Score loss and enemy bases

[Emad]

Hello, I'm liking the mod so far but I've encountered some big issues with the score.
I'm playing at difficulty 2, honest man (well, until now), build K1.

Yesterday I was in October of the first year and the guild built a base near my base and my score started to sink, I was losing around 100 points a day, I had to take it down to avoid a game over.
1) I couldn't get into the base because as I approached it a guild ship immediately appeared and shot down mine. At that point, my best ship was the convoy with three starting weapons and I couldn't stand a chance. I had to lure the enemy ship out with one of my other vehicles, let them destroy it, wait for it to go back to the base and then send the convoy as there seems to be a delay for the enemy ship to appear. How are you supposed to do it normally?
2) The base was filled with enemies in power suit and gauss weapons. I managed to do it going melee and using high explosives, but are you supposed to deal with such enemies so early in?

Now in November things were going good, I had over 2500 points two weeks in, then my score started to sink again, a day it went down 500 points for no reason at all. I tried fast forwarding it until the end of the month and finished with -500.
There seem to be no enemy bases anywhere this time.
I'm not skipping missions, except for the random landed govt ship that I'm supposed to ignore. I'm not in the mutant alliance.

The mod is too opaque with the score, what is a player supposed to do when in two weeks you lose 3000 points for no reason at all? I'm very confused.
Thanks for the help!

[Meridian]

If you still have it, attach that October save please.

[Emad]

Here's the mid-october save.
The enemy base is in Scotland.

[Marza]

Had a look at October, RNG rolled two pretty nasty missions. October does have the highest volume of enemy missions all campaign; one is the alien pact/zero tolerance mission in Europe that you already know about, the other is all the way in Antarctica.

Spoiler:

Looks like it's a mining mission with mostly harmless mining ships eating up score. It's just a thing they do.

Code: [Select]

alienMissions:
  - type: STR_MISSION_MINING
    region: STR_ANTARCTICA
    race: STR_FLOATER_INDUSTRIAL
    nextWave: 2
    nextUfoCounter: 0
    spawnCountdown: 10890
    liveUfos: 1
    uniqueID: 112
    missionSiteZone: -1

I'm guessing November has a similar case of evil RNG.

[Emad]

Thank you very much for the answer! I checked and there is a mining mission in November too.

I'm a bit perplexed. Why has someone mining on the other side of the planet anything to do with a bunch of runaway pirates-wannabe?
Why are govt punishing them so harshly?  I mean, Antarctica doesn't even have a government!
And how a player is supposed to find out other than guessing from the graph and looking randomly? Starting ships' radar radius is waaay too low for that.

[BBHood217]

Yeah, excavators have always had that problem.  They spend extremely long times landed, so their score penalty racks up pretty high if left unchecked.  I don't know if a UFO's score penalty values can be changed.

[legionof1]

They are already as low as the engine allows for excavators, -1 per tick in the air, and double that when landed. The activity cost while landed being double the air time cost is a hardcoded thing.

[BBHood217]

That could change in the future.  Self-destructing enemies always dying even when only stunned used to also be hardcoded.

[Emad]

I see.

I'm not against difficulty spikes, for example XCom Files did it well with very hard early missions like the deep ones' sacrificial mass murder, the difference is that those are missions, you know they are happening, you can try to do something about it, and fail miserably, here when you notice (if you do) it's already late and there is almost nothing you can do about it anyway. It felt like a bug to me.

Maybe those missions can be delayed (same for the enemy bases with power suit guys appearing so early), or those mining ships instead of deducting 1 point per tick, could deduct 0, so it's 0 even when landed. I mean, they are just digging stuff, not hurting anybody. Having no consequences for ignoring terror sites but getting wrecked because of some miners digging dirt in Antarctica makes little sense.

[Rince Wind]

You can't make them only deduct 0 because the engine doesn't allow it. Only thing Dioxine can do about that is to bug the devs about it, and I imagine he has other things in mind, that are more pressing for him.

[Kharim]

Just wait for them Ratman patrols spam to appear, that is another situation where your score takes a big hit out of nowhere

Sent from my ZAX 1.2

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Just wait for them Ratman patrols spam to appear, that is another situation where your score takes a big hit out of nowhere

Sent from my ZAX 1.2

But then you can prepare, buy aircar, fit laser charger (or 25 cannon) and get nice infamy bonus for shooting them down.

[Iazo]

The only other thing you can do is "do better". I don't mean this in a snarky-ish way but you can:

A)Hire max amount of brainers asap and keep then churning, specifficaly low-brainer day researches.

B)Keep some 'world lore' or other big point payday researches in reserve and fire them in when in hot water.

C)Generally accelerate your gameplay. Convoy in october? Slow, in my opinion. I will reserve my criticism for when I look in the game, but generally one base+mining mission should not completely kill your game.

[Emad]

The only other thing you can do is "do better". I don't mean this in a snarky-ish way but you can:

A)Hire max amount of brainers asap and keep then churning, specifficaly low-brainer day researches.

B)Keep some 'world lore' or other big point payday researches in reserve and fire them in when in hot water.

C)Generally accelerate your gameplay. Convoy in october? Slow, in my opinion. I will reserve my criticism for when I look in the game, but generally one base+mining mission should not completely kill your game.

B) Yeah, I did a world lore research in November to end with a positive score. Keeping the others for rainy months, they really help.

C) If I could I would! I'm in January, second year, and I still have to find the guild stapler, so no workshop. I have a guildmaster in prison, though. I wish I could trade him for some office supplies 

[Rubber Cannonball]

I'm a bit perplexed. Why has someone mining on the other side of the planet anything to do with a bunch of runaway pirates-wannabe?
Why are govt punishing them so harshly?  I mean, Antarctica doesn't even have a government!

You are being paid every month to make life miserable for the major factions and to keep the minor factions from causing trouble.  Those excavators are easy pickings with relatively small, poorly armed crews.

And how a player is supposed to find out other than guessing from the graph and looking randomly? Starting ships' radar radius is waaay too low for that.

The expedition or more advanced early craft have good enough radar to find them.

The mod is too opaque with the score, what is a player supposed to do when in two weeks you lose 3000 points for no reason at all? I'm very confused.

This isn't any different from the original game.  The shipping activity graph Marza posted from your save shows the points being scored against you from shipping flights and landings, faction bases, skipped missions (most don't have a penalty).  Note that it is possible for the factions to rack up several thousand points in a month here!

The "yer activity in areas" graph shows the points you are scoring from shooting down craft and battlescape missions.  It doesn't show your research points.

Your score (shown under the "finance"  graph) equals your activity points plus research points minus shipping activity points.

The graphs show past month totals along with the current month's running totals.  These running totals update whenever points are scored throughout the month.  There shouldn't be any surprise about the score at the end of the month.

PS  Not sure where points for any of your craft shot down show up, most likely in the shipping activity graph or possibly in yer activity graphs.