[DONE][Suggestion] Purchase from a country

[davide]

Slightly off topic but I came up with an association of ideas that could have some relevance and relevance to a possible implementation of the specific request as well

I was reminded of the XCOM Apoc feature in which some goods were purchasable by some corporations and if you were in conflict with them you could not buy anything (Marsec-flying armor suit?). In OpenXcom we don't have corporations but there are countries, if they are controlled by aliens you can't buy anything. It could be an additional motivation free country under alien control in order to obtain otherwise unavailable items

[Juku121]

Given that regaining countries is not generally a thing in mods, that would really cripple the player's economy. Especially if, say, the US got infiltrated and now half your weapon purchases are gone. :'(

[krautbernd]

Given that regaining countries is not generally a thing in mods, that would really cripple the player's economy. Especially if, say, the US got infiltrated and now half your weapon purchases are gone. :'(

To be fair it's up to players/modders if they want to enable this and/or to design mods around this.

[Juku121]

True, that's not a reason not to implement this. But it does mean using the feature is fraught with danger.

[krautbernd]

True, that's not a reason not to implement this. But it does mean using the feature is fraught with danger.

Why? All you have to do is set allowCountriesToCancelAlienPact to true and destroy the base associated with the infiltration.

[Juku121]

Why? All you have to do is set allowCountriesToCancelAlienPact to true and destroy the base associated with the infiltration.

Potentially destroying whatever balance the modder might have been aiming for with this feature.

Basically, why implement and play with a feature and then make said feature irrelevant?

I imagine one can try to balance for both regaining countries and purchaces being tied to countries, but such a mod would be quite different from anything we have today, and need a considerable amount of design to pull it off well.

[davide]

Perhaps you just need to add a new optional attribute on the purchasable items to indicate the country of origin and filter them in the list of purchasable

[krautbernd]

Potentially destroying whatever balance the modder might have been aiming for with this feature.

Basically, why implement and play with a feature and then make said feature irrelevant?

I imagine one can try to balance for both regaining countries and purchaces being tied to countries, but such a mod would be quite different from anything we have today, and need a considerable amount of design to pull it off well.

But that's not a coherent argument. You're claiming that a feature - which would have to be specifically included in a mod - is dangerous to implement because the mod would have to be balanced around it.

That's true for pretty much any feature that's included. That alone doesn't make a feature "fraught with danger".

The only way this could "break" existing mods ("because most mods don't include countries rejoining XCOM", according to you) would be to actually add this to an existing mod without taking into account what the feature does. Yeah, and if I give the basic rifle 500 hitpower it's probably also going to "break" the mod, or if I add elerium as a fuel to the players starting craft. Or if I lock important reasearch behind items that the player can't obtain. I don't see how this inherently any more "fraught with danger" that any other modification, let alone what that should be an argument for.

Regaining countries also doesn't make the feature "irrelevant". What are you even going on about here?

[Juku121]

...is dangerous to implement because the mod would have to be balanced around it.

That's true for pretty much any feature that's included. That alone doesn't make a feature "fraught with danger".

I think you're reading too much into this. This new feature would be dangerous, but there are other equally dangerous mechanics already in the game. A new modder can easily break their work and have to backtrack, and veteran modders need to be vigilant about them when moving forward. For a recent example, flying alien missions via non-existent UFOs. Or circular research dependencies, manufacturing costs vs profits, damage vs toHealth/toStun, captures locking the player out of progress, scripts doing something subtly wrong, etc. All easy to mess up if you're not careful, and all requiring a considerable amount of work to make the ruleset functional.

The distinction is that depending on implementation, it might be very easy to enable the feature while simultaneously either a) making it superfluous, or b) hitting players much harder than intended. One cannot just plop this mechanic into anything resembling vanilla infiltration (which many if not most mods retain) and hope it works out.

Regaining countries also doesn't make the feature "irrelevant". What are you even going on about here?

Vanilla-style infiltration is very random and unless the corresponding alien bases are truly monstrous, generally shortly reversible. So you end up with players getting parts of their arsenal removed without much control (big bad bases or no reclamation) or virtually no change at all (not so bad bases). Neither of these happening would require either scripting on par with the onetime XCF embassy keys, or an extremely tight tactical balance.

If this mechanic is to actually be worthwhile, one would need to make infiltration a core part of the game and give player the ability to manage the results. Otherwise, you could just make some random pop-up events that disable purchasing Rifle X or re-enabling Pistol Y. No new features necessary.

But that's not a coherent argument.

The argument was not about balancing at all, it was about the degree of it.

You were the guy who claimed "All you have to do is set allowCountriesToCancelAlienPact to true and destroy the base associated with the infiltration." My post was an answer to that. Now you're backtracking and saying "the mod would have to be balanced". Well, duh. Of course the argument is incoherent if you change the discussion.

[Meridian]

Implemented.

Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_PISTOL
    requiresBuyCountry: STR_AUSTRALIA


[davide]

Implemented.

Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_PISTOL
    requiresBuyCountry: STR_AUSTRALIA


thanks