Beginner's difficulty setting question

[minimen]

Hello guys. Interesting mod. Could you please help me with following:
I've started my first game on veteran difficulty and It's 3ed month of the game time. I can't win half of missions: I have to withdraw: a lucky shot from an enemy downing my man. My soldiers and their enemies shooting each other from a long distance but they have people advantages. Etc. It's better to withdraw, right? Is it by design or I need to lower my difficulty?

[Juku121]

In brief, you gotta 'git gud'.


Enemies will pretty much always outnumber your agents. So you have to get used to it. Cover, distance, sniper-spotter, elevation, smoke when you get it, grenade abuse if you're okay with it...

Some missions are better left alone, sometimes even half of them. By design, even. But not half of what you get at the beginning of the game. Your half a dozen agents see a forest full of Spikeboars, or 20 Chupacabras, well, discretion is the better part of valour. A dozen web-fingered hillbillies, that's very doable.

What are you using for transport, armour and weapons? You should have vans, leather and some sort of proper long arm by now. Kevlar vests, probably not if you haven't gotten one from a captive.

Lower difficulties will not improve your situation drastically, if you're bad at the tactical game then the cutoff point will just move from three months to a year or two.

Also, the occasional loss is fine. Just make sure it's the tactical ablative armour rookies/dogs who take the fall.

[Stone Lake]

Most of these are doable, but not worth it. When seeing a lot of critters, just withdraw.
Focus on capturing new and different cultists, to get promotions I-III. That's the most important thing in the mod.

[minimen]

You should have vans, leather and some sort of proper long arm by now.

Thank you for sharing the information. Of course, if agents arrive in a van fully armed, preferably with AK-74 from a weapon box , there is a 80% chance to complete a mission flawlessly.

if you're bad at the tactical game then the cutoff point will just move from three months to a year or two.

But it's no a tactical level. There is no chance for a beginner to know in advance what to research: how useful are dogs? How good is a hunting rifle? Should I research a lab instead etc.

[minimen]

Most of these are doable, but not worth it. When seeing a lot of critters, just withdraw.
Focus on capturing new and different cultists, to get promotions I-III. That's the most important thing in the mod.

So if a player botchers half of early missions, he's still be OK?

[minimen]

I changed the difficulty to Expireinced. In cult apprehensive missions there is usually one guy. Lately he's armed with an assault rifle. Still he usually gets killed or captured. It's pretty boring since there are a lot of cult apprehensive missions. I wonder if I'm playing the game a wrong way?

[Juku121]

Of course, if agents arrive in a van fully armed, preferably with AK-74 from a weapon box , there is a 80% chance to complete a mission flawlessly.

Not always, and less so as time goes on. Going after e.g. a cult outpost with just a van and AKs highly depends on your tactical acumen, and assaulting a base, a bad zombie mission or a horde of Chupacabras is tilted against you quite a bit. You should move on from vans and AKs as soon as possible, within the first half a year or so.

But it's no a tactical level. There is no chance for a beginner to know in advance what to research: how useful are dogs? How good is a hunting rifle? Should I research a lab instead etc.

You should always aim for better research labs, that's not something unique to X-Com.

Dogs and melee are not something you'll think of as OP when you see them first, I'll grant you.

Bad equipment can be compensated with better tactical play. Since you have trouble with that, I assume you're not good enough to kill half a dozen cryptids with a pocket knife, so you need to stack the deck in your favour on the strategic level.

But if you're not good at completing moderately tough missions and skip them, your strategic position will deteriorate, up to and including manors all over the place and/or a score death.

So if a player botchers half of early missions, he's still be OK?

Depends on which missions and how your score is doing otherwise. In general, if you do badly at the start of any strategy game, it'll snowball (and success will also snowball). We've had a few people come in and complain about losing in a year or two due to score/manors.

If your goals are doing well without the missions, the latter are skippable. But I get the idea that you don't really know what your goals are, yet.

It's pretty boring since there are a lot of cult apprehensive missions. I wonder if I'm playing the game a wrong way?

Kinda yes. Research the cult dudes to open up new missions to capture new cultists to open up new missions and so on. Cult apprehensions should be gone or largely gone around the second half of '97.

[Stone Lake]

So if a player botchers half of early missions, he's still be OK?

Escaping half the arrests / env alerts is normal. Madman / Crop Circles are main score winners early, and should be won properly. Safe house captures are important, you need all four (and bunch of other stuff) for promo II. They're usually easy at night /w flares, but if you spawn right into enemy it's worth escaping. Also, red dawn safe house can be a bit hard.

[Abyss]

 

When seeing a lot of critters, just withdraw.

Lol, no! Never withdraw if you have a chance to shoot and hit, not getting harmed in return.
Shoot as many bullets as possible, it's boosting agents stats.
And more, shuffle agents. Not get used to. Raise an army of 100 in two years.
Don't use save/load for immersiveness.
Read ANAL advanced description of weapons and compare, compare.
Shotguns are best for rookies.
Abuse light sources and night vs humans.

[Stone Lake]

Never withdraw if you have a chance to shoot and hit, not getting harmed in return.

Sure, but that may be tough to figure out to a beginner. That being said, there are even easier missions to train troops down the line.

Raise an army of 100 in two years.

Lol, no. Twenty is plenty, forty is too much.

[minimen]

Escaping half the arrests / env alerts is normal.

Thanks you guys for giving all those valuable pieces of information. About forfeiting missions. In a description it says: "despaw penalty". What does it mean? Is it score? Does monthly budget increase or decrease depends on score? Is it linear? Does score resets every month? Is there a way to see my current month score? If I escape: will I get "despaw penalty" plus every point I've got or lost during a mission?

[Juku121]

In a description it says: "despaw penalty". What does it mean? Is it score?

Yes, it's score.

Does monthly budget increase or decrease depends on score?

Yes.

Is it linear? Does score resets every month?

No, unless your mod uses score-based bonus income. And not fully or even mostly linear with that, either. It's more or less random, trending towards positive if you do well and negative if you do not, with notable local score pushing individual countries in their own direction.

There's some discussion of the actual OXCE code around here.

Score does reset every month. And two months of negative score means game over.

If I escape: will I get "despaw penalty" plus every point I've got or lost during a mission?

You get an 'abort penalty' and all the mission-related score (usually a bunch of dead civvies, you monster ), which is usually less than the 'despawn penalty'. So it makes sense to go over and abort instead of ignoring the site, a practice of X-Com Commanders ever since the terror missions of the original game. And take a few shots if there's no chance of return fire to score some stat XP, as Abyssal suggested.

Is there a way to see my current month score?

Yes.

[minimen]

...

Thank you for sharing this. Do two months of negative score have to be sequential for game over to happen?
Does it mean score points has diminished return? Every extra score point has less value then a previous one?

[Juku121]

Score loss is indeed two consecutive months of negative score. But there's a threshold for how negative it needs to be, depending on difficulty. I don't think XCF changes this.

Score points do have diminishing returns, sorta. But the exact specifics of how diminishing can vary. A few thousand score points a month should be a reasonable goal for a good pace of funding increases.

[minimen]

...

Score just got to zero on 1st April. I've tried to load a save file and stop all research so I won't get any extra points. Still zero. I wonder why.