First, thanks for all the amazing work that has gone into all the modding and developing for this game!
I would like to know just how difficult it would be to implement some form of customizable difficulty for the game. It has often been said that Superhuman makes the Battlescape hard due to the number and stats of the aliens, but due to the huge amount of loot you get to sell from them it makes the Geoscape easier. The reverse is true for the easiest setting.
So, my thinking is that you could have sliders to set various parameters, such as:
- Number of aliens (with a minimum depending on ship type).
- Number of terrorists per mission (that would have terrorists at all)
- Alien stats (could range from 50% to 200%, for example)
- Amount of loot recoverable (for example with 1x of every item that could drop, to some other max number)
- Frequency of Terror missions (want to have 5 per month, sure!)
- Cost of construction/upkeep
- Strength of UFOs
- Funding and score calculations
This isn't a complete list, of course.
Now, I know that actually implementing this would be a huge task, but once the core code would be in place I think it could dramatically change the game. You could set it up so that each mission would have few, but very tough enemies that drop minimal loot for a quick but tough game. Or, a game where you have loads of missions with loads of enemies that are weak, if that's what you like doing, or any other combination.
So, just how difficult would it be to implement this? Is this something that could be on the "sometime in the future" list, or more in the "dream on" list?
Thanks in advance!