OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => The X-Com Files => Topic started by: Jojo on September 23, 2022, 05:24:31 pm
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It's only August 1998.
I have 18 manors on my map.
Superhuman difficulty.
(http://xcom2.png)
Many of them have migs.
They shot down your planes with 1300 speed fighters. (this base gets immediately intercepted)
(http://xcom1.png)
I was notified only about 2 Manors.
I took one out (Exalt) but it was EXTREMELY difficult with little reward and many casulties.
I did every mission available to me.
Seeing 18 of them feels bad.
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I have the same exact experience, I'm probably a dozen SH/I runs in and all end in similar fashion - no matter how well I perform against the cultists (or how bad, for that matter), by mid-late 1998, there is *always* 20 manors around the globe. This wouldn't be so bad if some of them didn't already evolve into launching Migs, which completely hinders you from playing the game. Yes you can bait them but surely it is not intended to have this amount of Manors while closing 90% of all cultists cases. Migs of your own are gated behind promo 3 and several research projects, so the absolute earliest you can get this is by late 1998 and even then, you would go equal.
Another issue (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that the Manors seem to generate negative score every month? I did fairly well in certain months but ended up having negative score in the thousands, the mission score (or event/despawn score) didn't add up at all to this.
In summary, I thought Manors are there to punish players that are too passive on the geoscape and not be something you can't avoid being swarmed by.
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In my previous campaign (technically current as I haven't played in a while), I had dozens of Manors, bases, and Hybrid things. The most annoying were the Hybrids as they popped up dozens of fast attack crafts.
The good news are the crafts can be defeated by most of X-Com interceptors. A good thing to get bonus for the pilots.
As for the Manors, once everything has been researched, just bombard everything and everyone with no mercy and extreme prejudice. These are good training missions for 1/2 of the squad who might be still rookies. Just pay attention to the reinforcement areas. Those nice ambush zones are a two-way street.
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This is strange. By August '98, you've had 11 occasions for the manor-generating script to run, with 32x3% chance each time. So the expected number of manors ought to be 11*32*0.03 or near enough 11. That is, one per month. My own experience tends to reflect the roughly one per month nature of manors.
There's of course the tiny chance that you get 30 manors per month, but it shouldn't happen all the time.
AFAIK, difficulty should not affect mission generation, so Superhuman should not matter. Perhaps I'm wrong?
'Many of them have MiGs' is probably the fact that manors are coordinated to all stay roughly at the same tier, and so upgrade every 8 months on average. Although you should be seeing other fighter jets as well, unless your Earth has been taken over solely by Red Dawn. :D
...surely it is not intended to have this amount of Manors while closing 90% of all cultists cases.
You obviously don't know Solarius. :P
Migs of your own are gated behind promo 3 and several research projects, so the absolute earliest you can get this is by late 1998 and even then, you would go equal.
Eh, depends on the weapons. Avalanches are an auto-win button. Stingrays are a crapshoot, true.
Theoretically, you should be getting to Interceptors by the time the invasion starts, and those are pretty good against cultist craft.
Another issue (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that the Manors seem to generate negative score every month?
Yep, all 'alien' bases do. Though the worst you get from even the biggest manor is 5*30 = 150 a month. 20 of them would be pretty bad, though.
Edit: The bigger problem is that high-tier manors can upgrade as well, and those missions are much harder. Hybrids, Golden Academy, extra High Temples.
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Honestly my main issue with manors is how repetitive they are. I think it is a fun mission, but having to repeat it 11 times is a bit ...ugh. And yeah if you are behind the curve they just hit too hard. Imo would make most sense to then being rarer and not spawn jets until late 98 probably 99 specially considering how sometimes you can be locked out promo III for a big time.
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So every of my campaigns so far depend on the rng god, gotcha. Having every faction with 8 rolls at a 3% chance per month to spawn a manor is imo not a good design.
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Well, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps Superhuman does have an effect, perhaps there's some other source of manors that I'm not aware of, perhaps my experience is tainted due to frequent reloading, etc.
Appropriately enough, this is my 404th post here, too. ;D
And, yes, this mod has a bunch of strange choices in it. Comes with the territory, mods are by default somewhat idiosyncratic. Fortunately, in XCF most such things are easy to change yourself. Well, sometimes it depends on your tolerance for mindless busywork. :)
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Yeah personally, I cant play these types of games without true ironman but it feels like some of the difficulty spikes in this mod are more geared towards save scammers and not balanced around ironman. I will see if my current run fails again due to manor spam and if yes, i will try to change the spawning to start around month 14 instead of 10.
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it feels like some of the difficulty spikes in this mod are more geared towards save scammers and not balanced around ironman.
I personally think this mod is balanced around "player already knows everything about this mod and what mod can throw at a player". This is definitely true about research tree in early game. I don't think this is absolutely bad. After all there are only 2 possibilities: either game is balanced around experienced player or not. And both are equally terrifying...
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There' a simpler explanation: the mod is WIP, and balancing happens in unpredictably stochastic steps. :P
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I gotta give feedback and say that I stopped playing the mod due to manors. I explained my problems with them in another post. It is not that they are not doable on iron man, but I just don't see why and how there are a lot of manors already tougher than the cults' HQs (there are certainly more enemies) around August/September. I mean I am facing 90+ enemies on the third difficulty. I do think the idea is good but needlessly excessive.
In my opinion there are three ways to nerf the manors:
1) Make them easier relative to your tech the first months they spawn, so it would be your fault if you let them progress. They are already very dangerous when they spawn, and there are quite a few.
2) Decrease their evolution speed. I don't want to fight that many enemies around August, certainly not with those cheating reinforcemets that begin to attack you the moment they spawn, especially when you have no idea where they'll appear and thus take proper cover etc.
3) Or the manors should be gone when you terminate their respective cults.
4) Or at least give us better ways to shoot down their crafts, or better undercover crafts before Promotion III.
As I said, just my feedback.
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While I generally agree that (especially tier 3) manors are too much, I do have to point out that:
- Manors already have a 6-month grace period when they don't upgrade.
- Lower-tier manors don't have reinforcements, and only the same kind of equipment as regular cultists. Not sure how one could reasonably nerf their 'tech'.
- Manors don't self-propagate, so killing off existing manors does nothing to stop more manors from showing up.
- You're supposed to be able to start engaging UFOs in 1999, so being able to fight regular jet fighters 4-5 months earlier is not a big stretch. And actually makes your own MiGs useful for once.
Personally, I'd do away with the 32*3% business and make each cult 25% likely to create a manor per month, or thereabouts. And delay tier 3 manors till October 1998, give or take a month.
Oh, and give cultist HQs some reinforcements. >:D
Moving MiGs and Stingrays from Promo III to Promo II would also be nice.
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Yeah, I don't know the exact mechanics behind them, and didn't know they had fixed 6 months where they don't upgrade. But I seem to remember the circle around them getting bigger before 6 months passed. Maybe I discovered them late.
Still they are pretty difficult the first time they spawn. So maybe the best moment to strike them is later in that 6 months period, where you have developed your tech more and they stayed the same. However there are still a lot and a few of them will most likely slip by, at least with my progress speed with the game. I mean this knowledge won't help with my problems much.
With my previous playthroughs, the earliest I've unlocked Promotion III was still November. Add the time to do the proper researchs etc. I don't think I can get jets that fast. I do agree if MIGs were unlockable before Promotion III it would help. To be honest those Little Birds are pretty pointless in the game IIRC (been a while I played). You don't need to attack any cult crafts until they start to go faster than your transports, and once they do most of the time they'll destroy those helicopters.
Overall I still think the best fix would the destruction of manors when the cults are terminated. That way it would give the player a very good reason to rush the final assault and until then we'd have to play cat and mouse stealth games with them as intended, and this would actually make us feel rewarded when arc is complete. I don't even feel like I terminated a cult at this state, as basically I still need to do a few missions more difficult than HQs. The downside to this is you wouldn't 100% need to attack a manor outside of loot and flight security, but it'd still be better.
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But I seem to remember the circle around them getting bigger before 6 months passed. Maybe I discovered them late.
Most likely.
Still they are pretty difficult the first time they spawn. So maybe the best moment to strike them is later in that 6 months period, where you have developed your tech more and they stayed the same.
I mean this knowledge won't help with my problems much.
My comment was more aimed at how it'd be hard to meaningfully nerf tier 1 manors while staying 'realistic'.
Striking at a specific time is hard because there's little in-game info to tell you how old a manor is. Maybe you spotted it late, maybe it's been rolling snake eyes on its upgrades for a while, etc.
To be honest those Little Birds are pretty pointless in the game...
Well, you get some score and pilot experience out of using them. But, yeah, far from necessary. If Solarius makes more interceptable mission-spawning cultist craft, then maybe they'd have a role.
Overall I still think the best fix would the destruction of manors when the cults are terminated.
You could also just disable the interception missions upon cult termination. You'd still want to clean up the globe at some point, but a decapitation strike would actually have teeth then.
Manor-spawned missions have a strange progression ATM, too. At least the infiltrations got fixed.
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But I seem to remember the circle around them getting bigger before 6 months passed.
What I hate about mansions is that after certain date they spawn as level 2 and after another certain date they spawn as level 3. This is not realistic and fair. This basically means you almost guaranteed to lose Osprey to Migs at some point. The nerf I want for mansions is so that mansions will spawn as level 1 at any date and only their upgrade time is decreased over time.
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I understand the sentiment, but that'd mean you'd be very unlikely to see a tier 3 manor at all. Maybe a mix of low- and high-tier manors instead of a binary switch?
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While I generally agree that (especially tier 3) manors are too much, I do have to point out that:
- Manors already have a 6-month grace period when they don't upgrade.
- Lower-tier manors don't have reinforcements, and only the same kind of equipment as regular cultists. Not sure how one could reasonably nerf their 'tech'.
- Manors don't self-propagate, so killing off existing manors does nothing to stop more manors from showing up.
- You're supposed to be able to start engaging UFOs in 1999, so being able to fight regular jet fighters 4-5 months earlier is not a big stretch. And actually makes your own MiGs useful for once.
Update from my brother's SH/I campaign, his kitsune got shot down by a 2800 human ufo in dec 1998.
The manors appear too early, spawn too often and upgrade too fast. You simply do not have the arsenal to effectively deal with such air presence.
Imo while an interesting mechanic to keep the cults relevant, they are way overtuned and make the game not fun.
Can someone give me a step-by-step guide on how to change the starting month for Manor spam from month 10?
If not possible, I will have to unfortunately shelf the mod.
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...his kitsune got shot down by a 2800 human ufo in dec 1998.
There is no speed 2800 Earth craft. The fastest jet the cultists have maxes out at 2350.
However, there is a speed 2800 craft... A tiny flying sub from T'leth. I have a hard time seeing how that one could kill a Kitsune unless the latter was unarmed. In which case it was a self-inflicted wound.
Early manors are bearable and take like 8-9 moths to upgrade, possibly even more. Any longer and the upgrades would stop mattering. Even tier 2 with helicopters can be evaded or fought with Little Birds. It's the instant tier 3 manors with fighter jets, insane reinforcements and beefed-up security that kill your campaign.
Can someone give me a step-by-step guide on how to change the starting month for Manor spam from month 10?
Open missionScripts_XCOMFILES.rul with a non-enriching text editor (Notepad++ is popular), find the line saying - type: CultManorBlackLotus, change firstMonth and lastMonth to your liking. Copy this seven more times for Black Lotus, 3x8 times for the other three cults, and then start over with - type: CultGreaterManorBlackLotus And again for - type: CultGreatestManorBlackLotus and its 31 friends.
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There is no speed 2800 Earth craft. The fastest jet the cultists have maxes out at 2350.
However, there is a speed 2800 craft... A tiny flying sub from T'leth. I have a hard time seeing how that one could kill a Kitsune unless the latter was unarmed. In which case it was a self-inflicted wound.
This is good info, I'll let him know. And thank you for the instructions, I'll give them a go!
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i feel like something similar happened to me in my recent campaign and i was just on veteran. i got to nov/dec 1998 and i was completing every mission just fine but every score at end of the month was -1700 and i couldn't for the life of me figure out how this was happening after several reloads and replays of the 2 months. Now based on this thread it seems i had manors spawned all over the map and didnt know. (only 3 were showing but migs would attack from all over heading to missions)
I definitely feel this should be tweaked, or at least have the player notified.
And getting into the conversation about who the game is balanced for. the research tree pretty much requires game knowledge already. I mean yeah i get it. it has a search feature.. but as a new player, if i dont even know what to search for (which i dont) a search feature doesnt really do me much good. it needs branching system so you can break down into the tech tiers and see whats there. its broken down in other areas (like the filters on the available tech to research screen) the tech tree should have something similar. not just an empty screen with a search bar.
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...or at least have the player notified.
Well, you were notified, via MiG Express. :P
I don't even know how a modder could detect you're being overrun with manors.
the research tree
X-Com is a strategy game. I know that CiV popularised the idea of playing strategy games as RPGs where the strategic entity or its handler is your 'character', and you blindly plod along and LARP strategic choices, but IMO that's a pretty stupid way to play a strategy game. How many times have you tried optimising your walk on the tech tree in a 4X game? Same thing here.
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I remembered my 1-st playthrough. It was ruined partially because of too many mansions. But is was not due to I couldn't defeat a mansion, but because I didn't know I must search for them! After all I was notified about the first mansion (just like I was notified about pretty much every mission appearance earlier). I realized there are hidden bases only when I notices that enemy crafts are despawning in the same spots over and over again.
I have a proposal: when player gets notification about appearance of the first mansion, instead of showing just a text "Alien base detected" it should be something like "Council agents detected an alien base. By pure coincidence and sheer luck. Don't expect to be notified about further alien bases next time. Start using your crafts to patrol areas where graphics shows UFO activities. (Pro tip: countries are smaller than continents.)"
BTW, other strange things happened during my first playthrough that was very misleading:
- "The Root of All Evil" spawned next to my main base in the range of AIRBORNE MUDRANGER and kept spawning in the same spot over and over again. I was certain it was not a coincidence.
- First cult mansion spawned almost on top of one of my secondary bases. (MUDRANGER time!) Again I thought it was not a coincidence.
- When I encountered my first Migs I was able to return a vehicle back to base before before Migs were able to catch it. Another "to good for coincidence" situation.
And also, I was paying attention to graphics in the start of the game like I did it while playing in vanilla XCOM. But I soon realized that there is no UFOs (and there shouldn't be until 1999-01-01, how game told me later) I stopped doing that.
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Thanks for all the feedback, I'll keep thinking about this.
EDIT: I moved the whole off-topic into a new thread: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,10789.0.html
Next time I'll just nuke it. Honestly...
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I managed to get Promotion III due to a lucky Deep Ones mission in August 1998. So I decided to immediately tech into Mortars, and oh boy they are WORTH that price tag. On a totally unrelated note, I learned that soldiers can get the "betrayer" commendation after blowing themselves up.
I do agree that these missions feel tougher than some of the HQ missions, but the only thing I'd really change would be disallowing reinforcements from appearing on your own spawn point, or perhaps even on the same side of the map. Otherwise, smoke to conceal the spawn and enough mortars to flatten the place is the doctor's prescription. Even with that, it's a tough fight! Before mortars though, they are quite the nightmare. I tried using grenade launchers back in Promo2 for the same effect, but it wasn't killy enough even with those chokepoints.
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I do agree that these missions feel tougher than some of the HQ missions, but the only thing I'd really change would be disallowing reinforcements from appearing on your own spawn point, or perhaps even on the same side of the map.
This sounds reasonable. OK, I'll do that.
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Open missionScripts_XCOMFILES.rul with a non-enriching text editor (Notepad++ is popular), find the line saying - type: CultManorBlackLotus, change firstMonth and lastMonth to your liking. Copy this seven more times for Black Lotus, 3x8 times for the other three cults, and then start over with - type: CultGreaterManorBlackLotus And again for - type: CultGreatestManorBlackLotus and its 31 friends.
Sorry to report that this did NOT work -- I changed T1 Manors for all cults firstMonth: 15 and lastMonth: 19 and started a new SH/I campaign and as clockwork, there is a manor spawned in Oct, 1997 right next to my base.
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can someone, please, for the love of god tell me how to tweak this? I love this mod but hate the Manor spam with a passion
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checked my save game and have 2 manors already spawned on the map, month 10 xd
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Sorry to report that this did NOT work -- I changed T1 Manors for all cults firstMonth: 15 and lastMonth: 19 and started a new SH/I campaign and as clockwork, there is a manor spawned in Oct, 1997 right next to my base.
I just tested and it did work for me. So I suspect you missed something. Post your changed missionScripts_XCOMFILES.rul, and make sure the changed file isn't put somewhere it can't work, or that you don't have a duplicate somewhere.
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you are right, I found couple of other versions of this file, going to replace them and see if it helps. fingers crossed. sorry for being so pissed of but I spent a lot of time on this mod already. Don't want another campaign screwed due to this. Cheers man
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you shouldn't have more than one version of this file... or any file!
if you do, even the file duplication alone can also be the cause of excessive mission generation (and of a million other issues)
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Just on these manor things...
I think I have just entered 1st October 1998.
I just had my osprey shot down by a Mig (I also had a Syndicate base attack last month which was also a major bum ache... the difficulty has just ramped up).
Am i just way behind on research?
Looking at the Promotion 3 research tree.
I have yet to have a cave mission (I think I didnt capture a shambler... I got one a couple of missions ago though)
I have only had 2 cyberweb missions in the sewers and have not found a portal. These dont seem to come up much.
I have not captured a deep one (Not sure how to do this without a Dagon mission... but I completeed the HQ a few months ago... didnt realise I need a live deep one)
I am just waiting for the Black Lotus HQ mission to come up again, and then all of the Cults are done.
I think I have everything else. I have taken down several manors, but I cannot locate any more despite scouting with my Osprey near where I see vehicles activeit(am I doing that wrong?).
Almost all of my misions are Syndicate related at the moment.
Any suggestions?
1. If I research the shambler I should start getting cave missions and into the Dark (If I get an artifact from a cave mission)
2. I guess i have been unlucky with the RNG on Cyberweb
3. How do I get a deep one?
4. Is there another way to spank a MIG?
Cheers!
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October 1998.
osprey
Am i just way behind on research?
Hard to say based on just that.
I think I have everything else.
You mean for Promotion III? You only need one of the four prerequisites plus ransacking the HQ of a single cult, not even killing them off permanently.
I have only had 2 cyberweb missions in the sewers and have not found a portal. These dont seem to come up much.
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Almost all of my misions are Syndicate related at the moment.
XCF RNG at it's finest. :)
Not sure how to do this without a Dagon mission...
...I need a live deep one
As far as I recall, the redundancy is that if you destroy the Church of Dagon, you get the T'leth Embassy missions where you can capture Gillmen Deep Ones again. Then proceed from there.
...I cannot locate any more despite scouting with my Osprey near where I see vehicles activeit(am I doing that wrong?).
It might be that your radar locks onto the cultists too late and they've already moved away from their base. Though I doubt it.
You do remember to patrol above a city since manors only spawn in cities, right? Osprey should have the same base detection radius as its radar circle, so I see no problems with that.
If I research the shambler I should start getting cave missions and into the Dark (If I get an artifact from a cave mission)
And you've got Motion Scanners researched.
Is there another way to spank a MIG?
What's the 'first' method? Usually, one of the following: 1) use the Kitsune; 2) lure them away with another craft; 3) MiGs or Interceptors of your own, 4) another speedy transport (Cuteranger will work, maybe even a Skyranger if you surprise the MiGs).
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Ahhhh...
I only need one. I thought I had Alien Origins. I still need to capture an Alien though. That should sort me then. I misread the P3 as needing all of the prerequisites as I thought I had that tech.I mistook it for Alien biology, or Acnient Aliens, or Alien Language... or something else with the word alien in.
Oh... I did not realise you needed to be above a city... I never scroll in that far on the geoscape... Although I might need to give the mig a wide birth. Is there an AA weapon for a humvee or little bird?
I left the motion scanner research until very late. There is always a bigger gun...
Not got the Kitsune yet. Noticed that is a P3 anyway. I dont think I have a fast enough vehicle to lure it away yet. Just need to find a UFO landing and punch me a sectoid.
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You need to capture a lot more than just one alien. :)
You don't need to be straight above the city, but if you're somewhere where there's no city, you're searching in the wrong place.
Humvees can mount a man-portable gun. I find the BO miniguns best. Little Bird can mount four, but anything you put on it has too little range to fight MiGs and not rely on being extremely lucky.
Motion Scanner is not so useful by itself (since dogs and other sniffing critters exist), but it gets you prox grenades and Into the Dark.
You don't need a very fast craft to lure cult aircraft away. Decoys can work. Worst comes to worst, you can just sacrifice a rookie in a helicopter and make your raid after they've been blown away and the MiGs have drifted off.
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I have a couple of Q's on manor mechanics / functionality.
How do I see the in-game list of manors in my game? Like in the screenshot given? I can't seem to find any info on this. Also, do manors eventually stop spawning or do they continually pop up as long as the cults still exist?
Like once the alien invasion begins, does that become the focus? Or are cults still pumpin'?
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How do I see the in-game list of manors in my game? Like in the screenshot given? I can't seem to find any info on this.
Not sure which sceenshot you refer to, but the simplest way to display all known targets is pressing 't'.
Also, do manors eventually stop spawning or do they continually pop up as long as the cults still exist?
They do pop up as long as the cult exists.
Like once the alien invasion begins, does that become the focus? Or are cults still pumpin'?
Kinda halfway, but I'm slowly shifting the focus towards Earth enemies. (Alien will still remain, though.)