Add Option To Allow Infiltrated Countries to Be Liberated

[Warboy1982]

swearing in every single post doesn't help get your point across, please tone it down and talk like a civilized human being.
if you can't make your point without devolving to this kind of behaviour, please don't make it at all.

[7Saturn]

I believe I recently read here, that Russia won't defect to the alien side. If that's true, you have no problem whatsoever. As somebody else already said, by the time this could affect you, you probably won't have any money issues any more, as production and selling scavenged times will keep you a rather large income, even if there's only one supporting country left.

[Mazian]

Hey, they could have made it so that there wasn't even any indication this was happening, with countries just randomly siding with the aliens.  At least this way you know you're losing a country at the end of the month.
I don't know, I guess I just don't have a problem with timer mechanics that push the game forward.

[Surrealistik]

I believe I recently read here, that Russia won't defect to the alien side. If that's true, you have no problem whatsoever. As somebody else already said, by the time this could affect you, you probably won't have any money issues any more, as production and selling scavenged times will keep you a rather large income, even if there's only one supporting country left.

Never heard that, but if true, it debunks the idea that inevitable failure is intended as a deliberate design goal, and that infiltration is supposed to put the player on a clock as seems to be believed by many, and which was never actually confirmed.


@ Mazian: That the mechanic could be worse doesn't mean it shouldn't be better.

[7Saturn]

I have to correct myself: I (probably) had it from here.

[Dioxine]

Never heard that, but if true, it debunks the idea that inevitable failure is intended as a deliberate design goal, and that infiltration is supposed to put the player on a clock as seems to be believed by many, and which was never actually confirmed.

Nobody said that you can loose through country defection, the Russia non-defective status is sort-of-confirmed (better ask the devs for 100% confirmation), and it is highly improbable that majority of countries will defect before even a low-skilled player, who managed to survive to this point, will have the final mission available. It just was never the point of discussion. Your point was, it seems, that your feelings are hurt if a country defects due to non-controllable outside effect (ie. a random dice roll). My point is that hurting feelings is precisely the point of this mechanic and it's all good, as - in my personal opinion - the mechanic isn't overtly punishing, especially considering how strongly almost every other strategical aspect of the game (money, tech improvement, firepower) favors the player. The only strategical factor that favors the aliens is that player's elite soldiers are hard to replace - but this is balanced by the fact how uber-powerful these elite soldiers are, compared to any alien unit.

Having said all that, OpenXCom is supposed to be a faithful recreation of the original, not an "improved" version that removes or changes important parts of game experience. Such as the dreaded Alien Infiltration mission. I love XCom precisely because it sometimes just plainly says F**K YOU to the player. For example there was a long discussion over removing the "first turn grenade TPK" un-fun event from the game, and it finally stayed out (with an added option to enable it), but this was much nastier and definitely more unfair event than the Infiltration Mission.

[pilot00]

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.

I dont know weather that is fixed or not but the Russians never bail out therefore you can continue indefinently as long as you can manage scraping cash. Also in theory one of the fail scenarios is indeed this. Theoritically X-Com cant continue the fight indefinetly either and the world is slipping in mass hysteria by the hour so...
I agree with the resty of your post that it indeed is counter intuitive as a mechanic though.

Never heard that, but if true, it debunks the idea that inevitable failure is intended as a deliberate design goal, and that infiltration is supposed to put the player on a clock as seems to be believed by many, and which was never actually confirmed.

It was not done on purpose I think, it was a bug resulting on how the map was divisioned into zones and has something to do with the overlapping of Russia/Siberia/Europe.

[Warboy1982]

just as an FYI: Russia never gets infiltrated because there's no infiltration missions scheduled for that region, and there is no failure condition for having all funding nations drop out.

getting back to the point, i find myself in complete agreement with Dioxine's posts, and this Russia thing doesn't really debunk anything. my reasoning is based on the source code, specifically where, how and when things are handled. to put it in simple terms:
you have two functions: spawnUFO and UFOLanding.
all the code regarding for instance, terror site generation, happens in UFOLanding. the ufo touches down, but instead of becoming a landed craft, it becomes a terror site, if anything happens when a UFO touches down, it's in here.
all the code for pact signing etc. happens in spawnUFO.

my point is, the relevent code didn't end up in spawnUFO by accident. we don't need an official statement from an interview with the developers to determine that.

[7Saturn]

I thought, in vanilla, there was. Anyways, that confirms, that you simply can't loose caused by lack of funding nations, even if there were such a game-over-condition. It simply won't happen. So you can play the game until the sun explodes, if you wish.

[XOps]

[Opinion]
The alien auto-successful infiltration mission was always my number one nitpick with the original. To me, what the original developers intended is largely irrelevant (I tend to lean more towards 'death of the author' interpretations of work).  I just never liked how this was handled. Mind you, I'm past the frothing rage I felt many years ago when I first lost a nation after a bunch of UFO assaults, but I still never liked how the game slaps you in face with it. It's rather strange, because the game does this all the time in other aspects and no one cares. I think infiltration specifically makes players angry because players give themselves the illusion of being able to do something about it even though the game never suggests these missions could be stopped. Most players simply assume that infiltration can be stopped like any other mission. Expectation leads to disappointment. That disappointment is worsened when players mop up every UFO that lands which takes forever and they still lose the nation. At least that was my experience with it.
[/Opinion]

That said, while I don't think the vanilla game should be changed, I do wish infiltration wasn't hardcoded. I would totally mod a special mission out of it. I want to fight aliens in the Capitol Building while useless congressmen run around screaming.

-PS I hope my opinion doesn't make anyone upset. I find my opinions have a tendency to do that.

[Surrealistik]

Nobody said that you can loose through country defection, the Russia non-defective status is sort-of-confirmed (better ask the devs for 100% confirmation), and it is highly improbable that majority of countries will defect before even a low-skilled player, who managed to survive to this point, will have the final mission available. It just was never the point of discussion. Your point was, it seems, that your feelings are hurt if a country defects due to non-controllable outside effect (ie. a random dice roll). My point is that hurting feelings is precisely the point of this mechanic and it's all good, as - in my personal opinion - the mechanic isn't overtly punishing, especially considering how strongly almost every other strategical aspect of the game (money, tech improvement, firepower) favors the player. The only strategical factor that favors the aliens is that player's elite soldiers are hard to replace - but this is balanced by the fact how uber-powerful these elite soldiers are, compared to any alien unit.

Having said all that, OpenXCom is supposed to be a faithful recreation of the original, not an "improved" version that removes or changes important parts of game experience. Such as the dreaded Alien Infiltration mission. I love XCom precisely because it sometimes just plainly says F**K YOU to the player. For example there was a long discussion over removing the "first turn grenade TPK" un-fun event from the game, and it finally stayed out (with an added option to enable it), but this was much nastier and definitely more unfair event than the Infiltration Mission.

No, it's not that my 'feelings are hurt', it's that it's a poor game mechanic because again, it completely disrespects player agency and prevents the player from having any say about whether or not an infiltration succeeds in a game that is all about outmaneuvering the aliens on a strategic and tactical level. A mechanic that is about robbing the player of agency in a game predicated on it is a bad mechanic; full stop. I don't mind RNG rolls determining outcomes for small scale stuff, like individual shots on the tactical level, since it's possible to control and manage your overall risk and still come out ahead; the loss of agency here is not meaningful unless you're a bad player and you constantly rely on making a shot or two to uphold your tactical game. I _do_ mind it however, when it comes to completely irreversible, high impact nonsense like infiltration events.

Yes, OpenXcom is intended to be largely a faithful recreation; that is why I am asking for an _option_ to make Alien Infiltration counterable.

Lastly, since you can still continue the game even with all countries having signed a pact, it seems more likely than not that inevitable failure was not a core design goal (and again, even if it was it should have been handled differently).

[Arthanor]

@Warboy: Is there a way with the new mission scripts to create a mission where the landing of a ufo triggers a defection instead of its spawning?

If there is, a simple mod that removes the old infiltration and adds a new mission where landing triggers defection, everybody could be made happy..

I am surprised that the idea of allowing players to impact all aspects of the game faces so much opposition. It seems a pretty basic thing to want from a game to me.. "Oh, you weren't good enough" is desirable, but "oh, screw you because why not?" is not a great mechanic, even if the consequence isn't too bad (then it is even more pointless, if it's not too bad of a consequence, why not allow the player to play against it?)

[7Saturn]

@Warboy: Is there a way with the new mission scripts to create a mission where the landing of a ufo triggers a defection instead of its spawning?

From my point, this looks as ridiculously, as the no-way-of-stopping-part. If they land and I land there as well, obliterating them completely, this mission totally shouldn't be a success for them. As for any other landing mission, I presume. Or does e. g. an alien abduction mission succeed, even you catch them in the act? Don't know about that.

I am surprised that the idea of allowing players to impact all aspects of the game faces so much opposition. It seems a pretty basic thing to want from a game to me.. "Oh, you weren't good enough" is desirable, but "oh, screw you because why not?" is not a great mechanic, even if the consequence isn't too bad (then it is even more pointless, if it's not too bad of a consequence, why not allow the player to play against it?)

I agree, especially, when you find out later... I also noticed, that they »somehow« managed to get past my defenses, which I always found very suspicious. Now I know why they still succeeded in infiltration, even when I shot down every last one of them. Seems like there's no point in reacting to this supposedly »worst threat« (O-Tone of the Ufopaedia) to the X-com-Project, as you will not succeed anyways, no matter what you do. That kind of fools the player. It might not be a problem, if it comes down to loosing the game, or not. But it still feels quite bad.

[Mazian]

Perhaps it was originally set up where you could stop it from happening, but it made the game too easy?  Maybe the way it is now was purely about adding a challenge.  I'm all for someone making a mod to change this, but I bet the game becomes even more of a cakewalk.  Maybe add into the mod lower over all increases in funding to compensate?

[kharille]

Crossed my mind to create a mechanic for sponsoring xcom intelligence services.  But hey, unless Julian Gollop himself has input, I wouldn't consider it authentic.  Wish he'd do another squad based combat game, or rework laser squad nemesis.

Yeah, I'm a perfectionist.  Still on my first playthrough of openxcom, getting about 30 ufo missions a month and so far no countries lost.  Maybe with more than 250 soldiers with psi strength of 50 or more, the others were all 'lost'....  Guess I'd be disappointed to lose one country.