New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Rempsv
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Rempsv »

No they can get extra perks.
Stun lancers can get lighting reflexes, some can get grazing shots, or shredder ammo.
Some enemies can get harder to hack, or reinforcements can get called sooner.
Faceless can become alot stronger early on.
There are a lot of possibilities that can make a game a lot harder then its fun anymore early on.
And yes i am fully aware that i am losing lw2 campaigns atm because i am still learning the basic principles, and i dont mind it at all.
I do mind looking at the opposition and start wondering how the hell do i get to kill all those hitpoints savely within the time limit i am given.
Especially if they get more hp because of some DE that i couldnt prevent. or get a perk Formidable early on, which basically makes the first ambush worthless since i like to open with grenades.

There is ofcourse a big difference if the primary goal of a mission is time based, or if you like in the first LW had the meld part.
If in LW1 you for example run into a very hard pod you had the possibilty to retreat a bit and get a better position.
If you couldnt get the meld in a mission because of heavy resistance there would always be more missions to collect them.
Try retreating in Lw2 the mission timers wont allow that kind of movement.
When you decide on a path at the start of a mission you usually dont have the time to try a different route.
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johnnylump
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by johnnylump »

Our framework in designing and balancing these was and will remain "Incremental, permanent upgrades to aliens that XCOM will sometimes have a chance to counter." We used the Dark Event mechanism to give you that opportunity to counter them. Our balancing assumption is that most of them will end up being applied over the course of a campaign. The association of Dark Events with only temporarily problems is something LW2 players will have to unlearn from vanilla.

Again, our approach is to remake the navigator system in Long War for EW, but somewhat randomizing the order the upgrades are applied and giving you a heads-up which ones have gone through. The navigator system varies up your problem set on the battlefield by generally applying the upgrades to a limited set of aliens, so not all ViperM2s are identical problems. The permanent ones that apply to all aliens are meant to function as ".5" upgrades between the three tiers of many enemy types.

I will look at communicating which ones are permanent better, with the caveat that new translations will take assistance from the community (and are thus time-consuming to manage).

I will look at the rules of when they start happening and how many happen at once, particularly on rookie and veteran.

If there's sufficient, specific feedback -- grounded in play, not just theorycrafting -- that any particular DE happens too soon, or is applied too broadly, or does something else to unbalance the campaign, I can adjust any number of levers for that upgrade. Saying only that "some upgrades are game-breaking" without identifying which upgrades and how they broke your game is insufficient feedback for me to act on.

I'm still interested in the idea of some nasty facility assault mission to get rid of some upgrades, but I can't say if that's something we'll be able to get to.
Nagul
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Nagul »

Rempsv wrote:or get a perk Formidable early on, which basically makes the first ambush worthless since i like to open with grenades.
I suggest you try it first before making a conclusion. If you aren't the world's unluckiest guy I think you are in for a surprise.
Rempsv
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Rempsv »

Nagul wrote:
Rempsv wrote:or get a perk Formidable early on, which basically makes the first ambush worthless since i like to open with grenades.
I suggest you try it first before making a conclusion. If you aren't the world's unluckiest guy I think you are in for a surprise.
And what exactly would that surprise be?
If i use a grenadier for my opening attack who already got the boosted cores perk, a average hit would normal be around 4-5 damage.
With formidable on that advent i would probably hit for 1(66% damage reduction and 1 armour).
Which basically makes it a far less useful/useless opener, especially early in the campaign where you simply cant afford better weapons for all your squads yet.
So in order to complete the mission on time i often really need that first grenade to help me out a lot, simply to save me alot of time.
When i play lw2 more i probably will come up with other and better strategies, just as i learned to play LW1.
I just wished that in the early months they would happen a little bit slower, Just to give me more of a break to really build my resistance.
Hazelnut
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Hazelnut »

I've found that since 1.1 and the tactical DEs came on board the difficulty has jumped to the point that I'm reloading multiple times each mission and still getting lots of wounds. The ayys are so damn tough to kill with their extra HP and tactical sense (this one is a killer) buffs, I rarely can manage the battle so I fight one pod at a time because it takes several rounds to deal with each that others appear. Then reinforcements are dropping when I already have 2 pods engaged. Playing LW2 on veteran, finished vanilla legendary & LW1 so not a noob. :)

Maybe this is just the mod progression since it's my only playthrough, but definitely felt a lot harder once 1.1 dropped. It also makes the mission analysis (i.e. very light) quite misleading. Dropped 4 medium rank troops into a very light/vulnerable with mag and 1st tier upgraded secondarys + predator armour, and they really struggled when I thought they'd be fine - literally only controlling 2 mecs saved the mission and they all ended up with <3 hp by the end. Flamethrowers & stun guns also were critical. I think the elite muton (first time I seen one) was crazy hard to kill, also stunned twice and shot it so many times point blank with shottie it was ridiculous. It;s the tac sense that seemed to reduce the damage to grazes - is that right?

Anyway it was a timed mission and engaged the 2 pods near target on turn 3/9 and it took 6 turns and several reloads to kill all of them. Thats a lot of turns for a very light vulnerable target...
Goumindong
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Goumindong »

johnnylump wrote:Our framework in designing and balancing these was and will remain "Incremental, permanent upgrades to aliens that XCOM will sometimes have a chance to counter." We used the Dark Event mechanism to give you that opportunity to counter them. Our balancing assumption is that most of them will end up being applied over the course of a campaign. The association of Dark Events with only temporarily problems is something LW2 players will have to unlearn from vanilla.
This is not a good balancing assumption. Unless there is a correction mechanism, such that early failure or success in preventing a dark event produces an opposite and immediate effect, there will be permanent and continual effect on game balance. Getting lucky or unlucky will produce campaigns that are either too easy to too hard.

If you want to make dark events both permanent and random then there will need to be a mechanism that at least partially enforces a set number of DE's at any point in time. If you do not then the sum of the dark events will have an EV of P(Dark Event)*instances and a variance of Variance(Dark Event)*instances. Variance necessarily increases as the number of instances increase. Increased variance necessarily increases the probability of games that are too hard or games that are too easy.

One of the things that was done in the original nuXCOM was to force players to choose between a set of missions. Each mission had its own difficulty, reward, and penalty. While in nuXCOM this meant that there was a clear optimal path that you could determine (which included the entirety of the strategic layer), because it has the effect of forcing benefits and penalties to be similar, it also has a positive effect of producing variance in gameplay without producing(much) variance in balance. We might call this qualitative as opposed to quantitative variance

The same thing can be done here, either with a similar solution (produce a mission which can only be completed two ways and guarantee the mission be given with a sufficient timer, and/or grant a choice between two DE missions making them mutually exclusive), or with a different one. But without a solution all that is being done is shuffling the probability of an easy game or a hard game.
If there's sufficient, specific feedback -- grounded in play, not just theorycrafting -- that any particular DE happens too soon, or is applied too broadly, or does something else to unbalance the campaign, I can adjust any number of levers for that upgrade. Saying only that "some upgrades are game-breaking" without identifying which upgrades and how they broke your game is insufficient feedback for me to act on.
Its also worth noting that this kind of feedback almost cannot be produced when the set of DE's is random. You're asking a limited set of people to make determinations based on highly variable system. You would need to be drawing data from thousands of games (or more) being played to make this determination with any confidence. Its not easy to determine if the failure was because a particular DE was too hard, or because the player failed too many DE RNG's or because they made a "strategic mistake" earlier
Last edited by Goumindong on Thu Feb 02, 2017 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mattprice516
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by mattprice516 »

Rempsv wrote:
Nagul wrote:
Rempsv wrote:or get a perk Formidable early on, which basically makes the first ambush worthless since i like to open with grenades.
I suggest you try it first before making a conclusion. If you aren't the world's unluckiest guy I think you are in for a surprise.
And what exactly would that surprise be?
If i use a grenadier for my opening attack who already got the boosted cores perk, a average hit would normal be around 4-5 damage.
With formidable on that advent i would probably hit for 1(66% damage reduction and 1 armour).
Which basically makes it a far less useful/useless opener, especially early in the campaign where you simply cant afford better weapons for all your squads yet.
So in order to complete the mission on time i often really need that first grenade to help me out a lot, simply to save me alot of time.
When i play lw2 more i probably will come up with other and better strategies, just as i learned to play LW1.
I just wished that in the early months they would happen a little bit slower, Just to give me more of a break to really build my resistance.
Good news for you then, because if you're not playing on Legend you get 7 weeks before any tactical DEs can happen at all! :)

And Formidable can't happen until you see your first MK 2 captain. Once it finishes, it applies to 1 out of every 6 Captains, Shieldbros, Grenadiers, Rocketeers, and Mutton leaders (Centurion and Elite). Also Avatars.
Last edited by mattprice516 on Thu Feb 02, 2017 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mattprice516
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by mattprice516 »

@Goumindong, you're not technically wrong about the math but I'd advise you to try it out before making conclusions like "this just won't work" based purely on theorycrafting. If the probability of any given dark event going through is high enough, the variance shrinks pretty fast.

EV of binomial distribution = np
Variance of binomial distribution = np(p-1)

The further p is from 0.5, the lower the variance is. Them's the maths. And while maths are definitely useful for balancing a game, playtesting and experience also has its place. The playtesting I've done indicates that yes, most of the DEs will generally get through at the end of any given campaign and that balancing assumption is indeed useful. There are much worse actors contributing to campaign difficulty variance than DEs (particularly how the first few months go, and those don't even have any DEs).

EDIT: If we really want to get into the theorycrafting weeds, note that even though the active DE variance does grow linearly with the number of DE opportunities (and therefore with time), in order for that to cause the difficulty variance to grow with time you'd have to assume that difficulty scales linearly with the number of DEs active. I would contest that assumption pretty strongly - when you've got 15 DEs active, 1 more doesn't make as big a difference to overall difficulty as when you only had 2 active.
Goumindong
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Goumindong »

mattprice516 wrote:@Goumindong, you're not technically wrong about the math but I'd advise you to try it out before making conclusions like "this just won't work" based purely on theorycrafting. If the probability of any given dark event going through is high enough, the variance shrinks pretty fast.

EV of binomial distribution = np
Variance of binomial distribution = np(p-1)

The further p is from 0.5, the lower the variance is. Them's the maths. And while maths are definitely useful for balancing a game, playtesting and experience also has its place. The playtesting I've done indicates that yes, most of the DEs will generally get through at the end of any given campaign and that balancing assumption is indeed useful. There are much worse actors contributing to campaign difficulty variance than DEs (particularly how the first few months go, and those don't even have any DEs).

EDIT: If we really want to get into the theorycrafting weeds, note that even though the active DE variance does grow linearly with the number of DE opportunities (and therefore with time), in order for that to cause the difficulty variance to grow with time you'd have to assume that difficulty scales linearly with the number of DEs active. I would contest that assumption pretty strongly - when you've got 15 DEs active, 1 more doesn't make as big a difference to overall difficulty as when you only had 2 active.
The difficulty is generally the difference between "xcom unit quality" and "alien unit quality" and this is in absolute not on average. This is because you're hinging on discrete breakpoints with regards to being one shot, one shooting, and taking wounds. If XCom were not a game with significant failure cascades i might agree with you. But it is, so i do not.

So unless the variance is so small as to be inconsequential then there is a significant effect. And if the variance is so small as to be inconsequential why have it?

Edit: As an example. 10 DE's with .9 probability of success will produce a standard deviation of .94 DE's. 34.8% of games will have 10 DE's. 38.7% will have 9. 19.3% will have 8. 5.7% will have 7. 1.46% will have 6 or less. We have a "reasonable max difference" of about 3 DE's. Which is pretty huge when you think about it. There is expected difference (I.E. expected value of the absolute value of the difference between two pulls of this distribution) of i want to say 1 but i may be wrong on the calculation here

This of course excludes the effect of getting those first one(or more) DE's and the effect this has

edit1: was example. Edit 2 was potentially correcting expected difference math, which i derped; its actually sum(sum((abs((10-a)- (10-b))*.9^(10-b)*.1^b*.9^(10-a)*(.1)^a*(10 choose a) (10 choose b)), b, 0,10),a,0,10)
Last edited by Goumindong on Thu Feb 02, 2017 11:34 pm, edited 4 times in total.
GavinRuneblade
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by GavinRuneblade »

Goumindong wrote: Unless there is a correction mechanism, such that early failure or success in preventing a dark event produces an opposite and immediate effect, there will be permanent and continual effect on game balance. Getting lucky or unlucky will produce campaigns that are either too easy to too hard.

If you want to make dark events both permanent and random then there will need to be a mechanism that at least partially enforces a set number of DE's at any point in time.
That could be an interesting mechanic. Say have an increasing max number of permanent DEs based on month or advent global strength or doom track or whatever. It would have a cool effect of linking growth in advent power across markers. If global strength was used as the mechanic, for example, Advent legions aren't just dangerous in their own regions they open the potential for more DEs. And similar relationships open up from other mechanics too.

I like this idea.
Jadiel
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Jadiel »

There's a couple of helpful concepts I've heard in different gaming circles with regard to randomness: "input randomness" and "output randomness".

Input randomness is to do with randomness with regard to the conditions of a game. It's often good, because when done well, it gives a lot of replayability. A classic example is XCOM 2 maps vs XCOM1 maps. XCOM2 maps are randomly generated, whereas XCOM1 maps were chosen from a pool, with pods placed in the same places every time. Having random maps introduces variance, but I don't think anyone would argue that random maps don't dramatically improve the game. Input variance means that the problem is slightly different every time.

Output randomness means the result of a player's action is at least partly determined by RNG. Output variance can be very frustrating, because even though you did everything 'right', RNG decides that you failed. There is a lot of output variance in XCOM (shooting is the obvious example), but it can be mitigated somewhat by lots of actions, because while you can have bad luck, no one has consistently bad luck. What is really frustrating is when there is a single action where RNG plays a big role, and success/failure of that action has a large impact on the player's chance to win the game as a whole.

I think it's pretty obvious from the above, but basically, input randomness is good, output randomness is bad. A general gaming design principle (which like every gaming design principle is a rule of thumb, not an unbreakable law) is that you should have enough input randomness, and try and avoid output randomness. But sometimes it can be difficult to tell which is which. Here, I'm pretty sure that the intention is that DEs are input randomness. They add an unpredictable twist to every campaign, and mean that certain soldier builds will be better or once in a given playthrough. They add replayability, because when you've finished one game, you can start another, and the strategy you used last time probably won't work as well.

Input randomness was something that LW added a lot of to XCOM1. XCOM1 had very little input randomness (to the point where players had crafted their strategy layer plan for the first 3-4 months before even starting the game). LW tried to add more, through random pod location, and later on through country bonuses and random alien infiltration. It was one of the features of LW I really loved, but which got a lot of negative feedback. Players felt it was unfair if they were denied continent bonuses they had planned on getting because the aliens happened to randomly infiltrate one of the countries they needed. I enjoyed it because it meant you had to roll with the punches, and make a strategy on the fly.

I've found so far that DEs make great input variance. They don't determine the results of my actions, although they can be frustrating if they counter a soldier build I've invested in. But I think random progression of aliens is far better than the fixed progression in LW1 - watching streamers say "I know the aliens have XYZ upgrade coming up in a month, so I need to have ABC to counter it" breaks immersion for me. The aliens should be pulling surprises all the time, and the player should be adapting their builds/strategy layer play to match what they're doing. I want a game where I can't decide before the game starts what soldiers I'm going to have or how I'm going to build them, because I need to react to what the aliens are doing.
Nagul
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Nagul »

Rempsv wrote:
Nagul wrote:
Rempsv wrote:or get a perk Formidable early on, which basically makes the first ambush worthless since i like to open with grenades.
I suggest you try it first before making a conclusion. If you aren't the world's unluckiest guy I think you are in for a surprise.
And what exactly would that surprise be?
If i use a grenadier for my opening attack who already got the boosted cores perk, a average hit would normal be around 4-5 damage.
With formidable on that advent i would probably hit for 1(66% damage reduction and 1 armour).
Which basically makes it a far less useful/useless opener, especially early in the campaign where you simply cant afford better weapons for all your squads yet.
So in order to complete the mission on time i often really need that first grenade to help me out a lot, simply to save me alot of time.
When i play lw2 more i probably will come up with other and better strategies, just as i learned to play LW1.
I just wished that in the early months they would happen a little bit slower, Just to give me more of a break to really build my resistance.
Try to get some facts before jumping to conclusions. Sorry for the tone of the post but having half of posters there complaining about nonexistent balance issues just distract the LW crew on real and legitimate issues. As mattprice pointed out, it only affects some units in some proportion. As you could have known immediately if you bothered to try it out.

So don't worry, your opener is still fine. Sometimes one enemy in the whole pack won't take much damage, but as a XCOM player you should be ready for having the occasional bad roll.

That's why I say that the most glaring issue with DEs atm is the lack of clarity and how rarely it impacts the player.
50shotsofgrayyze
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by 50shotsofgrayyze »

johnnylump wrote:
I'm still interested in the idea of some nasty facility assault mission to get rid of some upgrades, but I can't say if that's something we'll be able to get to.
I think the tactical DE roulette is interesting fwiw but if you could do the facility idea it would be brilliant if all enemies on the mission had the perk(s) you would counter by going on the mission. It would create all sorts of puzzles/problems in deciding if it is worth building gear and/or speccing troops just to counter and beat that facility or if it is optimal to leave it be and focus elsewhere.
trihero
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by trihero »

That's why I say that the most glaring issue with DEs atm is the lack of clarity and how rarely it impacts the player.
That's the problem with LW2 in general, there's too much stuff "hiding behind the scenes" that only people with inside information and 800+ hours played (like xwynn) know about, and even then they don't know all the details. From haven management, to infiltration, to the "redone graze system" all require careful study you would never be able to figure out completely or optimally just by playing the game.

I tolerate the complexity because it's new and fun, but I don't want to feel like I'm spending half my time trying to read forums/wikipedia to figure out what breakpoints affect whose mother rather than well, just playing.
Rempsv
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Rempsv »

mattprice516 wrote:
Rempsv wrote:
Nagul wrote:
I suggest you try it first before making a conclusion. If you aren't the world's unluckiest guy I think you are in for a surprise.
And what exactly would that surprise be?
If i use a grenadier for my opening attack who already got the boosted cores perk, a average hit would normal be around 4-5 damage.
With formidable on that advent i would probably hit for 1(66% damage reduction and 1 armour).
Which basically makes it a far less useful/useless opener, especially early in the campaign where you simply cant afford better weapons for all your squads yet.
So in order to complete the mission on time i often really need that first grenade to help me out a lot, simply to save me alot of time.
When i play lw2 more i probably will come up with other and better strategies, just as i learned to play LW1.
I just wished that in the early months they would happen a little bit slower, Just to give me more of a break to really build my resistance.
Good news for you then, because if you're not playing on Legend you get 7 weeks before any tactical DEs can happen at all! :)

And Formidable can't happen until you see your first MK 2 captain. Once it finishes, it applies to 1 out of every 6 Captains, Shieldbros, Grenadiers, Rocketeers, and Mutton leaders (Centurion and Elite). Also Avatars.
So how can i tell when a DE happens which unit(s) and how many of them it effects?
For example i just got an DE which decreases hack chances, does that affect all robotic units and by how many.
If i got an DE which says faceless become much stronger does that effect all faceless, or just some?

Oh btw i just play veteran and get my ass handed down to me, so i wont be playing legend any time soon i am afraid.
GoodIdea
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by GoodIdea »

Part of it is the in-game text: just replacing the word 'tactical' with 'permanent', and being more explicit about which enemies are upgraded would fix half the problem. What exactly does "some enemies" mean? Without reading this thread, I would assume Lightning Reflexes goes to all Stunlancers and probably the snake-types, and Grazing Fire to all Gunner types, not just a percentage of them. I'm also not clear on whether they are infinite or eventually hit a cap.

Personally, I still like the idea of a facility raid mission to counter them even after completion. Maybe if you liberate a region with the relevant DE facility, advent could move production to another region, giving you a chance to raid them in transit.
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Valaska
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Valaska »

50shotsofgrayyze wrote:
johnnylump wrote:
I'm still interested in the idea of some nasty facility assault mission to get rid of some upgrades, but I can't say if that's something we'll be able to get to.
I think the tactical DE roulette is interesting fwiw but if you could do the facility idea it would be brilliant if all enemies on the mission had the perk(s) you would counter by going on the mission. It would create all sorts of puzzles/problems in deciding if it is worth building gear and/or speccing troops just to counter and beat that facility or if it is optimal to leave it be and focus elsewhere.
If tied to a facility this actually introduces an extremely vital point of game balancing, which is allowing the player to interact meaningfully with a mechanic. A great example woudl be ECM on MechWarrior Online, almost the entirety of the community were extremely against the ECM mechanics they introduced because simply you HAD to load up as much ECM on your team as possible. If you didn't lock yourself into that one mechanic and cheese it, you were screwed and there was nothing you could do.

It boiled combat down into the same 4 mechs, locked into doing the same tactics over and over again... People suggested that there needed to be a way to interact with or expunge ECM instead of being an absolute defacto win mechanic. Dark Events the way they are now sort of boil down into an ECM like mechanic, you are absolutely forced into dealing with them and there's no way to interact with it beyond getting lucky, it takes player interaction largely out of the game and choices you make matter less.

So yeah having them tied to facilities introduces to the player a way to deal with and handle these events... I understand that might be an extremely hard thing to code in though and it would be easier to just have facilities being assaulted expunge a random event, but that just takes control away from players again. I think the easiest thing honestly would be to just make dark events run a course of time, then have a chance to repeat.
JackDT
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by JackDT »

johnnylump wrote:Our framework in designing and balancing these was and will remain "Incremental, permanent upgrades to aliens that XCOM will sometimes have a chance to counter." We used the Dark Event mechanism to give you that opportunity to counter them. Our balancing assumption is that most of them will end up being applied over the course of a campaign. The association of Dark Events with only temporarily problems is something LW2 players will have to unlearn from vanilla.
Yeah. If they were named something else most players wouldn't expect to counter them -- it's just the alien progression system. You can't rename the big red 'Dark Events' button to something different can you? Alien Status, Alien Research, Alien Upgrades, something like that?

I just want to chime in that the concept of having a more randomized enemy progression than LW1 is appreciated and it's working for me. I just had to swallow my pride and realize I should probably by playing on Veteran instead of Commander.
Last edited by JackDT on Thu Feb 02, 2017 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ConradKurze
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by ConradKurze »

To add my 2 cents: I think the idea of a special facility raid which counters a dark event is awesome, but I can understand that it would be very difficult to implement from a technical standpoint. Instead of having a facility tied to each (or a subset of each) it might be easier to just add a facility mission every once in a while and if completed (and obviously discovered) before its timer runs out it counters a random permanent tactical. That way there aren't 20 different hidden facilities cluttering the map (and slowing the processing down), but there is still a way to interact with Permanent Dark Events.

Regardless I like the idea of permanent dark events in theory, the ability to counter enemy advances is cool (compared to LW1).
Denniz
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Denniz »

I think I had a Dark Event go into effect while I was infiltrating on the mission to counter it. Has anyone else seen this? Is it intended behavior?
Olin
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Olin »

So would anyone here be skilled enough to look at the code and maybe create a submod that removes one random tactical dark event upon successful HQ attack? This solution would put more emphasis on liberating as many regions as possible. And, as people previously mentioned, you would have some chance to unscrew yourself (albeit it still would be dictated by rng what event you counter). Maybe it is relatively simple to code?
MhBlis
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by MhBlis »

Actually yes. I just finished a mission to counter Viper rounds only it activated as I brought up the launch window. Mission timer still had a day left in it as well.

So even with the mission a success it's Viper rounds for advent.


-------

Annoyingly this was the first dark event I could counter all campaign. The first 4 all appeared outside any of my territories so had no control over it what so ever.

----

I understand why the system is the way it is but it's frustrating to have no input or affect on them what so ever.

I too would much prefer the permanent upgrades to be removed from dark events and be made a background effect. And the DE be used for temporary boosts to counter my activities thus making Advent feel more reactive and giving me a measure of input into the process.
wei270
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Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by wei270 »

after reading all your stuff on variance and expected value i think you guys are over thinking for the most part.

but the important part is we do need a set of control for those permanent DE. At the moment if you get unlucky with DE (ie hit a high variance) yeah difficulty can increase far beyond linear difficulty progression ( assumption that LW1 operated in a linear difficulty progression with alien get set amount of upgrade once they get set amount of points)

so we do like the math(stats) guy suggest that we put Permanent DE on a tracker that at certain point in Time there is alway a max cap on the amount of permanent upgrades advents get

however the problem is here is that some perk upgrades can still screw you over really bad like the an early reinforcement buff after alien defense buff early in the campaign, that is like gg for most people if you can't kill the alien faster enough before reinforment drop on top of you then you can't progress in your campaign.

so what we can do here is separate said advent stats improvement DEs and Advent special advantage upgrade DEs in two different timed constrained progression system

and the advent special advantage dark events have longer warming time before it hits like ,ie faster reinforcement.

this way the player will have an idea on where their own upgrade should be compare to advent stats upgrade at any point in time

and then an opportunity to prepare for the real nasty stuff that is coming your way, ie stun lancer getting lighting reflex may require player time to change tactical options, but once those lighting reflex lancer hit the field, others stuff like armored/aoe resistant advent leader unit wouldn't hit you for some time because their have a separate time constrain.

this should get ride of some variance in DE effect on player campaign and transform the alien progression system similar to LW 1
difference being in long war 1 alien upgrade are base on alien resource, long war 2 alien upgrade is based on time, by caping it base on time.
in long war 1 alien perk upgrade is fixed over their progression tech path, long war 2 alien perk upgrade is randomized but gives the player some time to transition to new changing battle field.

(and please do change the wording of tactical in to permanent, calling it tactical is just misleading especially for new players)
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 265
Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:49 am

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by mattprice516 »

Denniz wrote:I think I had a Dark Event go into effect while I was infiltrating on the mission to counter it. Has anyone else seen this? Is it intended behavior?
That would not be intended behavior. If you have a save and/or more details, report it in the bug report forum please. :)
Denniz
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:11 pm

Re: New and Improved Dark Events Thread

Post by Denniz »

mattprice516 wrote:
Denniz wrote:I think I had a Dark Event go into effect while I was infiltrating on the mission to counter it. Has anyone else seen this? Is it intended behavior?
That would not be intended behavior. If you have a save and/or more details, report it in the bug report forum please. :)
Thanks, I wish I had saved when it happened. I will try to make a save if it happens again. Probably shouldn't be too hard. After all, DEs aren't exactly rare. ;)
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