Prevent automatic success of alien bases and alien infiltration missions.

[Juju Dredd]

This is a mess. When the last battleship of one of these two missions enter atmosphere, no matter what you do an alien base is immediately built and in the case of alien infiltration one of the council countries quit. This seems highly unfair to me. There should be a preference to delay the consequences at the battleship's take off. This means if you crash it or capture it on the ground the whole alien mission should be a failure.

Who agree with me?

[moriarty]

absolutely. there is a lot about the geoscape strategy stuff that needs more complexity.

(like the thing about aliens attacking your base over and over again if your base defences destroy the incoming battleships, but they immediately forget your base as soon as the battleship lands and you manage to defend the base on the ground. this needs a different mechanic, perhaps some kind of counter-attack thing where once you defeat them on the ground, you learn the location of their base of operations and are given the chance to attack them and destroy their computers.)

[AMX]

I'm not entirely sure, but at least the infiltration may already be fixed:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1434.0.html

Haven't seen it documented anywhere, though, so that may have been a bug...

[Juju Dredd]

I'm not sure this is a bug.
I only know this is this way the original game works.
I believe this is intentionally done to prevent your game from running indefinitely, since a good avenger fleet would permit you prevent any alien infiltration as long as they don't send a great number of simultaneous alien infiltration missions. This is a way to figure that time runs against humans.

I think the possibility to stop alien infiltration should be an option.

[kharille]

I do suspect that was a bug, but hey, at least in my superhuman game I ain't pestered with the loss of India.  There was a floater base there from 2 months ago.  I've seen how useless it is to fight this, but I tried taking out the floater base before they arrived.

By the end of the month, India was still in the xcom project....  suits me...

[Juju Dredd]

I do suspect that was a bug, but hey, at least in my superhuman game I ain't pestered with the loss of India.  There was a floater base there from 2 months ago.  I've seen how useless it is to fight this, but I tried taking out the floater base before they arrived.

By the end of the month, India was still in the xcom project....  suits me...

I'm not sure, perhaps this was a coincidence.
I'm pretty sure in the original game, letting alien bases has no other impact than reducing your score (which is not an annoyance at all if you attack the reserve ships).

[kharille]

I think the floater base was in middle east...  if that helps...

Maybe it was a flaw introduced by OpenXcom?....

[Danny]

Alien bases should be created where a Battleship and a Supplyship land together for a few ingame hours, then disappear as the base is created.
where the ships are both completely dismantled and used in the base.
When Xcom attacks both ships are on the battlescape with with their full complementary crew.

Alien infiltration is where one battleship lands on a city and one hovering around in the area but not directly above it.
When Xcom attacks you will fight in a terrorsite-esk battlescape but with a Battleship on it. And thus there will be civilians.
When successful the 2nd battleship will land in the country of that city and will wait for a Supplyship to start an alienbase mission ^^

[Juju Dredd]

Alien bases should be created where a Battleship and a Supplyship land together for a few ingame hours, then disappear as the base is created.
where the ships are both completely dismantled and used in the base.
When Xcom attacks both ships are on the battlescape with with their full complementary crew.

Alien infiltration is where one battleship lands on a city and one hovering around in the area but not directly above it.
When Xcom attacks you will fight in a terrorsite-esk battlescape but with a Battleship on it. And thus there will be civilians.
When successful the 2nd battleship will land in the country of that city and will wait for a Supplyship to start an alienbase mission ^^

What you suggest sounds me more like a custom patch, I was just going for a simple game option to set...

[Danny]

What you suggest sounds me more like a custom patch, I was just going for a simple game option to set...

Well it would make sense ^^

[KiethSomataw99]

Well, when I played, the main infiltration wave appeared over Brazil, and i managed to shoot down the supply ship, the terror ship, and the first battleship in quick succession, which of course, delayed the second battleship significantly. The month ended before it arrived and Brazil payed me normally. The second battleship then  entered the atmosphere west of the US but I shot it down before it reached Brazil. I believe that once the second battleship arrives over the targeted country, the pact is signed. That did not happen with Brazil.

[Danny]

Well, when I played, the main infiltration wave appeared over Brazil, and i managed to shoot down the supply ship, the terror ship, and the first battleship in quick succession, which of course, delayed the second battleship significantly. The month ended before it arrived and Brazil payed me normally. The second battleship then  entered the atmosphere west of the US but I shot it down before it reached Brazil. I believe that once the second battleship arrives over the targeted country, the pact is signed. That did not happen with Brazil.

Interesting I read on the internet Ufopedia, that infiltration missions succeed the minute the Battleship entered the atmosphere... :\

[Juju Dredd]

Interesting I read on the internet Ufopedia, that infiltration missions succeed the minute the Battleship entered the atmosphere... :\

Have you read my first post in the topic? This is exactly what I said. I did not specify I was talking about the vanilla version of the game, because I thought OpenXcom would have kept this behavior, perhaps that made my post somewhat unclear.
As I already said, I strongly believe this is not a bug, but this is done to ensure player will lose over time, he cannot continuously repel aliens and play an infinite game. This makes sense, even thought I believe this is illogical.

This is why I suggest there is at least a single option to define how infiltration missions succeed.
- one value of this option could mean "like in the vanilla game", unstoppable. This should be the default value for this option.
- another value could say "destroy/crash/prevent from taking off the last battleship and the infiltration fails". Other ships could be considered as decoys.
- another value could say "if any large infiltrating ufo succeeds, infiltration succeeds."
- perhaps other simple possibilities.

This should be in the base openXCom.
I believe other more complicated way to determine if alien infiltration succeed should only be implemented in a custom mod.

[Danny]

I still prefer my idea about this... ^^

Alien bases should be created where a Battleship and a Supplyship land together for a few ingame hours, then disappear as the base is created.
where the ships are both completely dismantled and used in the base.
When Xcom attacks both ships are on the battlescape with with their full complementary crew.

Alien infiltration is where one battleship lands on a city and one hovering around in the area but not directly above it.
When Xcom attacks you will fight in a terrorsite-esk battlescape but with a Battleship on it. And thus there will be civilians.
When successful the 2nd battleship will land in the country of that city and will wait for a Supplyship to start an alienbase mission ^^

[KiethSomataw99]

Perhaps OpenXcom could be made so that if the Second Battleship is shot down or assaulted, there is a chance that the pact will not be signed. The sooner that happens, the higher the chance. If that happens a message on the monthly report goes "(Country's name) was interrupted in signing a secret pact with the aliens and has decided to maintain funding toward the XCOM project." Of course, once the second battleship arrives, the alien base will appear, regardless whether the pact is signed or interrupted.

Of course, they could make it so if a certain number of countries sign pacts with the aliens, 8 or more i guess?, then they will force the council to terminate the project, with the monthly report message, "A majority of the sponsors have signed pacts with the aliens and unfortunately, they have forced the Council of Funding Nations to terminate the project. They have persuaded the remaining sponsors to deal with the problem as they have. We can only hope we can come to some accommodation with these apparently hostile forces, and the general populace will come to terms with these alien visitors."