OpenXcom Forum

Modding => Released Mods => The X-Com Files => Topic started by: Stormtrooper on March 02, 2025, 09:15:08 pm

Title: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 02, 2025, 09:15:08 pm: As you're playing this mod, obviously, you encounter tons of missions, enemies and equipment and progress further by unlocking new stuff. Most of the gear has an "expiration date" past which you don't want to use it, because you have more powerful stuff already. Nobody will attack alien colony with a pump-action shotgun, for example.
Same goes for missions - you do cult apprehensions, but once you progress far enough you leave these to council salvagers, because you have more important tasks and eventually you terminate all cults and their remnants aren't something you bother yourself.

However, I noticed that's not always the case - in my last in-game month I've gotten tons of hybrid-related early missions despite already conquering their hq. It was farm after chemtrails after farm after chemtrails non-stop, even aliens gave up during this month and haven't sent a single ufo. I checked the wiki and these seem to have no trigger to stop them from spawning!

May I ask why is that? I have cyberarmor and lasers, in these missions it's a miracle if my soldiers get hurt at all, for all practical reasons I'm invulnerable and it's a duck hunt. These missions stopped being fun because of this, they became "obsolete" and I want them gone from my save.

"But you can skip them their penalty is minimal and you get tons of points from ufos and bases and stuff" you might say - true, but there are only so many missions per month and I'd rather get the ones I need to progress and are still fun to play rather than end up with the mission pool clogged by stuff I no longer need nor does it provide any challenge whatsover. If council salvagers can deal with cults or monsters past a certain point, why is hybrid farm assault suddenly a problem?

So, tl;dr: My suggestion is to include "disable spawn trigger" for every mission from a "completed" questline so the player has a higher chance to get what is currently needed. So many chemtrails and farms, yet it's been months since I researched cult of apocalypse communion and I'm yet to have a single mission spawn.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Solarius Scorch on March 10, 2025, 12:39:26 am: I placed such a trigger where it made sense. In some cases it didn't, even though there might be insufficient challenge. That's all, really.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 10, 2025, 12:51:43 am: May I ask why adding this trigger for, say, already mentioned hybrid farms didn't make sense to you? Besides embassies, bases and hq these are always small missions with rather little resistance, so with the whole conspiracy interrupted, with hq destroyed and after playing "uno reverse" on aliens regarding hybrid control, why would xcom have to bother with some small remote communities left without command (almost harmless to the world at this point I imagine) instead of delegating it to salvagers?
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: DarthTheIII on March 10, 2025, 05:09:29 am: I do think having some amount of easy missions for training is a good thing. Once you've cleaned up the cults/strange lifeforms getting new recruits trained up without them getting obliterated can be a bit difficult.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 10, 2025, 07:20:48 pm: I stopped using fresh recruits long ago and only hire experienced soldiers. The only situation where you can't is if you're struggling with monthly score, but if you're facing such problems then most likely having stats increase a little by a shooting range mission won't help much. Also training facility is a thing, takes a while but is capable of bringing recruits to a more reasonable level, add transformations to the mix and simply the power of high-tech gear and after a while your soldiers will be good enough for serious combat even with no prior experience.

Yes, I am aware people do use such missions for training (I swear I even saw someone say so on this very forum...), but I struggle to believe lack of this possibility would seriously impact their performance, especially given how the game constantly provides new and new missions as you open new arcs and not every one is hard once you get some decent guns and armor. And the other side of the coin is what I already mentioned - boredom and these missions from new arcs refusing to spawn. Forget that scorpoid village you need to progress, but hey, don't worry, here's the hybrid chemtrails site no. 23165464 instead.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: hairybert on March 10, 2025, 08:13:06 pm: Just an idea, explained for the example of cult apprehensions.

Currently, cult apprehensions are disabled as soon as the "<cult> network" tech is researched. Instead, the "<cult> network" tech could be the prerequisite for a new tech "transfer <cult> apprehensions to council salvagers" which disables that mission. I guess it would make sense to give some incentive for researching that tech. Some bonus money might work well. Money is super scarce in the early game and something like 100.000$ (effectively multiplied by 4 since there are 4 cults) could make a huge difference. Lore-wise, the player gets the money as a reward for having condemned those cult apprehensions to a level where the council can deal with them on its own.

In this way, the player decides on his own when he wants those increasingly trivial missions to stop.
Also, it defuses the trap for the unspoiled player that the reseach "progress" of the "<cult> network" tech is in a certain sense also a step backwards (no super easy training of noobs any more).

As a variant, there could be only a single "transfer cult apprehensions to council salvagers" tech, which disables those missions for all cults simultaneously. In this way, it won't be possible to rake in the reward for 3 cults while keeping a single cult alive in case easy training is needed.

Another thought: That "transfer ..." tech could be the prerequisite for Promotion II, forcing the player to disable the missions at a certain point.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Stone Lake on March 11, 2025, 05:12:30 am: Quote
And the other side of the coin is what I already mentioned - boredom and these missions from new arcs refusing to spawn. Forget that scorpoid village you need to progress, but hey, don't worry, here's the hybrid chemtrails site no. 23165464 instead.
Old missions don't affect spawn of the new ones in this way, there's no limit on the mission pool.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Solarius Scorch on March 11, 2025, 02:49:47 pm: Quote from: Stormtrooper on March 10, 2025, 12:51:43 am
May I ask why adding this trigger for, say, already mentioned hybrid farms didn't make sense to you? Besides embassies, bases and hq these are always small missions with rather little resistance, so with the whole conspiracy interrupted, with hq destroyed and after playing "uno reverse" on aliens regarding hybrid control, why would xcom have to bother with some small remote communities left without command (almost harmless to the world at this point I imagine) instead of delegating it to salvagers?

Because there's nothing to replace it with and no clear reason why this particular mission would be delegated to other Council forces. Hairybert is on point.

Besides, having easy missions makes this mod less manic, and RNG knows it needs to be less manic.

Besides besides, it's not easy for every player. ;)

Quote from: Stone Lake on March 11, 2025, 05:12:30 am
Old missions don't affect spawn of the new ones in this way, there's no limit on the mission pool.

Yeah, I have no idea where people get this idea from. It makes zero sense.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Alex_D on March 13, 2025, 11:15:53 pm: Quote from: Stormtrooper on March 10, 2025, 07:20:48 pm
Yes, I am aware people do use such missions for training (I swear I even saw someone say so on this very forum...)
Not particular fan of "obsolete missions" either. Having said that, I'm one of the guys who use low level missions to train rookie troops (whether recent hires or brand new claim pros). If I know the mission won't be too dangerous, I usually sent a mixed team: 1 or 2 high stat veterans, 2 medium stats, and the rest rookies, or someone who was idle for too long.

This works quite well. Case in point for zombies. Once a defensive perimeter is set, everybody reaction fires until the battle is won. Same for bio entities (strange animals), except when
the MiB shows up with their vessel, large crew and heavy weapons, then it's "ouch time", and my veterans hopefully earn their pay.
In fact, I even hide "Exalt Operations" so I can get the occasional "Safe house" and use mostly rookies for training.

Quote from: Solarius Scorch on March 11, 2025, 02:49:47 pm
Yeah, I have no idea where people get this idea from. It makes zero sense.
I don't have idea either. Yet somehow I have the same feeling. Like I get X amount of missions for the month, and they are spread among multiple possible scenarios. The more scenarios the less chance the ones favorable to advance the plot to appear.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: DarthTheIII on March 13, 2025, 11:18:38 pm: I’m pretty sure the pedia says that isn’t the case. But I may be thinking of an entry from piratez.
Title: Re: "Obsolete" missions
Post by: Whatever on March 14, 2025, 12:28:04 pm: Quote from: Solarius Scorch on March 11, 2025, 02:49:47 pm
Yeah, I have no idea where people get this idea from. It makes zero sense.

I don't have idea either. Yet somehow I have the same feeling. Like I get X amount of missions for the month, and they are spread among multiple possible scenarios. The more scenarios the less chance the ones favorable to advance the plot to appear.
[/quote]

Quote from: DarthTheIII on March 13, 2025, 11:18:38 pm
I’m pretty sure the pedia says that isn’t the case. But I may be thinking of an entry from piratez.

I did some testing with savescumming on the last day of the month with randomization on and the number of missions rolled for one and the same month can vary greatly.

What may lead people to think there are limited "mission slots" is that overall many missions seems to be locked to a certain day-two days of the month, and a lot, I mean A LOT of them trigger on days 1-4 or 4-7. Then things get calmer and then you have another, smaller lump of missions around day 18.

Also, some common missions have multiple variants that (I think) all have their separate rolls to appear, while many unique one-time missions have a low chance to appear, it may lead people to think the common missions "push out" the rare ones from the pool.