As I said in my first post on the topic, that would be completely fine if this mechanic was
designed as a timer. But it isn't, right now. It's details are largely carried over from vanilla, while all the other aspects of the game are significantly changed. Especially the length of time spent playing, the relatively higher importance of Council funding and
massively slower research. You could breeze through OG X-Com in a couple of sittings if you focused on it. People have been playing XCF for
RL years.
For reference:
Vanilla infiltration: random 20% chance each month, 2*20% after half a year. One infiltration can take over an entire region (about 8-9 that matter). Council funding is icing on the cake. The game lasts for maybe a year or two. On average, you
might lose about two-three regions in the first year, and if you cared about funding, that'd make you start to hurry. But it doesn't. Even Gollop admitted at one point it wasn't really working as intended.
XCF infiltration: ~3-6% per month + another 11%, both after the invasion proper starts. And some one-off invasions for letting the four cults live too long. One infiltration per country (33 total). Council funding is vital to get you off the ground, and a good chunk of your income for quite a while. Manufacturing is no longer profitable and alien loot prices have been nerfed some. I'm not sure how long the game is supposed to last, but I'd guess five years or so at least, unless you bumrush it. That'll lose you maybe six the countries (a fifth) on average, with a large amount of randomness thrown into the mix because of these very low trigger chances and whether the target is a significant donor or not. That's usually negligible except as flavour (of the 'fuck you, player!' variety
), but an unfortunate series of events can cripple someone well into midgame through no fault of their own.
The first, big issue here is the
total randomness. Why are only
some players hit by the timer, and some harder than others, e.g. the US resigning at the start of the invasion? This subforum has quite a few people posting how they're just hanging on when 1999 hits, and I would completely understand it if one of them got hit by, say, two infiltrations of major donors, went into a downward spiral and lost the game, and then uninstalled XCF in disgust.
The second is that players
have no agency when it comes to infiltration, which is
generally not a good way to make a game.
The third and shakiest is that the X-Com
organisation has no agency, while a number of pedia articles at least suggest they ought to.
Finally, if your main argument in favour of current infiltration is "It sucks, but it doesn't make the game unplayable", then... it's not much of a defence.
XCOM1 designed the whole panic and abduction thing as a central mechanic of the game and tested it thoroughly. I haven't touched XCOM2 and am not planning to.
