Yes, but how is requiring this improving the situation?
Why is me saying it is
not required and there are other methods to soften the blow,
twice, not getting through? The ideal player-side solution is to beeline for better transports and new bases. If the player can't be bothered or plays a challenge run, and dislikes both savescumming and excessive preparation, well, a minor score loss on par with regular crop circles should not cripple their game.
How is savescumming an argument in favor of anything? It isn't. Mechanics and missions that are well implemented should not require or encourage savescumming.
But the issue at hand is not whether there's a well designed mission, nor whether sacescumming is required. Nothing particularly bad will happen if you don't sacescum. Your other argument was that it 'frustrates' the player, ie a specific kind of player's
emotional state, and reloading is a solution to that. One that millions of players utilise every day. If you have a different argument about the
mechanical design, that should be made separately.
That is, don't think that the mod 'owes' you 'fair' missions. It doesn't. Getting to do and win a rare hard mission is a
reward. Or maybe luck.
Your argument earlier was basically "doing these would make doing these missions less frustrating". I honestly don't see any meaningful reward here that's worth pushing the player into keeping their agents eternally airborne.
No, it was 'would make
finding these missions less of an issue'. Actually winning the mission is a separate matter. One could also make the early instances easier, by equipping the aliens with stun weapons, anal probes and the like instead of plasma guns.
And I agree,
forcing players to do a Helmet Hair would be useless. Fortunately, getting to these mission sites in no way
requires that.
Plus, getting Alien Power Systems from such a UFO means early Skyraiders, which means you no longer need to be 'eternally airborne' if you chose to do that. Or get better coverage if you lucked into a nearby UFO, etc. I think that's quite a meaningful reward.
And if you mean 'reward' in a meta sense, it's catering to the mod's stated audience, 'experienced players', and rewarding good play. I see no isse with that unless you're one of these people who think all games need to get harder and harder and
harder the longer they go on.
That's still not an excuse for implementing early game missions that use mid- to late game despawn timers comparable to those for alien terror missions.
That is
exactly an excuse to do that. There might be reasons why doing so might be counterproductive otherwise, and indeed there are. Strategy games and their design is a matter of trade-offs, after all.
They are not, but they provide pretty much the same benefits you're advancing for this new type of missions. Hence "needlessly".
Well, yes, the mod will not suffer greatly if there are no more UFO different missions. But that argument can be leveled against most any single mission type, and is thus not particularly strong in itself.
And if the mod has an overabundance of 'shot down' UFOs, that raises thematic issues. Why does the world need X-Com when local militaries can already do the job. My proposal is largely about providing a more varied source of UFOs to play with, so one type will not dominate too much.
And the 'shot down' missions have allies, so they're the really easy version. My proposal is a middle ground between those and 'free' UFOs.
Because it doesn't. If these were introduced later or used longer despawn timers I wouldn't have all that much trouble seeing these as a worthwile addition.
My proposition already covers the 'later' part. It was that these missions would be added to every phase of the game, with UFO sizes and prevalence increasing as time goes on. They'd be rare in the beginning, where most crop circles etc still have farmers, then you transition to mostly MiB coverups, and then mostly UFOs. Maybe one year per each phase.
You might consider the rare early UFOs interactable 'bad events'.
I simply don't see the added benefit of pushing despawn times even further down in the early game.
It isn't 'pushing despawn times ... down'. It's a singular mission type.
Not trying to frustrate new players and restricting missions to very specialzed play styles.
Given that the 'specialised play style' is a strawman, and new players will not be meaningfully more frustrated by a few early UFOs than they'd be by manors, regular early UFOs, Chupacabra hordes or any other curveball the mod throws their way, I fail to see why you're so insistent about this one single addition.
Please don't introduce missions with very short and strict despwn times early in the game.
Actually, I am not even sure where you get that these are insurmountably short timers. A Dragongly covers half the globe in 10 hours. An Opsrey covers like 80%+ in 11. So two bases with Dragonflies will get to almost any 12-hour-time-limit mission, barring more important missions coming up at the same time. And that's what a player is supposed to be doing in a strategy game, making meaningful choices using limited resources.
Early on, a private car will do much the same as an Osprey, and two agents against a Small Scout seems reasonably fair. Very early on, before Promo I, you're kinda hosed, but that's what progress is all about.
They are not needed...
Nothing is ever strictly needed in a game. I think such missions would provide an interesting and thematic opportunity.
