Author Topic: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?  (Read 6342 times)

Offline aquanaut

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[TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« on: October 03, 2015, 10:49:13 pm »
Hey guys,

  I came upon OpenXCOM:TFTD about a week ago, and I have been enjoying the hell out of it ever since! This is a great project for a great game.

  As I've been putzing around with it, a thought occurred to me: I accrue a greater income from selling alien carcasses and sonic MacGuffins than I get from any of the funding nations; however, those same nations can sack me from X-COM command if I have two consecutively bad months. It seems to me I should be able to just slog on indefinitely without international support. In fact, the plot of the new XCOM 2 seems to be just that: X-COM as a last-ditch resistance movement after the aliens control world government.

  Is there a mod made/is there a way I could make a mod that removes the two-consecutively-bad-month loss condition and leaves me independent of the world at large? Make a game that ends only when you either lose all your bases or blow up T'Leth?

  Thanks!

Offline Meridian

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2015, 11:06:18 pm »
I don't think you can make a mod for that... but if it bothers you too much, you can just save the game before the end of the month... open the save in a text editor... and remove the bad score manually (the file is readable by humans). Then reload and continue ;-)

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2015, 11:39:54 pm »
Yeah.. Did you ever think about your staff? Would they follow you even despite their country saying that XCom is not needed anymore? We tend to think of them as ours, but these guys come from somewhere and if you have had two months of bad score, it's entirely possible that they don't want to stay either.

Continuing despite the dismissal by the funding nations could make sense, if you lost all bases within the borders of one of the funding nations (they took them back, it's their country after all) and a pretty high % of all your staff (maybe based on difficulty). Then you would be following the XCom2 way: "XCom: Guerilla".

Forging on with everything you once had means you remove one of the main ways to lose the game, without even a penalty to replace that. Then the only other way to lose is if the aliens capture all your bases, which is incredibly unlikely. If you can't lose, where's the risk? Where's the challenge? It's XCom, it's a great game because it's harsh.

Offline Ajaxial

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2015, 11:45:26 pm »
Hey guys,

  I came upon OpenXCOM:TFTD about a week ago, and I have been enjoying the hell out of it ever since! This is a great project for a great game.

  As I've been putzing around with it, a thought occurred to me: I accrue a greater income from selling alien carcasses and sonic MacGuffins than I get from any of the funding nations; however, those same nations can sack me from X-COM command if I have two consecutively bad months. It seems to me I should be able to just slog on indefinitely without international support. In fact, the plot of the new XCOM 2 seems to be just that: X-COM as a last-ditch resistance movement after the aliens control world government.

  Is there a mod made/is there a way I could make a mod that removes the two-consecutively-bad-month loss condition and leaves me independent of the world at large? Make a game that ends only when you either lose all your bases or blow up T'Leth?

  Thanks!

I posted maybe a year or two ago asking the exact same question. A way to disable the game ending at the loss of council funding. IE being able to continue and rely upon my own antics to keep myself funded. 3 pages went by and I had like 2 actual responses that were helpful. The rest of the posts were nothing but people telling me how dumb it was and how it makes no sense or demanding to know why'd I want such a mechanic when it makes no sense rather than helping to achieve what I wanted for personal use. At-least you got the answer within the first reply.

It seems that it is all inside the main exe, the code controlling game failure at a certain amount of negative months. Unless that has been changed at all. But from my antics looking through the files over past while. I've never seen anything that would alter the end game triggers.

Offline aquanaut

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2015, 11:51:05 pm »
Continuing despite the dismissal by the funding nations could make sense, if you lost all bases within the borders of one of the funding nations (they took them back, it's their country after all) and a pretty high % of all your staff (maybe based on difficulty). Then you would be following the XCom2 way: "XCom: Guerilla".

Ooh, that's a great twist on the idea! I seem to recall reading on the UFOPaedia website somewhere that all the bases from X-COM1 were converted into theme parks or something between the first two alien wars.

Is there any conceivable way to implement such a mechanic, in your opinion?

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2015, 12:56:53 am »
@Ajaxial: Well now, the answer to your question is the same: Go in your save and fix it. Nobody with the knowledge to code it was interested to, which sadly is the fate of many a good idea (like recovering countries that defected through a series of missions, or even preventing infiltration from being a 100% success thing).

@aquanaut: Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible, currently, no, and would probably require a bunch of new work on the executable side to have such an event. BUT, it is 100% possible to do that yourself through saves manipulations: Up your score so the game doesn't end, delete the bases on countries' territories after transferring a fraction of the people/stuff that was there to other "neutral countries" bases, set all countries funding to 0.

The funding change could be achieved through enabling a mod at the right moment, but I don't think the other two can. Maybe you can set how negative your score has to be for the game to consider that you were too bad and need to stop, but I'm not sure.

Note that the idea to remove bases is fairly extreme. In the regular game, you don't lose a base even if it is situated on the territory of a defecting country (probably that would be too harsh given the 100% success of infiltration missions).

Offline aquanaut

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2015, 05:19:57 am »
Nobody with the knowledge to code it was interested to, which sadly is the fate of many a good idea (like recovering countries that defected through a series of missions, or even preventing infiltration from being a 100% success thing).

@aquanaut: Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible, currently, no, and would probably require a bunch of new work on the executable side to have such an event.

Oh, well. Is there any sort of suggestion box/thread here where we can submit ideas to the OpenXcom developers for these sorts of things?

Note that the idea to remove bases is fairly extreme. In the regular game, you don't lose a base even if it is situated on the territory of a defecting country (probably that would be too harsh given the 100% success of infiltration missions).

As I mull it over, actually, it seems to me that any self-respecting X-COM commander isn't going to hand over a base just because the host country defected and called "backsies"; and, since said country is cooperating with the aliens, they would just deliver the coordinates to their new bug-eyed overlords anyway. (Besides, I suspect that a dreadnought USO full of Lobstermen would pose a bigger threat than anything that the Icelandic Union military could come up with on its own.)

So the best way to represent that, then, might be some way to ratchet up the frequency/strength/number of terror units for floating base attacks?

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2015, 06:37:04 pm »
Oh, well. Is there any sort of suggestion box/thread here where we can submit ideas to the OpenXcom developers for these sorts of things?
Until TftD is all done and moddable to the level the devs are aiming at, I don't think there is much else you can attract their attention with. Maybe Yankes with his OpenXCom Extended, as he seems to be the most open to implementing new things instead of recreating the originals, but that seems beyond what he usually does.

Quote
As I mull it over, actually, it seems to me that any self-respecting X-COM commander isn't going to hand over a base just because the host country defected and called "backsies"; and, since said country is cooperating with the aliens, they would just deliver the coordinates to their new bug-eyed overlords anyway. (Besides, I suspect that a dreadnought USO full of Lobstermen would pose a bigger threat than anything that the Icelandic Union military could come up with on its own.)

So the best way to represent that, then, might be some way to ratchet up the frequency/strength/number of terror units for floating base attacks?

That could work, yes. But remember, XCom fights aliens. A self-respecting XCom commander might not want to fight humans. When an army of humans from a legitimate government shows up at your door, even though they are less scary than lobstermen, will your aquanauts be willing to fire on them? Enemy Within and XCom2 shows that XCom is willing to kill humans that are integrated in the aliens' system, but at that point, the army (and even the government who just signed the pact) isn't yet.

And even if an icelandic trooper isn't much of a threat compared to lobstermen, a country can marshal thousands of troops supported by tanks, artillery and aircrafts. I'm not sure how well an XCom base with ~50 troops, and 3 crafts that can't shoot outside of water would hold up. It's a typical case of "elite soldier trumped by masses of crappier ones". They win in attrition, and a basic rocket launcher can still hurt.

Anyhow, that's a case of different "head cannon". I don't see the XCom conflicts as a typical fantasy-like 100% good and evil fight where if someone is your enemy, they are absolutely evil and deserve to be destroyed. The aliens, yes, but the humans that side with them.. It very much depends on whom.

If XCom starts fighting governments, does it not then become a threat to human society as well and worthy of being terminated? Why would 1 XCom commander know better than all of the world's leaders agreeing that XCom is over? To me, the only continuation that is acceptable after official termination is the kind of guerilla war shown for XCom 2.

Offline shinr

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2015, 10:29:05 am »
The way I see it, while X-COM could theoretically fight without the support of the Funding Nations with little to no degradation in efficiency, it is just that the Aliens getting all of the Nations' defacto approval to do whatever they want is such a huge strategic and tactical advantage that unless X-COM performs a miracle within one month or less, the war is effectively lost for humans.

And the aliens usually destroy Earth soon after, rendering any guerrilla activity useless.

As for Story and Gameplay segregation of "everything is fine as long as Russia alone keeps funding us", well, in most of games you either win or more likely lose long before getting to that point.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2015, 01:59:47 pm »
The way I see it, while X-COM could theoretically fight without the support of the Funding Nations with little to no degradation in efficiency,

- They stop buying your wares
- They stop supplying electricity and food ('maintenance costs')
- They stop supplying recruits

Yeah you'd definitely last a lot.

Offline Saklie

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #10 on: October 10, 2015, 06:24:08 pm »
An independent X-Com ain't that impossible. They can hire mercenaries, freedom fighters and the other usual people. The base's needs can be taken care by using the black market to get what they need, the same place we can use to sell our wares on. The Staff have their own personalities, some would leave xcom while other would stay. And fighting other humans? Eh, we been killing each other for ages now, and I doubt that a country would care if we attacked the now alien-allied defectors, who might or might not be now attacking the X-Com funding countries and invading them.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 06:33:38 pm by Saklie »

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [TFTD] An independent X-COM?
« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2015, 06:49:19 pm »
The fact that XCom could continue fighting is not really a debate (it is happening in the sequel to the remake), it's the "with little to no degradation in efficiency" that is. Indeed, in the sequel XCom becomes a guerilla operation based on one recovered alien supply ship and, as Dioxine mentioned, there are a lot of things that would change for a normal XCom base if the countries removed their support.

The power/food one being debatable, since losing the country in which your base is located doesn't actually impact either. If we get around to making 2 levels base defenses, maybe there should be a farm there and a power plant...

As for fighting other humans being ok, sure, as a species we have a lot of infighting, but that's usually based on some devilisation of the enemy. Hiring a US marine to defend humanity (and his country) against the alien threat doesn't mean he will be willing to fight his fellow americans once they sign a pact with the aliens. I think that would be a decent part of the defections.