Advanced Itelligence Idea

[betatester]

I had an idea and I would like to know the community feelings about it.
At the start of each month if you got an advanced intelligence building you  can choose in a limited list one mission for each building that will appear this month (or maybe the next one) in the base detection range of a large radar

Of course you will need some prerequisites for the mission to be available
- mission is available naturally
- mission can spawn in the vicinity
- you have made some researches like having researched rats to be able to trigger a rat mission or other topics depending on the mission
- some missions may need a specific building like radar, hyperwaves radar, HQ, Virtualized HQ, bio Lab and so on
- some missions are excluded from this choice (because no matter how you focus on some mission type you can't schedule the invasion)
- you may search for bases or mansions that are here but you fail to spot. But if there aren't any you will have a message can't find any base in the vicinity at the end of the month

When the mission pops you got a message like Base X Advanced intelligence center have spotted a nest of Bullfrogs and the standard EA mission but you know it's bullfrogs and gear-up accordingly
 

It may or may not cost money because you put extra effort and extra working hours into it

I see it as a way to correct a little bit RNG.

[Stone Lake]

Impossible under current engine. Nuff said.

Having advanced intelligence center basically means you've graduated past most possible RNG screw-ups, such as that one last safehouse / outpost. So RNG-correcting at this point is questionable. What needs correcting, exactly?

Most "RNG" missions are interesting in the case that they've never spawned before. Researching "- you have made some researches like having researched rats to be able to trigger a rat mission" pretty much means this mission has spawned before, you've got some relevant stuff from there "rats", and thus such mission is completely uninteresting.

There are however some "farming" RNG missions - e.g. you may want to farm aforementioned rats, bats, sectoids, osiron stuff, etc, which you may want more of. But personally i'm fine with them being RNG.

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As for correction of early RNG. Technically, mission spawning is controlled by triggers. Some are set permanently, most are enabled/disabled once you progress through the plot (by researches). Most  triggers spawn missions randomly. It's possible to make triggers that are 1) certain 2) work only a few times 3) guarded behind research of some item perhaps.

So - make some "LOTUS SAFEHOUSE LEAD" item, tie it to unlock safehouse spawn trigger that will work once; sprinkle the item at apprehension mission or something (at map, or probably better in loadout of cultists there). As a result -> player completes mission, sees item -> researches it -> has a guaranteed once-per-campaign spawn of a mission (next month after said item is researched).

[betatester]

As an example actually in my game:
- No underwater mission is popping even if they could
- would love to have an alpha cat mission or a doctor alpha mission that still doesn't show
- need some live spikeboar because I realized I sold it by mistake
- would like some missions to train some bases

An option could be also to be able to do some missions that are currently handled by government and aren't available anymore.

[Rag]

I don't think the facility itself can effect missions outside of radar coverage but could be wrong on that, it might be why the Kitsune only requires the research and not the facility itself built.

As mentioned above I think if you create new missions based on triggers you might be able to force some in, using Spikeboar as an example you could make a mission trigger with the Advanced Intelligence Centre but with false on Spikeboar Autopsy complete, that way if you never did an autopsy to keep the corpses for the quillbows it can spawn a mission to give you another chance to get more, but not bother with it if you have done the autopsy as that would assume you didn't need the corpses anymore for quillbows. Never made missions of my own though so idk if thats that simple.

[Stone Lake]

Underwater will appear so much you'll get sick of it.
Alpha will also appear. Maybe not Alpha Wolf / Cat - they're somewhat tricky to get. These are basically alternative ways to get psionics - besides that, it's just a werewolf mission with one special guy.

There's a whole syndicate arc later, in which (among other things) you catch lab scientists, interrogate them to research monsters (like spikeboar). And at the end of the arc you'll be able to just buy quillbow components.

And of course there are plenty of missions just to grind troops (e.g. just complete asylum ghosts, enabling non-stop ghost arc). You can get like 40-60 maxed ninjas up to 1999 which is enough to steamroll the campaign on any difficulty.

Having said that.
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I checked ruleset:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Mission_Scripts
and there a couple of interesting rules:
itemTriggers   A list of items that can influence the execution of this script. Similar to research triggers; checks the presence of items in the base stores (not anywhere else).   -
facilityTriggers   A list of base facilities that can influence the execution of this script. Similar to research triggers; checks the presence of a facility (in any xcom base).   -

So it seems you can on/off a particular mission on your own discretion if you want to, by manufacturing/buying/finding a trigger-item and then selling it, but need to check up on that more.