[Rejected] Killing xcom soldiers via geoscape events

[Finnik]

Rejection reason: this is beyond/outside the scope of OXCE


I've just got an idea to call `void Soldier::die(SoldierDeath *death)` from the geoscape event. The idea is pretty raw, but I want to know your opinion, guys. There would be in issue to define SoldierDeath tho, but I think it could be fun to have some creativity here. For instance, a soldier can choose to leave the X-Com project if low score (low opinion on the project), can die because of super heavy wounded or infection because alien monster bite - modders could have a wide variety of applications. I would definitely use this in my project. Feedback welcome.

Would require some work, I know - defining soldier name in the event description text as a parameter, some model for defining soldier death case.

I also know your @Meridian opinion about removing items on event, but I think with `die()` method it is easier to do. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Meridian]

I'm really not a fan of negative events of any kind.
Instead, I prefer less resources + positive events only.
(Numerically) same outcome, but a much better feeling.

As for "dying on command", there's enough dying on the battlefield (if not then rebalance the battlefield)... the player doesn't need any more random f**k y*u in the face.
Just my opinion.

[Finnik]

Well, there are a lot of such "oh, bad for you" events in many mods, in XCF and XPZ, for instance. To me there are points:
1) Now it is not so easy to "punish" player for low score, if he or she managed to get enough funding before and/or manage to build economics, scoring does not become something important. Get negatives 2 times in a row is difficult, but having it for one month - more often event, that comes without any real impact. Quit of soldiers in that case could make soldiers care about score a lot more.
2) If the soldier leaves the battlefield alive, nothing bad could happen to him/her, no matter how critical the damage was, that is not very realistic IMO. Once time pass, you will get the soldier back in a very good shape. Partially could be done with some "scars" system from commendation or scripts, that mark such a soldier and debuff it, but I believe we must be super careful with it to keep things fun. Death of super-critical wounded soldier in med bay feels ok to me, promoting the player to use medkits more to patch things on site - also feels more realistic to me.
3) Hurt with Silacoid alien? We don't know what's that is yet, but I'm sure you will be fine, just have a rest =) Not to mention, say, Zombie bite.

If those events would be rare, could shake gameplay in a good way, IMO.

As usual, I'm OK if its rejected, just want to know if that can be good to OXCE project =)

[Solarius Scorch]

Finnik asked me to also chime in, so I'm saying that this feature doesn't look good as is - it's more of a "screw you player" than a useful feature. It could have some potential, but IMO would require a whole submodule of maintaining morale and such. I mean not a trivial thing - using mana as readiness and similar solutions wouldn't be enough. Therefore it seems to be way out of scope of OXCE.

[Meridian]

Well, there are a lot of such "oh, bad for you" events in many mods, in XCF and XPZ, for instance.

I haven't played XCF, I think it's not a mod for me (for more than just this reason).
No hard feelings Solarius

I have played XPZ and I can say that I hated every single negative event with all my heart.
(there's however so many good things about piratez that I happily accept the "bad" things as well... also "you lose $50k in a random event" and "you lose your pirate queen in a random event" are orders of magnitude of frustration apart)

1) Now it is not so easy to "punish" player for low score, if he or she managed to get enough funding before and/or manage to build economics, scoring does not become something important. Get negatives 2 times in a row is difficult, but having it for one month - more often event, that comes without any real impact. Quit of soldiers in that case could make soldiers care about score a lot more.

What I was trying to say is that a good game/mod doesn't need to "explicitly" punish the player at all.
IMO.

If those events would be rare, could shake gameplay in a good way, IMO.

I politely disagree.

I can't think of any situation, where I invest 200 hours of gameplay into pumping up my favourite soldier and just before I go to a final mission, the game tells me he died from COVID.
(if any such eventuality is even feasible, it would be an absolute no-go for me to play such a game/mod... no joke)

As usual, I'm OK if its rejected, just want to know if that can be good to OXCE project =)

It's not rejected, I provided feedback as a player, not as a dev.

As a dev, I've merged many features I didn't agree with (on a gameplay level) already, if this feature is well-defined and doesn't break other features, it has a chance. Priority depending on modders' feedback of course.

[Yankes]

Well, there are a lot of such "oh, bad for you" events in many mods, in XCF and XPZ, for instance. To me there are points:
1) Now it is not so easy to "punish" player for low score, if he or she managed to get enough funding before and/or manage to build economics, scoring does not become something important. Get negatives 2 times in a row is difficult, but having it for one month - more often event, that comes without any real impact. Quit of soldiers in that case could make soldiers care about score a lot more.
2) If the soldier leaves the battlefield alive, nothing bad could happen to him/her, no matter how critical the damage was, that is not very realistic IMO. Once time pass, you will get the soldier back in a very good shape. Partially could be done with some "scars" system from commendation or scripts, that mark such a soldier and debuff it, but I believe we must be super careful with it to keep things fun. Death of super-critical wounded soldier in med bay feels ok to me, promoting the player to use medkits more to patch things on site - also feels more realistic to me.
3) Hurt with Silacoid alien? We don't know what's that is yet, but I'm sure you will be fine, just have a rest =) Not to mention, say, Zombie bite.

If those events would be rare, could shake gameplay in a good way, IMO.

As usual, I'm OK if its rejected, just want to know if that can be good to OXCE project =)

1) I do not think this is good to punish player too much in this case, only problem would be if player could completely ignore score but its is impossible as there is already Game Over when have two bad months.
2) There already lot of penalties like long recovery time or low freshness, and more importantly give unit was already close to death in battle filed, wrong roll and it would be dead already. This mean if you want have long term same effect you could increase damage by 10%.
3) There already mods that have more robust gameplay around "Zombie bite", I do not think we need this too outside of battlespace.
3)

[krautbernd]

I have played XPZ and I can say that I hated every single negative event with all my heart.
(there's however so many good things about piratez that I happily accept the "bad" things as well... also "you lose $50k in a random event" and "you lose your pirate queen in a random event" are orders of magnitude of frustration apart)

In turn I haven't played XPZ but a lot of XCF, and I have simply disabled all *lolsorandum* bad events that are simply there to punish the player for no reason, especially if they are unavoidable. Simply not a fan of pretending on one hand that the player is in control only to get hit with a random negative event that the players has no no control over or chance to avoid.

While I like to see new gameplay mechanics, having soldiers die in geoscape and making it an interesting and enjoyable experience would probably be non-trivial, given that just having a soldiers "leave/"die" randomly would be a bit pointless. What would these events be tied to? Morale loss/fatal wounds/recovery time? Number of sustained PSI attacks or aliens/civilians killed? Alien/X-Com points at the end of the month?

[Finnik]

In turn I haven't played XPZ but a lot of XCF, and I have simply disabled all *lolsorandum* bad events that are simply there to punish the player for no reason, especially if they are unavoidable. Simply not a fan of pretending on one hand that the player is in control only to get hit with a random negative event that the players has no no control over or chance to avoid.

While I like to see new gameplay mechanics, having soldiers die in geoscape and making it an interesting and enjoyable experience would probably be non-trivial, given that just having a soldiers "leave/"die" randomly would be a bit pointless. What would these events be tied to? Morale loss/fatal wounds/recovery time? Number of sustained PSI attacks or aliens/civilians killed? Alien/X-Com points at the end of the month?

I have to say I also dislike random negative events that appear for no reason and I as a player can not avoid it, so as a modder I also turn it off =) All my examples have reason (except RNG roll) and more or less avoidable, at least they depends on player actions.

I personally would use it together with other FtA mechanics - loyalty for instance, to make, say, a scientist say "screw you" and leave the team. Also, this could be cool as hacking lose case event, like soldier was blackmailed by MIB as he/she disposed some personal information. I understand that it is not related to OXCE, but I wanted to know if other modders feel to use it in their OXCE-based projects. So don't get me wrong, no pushing here =)
Also, I thought making soldier death because of uncured fatal wounds and low hp, but your feedback push me to think more if it's a good game design.

Thanks for feedback, I will take it into consideration for sure!

[Yankes]

I have to say I also dislike random negative events that appear for no reason and I as a player can not avoid it, so as a modder I also turn it off =) All my examples have reason (except RNG roll) and more or less avoidable, at least they depends on player actions.

And how random death is avoidable? You have units that already have have big hole in chest but by miracle still live, what actions you need to do to prevent its random deaths after month in base? By definition of random events there is none available.

If you had "surgeon" minigame where you could still save his life then would have some player actions to avoid negative events.

[Finnik]

And how random death is avoidable? You have units that already have have big hole in chest but by miracle still live, what actions you need to do to prevent its random deaths after month in base? By definition of random events there is none available.

If you had "surgeon" minigame where you could still save his life then would have some player actions to avoid negative events.

He-he =) well, I mentioned uncured fatal wounds on recovery, and as a player you can choose to cure it before you go, so it is not that random =) Also, again, its FtA thing, but you can have choices in events there, so for instance the player can have an event like - hey, we need super expensive treatment or the soldier might die, and then the player would have to choose either to spend money or face risk of soldier death.
But I will say again - if it does not fit OXCE - I'm completely fine 

[Yankes]

Ok, then this is not "random" event as can be trigger by direct user action (aka minigame like: pay 1M for 100% survive chance or pay none and have only 60%).

[Vakrug]

(there's however so many good things about piratez that I happily accept the "bad" things as well... also "you lose $50k in a random event" and "you lose your pirate queen in a random event" are orders of magnitude of frustration apart)

$50k...  I just lost $50m due to random event.  Never before I felt so satisfied and right while modifying a save file... 

When a negative event occurs and took away from a player some resources, it is very important to take into account how much effort it took from a player to obtain those lost resources. And by effort I mean active effort, that is player actions taken specifically for that resource generation, not actions taken that generated that resource as byproduct. (Simple example: Player assault an alien base to get a live commander. After successful mission an event occurred that says that the player lost all loot from that alien base assault, but keeps that captured commander. Even if the player essentially just lost a lot of money, it is not so frustrating, because money was not a goal in the first place. But if an event would take away that captured commander, it would feel like a big waste of energy and time.) In my case, when I lost a lot of money, it was very frustrating exactly because how much active effort it took to get those. In Xpiratez you print money by producing medicine (this is not some kind of an exploit, the game clearly states that this a way to go). And this involves a lot of clicking and concentration. Loosing money in any other XCOM mod is less frustrating, because you are not printing money by clicking in those.

So, if you implement a negative event, please, assess how many players clicks you invalidate!

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, this is precisely why gold and silver bars exist. And why it's not a good idea to sell credit chips (the other reason being saving for a mint). There are other items which can be used as investments, but these are the most practical.

To be honest I don't understand the design reasons behind this, but I'm not going to assume they're bad just because I don't get it.

[Vakrug]

To be honest I don't understand the design reasons behind this, but I'm not going to assume they're bad just because I don't get it.

It is very bad because it was totally unexpected. I had lost some money due to events earlier, but it was a tiny amount and it was for lore reasons mostly.
And since it was unexpected, why would one assume that storing gold is a safe bet? Nothing prevents developer to steel gold during random event as well...

[Solarius Scorch]

It is very bad because it was totally unexpected. I had lost some money due to events earlier, but it was a tiny amount and it was for lore reasons mostly.

Dioxine has repeated many times that that you're supposed to fail, learn and retry the game. (I've never felt this to be necessary myself, but I've been playing this mod since its conception, long before events and such.)

Nothing prevents developer to steel gold during random event as well...

Nothing except the game's code.