Promotion II

[Empiro]

One thing I'd like to see improved is the progression to Promotion II. I think Promotion II is when X-Com Files really kicks off, but it's highly dependent on luck / randomness. In both my last 2 games, I basically stalled out before getting Promotion II, and almost ran out of things to research. It feels like the Cult Network and the Cool Alien gadget requirements are the most problematic requirements.

In my current game, I literally had 0 EXALT Safehouse missions until December, even though I got EXALT researched in January or February (lots of boring cult apprehension missions for EXALT though). I'm not sure what's the best way to fix this, but perhaps guaranteeing Safehouse missions after a certain month could help.

In a different game, I couldn't for the life of me fulfill Cool Alien Gadget until around the same time. I think Cool Alien Gadget is particularly kind of problematic. I get the intent -- you get something cool in your stores, and you want to hire a chief researcher to study all this cool stuff. However, the requirements for researching almost all of the items in the list either directly or indirectly depends on having the Lab, which requires having the researcher in the first place. 95% of the time you end up researching a PsiClone, which is closely related to the EXALT Safehouse requirement, and the item itself is hardly that cool.

I thought it's the case that in the latest OXCE versions, it's possible to check your base stores for specific items? Perhaps it's possible to check your base stores for a "cool item" (excluding PsiClones, as they're not that cool), and from that, generate an event that gives you the "Cool Alien Gadget" tech, kind of like how you have the character intros at the beginning of the game? The "hire researcher" task could be made more expensive to compensate for not having to research the item itself.

[psavola]

Based on my earlier observations (many also in this thread), the mod has been designed to be RNG-wise unpredicable - or at least there has been little interest in making it more predicable or "fair" to avoid many similar occurrences. And this can lead to precisely the kind of issues you bring up. I suspect you'll have shrug this off as "each game might end up being very different and that's a good thing".

[Zesty]

At the very least, items which can't unlock Cool Alien Gadgets (due to having a prereq that is past it in the tech tree) should not be listed as able to unlock it. I was about to post a thread asking whether the mod was actually broken and uncompleteable because I'm in Feb 1998 with 4 alien artifacts sitting in my inventory and out of reseach options.

I'm fine with "just do more missions and capture more dudes for interrogations", but at the very least the tech tree shouldn't deceive you. Here I was waiting for months to do a half dozen incredibly deadly and painful missions for alien artifacts when I could have just stunned a few more of those morons.

[krautbernd]

At the very least, items which can't unlock Cool Alien Gadgets (due to having a prereq that is past it in the tech tree) should not be listed as able to unlock it. I was about to post a thread asking whether the mod was actually broken and uncompleteable because I'm in Feb 1998 with 4 alien artifacts sitting in my inventory and out of reseach options.

I'm fine with "just do more missions and capture more dudes for interrogations", but at the very least the tech tree shouldn't deceive you. Here I was waiting for months to do a half dozen incredibly deadly and painful missions for alien artifacts when I could have just stunned a few more of those morons.

To be fair, at no point does the tech tree viewer "deceive" you. It tells you exactely what items unlock what research topics and what prerequesites are needed. The tech tree viewer is a crutch, not an integral part of the mod, given the massive spoilers using it entails.

[Chuckebaby]

My latest playthrough I had terminated all three cults and waited months before having an Exalt Cult forward base mission pop up (the one needed to capture and interrogate the Exalt master.) The prerequisite for Exalt HQ to spawn. It's just RNG, it's random, part of the game and possibly the thing that makes the game so good. Yes it is frustrating but also allows you to build soldiers character/stats. Get them some experience.

In my opinion, Id rather see less Strange life forms, Cattle mutations and crop circles if anything else. I understand the game needs filler missions but those get monotonous. But again, it's part of the game.

[Empiro]

Right, but it's okay in the case of bases and HQs because eliminating any one of the 4 unlocks the cult part of Promotion 3. Promotion 3 also has multiple paths for the other requirements, so that's typically not a problem either.

Promotion 2 is where the frustration can set in. It's such an important milestone because you're quite limited before and it opens up so many new options. However, you must obtain all 4 cult safehouses and find a researchable Cool Alien Gadget.

It's very easy to be left waiting on one of the 4 for months on end. Likewise, it's very possible that you don't get a psiclone from an Exalt safehouse, and you're stuck with a bunch of other gadgets that are technically on the list, but can't be researched until you get the promotion in the first place.

[Zesty]

To be fair, at no point does the tech tree viewer "deceive" you. It tells you exactely what items unlock what research topics and what prerequesites are needed. The tech tree viewer is a crutch, not an integral part of the mod, given the massive spoilers using it entails.

It does deceive you. It lists, say, Plasma Blade as a path to unlocking Cool Alien Gadget. Except you need an improved lab to research it, which requires promotion 3, which requires promotion 2, which requires Cool Alien Gadget. So Plasma Blade cannot unlock Cool Alien Gadget no matter how you do it and even if you get your hand on one its useless for this purpose.

[Juku121]

It lists Plasma Blade as "technically leading to" the CAG. TTV is not a player-facing interface, it's a way to peek under the hood of the game. So the point is that it literally cannot deceive you when used for its intended purpose.

If you use it as an in-game tech tree then, yes, it lies to you. It's not really meant to be used for that, even if that's probably the biggest use case right now.

[krautbernd]

It does deceive you. It lists, say, Plasma Blade as a path to unlocking Cool Alien Gadget. Except you need an improved lab to research it, which requires promotion 3, which requires promotion 2, which requires Cool Alien Gadget. So Plasma Blade cannot unlock Cool Alien Gadget no matter how you do it and even if you get your hand on one its useless for this purpose.

As Juku pointed out, the tech tree viewer can not deceive you if you know how it actually works and you use it correctly. It literally just lists the entries as they appear in the rul files. Solarius assigned "Cool Alien Gadget" as an unlock to a lot of items, and all of these will be listed accordingly in the viewer. The only way the viewer would deceive you is if it was not listing those items as a possible unlock, because in that case it would be misrepresenting what's actually in the rul files.

[psavola]

Apart from tech-tree viewer mechanics, I think this raises a good point that there is actually no sense to define Cool Alien Gadget dependencies in the manner they are defined. Cool Alien Gadget is obviously intended as a placeholder for very early-game easily researchable alien devices, because it is not currently used for anything else than gating the early research tech tree. The current requirements clearly imply that the majority of already defined items are not easily researchable and therefore do not actually fit the actual purpose of why Cool Alien Gadget was defined as the prerequisite for Chief Engineer Recruitment in the first place. Therefore such extra definitions should be removed as redundant.

[Raptor29a]

There is trick you could do to get mostly safehouse missions. For starters if you don't advance/research every storyline, you won't get extra mission triggers. So maybe hold off on zombie or monster research, or whatever research you're doing as to not trigger a mission that isn't a cult mission.

[psavola]

There is trick you could do to get mostly safehouse missions. For starters if you don't advance/research every storyline, you won't get extra mission triggers. So maybe hold off on zombie or monster research, or whatever research you're doing as to not trigger a mission that isn't a cult mission.

Holding off on other branches of missions doesn't increase the chances of getting cult missions. There are very few instances of XCF mission scripts which have these dependencies (technically called labels and conditionals). So it doesn't really pay off to hold off the research on other fronts, also because the mission abort penalties (especially on those other branches) are generally very low. So even if you get swamped with too many missions at once, you can just go there with a car and abort or just ignore the rest.

[Juku121]

Though getting more missions does mean your resources (agents, ammo, flight time) are stretched more thinly across the globe.

On the other flipper, a lot of the time research opens up some missions and closes down others, so it's not always going to increase X-Com's workload. Never mind that what you actually get each month is all heavily RNG-based.

[Asheram]

I too have had issues with Promotion II now in 3.0. Did they significantly nerf the amount of Psiclones that Exalt carry around? Because I've seen none and I'm into august.

[Juku121]

I don't think so. I recall managing to convince Solarius to actually add some Psiclones as intrinsic loot (reward for mission completion, not on the map) back in... checking... 2.6.