New and Improved Dark Events Thread

DerAva
Posts: 94
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 8:46 am

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by DerAva »

I just don't see how restricting them to areas you have contacted is a bad thing. The argument that this changes the best strategy to not expand is pointless. There's plenty of incentive to expand: you need to reach story mission locations, you need more income and you want to unlock continent boni (if they are actually worthwhile, looking at you "To Serve Mankind"). Yes, you could counter all Dark Events if you stay in your starting country, but you'd still lose the game to the Doom Clock and barely have enough supplies for two Battle Scanners.
nightwyrm
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by nightwyrm »

DerAva wrote:I just don't see how restricting them to areas you have contacted is a bad thing. The argument that this changes the best strategy to not expand is pointless. There's plenty of incentive to expand: you need to reach story mission locations, you need more income and you want to unlock continent boni (if they are actually worthwhile, looking at you "To Serve Mankind"). Yes, you could counter all Dark Events if you stay in your starting country, but you'd still lose the game to the Doom Clock and barely have enough supplies for two Battle Scanners.
I think the idea is that they actually don't want you to be able to counter most of the DEs.
infidel901
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 6:41 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by infidel901 »

Some of the DE's are so much worse than the others, they should just be removed, or added to a new difficulty level higher than legendary, or restricted exclusively to legendary.
Jacke
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Jacke »

All the Tactical Dark Events make the enemy units tougher. There's also Force Level that as it increases every X days (where X is smaller for higher difficulty, 16 days in Legendary I think) starts making tougher enemy units available. With the tendency of zones to have more ADVENT strength, that means as a campaign progresses, battles tend to be with more enemy where all enemy tend to get tougher and more often there are the more tougher enemy units present.

Right now all these trends seems to start overwhelming players at least in Legendary. I'm not there yet in my own campaign, but I've heard about what JoINrbs saw in his Legendary campaigns and what I'm seeing in xwynns video series. Apparently things get right out of control late November or in December. And it's very hard on the troops not equipped with the best weapons. Shinobi blade attacks become less useful as they don't have a close to certainty of killing their target. And if you've had a serious reversal, lost skilled troops and best equipment, the lose can amplify the chance of having further setbacks.

I really think something has to be reigned back with this progression. I know the point of the campaign is to hold off ADVENT long enough to build up a force to send on the story arc missions which is the only true way to win. But right now this growing threat from ADVENT precludes a lot of things. I'm wondering if xwynns will even get plasma weapons and top armour before things come apart for him. And it appears there's a lot of research and PG projects that are just not worth it, partly due to not having the time to get to them.
darkerevent
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by darkerevent »

Jadiel wrote:Another way to mitigate the randomness might be to allow you to spend intel for a guaranteed detection of the dark event counter mission. This means if there are particular DEs that you dislike you can spend resources to counter them, but the cost would be high enough that it probably isn't worth guaranteeing the detection of all DEs. It would require some back-end work, as you'd need to be able to move a mission from a region where the player has no presence to one where he does. I'm not sure how you'd do the mechanics for time remaining - I guess it would be random? I like the flavor of using intel to root out particular alien projects that you perceive to be more threatening to the XCOM agenda.
+1 for this basic idea.

In my head, I imagine it being a situation where you spend intel in order to trigger some kind of preliminary mission which, if successful, will then lead into a second mission that allows you to counter the targeted dark event no matter where in the world you are.

Example: I spend 5 intel to determine that the Tac Sense DE is coming up. I want to make absolutely certain that it goes away, so I spend 25 (arbitrary number for example purposes) extra Intel in order to have my resistance informants go look for a way to counter it. This expenditure immediately spawns a special Dark VIP mission in one of my contacted regions. I deploy a squad to the mission. Down in the tactical layer, I MUST capture the Dark VIP alive in order to get what I want (the idea being that I can't interrogate them for the needed information unless they're brought in alive). Once I have the Dark VIP in custody, my intel guys make him/her talk, and a DE Countering mission is spawned and instantly detected in the same region. I must also do THAT mission in order to make the DE go away.

This seems like a reasonable compromise between the current design (which occasionally leaves players feeling like, "The RNG has screwed me yet again without allowing me any option for counterplay") and the previous design (which discouraged expanding beyond a few regions). The compromise should allow the player to counter specific DEs they really don't want to deal with, while not making it trivially inexpensive to do so (both in terms of intel expenditure and solder infiltration+wound times).
synthphase
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Joined: Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:54 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by synthphase »

I have around 20 dark events active, is that how it's supposed to be or did I hit a bug?
Clibanarius
Posts: 205
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Clibanarius »

synthphase wrote:I have around 20 dark events active, is that how it's supposed to be or did I hit a bug?
Those are Tactical Research Dark Events, they're permanent and meant to build up and make the aliens more competitive. The game's balanced around them occurring, although you can counter them like you can Dark Events by beating a mission tied to their activation.
Dagless
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Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:03 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Dagless »

I'm still confused about how all this works.

Is it right that dark events occur in contacted regions and regions adjacent to them?

If so I don't get the argument that they encourage expansion, as there's always regions you haven't contacted (at least til very late game). So by expanding, don't you just push back the boundary they can occur in s well as having them in your contacted regions?

Is there an Advent force strength threshold or something?
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by chrisb »

Dagless wrote:I'm still confused about how all this works.

Is it right that dark events occur in contacted regions and regions adjacent to them?

If so I don't get the argument that they encourage expansion, as there's always regions you haven't contacted (at least til very late game). So by expanding, don't you just push back the boundary they can occur in s well as having them in your contacted regions?

Is there an Advent force strength threshold or something?
AFAIK they spawn in a random region. I'm not sure if its purely random or if there's some skewing factors involved. But the basic idea is the more regions you have contacted and working on Intel, the more likely you are to get a mission to interrupt the Dark Event. This can stop alot of Avatar progress as well as help control how many buffs the aliens get. You won't stop them all, but you can keep them from getting out of control.
LordYanaek
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by LordYanaek »

darkerevent wrote:
Jadiel wrote:Another way to mitigate the randomness might be to allow you to spend intel for a guaranteed detection of the dark event counter mission. This means if there are particular DEs that you dislike you can spend resources to counter them, but the cost would be high enough that it probably isn't worth guaranteeing the detection of all DEs. It would require some back-end work, as you'd need to be able to move a mission from a region where the player has no presence to one where he does. I'm not sure how you'd do the mechanics for time remaining - I guess it would be random? I like the flavor of using intel to root out particular alien projects that you perceive to be more threatening to the XCOM agenda.
+1 for this basic idea.
I suggested something similar quite some time ago but it didn't get many support ;)
However last time i heard (well, read) from the developers they were rather considering an alternative option to allow special missions that would end permanent DEs if you win them. Either idea seems perfectly fine for me but probably should be unusual because wether we like them or not, tactical DEs are part of the balance of the game. That balance might not be perfect right now but players shouldn't be able to cancel every DEs, just a couple ones they really hate (which might vary from player to player as we have different play-styles).

I really hope they didn't abandon the idea because it would be really interesting.
darkerevent
Posts: 103
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:12 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by darkerevent »

LordYanaek wrote:wether we like them or not, tactical DEs are part of the balance of the game. That balance might not be perfect right now but players shouldn't be able to cancel every DEs, just a couple ones they really hate (which might vary from player to player as we have different play-styles).

I really hope they didn't abandon the idea because it would be really interesting.
If basing the ability to access a guaranteed counter-mission on spending intel, an interesting thought would be to make it so that the cost of each guaranteed counter-mission increases with each one that you do, akin to how Radio Towers already work. If the base cost is then high enough, it would encourage the player to be judicious about using this.
prokolyo
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by prokolyo »

If you counter a tactical DE, can it spawn again in time, or it's done for good?
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