Victory conditions

[KZad Bhat]

I can see good ideas brewing, but I don't know if any of it is possible just in the available YAML, or if engine code will have to be added.

Instant surrender of everyone would be a bit too much, but giving the enemy the capability to flee the scene, and so removing any possible points based on kill/capture, or picking up any of their inventory, could be a good compromise. It is possible to have it based on commendations, but again I don't know if the current state of OXCE+ can handle it, or if additional code i necessary. More directly though whether they flee should tie in with morale itself, with low morale over several turns increasing the probability.

I can say for sure that the ability to flee is not available at all right now, and will require new engine code. Maybe we could see it start happening early next year.

[cc]

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.

They have to have performed one successful action over their whole career.

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.

That sounds like a nice idea, but would require engine code changes.

[Zharkov]

Instant surrender seems a bit OP [...]

And why is that?

If my employer expected me to defend an Excavator with a Shovel against Gals with Powerarmor and Plasma Weapons I would not be slightly worried. I would not be there at all.

[Solarius Scorch]

Considering that you would receive no XP for such missions, I don't think it would be that attractive, even if you automatically bag a few captives. Autoflee mechanics would be amusing though.
But when exactly would this happen? I suppose the intention would be to make it similar to the Heroes of Might and Magic feature, but X-Com doesn't have any method to assess army strength.

[Labraid]

I can say for sure that the ability to flee is not available at all right now, and will require new engine code. Maybe we could see it start happening early next year.

I wasn't actually even considering a possibility to see enemies flee, although it would be great thing to add one day. What I thought of, at least for now is just capturing all stunned enemies and only about 70%, or 1/3 to round things easier, of panicked enemies that are as of now considered surrendered at the end of a mission to model possibility of them fleeing successfully.

And why is that?

If my employer expected me to defend an Excavator with a Shovel against Gals with Powerarmor and Plasma Weapons I would not be slightly worried. I would not be there at all.

All depends on the exact balance of such mechanic. With great difference in power I agree it should be almost instant (like require shooting a fireball launcher in general proximity of enemies) if not actually instant.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Instant surrender caused by stat-check is a double edged sword.

If you want the loot and stat-improvements, you've to invest time in it.
Yes it's questionable to do certain missions where you spend most of your RL time flipping every tile and stage of a 3-4 floor building to find a single Guild Teamleader that is too brave to surrender.

That's a reason to bring aye-phones into every mission.

If certain missions like a crashsite (civilian traffic) or ratman rodeo starts to offer no challenge anymore, you can ignore those missions and spend the RL time saved into more geoscape-time, continuing the actual the campaign.

Yes you lose apples and other loot to get some money out of it but at a certain point it's just more money on the non-stop growing pile of money you have anyway only to burn it onto hellerium capsules and the actual costs to produce the conquerer-craft.

If you don't want to end your campaign at all (like myself, since the visit to cydonia offers no usable payoff for the current campaign and instead trashes the entire RL time invested into it) you've to question yourself what goal you've set to get the most fun out of the game.

Once you have at least 10+ annihilator armors and all x-com plasma weapons researched and build you can shuffle around here and there and try out all the new content added via new releases or start a new campaign without doing cydonia at all.

If you win or lose cydonia, the result is the same.

[khade]

Whether booking it or fighting to the (possible) death with a shovel is the better option depends on your employer, and really none of the factions look remotely reasonable.

[KZad Bhat]

Yeah, but at least if you book it instead of fighting to the death, you can try to find some little community to make a living in where your faction probably won't find you. So at least as far as the setting, it is still reasonable.

[Blood Raven 117]

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.

This idea needs more consideration. I love the idea of it.

[Ethereal_Medic]

The 'rank' of your hands can be totally misleading in terms of talent.
It feels like the game randomly picks the worthy hands to advance in rank based on the threshold of your overall maximum crew spread across all bases.
A 'pirate queen' tells nothing how good she really is. A basic 'gal' (squadie) can have maxed-stats and perform just as good as a queen.

It's the vanilla ranking system and barely means anything. It does benefit certain levels and the 'commanding' effect of fielding high-ranked hands is a bless and curse at the same time. They prevent moral loss if a teammate bites the dust and nuke the teams moral if they die.

[legionof1]

There are some weapons that get ranked based buffs to damage, between those and the morale effects i would say rank does have an impact.

[Ethereal_Medic]

But not in terms of how 'good' an individual is.
A squaddie can have maxed-out stats while a sergeant can't even peak over 90 aim and has 40 strength 60 reactions for example.
Rank matters for moral and item-scaling, nothing more.