Well, this was kinda going in circles, so I'll move it over.
The proposed mission being argued about:
After reading Rezaf's Recap, I was struck by the idea of having somewhat more diverse crop circles/cattle mutilations, and perhaps even abductions? Namely, offering some mission sites where you get a very early warning and the UFO is still there, making circles, molesting cows, impregnating Earth women, or whatever it is that they do.
Would need a pretty tight timer, comparable to UFO landings, or perhaps double landings. 10-12 hours, tops. The three varieties of scout ships and maybe Abductors/Harvesters look like a natural fit for such missions.
As time goes by, the balance would shift from traumatised farmers towards MiBs and then bigger and bigger farmer-traumatising-UFOs, with everything still possible at any stage, but weighted towards different target mixes.
This would sorta solve both of rezaf's complaints about there being a lack of early UFOs, and crop circles sticking around way too long. And also incentivise building transport coverage for time-critical missions earlier.
An additional aspect that came out of the non-crop circles continuing below was that it'd probably be a good idea to make this into a 'terror' mission with a UFO spawning first and then proceeding to their target, so there's potentially some early warning.
I already laid down why I don't think that - as proposed - this is needed or beneficial...
The 'needed' thing is a red herring. A rare, non-progression-critical mission can't by default be 'needed'.
The benefits have been enumerated. You having reservations about their applicability to
every player does not mean they do not exist.
...claiming that this would "incentivize" anything is in my oppinion not a valid argument, given what's already in the game.
It will not incentivise the development or improvement of a transport game. It'll incentivise the
speed at which one does that. How strongly, well, largely depends on the player.
I am not here to convince you of anything, really. I am aware that that rarely works when people are invested into an idea.
What exactly are you trying to accomplish, then? Because the whole thing is a textbook example of non-constructive criticism if I ever saw one.
I am also not married to the idea of strict early timers. But these already exist for early UFOs, and I don't see a good, lore-consistent way around those. And you have not come up with one, either. And Solarius does care about his lore.
I don't get the part about the despawn timer and UFOs landing or taking off. We are specifically not talking about UFOs here.
We are talking about UFOs doing a mission, even if it's technically a terror mission. And UFO landings are functionally a despawn timer, and one of the more common tight timers post-invasion.
It is unfortunate that the engine does not support UFOs taking off after 'terror' missions, but we work with what we have.
If this would spawn as an actual UFO this would be a different matter.
That could also be done, making it a UFO with a special 'terror' mission. If that alleviates or resolves your reservations, all the better.
I also don't understand why you think that "this covers more than early game" changes anything.
Because for most of the game, the timers are not a big issue? Also because:
...I would have less objections to these were popping up later in the game...
Your claims regarding "incentives" makes even less sense the further the player gets into the game.
Well, yes, when the player has done what they've been incentivised to do, the incentive is gone. Strange, huh?
And when I say "incentivize" or "incentives" I do in fact mean those words and not something else.
I am not saying anything about your terminology. I am saying your
reasoning turns the discussion into one of (not)
requiring the players to do something. Which this the source of our disagreement AFAICT.
New players "already getting frustrated and savescumming in other missions" still isn't an argument in favor of implementing another mission that is prone to causing frustration because of overly short mission timers in the early game.
But it's an argument for not considering that criticism too important if there are other aspects to the mission other than simply causing frustration. Which there are.
And funny how I...
Yes, that seems the common theme here. Your whole argument is essentially "I don't like it, some others might not either". The solution to that is to make your own modifications, not block
everyone from a thing only
some might dislike.
Again, I think the "this needed to incentivize ..." is really more of a pretext.
This is not my argument. I said 'would incentivise', and never how strongly (because that kinda depends on the player more than anything), not that 'incentivisation is necessary and this is necessary for incentivisation', which is what you've been strawmanning my position into for a while. Again, 'incentivise' does not mean it must apply to everyone nor that the incentive needs to be strong.
As far as I can tell both craft have their uses and "some people do ... and don't play the game correctly" is a pretty weak argument in my oppinion.
But this is again not my argument. The argument was "This would make the Dragonfly more attractive, because empirical information shows it is sometimes ignored altogether".
