[solved] help on ruleset/script changes to avoid gvts destroying piratez

[sectopod]

hi piratez!

can you help me with ruleset/script changes to avoid gvts destroying the pirates after 2 consecutive bad months? additionally i want to prevent a single gvt, which thinks the pirates are a joke, to leave the flock, of those paying protection money, forever, if such a thing exists in piratez+.

my last game was my first piratez game and i did ok. 19 missions, 3 lost, 1000+ average monthly rating on jack sparrow/supermutant difficulty. and then, the last month the gvts were bloody scared of me and the next month they unite and destroy me via a text screen. 

i was ... surprised. then i read on the forums about the 2-consecutive-bad-months-and-it-is-over mechanic.


now i ask for guidelines on how i can achieve the following behavior in piratez:

1. completely disable the 2-consecutive-bad-months-and-it-is-over mechanic
(this is obvious. i want to be able to, although i had some bad months, be bad-gals-ass back with a new transport, better equipment and a larger crew after i prepared and hid some months in my hid-out.)

2. change the percentage in changes in protection money if gvts are more or less scared
(this i want, so i can make the impact of more or less scareddom be larger. and i would like to see it so that the drop in PM of a less scared gvt is larger than the rise in PM of a more scared gvt. this way the way up is hard and the way down easy)

3. if there is a game mechanic like in vanilla and OXC, by which not scared at all gvts are leaving the group of those paying PM, i want to disable that. - and/or change it, so the PM of a not scared gvt drops to 0$ instantly (this way i will think twice, trice and quadruple before i let myself appear like a joke. but if i did so, i can always work my way back into the gvts pockets)

4. if it is not too complex: let not-scared-at-all gvts launch attacks on my hideouts frequently (additional punishment and danger on one side, but also some sort of potential additional income during bad times)


i like the scenario a lot - if things go that bad - where we (the pirates) are decimated, worn and fought down considerably and forced to retreat to our hideouts, left to sell x-grog (and ourselfs) to the locals for some income while hiding in the dark, manufactoring and restocking gear and building up numbers. preparing for our comeback. after all, with some slimming down, it always was possible to become halfway selfsustaining in XC by producing the stuff with the biggest profit/workhours ratio. and if it wasn't for that ability to destroy us via a text screen, i know we will recover from setbacks and eventually prevail against all odds (and odd aliens).

i would be glad about some instructions.

[Meridian]

1. completely disable the 2-consecutive-bad-months-and-it-is-over mechanic
(this is obvious. i want to be able to, although i had some bad months, be bad-gals-ass back with a new transport, better equipment and a larger crew after i prepared and hid some months in my hid-out.)

Code: [Select]

defeatScore: -50000


2. change the percentage in changes in protection money if gvts are more or less scared
(this i want, so i can make the impact of more or less scareddom be larger. and i would like to see it so that the drop in PM of a less scared gvt is larger than the rise in PM of a more scared gvt. this way the way up is hard and the way down easy)

Not possible, hardcoded random number between 5 and 20.

3. if there is a game mechanic like in vanilla and OXC, by which not scared at all gvts are leaving the group of those paying PM, i want to disable that. - and/or change it, so the PM of a not scared gvt drops to 0$ instantly (this way i will think twice, trice and quadruple before i let myself appear like a joke. but if i did so for too long, i can always work my way back into the gvts pockets)

It's same as in vanilla.
Doesn't matter if they are scared or not.
It depends on whether the infiltration mission is finished (in piratez called Sway Local Government mission).
You can disable it by deleting all such missions from mission tables and from mission scripts.
I'm not gonna tell you how, it's not just one line, you'll have to experiment yourself.

4. if it is not too complex: let not-scared-at-all gvts launch attacks on my hideouts frequently (additional punishment and danger on one side, but also some sort of potential additional income during bad times)

Individual governments are not factions... there is only one faction called government.
So you can't make some attack and some not... there is only one government for this purposes.
You can increase the rate of monthly retaliations (in piratez called crackdowns or hideout defences) of government forces using mission scripts (inspire yourself from vanilla ruleset or from piratez ruleset, both have it in mission scripts section).

[sectopod]

yay, thanks a bunch!

It's same as in vanilla.
Doesn't matter if they are scared or not.
It depends on whether the infiltration mission is finished (in piratez called Sway Local Government mission).
You can disable it by deleting all such missions from mission tables and from mission scripts.
I'm not gonna tell you how, it's not just one line, you'll have to experiment yourself.

ah, i recalled that one wrong. and now i remember, in vanilla the govts would not rejoin. even after alien bases were destroyed. is it the same in piratez? can it be edited, so they rejoin?

thanks

[Solarius Scorch]

in vanilla the govts would not rejoin. even after alien bases were destroyed. is it the same in piratez? can it be edited, so they rejoin?

No, such a function is not supported.

[khade]

Might be useful to have research projects or manufacturing projects that would reset lost governments, though at a low monthly payment, though the cost would have to be fairly high, maybe requiring a general or something rare and worth notoriety.

A way to hunker down and wait out bad times could be nice, but I actually do like the risk of the government deciding you're not scary enough to keep paying and basically just dropping large rocks on your hideouts, remove the evidence and the extortionists in one blow.

[nrafield]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the hardest difficulty is meant to allow you at any time to just sit tight and do nothing. You have to kick ass day and night to get by.

[sectopod]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the hardest difficulty is meant to allow you at any time to just sit tight and do nothing. You have to kick ass day and night to get by.

that is perfectly fine, but i want different possibilities. i mentioned the jacksparrow/supermutant difficulty to show that i like the challenge (and i am doing ok in general). and that i like to face the consequences of my actions or inactions with no way back. but the consequences must be fair and there must be a way ahead to deal with them. if they cut the funding, fine. i will slim down and will try to become more selfsustaining. if they come for me in my last hideout, fine. we gonna fight it out.
but unless i am beaten fair and square, i don't want the game to close on me for no good explanation.

and, tbh, i believe 20 years ago, the story was like that: microprose said "we are going to release next month". but the game was not yet finished. the game designers had something like you in mind though. some incentive to not sit around and hide. but they couldn't get that game mechanic done in time in a nice way. so they made an ugly textscreen and two pictures.

OOOOOOOORRR - an even better explanation: by observing playtesters the dev studio found out, that failing two months in a row was a good indicator that the player would lose the campaign. but not before the player would play for another in game year and lose funding after funding and battle after battle. and then the player would say "what a crap game". to cut the misery and let the player start another campaign which she or he might win, they programmed this ugly ending into the game engine.

i always wondered why a close to perfect game like this would have such an ugly game mechanic in it. after all, all the difficulty in this game derives from numbers and stats and not from disruptive events.

so i am changing this to come closer to the game experience i want. I dont mind playing a hide, lay low and attack guarilla warfare in bad times.

[Dioxine]

but unless i am beaten fair and square, i don't want the game to close on me for no good explanation.

The AI is incapable of beating you fair and square, with how easy it is to defend Hideout. Hence lo-score loss condition seems the only solution. Also, you need to play really, really bad to trigger it, so I think it's fine as it is.

[nrafield]

Well, it's your choice if you prefer it to be like that. In the end, I don't think this is as a big deal as the cut features of X-COM Apocalypse, as it's not that hard to accrue positive points after a few months of gameplay. There are plenty of strategies for that too, such as not researching the Mutant Alliance until you feel like you are ready to start doing something useful on mutant pogroms. And doesn't holding out for more research kinda defeat the point of having more weapons? I simply don't see any other reason to do it otherwise. But, that's just my opinion anyway.

[sectopod]

The AI is incapable of beating you fair and square, with how easy it is to defend Hideout.

well, i dont mind the AI sending in overwhelming numbers. and then i accept my defeat. but a text-screen? no. me no likey. breaks my immersion. works against my need to be able to react. now i have a tool to change it the way i want. me likey.

your point is good. it probably is possible to defend a base forever. but leads to the question, why not let a player play like this? if the player decides to return to the surface with mutons, blaster launchers and ethereals all over the planet, why not let it be that way? if the game goes into a stale mate for a while, why cut it?

a reason might be to prevent the player from sitting in the bases, producing, selling, stockpiling gear and saving money forever and then popping out with an army and mopping up everything in a few months.

my preference concerning all this would be to be base-attacked frequently. base attacks cause damage to the facilities and the crafts. aliens specifically try to damage the base and crafts. scientists and engineers get shot up, facilities go out of order and need to be repaired which costs time and money. etc ... etc ...

i dont mind being beaten up, if i play bad. but not in such a patronizing way vanilla introduced it. and playing this game on the defensive side for a while, could have been a challenge as well.

[khade]

Something to keep in mind: if you have an idea that you want to try, and can figure out how to implement it, you can do it.  If it's usable, you can distribute it and if people like it, they will start using it, might even become official in the mod.  Though this requires knowledge of how to manipulate the game, and I'd assume creating different ending criteria could be very difficult.  Far easier, as posted already, to just make the numbers that indicate loss to be absurdly low, but that's boring, I think.

Supermutant is ironman, right?  It's highly suggested that you not set that, while the game is being developed at least, as it doesn't allow for bug fixes, your loss might be linked to an error that you could fix, but with the save limits, it's at best prohibitively difficult to deal with.

[sinisteragent]

Honestly, while x-piratez gives you a lot of leeway in how you play (which is very much a Good Thing), there comes a point where as a player you kind of have to accept that you lost. It's not like there's no way to lie low for a couple of months as it is - research alone gives plenty of points, and your expenses can be kept under control or trimmed back in a financial emergency (and even netting fairly large sums of money on top of the reduction in maintenance fees for buildings).  The game gives you a warning, and anything that causes massive score penalties also offers a chance to gain huge points.

If the situation is so dire that you stand no chance of fighting back, the game over situation is doing you a favour. If you do stand a chance of fighting back... why didn't you?  I'm just not sure what benefit there is in allowing a player to do really badly forever.

Plot wise it makes perfect sense to me, too. Everyone unites against you = you lose. Even if you could theoretically defend the base forever, there's nothing stopping them from, say, just sealing you in and waiting for you to starve.

Also, fwiw, midway through my first game I switched the difficulty down from 5 to 4 (ie, second hardest) and never went back. The top level is sort of deliberately over the top, a little erratic, and not a linear progression from the middle difficulties. In particular, every ship is swarming with people, which makes some ships/maps a real headache, and sort of takes away some of the milk runs you can do to keep yourself afloat during quiet months. I think of 4 as the ideal setting of the game, particularly if you're new.

[Scorrpio]

These statistics are rather odd. Total 22 missions in 10 months?  And still a single hideout?  I am doing my first run, taking it easy (veteran) and I got like 18 missions in first 3 months.  Did you get most of your monthly scores from research? 

[legionof1]

There is a great degree of variance in early missions these days. Most of the potential craft can simply spawn outside radar coverage. And "event" missions are fairly low in count. Most i've seen in a month is 5 with all the research. If one chose to ignore the mission spawn techs you would drop to 0 per month after watchtowers stop, which i believe is at 6 months.

[Dioxine]

The low mission count in early months is indeed a bit unfun. However, with the latest version, you immediately get a few extra missions from the 'Doctor X' plot. Trivial missions like watchtower indeed dry up after 6 or so months, but not completely so, it's gradual. But if you can't off the ground in 6 months, it's really better to quit. Anyway there will be many more missions in the final version, so current situation is pretty much WIP.

One can say that the score loss condition is patronizing, but isn't it a bit of patronizing, too, to claim something is wrong because you've played a single run and got destroyed?

I've updated the loss texts, maybe that changes nothing but at least explains the whole situation better - the current ones were as old as the mod and lacked coherent vision.