How to start the game earlier?

[Praevasc]

I like to play a pseudo-ironman style. Not true ironman, becasue I don't want to start a long game from the beginning after a crash or a major screwup, but I do prefer to not reload after suboptimal missions and even larger losses. And I like to play blindly, not knowing what to expect. This is how I played this mod halfway (when it was 1.8 ), on an easy difficulty setting, and then ran out of time when the invasion begun, with almost all cult missions unfinished.
This is why I had to edit my save file at the end of 1998 to get a few extra months to prepare.
The problem with easier difficulty modes is that events don't happen as often, so there are fewer occasions for gathering crucial loot and crucial prisoners. Especially if I don't reload if I failed to capture a cult leader alive, and have to wait ages until such a mission appears again.

Therefore it would be nice to have a way to start the game earlier. Maybe even a whole custom difficulty setting, but I think the latter is mainly the job of OXCE and not of the mod.

It's easy to turn back time in a savegame, just edit the date and the "monthsPassed" at the beginning of the save file. But as monthsPassed starts with 0, I don't know how to reliably start the game earlier instead of just turning back time after x months.

[Fomka]

Did you try negative MonthPassed? I do not know for sure, just  guessing whether the algorithm will accept it.

[Praevasc]

Did you try negative MonthPassed? I do not know for sure, just  guessing whether the algorithm will accept it.

Yes, I though of that, and I tried it, it seems to work, but I'm unsure if it won't have some weird negative consequences or side-effects later on. The initial messages and transfers and introductions work well, so I guess it should theoretically be safe.

[Meridian]

Definitely don't set monthsPassed to a negative value! It will have tons of bad side effects, some completely game-breaking.
We use this internally for "New Battle" game mode.

If you want to keep the early game for longer, you can reset monthsPassed back to zero every month, or every few months.

[Praevasc]

Definitely don't set monthsPassed to a negative value! It will have tons of bad side effects, some completely game-breaking.
We use this internally for "New Battle" game mode.

If you want to keep the early game for longer, you can reset monthsPassed back to zero every month, or every few months.

Thank you for your answer!
(I hope setting the date on its own is safe? If I wish the invasion to start at the canonical day instead of later due to resetting monthsPassed, I'd start the game with an earlier date and then remember to reset monthsPassed when that amount of months has passed)

[Meridian]

Setting the date is safe... it has no impact on the game.

[Finnik]

I think that would not help. All game logic is defined with month passed from the game start (starting with 0), not ingame date. So with changing the starting date, you will also move all in-game events. Though, AFAIK, XCF starts at the very end of the month, so you can change the date within that month to get some result =)

Way to solve it - is to change every month setting in mission and event scripts (and arc scripts, I can't remember if XCF has any). But this change would be prone to bugs, as there is a lot of logic....

[Meridian]

That's what I said.

To repeat:
1. setting the date is harmless and does practically nothing
2. setting months passed to zero will postpone most game progress
3. setting months passed below zero will break the game

[Kozinsky]

Just use this submod.