Solar's wishlist

[karadoc]

For the monthly profit, I'd suggest the weighted average of the possible profits.


Regarding crackdowns, regardless of realism, I think it would be better for gameplay if they were something people wanted to avoid. I just think the decisions about how to avoid being found and how to defend are good parts of the game; but that only works if base assaults are something players want to avoid.

If a player sees an crackdown sentry and fighter, they should think "I'd better shoot that down before it finds the base"; and the player should have built interceptors for this purpose. If the enemy is flying heavy gunships or something, hopefully the player should have their own heavy craft to defend. If the crackdown arrives, the player should hope there base defences are enough to help them... But on the other hand, if the player actually wants there base to be attacked, then all of the planning and preparing and fighting becomes "Cool. Crackdown. I'll just do nothing and wait for them to arrive." I just think it's more interesting to act than to wait. (I personally 'role play' that I need to protect my bases from being attacked regardless of the profits.)

I've not sure what (if any) changes would be good for crackdowns; but I do have one suggestion:

Damaged tiles in your base should cost money to repair. I'm not talking about whole facilities being destroyed, I just mean there should be costs to repair the base after various explosives have trashed the place. That way, if you win a base defence you'll still be awarded with good equipment and high ranking prisoners, but you'll have to pay a price too...  Maybe you'll have to sell the equipment you got to repair your base. The cost could be based on the number of damaged squares on the battlescape at the end of the mission; and it could be deducted directly from your account.

Anyway, that would probably take a decent amount of work to implement and balance; so maybe it's not worth it. But I thought it was at least worth suggesting.

[just_dont]

In Piratez you can shoot down their cruisers and battleships and the only answer to something clearly threatening to their reputation is an anemic hideout raid.

Even if crackdowns become automatic losses, it won't make them resistant to abuse.
I can easily imagine that people will simply build dedicated "attack bases" (hangars/barracks) and will do all the raiding from those, quickly transferring stuff out in case of imminent crackdown. Losing only ~25 days of construction time at best.

This is hardly a good solution for increasing game difficulty. At worst, it can make it much more annoying (because, as people mentioned, sometimes crackdowns are the only sure-fire way to obtain high-rank enemy units).

A more proper solution would be to make crackdown missions appropriately hard (always scaling with actual player's progress), while at the same time removing all instakill heavy ordinance from the game at all (chinese dragon, baby nukes, etc), because instakill weapons trivialize crackdown missions way too much. At least all replenishable instakill weapons.

Scaling missions might be way too much work for the OpenXCOM engine as well. Not to mention that at best you can scale enemy quantities and their equipment; but any equipment gap between the player and the AI that you create will be eventually closed.

[Solarius Scorch]

For the monthly profit, I'd suggest the weighted average of the possible profits.

Your runts (or whoever is running the numbers) have no idea what the manufacturing result will be; they may not even have a list of possibilities. It's like buying a shed with everything in it before opening it. How would they/you appraise its value?

No, it should be a big fat question mark. It's a surprise!

[karadoc]

Your runts (or whoever is running the numbers) have no idea what the manufacturing result will be; they may not even have a list of possibilities. It's like buying a shed with everything in it before opening it. How would they/you appraise its value?

No, it should be a big fat question mark. It's a surprise!

Fair enough. I was imagining that the runts _did_ know. For example, if they were opening a treasure chest; they might not know what's in there, but they do know from their treasure chest research roughly what the value will be... ...

In any case, the is probably good. You're right that if the runts have no idea, then they shouldn't be able to tell the player.

[Solarius Scorch]

Meridian, it's not terribly important or urgent, but maybe you could have a look at this: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5185.0.html

If it's simple to code, it could be useful for all sorts of rescue missions.

[Martin]

A more proper solution would be to make crackdown missions appropriately hard (always scaling with actual player's progress), while at the same time removing all instakill heavy ordinance from the game at all (chinese dragon, baby nukes, etc), because instakill weapons trivialize crackdown missions way too much. At least all replenishable instakill weapons.

They already have top grade equipment. The "AI" is too dumb to actually attack, it is stuck patrolling hangars.

[khade]

Using a chinese dragon in your base gets you what you deserve

Maybe what we need is the crackdowns start hunting for weak bases, to cut you off from your expansions, so you actively have to bait them into attacking the bases you've prepped as a kill box

[Eddie]

If you want to make crackdowns punishing, simply remove the loot from them. Only use terror units with built in weapons that give nothing valuable when captured and give no loot (Biodrones anyone?). That you need crackdowns to get VIP's from certain factions is a debatable game design choice that can be changed.

Ideas for crackdown terror units:
- suicide doggies with strapped on dynamite, primed to 10 rounds. Needs explosives beeing able to expode in inventory when timer runs out. Kill them fast enough, then you can disarm the dynamite.
- exploding attack drones. Drone with an explosion melee attack, that will kill itself too. Of course they explode cyberdisk style when killed.
- ninja cryssalids that have catgirl style camo.
I can really think of lots of stuff that would annoy the hell out of me...

If bombardment were to be implemented in any way, my idea would be:
Attacking bomber attacks base until defense cannons shoot it down / damage it enough to force a retreat. Each attack run of the bomber has a chance to kill runts, equipment, scientists, hands. More/better base defence kills the bomber quicker, so less attack runs. Stationed interceptors can join in attacking the bomber, their guns are added to base defence value. Bombardment shield offers protection from x number of attack runs before it wears out. If you have no base defence... the bomber can attack until the job is done or ammo empty.

[Ketonur]

I think the easiest way to make crackdowns punishing is to give random equipment to the gals. It is quite logic, you are attacked by surprise and grab whatever you could find.

[legionof1]

That would add some difficulty in a reasonable way. Technically feasible maybe not.

[ohartenstein23]

Random weapons can happen if you have autoequip set in options, and random armor might be a thing in an upcoming OXCE+ version...

[Eddie]

Since difficulty level has been discussed in another thread:
How hard would it be to code in additional starting items / facilities based on difficulty level?
IF difficulty lower then 4/3/2/1 THEN lookup in ruleset which additional items/facilities/soldiers to add to starting base.

[Meridian]

Since difficulty level has been discussed in another thread:
How hard would it be to code in additional starting items / facilities based on difficulty level?
IF difficulty lower then 4/3/2/1 THEN lookup in ruleset which additional items/facilities/soldiers to add to starting base.

Easy.

[Meridian]

[DONE] Custom damage types

 - current ruleset is backwards-compatible, no need to define all 20 resistances for armors
 - but if you want to define let's say resistance #15, you will need to define all from #1 to #15

New translations visible on screenshot, hopefully.

[karadoc]

Nice.

Speaking of damage types; is there any good reason why the 'normal' choking damage modifier is 400%, rather than 100%? It's a bit weird.