Victory conditions

[Zharkov]

I am sure this has been discussed before. I just wondered whether there are plans to define victory conditions differently. In this Red Lantern Mission, I blew a hole in the wall of the villa to get to the cells, snatched the Castaway Gal, and retreated. Victory from my point of view.

[legionof1]

Well to be fair accepting less then the stated victory conditions has always been a player option. As long as your getting some progress and/or resources gain your still "winning" the campaign.

[Rince Wind]

Well, the tough guys and b-boys will certainly call it a victory because they beat you back and they survived.

[Martin]

I blew a hole in the wall of the villa to get to the cells, snatched the Castaway Gal, and retreated.

I do that all the time to save time.

Alos, for trivial missions like most of the D level bounty hunts and sea trassures missions late in the game I suggest enabling debug mode and ctrl+D, ctrl+K to fast victory to save time.

[Ethereal_Medic]

You don't need to go for D-Level missions in the late game. Those are totally optional at that point in the game.
With mutant alliance freighters and missions along with pulverizing every enemy craft above water you can stay afloat with the score and still run positive.
Once you have all the codes, just go for the capsule-production and Conquerer production to beat the game (eventually).

[Martin]

By late, I meant later.

You know, when you have tac armor and military firearms/lasers.

By that point you are extremely unlikely to even get injured on those missions (unless its friendly fire from reactions), but you still want the bounty tokens.

[Ethereal_Medic]

In that case I wouldn't skip those missions and go for max captives using electro-whips, batons/handles and harpoons.

[Zharkov]

Well, the tough guys and b-boys will certainly call it a victory because they beat you back and they survived.

Good point.^^

Nevertheless, there is always a point, when tedium sets in, because I have to clean maps of units that do not pose a threat. I thought more specific victory conditions might elevate that problem.

[Martin]

I played this before surrender mode was introduced.

I played original Terror From the Deep, where fidinig the last tassoth on cruise ship mission could take almost a hour.

The tedium isn’t anymore in cleaning up, its in trivial mission that still take nontrivial time to finish.

[Zharkov]

I do that all the time to save time.

Alos, for trivial missions like most of the D level bounty hunts and sea trassures missions late in the game I suggest enabling debug mode and ctrl+D, ctrl+K to fast victory to save time.

Yeah, I wanted to get through the game without cheating, but it is impossible, as I loose interest, when slaughtering my way through an hapless excavator crew etc. too often. Then I just stop playing and the Star Gods win again.^^

I think, at some point your reputation should be high enough for your victims to just turn and run, when your merry crew arrives.

[Ethereal_Medic]

It's not just a robbery the piratez are doing. They mean business if they use ship to ship weaponry to shoot down vessels.
Maybe the opposition knows if they 'run like cowards' and return back at their faction base something more punishing than getting enslaved/killed is going to happen to them.

Morale reasons to fight for your life?

Anyway I don't think a short-cut solution for milkruns is needed. You can entirely skip them.
You also can't archieve a level of 'reputation' other than your end-of-month performance rating. It's totally clear for the player that your empire is badass once you bring your own plasma-weaponry, cyborgs and heavy tanks into the battlefield but the actual game doesn't care.

In case of something like 'reputation' would be implemented, missions causing little to no threat to your team would end instantly with a victory.
So how do you train your rookies now? You can't count on 24-36 soldiers to survive every mission and last until you can embark to mars.

[Labraid]

There is morale system already in place, so maybe just use it instead. The way it could be implemented is to compare highest rank of your and the enemy crew. As far as i know it does have some effect now, all we need is to extend it.

If your high ranking gal drops by on some unlucky sods mining for minerals expect enemy to break as soon as firefight starts and first casualties pile up. On the other hand if there happens to be somewhat competent officer on the enemy side he will most likely motivate (Warhammer 40K Imperial Guard style if need be) his subordinates to stand and fight regardless.
This would make your run of the mill training field trips relatively harmless in term of morale hit, but on the other hand will pose a risk of things going south for you if your gals don't motivate themselves by killing fast enough.

The alternative is to add up ranks of all the hands present and calculate the final morale boost/penalty based on that, as it would allow us to take 1-2 more experienced "instructors" on training trips, as well as tip the scales even more toward the enemy of higher difficulties as a result of higher enemy count.

EDIT: Just realized that making enemy crew break the way it is implemented now will generate high amounts of prisoners and might turn easy missions into instant cash-in situations. About the only way to fix this would be to count panicked enemies separately from stunned ones, so that panicked enemy would have at least 70% chance of running away from AO and not turning into captive. That said I don't know if it is possible as of now to separate panicked and stunned enemies.

[Martin]

How about weak enemy crews offering to surrender on the first turn on contition that they can walk away freely and take any guns they have, while you keep the ship and cargo with option to accept or decline?

[cc]

There is morale system already in place, so maybe just use it instead. The way it could be implemented is to compare highest rank of your and the enemy crew. As far as i know it does have some effect now, all we need is to extend it.

The rank of your gals is based almost entirely on crew size. I just can't see a well-armed crew surrendering to a bunch of poorly armed, unskilled gals.

[Labraid]

The rank of your gals is based almost entirely on crew size. I just can't see a well-armed crew surrendering to a bunch of poorly armed, unskilled gals.

Hmm.. I though it has some other requirements for ranks to be awarded other than just number of hands, well never had too many hands before some of them were almost maxed out.

If that is the case then the most logical, but not sure if possible, solution would be to rely on commendations your hands earn, like enemy might not be too keen to face hand know as Scourge of Europe, Bane of Academy and Master of Sledgehammer. With various base points for each title (Person of Mass Destruction being scarier than Patient) multiplied by rank - sum it up and compare to enemy level for encounter or somehow sum ranks of individual enemies to account for how many there are. This seems to me as most logical way to check "reputation" and its potential effect on the enemy.

Instant surrender seems a bit OP, but lowering starting morale by up to, lets say, 50% of its original value for side being in disadvantage could result in fast cleanup operations, or on the receiving side, taking cover for a few turns and slowly advancing to let morale regen