I can see no reason why January 1997 should have double the number of missions compared to, say, February 1997.
BTW: Also 'Shotgun' ufopedia description goes on two pages (not sure if this was the exact same thing as reported before, because this is maybe due to many ammo types).
Why not? Difficult beginnings, you are the new sheriff in town and all... I've been thinking about it before, but it feels okay to me. It's not like scoring means anything at this point.
Why not?Inconsistency without an explanation. I guess it'd be okay if there was some sort of blurb about the Council dumping all its currently active cultist/missing people investigations on us.
It's not like scoring means anything at this point.Er, it's one of your two strikes for losing the game? Granted, it's doubtful whether a bad early month will actually tank your score badly enough for that to apply.
I've always thought X-Com never actually discovers all or even most cultist/cryptid activity, and the stuff we see on the globe is what our intel department/radars/contacts can get us.
Well, now that it has been pointed out I'd like to add that I also felt that something was a bit off with the games I've started in more recent versions. I found the prior number of missions early game a bit more reasonable tbh. And as much as I like the additional content I think it would be more...enjoyable...for players - especially new ones - if you weren't swamped in missions in the first months. I think staggering them out more would be reasonable.
Yes, strictly speaking it might make that much of a difference point wise, but that might not be obvious for players that aren't veterans. Being swamped with more missions than you can possibly adress is first and foremost frustrating and honestly I don't consider it good game design.
Hmm, do you mean to say that there are more missions now because of new missions being introduced?
I honestly can't recall any early game missions being added since 2.3 (and they weren't super early either - I mean stuff like Cult Street Fighting).
We can argue whether this is jarring or the opposite, hardly noticeable, but I can't recall any "swamping" in early game, much less frustration. I understand that people have varied level of experience, but what's so frustrating about having more opportunities? In the worst case you'll just skip some missions, it won't end you.This is a combination of "no actual control" over missions, not enough feedback regarding the impact of missing missions and being presented with mission spawns that are impossible to reach in time. I guess my dislike for this is partly down to the mechanics that FtA has introduced, which actually gives the player some agency instead of passively waiting for missions to pop up.
This is a combination of "no actual control" over missions, not enough feedback regarding the impact of missing missions and being presented with mission spawns that are impossible to reach in time. I guess my dislike for this is partly down to the mechanics that FtA has introduced, which actually gives the player some agency instead of passively waiting for missions to pop up.But since this is not nor is it likely to be based on Finnik's version of OXC, more mission spawns is the closest we are going to get to controlling which kinds of missions we do. More missions on the map - more choice of which ones to do and thus more control. It's not ideal, but it is what it is.
...there really isn't any reason or explanation why the cults/monsters/etc postpone their december activities to january just as the player takes over as commander. Why the inconsistency?My impression is that you can explain this by not increased cultist activity, but increased X-Com detection due to getting handed all the leads from precursor orgs/Council factions/whoever.
And even if firstMonth: 0 missions were removed, you'd likely still get maybe 7-8 missions...I counted more like 11-12 on average. Although it can be quite unpredictable how many you actually get...
This looks more like a difficulty-related proposal. Maybe remove 'month 0' for Beginner/Experienced?
I doubt this is feasible (or I wouldn't implement it at least if I had to maintain this kind of mod).Sure, but mission script maintenance is already a pain due to all the duplicate scripts and the sheer amount of missions. I think I saw some non-aligning numbers when I was looking at 'month 0' mission chances, and recall similar instances having been reported and fixed in the past. One more pinprick or two isn't too bad.
More missions on the map - more choice of which ones to do and thus more control. It's not ideal, but it is what it is.
My impression is that you can explain this by not increased cultist activity, but increased X-Com detection due to getting handed all the leads from precursor orgs/Council factions/whoever.
If anything this equals less control because you are forcing players to drop missions.No? If the player can choose which mission to take and which to drop, it's control over what they do by default. Unlike doing all the missions, where the only control is over the order in which the missions get done. If that, since many of them aren't active simultaneously.
There is no real "choice" here because you have no control over when and what missions spawn...Mission-gating research exists, so you're wrong even about that.
If a player is prevented from attending a newly spawned mission because of a prior mission spawn there isn't a valid choice being made.Only the first time. Next time, or next game, either the player has prepared for this by upping their transport game, or has chosen to remain in the previous situation.
What you are referring to here is an illusion of choice that does not actually benefit the player because you can't retroactively pick out missions you want to attend or not.If you're so concerned about picking the exact lineup of missions, enable savescumming, save at the start of the month, check out all the missions and reload. Because beyond that, I don't think many games even allow such a degree of freedom. The original certainly didn't. It's always been about limited information and living with the consequences of your choices made within the fog of war.
The thing is that the missions don't actually reflect this because they behave like regular newly spawned missions, not ongoing stuff you are catching on to. It simply isn't consistent with with subsequent months.Yes, and your first day on the job isn't consistent with the rest of your career. Quelle surprise.
This is by no means game breaking or anything, but it does stand out for me (and apparently others as well).Sure, it's only been what, several years, until one person actually pointed this out? You admitted yourself that your own problem with mission overload wasn't really 'month 0', but rather ghost missions and general mission overload. Which are valid criticisms, the latter having been made plenty of times before, and my impression is that Solarius has made a conscious design choice about this being so. So it's either live with it, or make a submod. Maybe publish it if you want to convince others that this is the better way.
I doubt this is feasible (or I wouldn't implement it at least if I had to maintain this kind of mod). Such a change would require duplicating or at least referencing all the mission scripts that currently start at month 0; I don't think you can have a ruleset "firstMonth is 1 for difficulty level 0-1, otherwise it's 0". There would be a few ways to do this but AFAICS all of them are painful for maintenance point of view and prone to cause bugs (if one was to forget updating all of them if further changes are made or if a new mission is created).
Why are there any missions in a month where you have only 48 game hours...Technical reasons (it's easier to assign missions to any starting month regardless of exact starting date) plus Solarius found that he actually likes the effect.
Why not just hold off on missions til 1 January 1997?New sheriff in town, XCF new player hazing ritual ;D, showcases more missions. None of it is compelling, but neither is the opposite position, at least so far.