[Solved] How to turn off Bughunt mode?

[Tekamthi]

Is there any option to turn off 'bughunt mode' when using OXCE+?

Thanks!

[Yataka Shimaoka]

Yes, if I remember correctly, you can make a mod to make it longer, say 999 turns

[Meridian]

Yes, if I remember correctly, you can make a mod to make it longer, say 999 turns

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4997.msg73330.html#msg73330

[Tekamthi]

Thanks! and sorry for my poor search skills

[Tekamthi]

I wonder if this feature could be built into the game somehow? like if you capture and hold a tile next to a navigation console in the UFO, bughunt is enabled... or maybe from an item held by a high ranking enemy..  Its jsut a little gamey for my tastes in its current implementation, but I understand the value of the idea here.

Thanks again, love your work!

[Meridian]

Capturing a tile or item is easier to achieve than the current conditions... so it would be more gamey.

Anyway, in the next version the bughunt will be disabled by default, so you get your vanilla experience back.

[Stoddard]

I wonder if it's a good idea to implement 'exit tiles' like in apocalypse, so that the enemy can flee and not default to hiding in a cupboard on a fourth floor.

[Meridian]

That would however need a change in the AI to teach them to go to those exit tiles... not a very vanilla-friendly change.
Also doesn't help if they're panicking.

I think the current surrender mode serves more or less the same purpose and is more convenient.

[Stoddard]

I agree that current situation is fine enough in general, but some high-density maps, like the downtown ones where there are only 1-tile passages between 3-4 story buildings, are just too dense to do a complete sweep in a reasonable amount of time, and sometimes someone would be too stubborn to surrender, and well..

I know, that's what satchel charges and baby-nukes are for, but still..


On a tech side, yes, that wouldn't be as trivial as the leeroy code was, but can be done along similar lines.

[Tekamthi]

Capturing a tile or item is easier to achieve than the current conditions... so it would be more gamey.

Anyway, in the next version the bughunt will be disabled by default, so you get your vanilla experience back.

I meant on top of the existing conditions; I'm craving it to be part of the world somehow w/o re-arranging the existing implementation altogether.  As it is, if we're to assume its part of the existing squad equipment somehow, one wonders why they wouldn't just turn this mode on from the beginning.

Anyway, can understand that this might not fit, or suit everyone's tastes.  Appreciate the option to toggle it on/off. Thanks again!

[Meridian]

I meant on top of the existing conditions; I'm craving it to be part of the world somehow w/o re-arranging the existing implementation altogether.  As it is, if we're to assume its part of the existing squad equipment somehow, one wonders why they wouldn't just turn this mode on from the beginning.

Well, there is no official explanation how it "works"... and yes, it is probably immersion-breaking for some people.

I tried to tweak the conditions, so that it only triggers when the pain threshold on the player's side has been reached... and he's willing to sacrifice immersion to save time (and preserve sanity) in real life. After some playtesting, I think it triggers even less than I would want it to.

I understand that each player has a different threshold, and that default settings are biased towards my preference... but they are moddable and will be turned off by default. I am also open to suggestions for more parameters (of course I reserve the right to decide if I implement them or not).

PS: I would also like to add that other games have similar concepts too, for example in Heroes of Might & Magic... if AI hero doesn't have a town for 7 days, he's automatically banished from the game even though there is no real explanation why would that be... or in Warcraft 3, if you don't have a "town hall"-like structure, entire map is revealed for your opponent after 60 seconds even though there is no reason to... other than to speed up the game And so on...

[Stoddard]

I wonder if this feature could be built into the game somehow? like if you capture and hold a tile next to a navigation console in the UFO, bughunt is enabled... or maybe from an item held by a high ranking enemy.. 

It's my extremely personal opinion, but I think this just can't fit into or be adequately explained by any narrative. How are those enemies hiding all over the map in cupboards, including dogs and b-boys, get to learn that someone's stepped on a certain tile or picked up a certain item?

The whole 'capture and hold a tile' mechanic is also quite alien to the engine. What does it exactly mean to 'capture and hold' a tile?

I think if the 'quest for the last alien' is still a problem, there has to be some other way to solve it. Or is the problem you're trying to solve a some different one? Please tell.

--- posts merged, it's damn hard on a phone:/ ---

Well, there is no official explanation how it "works"... and yes, it is probably immersion-breaking for some people.

I tried to tweak the conditions, so that it only triggers when the pain threshold on the player's side has been reached... and he's willing to sacrifice immersion to save time (and preserve sanity) in real life. After some playtesting, I think it triggers even less than I would want it to.

I understand that each player has a different threshold, and that default settings are biased towards my preference... but they are moddable and will be turned off by default. I am also open to suggestions for more parameters (of course I reserve the right to decide if I implement them or not).

WRT a pain threshold, I have had this: last.py for a long, long time. It dumps coordinates of all units, and their health and surrender state. I use it only when I get terminally bored wandering all over an empty map, but still I wrote it and I still use it and thus there is a need for it.

It's also useful to get a summary of a certain item's inventory, this part I'll make into a geoscape/basescape window sometime later. That part gets much more use.

[Tekamthi]

Well, there is no official explanation how it "works"... and yes, it is probably immersion-breaking for some people.

I tried to tweak the conditions, so that it only triggers when the pain threshold on the player's side has been reached... and he's willing to sacrifice immersion to save time (and preserve sanity) in real life. After some playtesting, I think it triggers even less than I would want it to.

I understand that each player has a different threshold, and that default settings are biased towards my preference... but they are moddable and will be turned off by default. I am also open to suggestions for more parameters (of course I reserve the right to decide if I implement them or not).

PS: I would also like to add that other games have similar concepts too, for example in Heroes of Might & Magic... if AI hero doesn't have a town for 7 days, he's automatically banished from the game even though there is no real explanation why would that be... or in Warcraft 3, if you don't have a "town hall"-like structure, entire map is revealed for your opponent after 60 seconds even though there is no reason to... other than to speed up the game And so on...

Yeah I can appreciate where the feature comes from, and enjoy it especially on missions w/ timers in some of the modpacks. On a more vanilla play through, I enjoy the 'unknown' of the final turns of some missions -- its not unheard of, for example, to think there's only 1 left at the end of a mission, and encounter several, or vice versa.  On missions against sectoid/cyberdisk, for example, or reaper/floater etc., where your squad has suffered heavy losses, near the end with only a fraction of your original units (w/ suppress panic messages on), some of your guys maybe w/ fatal wounds, all the remaining meds on corpses out in the dark somewhere, unsure if you should salvage a few items and abort, or risk the unknown for a marginal win... the bughunt message in these scenarios, or lack thereof once I became accustomed to it, has ruined this effect once or twice w/o needing to check the minimap, or necessarily reach the bughunt mode at all.. but I don't think this feature is out-of-place overall, and its only really occasionally where i've found it a detriment.  I understand that some find these final turns tedious, and I do too often, but the option to play w/o will be nice to maintain some of the original suspense.

It's my extremely personal opinion, but I think this just can't fit into or be adequately explained by any narrative. How are those enemies hiding all over the map in cupboards, including dogs and b-boys, get to learn that someone's stepped on a certain tile or picked up a certain item?

The whole 'capture and hold a tile' mechanic is also quite alien to the engine. What does it exactly mean to 'capture and hold' a tile?

I think if the 'quest for the last alien' is still a problem, there has to be some other way to solve it. Or is the problem you're trying to solve a some different one? Please tell.

W/o ever having looked at the code or modding aspects of OXC(E+) very deeply, and acknowledging that some things might just not be possible, I imagine this would fit into the narrative & game structure as follows: assuming the aliens are coordinated in their combat opposition w/in the game narrative, I would assume this is enabled through some tech in the UFO.. the only tech present on nearly every map, is the navigation terminals, and I imagine it may be a trivial trigger to check if adjacent tiles are occupied by a player unit or not.. this is what i meant by "hold".  Through this mechanism, we're thus imagining that these UFO terminals give access to the "bughunt" feature.  Alternatively, an item held in inventory could enable it, suggesting its a feature of that item?  To my tastes, I feel this would fit w/in the mind probe/motion scanner item dynamic quite well.  If it were setup this way, or a bit more connected to the world in some other way, I'd probably have it turned on permanently, rather than just with certain mods.

[Stoddard]

W/o ever having looked at the code or modding aspects of OXC(E+) very deeply, and acknowledging that some things might just not be possible, I imagine this would fit into the narrative & game structure as follows: assuming the aliens are coordinated in their combat opposition w/in the game narrative, I would assume this is enabled through some tech in the UFO.. the only tech present on nearly every map, is the navigation terminals

This assumption is going to be true only for a certain subset of mods, and/or a certain subset of missions within.

X-Piratez for example have a lot of missions where there isn't any UFOs. Or any tech at all.

and I imagine it may be a trivial trigger to check if adjacent tiles are occupied by a player unit or not.. this is what i meant by "hold".

This is trivial, yes.

Through this mechanism, we're thus imagining that these UFO terminals give access to the "bughunt" feature.  Alternatively, an item held in inventory could enable it, suggesting its a feature of that item?  To my tastes, I feel this would fit w/in the mind probe/motion scanner item dynamic quite well.  If it were setup this way, or a bit more connected to the world in some other way, I'd probably have it turned on permanently, rather than just with certain mods.

This outlook looks limited to the classic ufo:eu narrative, that there are some coherent forces acting against player's team.

If your team is facing a mob - well, what's you going to do? There is no tile to sit on, there is no leader to rob. So the mechanic wouldn't work at all, and if the requirement is that it works for any mission, then the suggested solution doesn't cut it.

[Tekamthi]

This assumption is going to be true only for a certain subset of mods, and/or a certain subset of missions within.

....

This outlook looks limited to the classic ufo:eu narrative, that there are some coherent forces acting against player's team.

agreed, thats the perspective i'm playing from.. I imagine this is a large portion of OXCE+'s audience these days, and I can respect that oxce+ has other origins, and others have taken mods elsewhere

If your team is facing a mob - well, what's you going to do? There is no tile to sit on, there is no leader to rob. So the mechanic wouldn't work at all, and if the requirement is that it works for any mission, then the suggested solution doesn't cut it.

I'm not certain of the context you're referring to -- I've only returned to playing x-com in its modded form a few months ago, and I've been working through area 51, fmp, & twots... with x-piratez and others further down my priority list. 

I really enjoy the feature on area 51 and twots, so I wouldn't mind if it stayed available as-is at all.  If it were developed a little further, though, I could easily see how I could enjoy it everywhere.  I see an opportunity to add depth to that classic eu world here, using a feature that's *mostly* all the way there... all I'm talking about really is one or two additional triggers, tied to either the map or an item, or both.  Considering your examples of maps w/ no navigation or other "tech" from a broad sense, and w/o necessarily being familiar with all the mod specifics, surely this property could be then set to trigger off of other tiles/items ie doesn't have to be *just* the nav console, once the framework's in place (though maybe nav console is the default, so that it fits on mods that haven't necessarily considered how to implement bughunt).  As I'm thinking this through a little further, in the vanilla world, ideally you'd have to have some tech to enable this as well, or maybe even a tech, item, and x map position to make sense... so maybe 3 triggers.  I can imagine further modding possbilities, like different techs for different races, ie you gotta learn to track each one, if the underlying structure of bughunt were a little broader and tied to the world.

Anyway, while admittedly a little half-baked, I feel this tile-hold in particular would add the possibility of some depth via creating a secondary or tactical "objective" in most missions.. i'd probably even tweak it to be a little easier on the other restrictions, or remove some altogether, giving a true bonus to prioritizing an early command area capture, or w/e other items/areas it might be tied to.  As-is I usually move on these last.

Maybe as an alternative, you might consider adding a check that requires a high portion of your units to still be alive/conscious/uninjured?  Or just even a straight-up max friendly deathcount? Or each death adds to the min turn timer? These might be simpler ways to eliminate most of the occasions that I've found bughunt to be a distraction from the original game decisions to be made