Add Option To Allow Infiltrated Countries to Be Liberated

[Surrealistik]

https://openxcom.org/bugs/openxcom/issues/341

I think it should work like this:

If an infiltrated/withdrawn country hosts no alien colonies/bases there is a % chance that they will rejoin X-Com at the end of each month that scales with the score for that month if X-Com managed to obtain a rating of 'Good' or better. This % chance is further increased in proportion to the score X-Com accumulated in that country's territory.

In general, if they would increase their funding if they were still a member nation they would rejoin assuming there are no alien bases in their territory.

To compensate for this, the aliens may be more aggressive and proactive in their attempts to infiltrate countries.


Also, for the love of god, if I shoot down the vast majority of an infiltrating armada before it lands, or stop a landed Dreadnought via a ground assault, please don't let the country get infiltrated anyways; that is just straight up bullshit. I know it was like this in the source game, but it was a stupid design flaw then, and it still is now. Easily my biggest peeve/annoyance.

[doctor medic]

By the time you go to land site the aliens will already have made a deal,you are just arriving at the time they  are leaving

[Surrealistik]

Even within an hour or two of landing?

Man, that's pretty damn fast as interspecies diplomacy goes.

Also what about actually downing the ships in the first place? Why should that do nothing?

I mean the way it actually works in the code is that the moment they enter the geoscape you're done son; it's over, they've succeeded, sit down, your agency doesn't matter; doesn't matter how many of the ships you shoot down, or whether you invade the landing site. It's nonsense.

[Arthanor]

Presumably most of the discussions happen between envoys, and even "by hyper-phone" and the battleship landing is just so the president can shake the hand of the alien diplomat. You interrupt the celebration of the new alliance, so they both hate you more and the country defects. It makes no sense that the discussion would happen only while the battleship is landed. How do they even "get permission" to land? Or arrange a meeting? You don't bring a battleship to open discussions...

Anyhow, I don't really like the way it works currently either, since it leaves no power in the hands of the player. With the new mission scripts, it might be possible to tweak things and make the mission more dynamic instead of a predetermined failure.

[Surrealistik]

I figured that they don't have permission to land; the initial armada infiltrates alien operatives into the target country's government that sets things up, and the follow up second dreadnought/battleship does the handshaking/treaty signing.

But yes, all that shit is irrelevant/besides the point; what really matters is that the mechanic is utter shit because it totally disrespects player agency.

[Ridаn]

But otherwise Xcom can farm aliens forever and there is no need to go to Cydonia.
Player is supposed to fight a losing battle against alien menace.

[Mazian]

And really, any player worth his salt is making enough money by the time countries start defecting that it doesn't REALLY matter.  Just sell everything you got from those ships you shot down.

[Arthanor]

It's not about the (financial) consequence, it is about the mechanic that doesn't make sense. Players who care about losing countries mostly don't do so because they lost money, they do so because they don't want to lose the country, worked on killing every alien that attempted to turn the country and still lost it because of game magic. There shouldn't be scripted game magic, there should be a self-consistent story.

As for being pushed to go to Cydonia, that's what increasingly numerous and difficult missions is for: Once you are ready, you have the choice to go and most likely win, or stay here for little real advantage but risk getting your soldiers killed in combat.

And really, if someone wants to farm UFOs for fun, I'm not going to argue against that. It is a single player game and we all have various conceptions of what's fun.

[Mazian]

The mechanic makes sense from a game design perspective, but I agree it is done a little heavy handed.  But then the game could just spam like 20 battleships all at once on infiltration missions to achieve the same thing.  Would make more sense story wise like you want, but would probably piss people off just as much.

[Arthanor]

Well, a mechanic that says "As soon as the rng decides this mission starts, there is nothing the player can do about it, but it's ok because it doesn't hurt the player too much if they are already abusing something else" is a mechanic that many would like to see improved, myself included

I'd rather try to fight an air war against 20 battleships in the hope of saving a country than look at the one landed battleship and wonder if I should raid it, knowing that besides loot and points, I will not get any advantage out of it. It's like if shooting down terror ships did not prevent terror missions from happening. Actually, the very fact that shooting down the terror ship can prevent the terror mission hints that it should be doable to shoot down the battleship and prevent the defection.

[Surrealistik]

Even if X-Com was intended to be fighting a losing battle (I don't think that was ever actually confirmed by the devs), there's definitely better ways to do it that don't totally rob the player of agency and exploit arbitrary bullshit. Slowly escalating UFO activity to the point that the player can't keep up for example (no suddenly lolwtf 20 battleships, but that might happen if you let things drag on too long).

[pilot00]

I agree that the mechanic is not the best out there, especially when you have the equipment to shoot down 3 battleships and their attended escorts. That said turning on and off the funding of a counsil member doesnt sound legit either. It can lead into schizophrenic occurances the like of: January the US abandons X-Com. March US rejoins the X-COM. Add infinitum.

[Surrealistik]

To be fair, alien infiltration is exactly that; no good alien shits masquerading as humans that have subverted the government. If those shits were outed because you totally handed the aliens their ass and there was popular uprising against an alignment with the invaders, it's totally possible that a country could pull a 180 in short order.

On the otherhand, if the aliens were especially aggressive in subverting governments, they could indeed yoyo a newly anti-alien government back into line, by replacing its leaders with bugeyed imposters.

[Dioxine]

Also, for the love of god, if I shoot down the vast majority of an infiltrating armada before it lands, or stop a landed Dreadnought via a ground assault, please don't let the country get infiltrated anyways; that is just straight up bullshit. I know it was like this in the source game, but it was a stupid design flaw then, and it still is now. Easily my biggest peeve/annoyance.

There are many players who feel like this, but this is not a reason enough to change one of the cornerstone UFO mechanics. A mechanic that adds the feeling of inevitability and powerlessness. It naturally angers me when a country defects, but isn't it a bit of a childish feeling? Such is the reality of war, and X-Com is not The United Earth Defense Force, not even The Anti-Alien Inqusition, but a small, clandestine operation - so there are many things beyond X-Com's power to change. If a government wilfully embraces the aliens, what the X-Com can do? Bomb that country? Stage a coup? The real diplomat-carrying alien vessel is probably not even shown on the map, as it is bound to be protected by the airforce of the defecting country.

[Surrealistik]

Again, it's a game, player agency is important, and disrespecting player agency as this does is pretty much a leading hallmark of bad design; it's not childish to take objection to a punishing mechanic that totally discards your ability to do anything about it. You can't even stop the aliens from distributing their agents/infiltrators, the precursor to pact signing, in the first place.


If the motive behind this shitty mechanic was to guarantee inevitable failure, assuming such a motive exists, this was a terrible way of doing it, and there are better alternatives.