alertlevel and forcelevel?

[davidlallen]

In the missions files, we can see alertlevel as a range 1-7 and forcelevel as a range 1-4 (I think). What do these represent? What is the difference between them?

[xdforcezz]

Force level range from 1 to 20. It determines the strength of the aliens. Think of it like Alien Research in Long War. The higher the Force Level the stronger the enemies. As for Alert Level, not quite sure what that is.

[davidlallen]

Interesting. In the missions ini file, it seems that each encounter group has seven variants, one for each *alert* level, with successively stronger creatures. So I am curious where *force* level is defined and used.

[xdforcezz]

Don't know if this is where it's defined, but it definitely has something to do with it. Lot of the alien strategy stuff is in XComGameState_HeadquartersAlien.uc.

[Hobbes77]

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

 

 

Force Level – Determines the types of enemies that will appear in the mission. The force level of a mission in the strategy game is based on the date in the game. The later the date, the higher the force level. Force level 1 would spawn enemies seen in the first mission. Force level 10 would spawn endgame enemies.

Alert Level – Determines the number of enemies that appear in the mission. This corresponds to the difficulty level described in the mission briefing in strategy, with 4 being the highest alert level.

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the pointer. I am not sure that is the whole picture. In DefaultMissions.ini, in the MissionSchedules section, all of the missions have exactly 7 schedules. The first one has MinRequiredAlertLevel 1, MaxRequiredAlertLevel 1. The seventh one has MinRequiredAlertLevel 7, MaxRequiredAlertLevel 1000. That seems to imply alert has a larger range than 1-4?

 

Also, force level appears to go up to at least 20, and there are modifiers where the pod selected appears to change the force level using the OffsetForceLevel variable (again in DefaultMissions, ConfigurableEncounters, where EncounterID includes "strong". Adding a boss increases the force level of the encounter by 2.

 

All of this has to tie together somehow. I am interested in adding "quest chains", but I haven't found any way to disallow one mission, unless another mission has been executed first.

[eXecator]

The actual AlertLevel in a mission is a function of i) game difficulty and ii) mission difficulty.

 

I'm pretty sure an easy mission on the first difficulty will have alertlevel 1. I'm not sure if a very difficult mission on legendary will be a 7. I started to believe that, but it might be a 6. Alertlevelbonus per difficulty could be 0/1/1/2 or something along the lines.

 

If I remember correctly the 'strong' templates are not used in any of the default schedules.

[davidlallen]

I guess at some point, I will search around in the *.uc files to see how these two variables are changed.

[Renverien]

The actual AlertLevel in a mission is a function of i) game difficulty and ii) mission difficulty.

 

I'm pretty sure an easy mission on the first difficulty will have alertlevel 1. I'm not sure if a very difficult mission on legendary will be a 7. I started to believe that, but it might be a 6. Alertlevelbonus per difficulty could be 0/1/1/2 or something along the lines.

 

If I remember correctly the 'strong' templates are not used in any of the default schedules.

 

This is correct. Alert level is Mission Difficulty (1-4) + Campaign Difficulty (0-2) + 1 if the dark event Show of Force is active.