the other 20 serve no strategic role other than to provide soldiers.

The amount of work needed to add more countries is really huge, at least from a modding perspective. Entirely new art assets would have to be developed and inserted into the game for both the Situation Room UI and Geoscape UI. The Situation Room UI would have to be completely redesigned, as 36 countries just wouldn't fit in the existing UI concept. That's a lot of work to add more countries.

 

I have figured out how to add new cities, and the new cities can be put in the 20 non-Council countries. The vanilla mechanics wouldn't ever choose those cities for terror/abduction mission sites, and there's no gameplay difference between different cities, but perhaps something could be added.

 

One feature I'm thinking of adding is the ability to spawn additional alien bases in the non-Council cities. The big problem there is that there's only 2 Alien Base maps, which gets a bit tiresome if there's too many Alien Base missions.

[wghost81]

I think the main reason for limited number of countries and 8 countries lost condition is to shorten the loosing part of the game. With LW it is generally harder to loose the game to panic, but is easier to fail into "Slippery Slope" positive feedback loop, when you can still play, but can't win. Panic and defecting countries in vanilla are there to tell the player to start a new game and adjust his strategy.

[Amineri]

On the flip side, we have seen screenshots of players having won Long War with only 3 or 4 countries remaining. Even if the player is on the downward slide getting to and winning the Temple Ship mission is what wins the game, no matter how many countries are lost.

 

I think that makes for at least an equally compelling story -- managing to pull out a victory with a desperate attack on the mothership -- compared to dominating the aliens then finally getting around to finishing them off.