Month 0 mission scripts

[psavola]

Reposting a link here. Month 0 (beginning of game at the end of December 1996) spawns a number of missions, which due to very small start delay and randomization crop up in January 1997. But that same month ("1") also spawns essentially a similar set of missions. Therefore you get double the number of missions in January 1997 compared to, for example, February 1997.

I can see no reason why January 1997 should have double the number of missions compared to, say, February 1997. Changing firstMonth: 0 to 1 should fix this bug. Also otherwise, IMHO it would also be nice to give a player a bit slower and easier start (for example, a bit more time to develop early research). If you get crazy RNG (as I had in the post), you could end up having 20+ missions in January 1997 which is physically impossible and you're guaranteed a bad month score.

More details based on geoscape debug log:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4595.msg156282.html#msg156282

BTW: Also 'Shotgun' ufopedia description goes on two pages (not sure if this was the exact same thing as reported before, because this is maybe due to many ammo types).

[Solarius Scorch]

I can see no reason why January 1997 should have double the number of missions compared to, say, February 1997.

Why not? Difficult beginnings, you are the new sheriff in town and all... I've been thinking about it before, but it feels okay to me. It's not like scoring means anything at this point.

BTW: Also 'Shotgun' ufopedia description goes on two pages (not sure if this was the exact same thing as reported before, because this is maybe due to many ammo types).

That's because the shotgun has more than 3 types of clip. (But the clips from the second page are initially unresearched, so aren't shown.)

[psavola]

Why not? Difficult beginnings, you are the new sheriff in town and all... I've been thinking about it before, but it feels okay to me. It's not like scoring means anything at this point.

It is very illogical. For example, according to *Cult Intercepted Messages (see the first messages you intercept), the cults are not even aware that there is a new sheriff in the town so there would be no reason for them to be doubly active in Jan 1997 compared to February. I can't think of any logical reason (or a reason that could be explained with existing lore) why the amount of activity in Jan 1997 should be significantly more higher than Feb 1997. A high peak of activity in January also cannot be an annual thing, because the same thing does not occur in January 1998.

[Juku121]

Why not?

Inconsistency without an explanation. I guess it'd be okay if there was some sort of blurb about the Council dumping all its currently active cultist/missing people investigations on us.

Also, these kinds of missions have been consistently criticised for being a 'slog'. I don't think it's terribly good for (new) player retention if the mod dumps all that on them in the beginning and then relents. Or, at least eliminating this from the 1-2 easiest difficulties might be worth considering.

Then again, I never noticed this myself.

It's not like scoring means anything at this point.

Er, it's one of your two strikes for losing the game? Granted, it's doubtful whether a bad early month will actually tank your score badly enough for that to apply.

It also reduces (or at least reduces the growth of) your Council funding, which is your main income source this early.

[Solarius Scorch]

It's just a lot of pointless work. Come on, let's be reasonable; nobody has ever even noticed before, and also I can't see it as a bug. You keep saying that it's "illogical" and stuff, but I don't think how this can be called illogical when there is not enough data to even make such a conclusion.

[Juku121]

We don't need data when the game mechanics are open to us, unlike RL. From a 'this reflects cultist activity' POV, it's definitely strange and unexplained. But this assumes what we see is indicative of how things are.

I've always thought X-Com never actually discovers all or even most cultist/cryptid activity, and the stuff we see on the globe is what our intel department/radars/contacts can get us.

[Solarius Scorch]

I've always thought X-Com never actually discovers all or even most cultist/cryptid activity, and the stuff we see on the globe is what our intel department/radars/contacts can get us.

Yes, that's pretty much how I see it.

I can block some scripts for month 0, if it's such a huge problem... But I honestly prefer it as it is, with an extra load of shit to deal with on day 1.

[krautbernd]

Well, now that it has been pointed out I'd like to add that I also felt that something was a bit off with the games I've started in more recent versions. I found the prior number of missions early game a bit more reasonable tbh. And as much as I like the additional content I think it would be more...enjoyable...for players - especially new ones - if you weren't swamped in missions in the first months. I think staggering them out more would be reasonable.

Yes, strictly speaking it might make that much of a difference point wise, but that might not be obvious for players that aren't veterans. Being swamped with more missions than you can possibly adress is first and foremost frustrating and honestly I don't consider it good game design.

[sudtrap]

I think it's fine for what it's worth. Yeah, it does get pretty hectic during the first month, but it does give you alot of opportunities to get your feet wet. Combined with the cheaper agent costs, I think it makes the game more forgiving at the beginning.

Realism or not is hardly something that most people are going to think about; and although I've noticed that the beginning of the game was way more busy, I never really thought about it before. I doubt many people think about it too much.

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, now that it has been pointed out I'd like to add that I also felt that something was a bit off with the games I've started in more recent versions. I found the prior number of missions early game a bit more reasonable tbh. And as much as I like the additional content I think it would be more...enjoyable...for players - especially new ones - if you weren't swamped in missions in the first months. I think staggering them out more would be reasonable.

Hmm, do you mean to say that there are more missions now because of new missions being introduced?

I honestly can't recall any early game missions being added since 2.3 (and they weren't super early either - I mean stuff like Cult Street Fighting).

Yes, strictly speaking it might make that much of a difference point wise, but that might not be obvious for players that aren't veterans. Being swamped with more missions than you can possibly adress is first and foremost frustrating and honestly I don't consider it good game design.

I'd rather say it's the veterans who notice...
We can argue whether this is jarring or the opposite, hardly noticeable, but I can't recall any "swamping" in early game, much less frustration. I understand that people have varied level of experience, but what's so frustrating about having more opportunities? In the worst case you'll just skip some missions, it won't end you. (EDIT: I see Sudtrap wrote something similar, but I only read it after writing this paragraph.)

[krautbernd]

Hmm, do you mean to say that there are more missions now because of new missions being introduced?

I honestly can't recall any early game missions being added since 2.3 (and they weren't super early either - I mean stuff like Cult Street Fighting).

I think I might I have used "early game" a bit too broadly here, I think what I noticed were two different things - the effect of more missions in general and the early game scripting "issues". Especially CoE/ghost hunt missions seem to spawn quite often for me.

We can argue whether this is jarring or the opposite, hardly noticeable, but I can't recall any "swamping" in early game, much less frustration. I understand that people have varied level of experience, but what's so frustrating about having more opportunities? In the worst case you'll just skip some missions, it won't end you.

This is a combination of "no actual control" over missions, not enough feedback regarding the impact of missing missions and being presented with mission spawns that are impossible to reach in time. I guess my dislike for this is partly down to the mechanics that FtA has introduced, which actually gives the player some agency instead of passively waiting for missions to pop up.
 
Like OP I also find the difference between the first month and second month a bit jarring, because there really isn't any reason or explanation why the cults/monsters/etc postpone their december activities to january just as the player takes over as commander. Why the inconsistency?

[Juku121]

This is a combination of "no actual control" over missions, not enough feedback regarding the impact of missing missions and being presented with mission spawns that are impossible to reach in time. I guess my dislike for this is partly down to the mechanics that FtA has introduced, which actually gives the player some agency instead of passively waiting for missions to pop up.

But since this is not nor is it likely to be based on Finnik's version of OXC, more mission spawns is the closest we are going to get to controlling which kinds of missions we do. More missions on the map - more choice of which ones to do and thus more control. It's not ideal, but it is what it is.
 

...there really isn't any reason or explanation why the cults/monsters/etc postpone their december activities to january just as the player takes over as commander. Why the inconsistency?

My impression is that you can explain this by not increased cultist activity, but increased X-Com detection due to getting handed all the leads from precursor orgs/Council factions/whoever.

[psavola]

Veteran XCF players are likely indifferent or even like this feature - if you ignore the first month score and a small hit to council funding, you'll get a good enough score in February anyway. So you can skip some missions or go and abort the missions you don't like. You'll get maximum chances to train your agents.

But IMHO mods, especially the beginning, should be geared towards players that are new to the mod, to make it welcoming and encourage continuing to play it. (And XCF makes a good attempt at educating the beginning players with all the introductions.) XCF players come from vanilla or other mods which have just a couple of events in the first month(s) and have been used to the playstyle that you're supposed to deal with the missions that you get. Getting 10 or 20 times as many missions in XCF could be very brutal especially when you don't really know that you don't need to bother with all of them if you cannot. And even if firstMonth: 0 missions were removed, you'd likely still get maybe 7-8 missions, which is still plenty with the slow transports you have and get the newer players accustomed to the more hectic playstyle in XCF.

[Juku121]

This looks more like a difficulty-related proposal. Maybe remove 'month 0' for Beginner/Experienced?

And even if firstMonth: 0 missions were removed, you'd likely still get maybe 7-8 missions...

I counted more like 11-12 on average. Although it can be quite unpredictable how many you actually get...

[psavola]

This looks more like a difficulty-related proposal. Maybe remove 'month 0' for Beginner/Experienced?

I doubt this is feasible (or I wouldn't implement it at least if I had to maintain this kind of mod). Such a change would require duplicating or at least referencing all the mission scripts that currently start at month 0; I don't think you can have a ruleset "firstMonth is 1 for difficulty level 0-1, otherwise it's 0". There would be a few ways to do this but AFAICS all of them are painful for maintenance point of view and prone to cause bugs (if one was to forget updating all of them if further changes are made or if a new mission is created).