[GLOBE] Improved Nations Mod

[MFive]

At some point, I'll get around to doing funding for the nations in the game. The problem is finding a proper metric that balances the game, to avoid the fact that the US defense budget is 40%+ of world defense spending.

i have no problem with a higher funding amount, as it also means higher risk that the nation sign a pact with the alien foe, but until now i had not realised that america was funding 40% ...

[MKSheppard]

Some more cities, some more improvements, more nations join the fun:

Belgium
Netherlands
Ireland
Iraq
Syria
Israel
Baltic Confederation (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)
Belarus

Antarctic bases have been commented out, since we don't have any custom terror mission maps or code yet for them.

----

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to get the full use of this ruleset, you need to enter your Xcom1Ruleset.rul and make it so that the:

countries:

section is blank or commented out -- you want your opening of Xcom1Ruleset.rul to look like this:

Code: [Select]

# X-COM 1 (UFO: Enemy Unknown) ruleset
# For documentation on these values, see https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Rulesets_(OpenXcom)
countries:
regions:
  - type: STR_NORTH_AMERICA

[MKSheppard]

but until now i had not realised that america was funding 40% ...

Mfive, no no let me explain it better:

In XCOMworld; the US gives about 14% of all total funding generally at the start of the game in 1999, with Japan taking up slack at second place with 9.56% of total funding.

In real life 1999:

GDP:
US is 39% of world GDP
Japan is 19.22% of world GDP

Military Spending:
US is 48.5% of world spending
Japan is 7.17% of world spending

Clearly, the US has been "defanged" to prvent players from just setting up shop in the US and always calling it a day in the name of game balance.

[MKSheppard]

All the nations I intend to add are pretty much in now -- (see list below).

Now comes the "fun" part; balancing them off funding wise. 

XCOM Stock (16 Countries)

USA
Russia
UK
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
China
Japan
India
Brazil
Australia
Nigeria
South Africa
Egypt
Canada

Improved Nations (58 countries)

USA
Canada
Mexico
Russia
UK
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
Portugal
China
Japan
India
Australia
African Union
South Africa
Egypt
Philippines
Taiwan
Korea
Pakistan
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Quatar
UAE
Libya
Poland
Ukraine
Denmark
Indonesia
Vietnam
Thailand
Greece
Turkey
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Belgium
Netherlands
Ireland
Iraq
Syria
Baltic Entente (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia)
Israel
Belarus
Czech Republic
Austria
Hungary
Romania
Bulgaria
Balkan Pact (All the places like Serbia etc)
Cuba
Venezula
Brazil
Colombia
Peru
Chile
Argentina

[kevL]

Now comes the "fun" part; balancing them off funding wise. 

I'm not sure how this'll balance (eventually)

But am thinking, myself, of doing some wikipedia to get more or less accurate ratios among nations. And -- hope this is helpful -- try setting the caps at a simple 10x initial funding...

[MKSheppard]

I have a problem -- I think I broke the funding model 

The RUL file says:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_GERMANY
    fundingBase: 160
    fundingCap: 2400

  - type: STR_ITALY
    fundingBase: 160
    fundingCap: 2400

I think it's because a lot of things were predicated around the ~6M starting funding and 16~ nations of stock XCOM; and with 50+ nations now funding the place; things are getting all negative-y.

[MKSheppard]

I'm not sure how this'll balance (eventually

I'm going at a simplistic ratio of:

4% of XCOM Funding for countries which are nuclear powers.
2% of XCOM funding for countries which are NATO.

[Sharp]

I have a problem -- I think I broke the funding model 

The RUL file says:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_GERMANY
    fundingBase: 160
    fundingCap: 2400

  - type: STR_ITALY
    fundingBase: 160
    fundingCap: 2400

I think it's because a lot of things were predicated around the ~6M starting funding and 16~ nations of stock XCOM; and with 50+ nations now funding the place; things are getting all negative-y.

This is simply a case of art imitating life. Silvio Berlusconi siphoning off money that should be going to XCOM and then XCOM getting cheap labour from Mexico and Portugal.
/casual_racism

Code: [Select]

* Generates the random starting funding for the country.
 * @return The monthly funding.
 */
int RuleCountry::generateFunding() const
{
return RNG::generate(_fundingBase, _fundingBase*2) * 1000;
}


Code: (RNG) [Select]

int generate(int min, int max);
It shouldn't be negative....

[kevL]

methinks the problem starts about here:

Code: [Select]

https:// Generates a brand new saved game with starting data.
https:// @return A new saved game.
https://
SavedGame *Ruleset::newSave() const
{
https:// snip.

https:// Adjust funding to total $6M
int missing = ((6000 - save->getCountryFunding() / 1000) / (int)save->getCountries()->size()) * 1000;
for (std::vector<Country*>::iterator i = save->getCountries()->begin(); i != save->getCountries()->end(); ++i)
{
(*i)->setFunding((*i)->getFunding().back() + missing);
}

https:// snip.
}

dam vectors /mutter

[kevL]

that's better; i simply commented out removed the "missing" stuff

[SupSuper]

Yeah vanilla X-COM clamps starting funding to $6M, so you're either gonna have to rebalance your countries or have a really cheap ruleset.

[gix]

Yeah vanilla X-COM clamps starting funding to $6M, so you're either gonna have to rebalance your countries or have a really cheap ruleset.

Got the PR https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/issues/696 (in starting https://openxcom.org/git_builds/openxcom_git_master_2013_10_20_2108.zip) which parametrizes  the $6M in ruleset, and also https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/issues/699, which gives button scrolling on graphs for countries and regions (if added over 16).
Hope you'll enjoy it...

[gix]

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to get the full use of this ruleset, you need to enter your Xcom1Ruleset.rul and make it so that the:

countries:

section is blank or commented out -- you want your opening of Xcom1Ruleset.rul to look like this:

Code: [Select]

# X-COM 1 (UFO: Enemy Unknown) ruleset
# For documentation on these values, see https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Rulesets_(OpenXcom)
countries:
regions:
  - type: STR_NORTH_AMERICA

Well, IMO there should be a ruleset facility added to the game in order to allow erasing by complementary ruleset. For whole rules, the https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Rulesets_%28OpenXcom%29#Modular_Rulesets, sadly doesn't apply.
So maybe should add a facility like '%key' meaning fully erase the key? This could allow you to have an empty  - type : STR_NIGERIA% which would do the job...
Added PR#701 https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/pull/701

[gix]

Just thought - in order to make this mod almost complete in geoscape - would be nice to take the polylines (now hardcoded in Resources) as point-lists attached to each country rule in order to draw its borders...

[Hobbit Lord]

I don't see the point of this mod. X-Com is not realistic, it's a sci-fi game in an alternate/retro reality (well what people in 1990 thought things might be like in 2000). Remember the Cold War had just ended (had the USSR collapsed yet?)

Actually I'd like to see a mod which takes it more in the direction of TFTD... Neo-Japan, the People's Republic of Alaska, Africa Corporation etc

Or part of the way there. A United States of Europe or a divided USA maybe