Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

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Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

Post by Jadiel »

Currently, when a mission reaches 100% infiltration, the geoscape stops so you can launch it. However, you actually hit Enemy Readiness: Normal somwhere between 87% and 100% infiltration, and once you have reached that point, there's no benefit in going up to 100%. You can take advantage of this by scanning small increments and checking, but it's very tedious.

Can't we just have it so that instead of stopping at 100%, it stops when Readiness hits Normal? I guess this could maybe be a mod rather than a change to LW2, but it feels like you get punished for not tediously micromanaging the UI.
nmkaplan
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:14 pm

Re: Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

Post by nmkaplan »

Well I guess the real question would be:

Is 'enemy readiness' the defining characteristic of infiltration percentage? I know there are tiers that gradually scale down the difficulty of mission parameters as infiltration% rises. And I know the parameters affected by infiltration% were overhauled in 1.3. But it's not a given that "enemy readiness" is the defining characteristic for ALL of these parameters.

It seems unlikely that the devs would have put in a "tier" that begins at 87% and *doesn't* end at 99%, yes?
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 265
Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:49 am

Re: Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

Post by mattprice516 »

nmkaplan wrote:Well I guess the real question would be:

Is 'enemy readiness' the defining characteristic of infiltration percentage? I know there are tiers that gradually scale down the difficulty of mission parameters as infiltration% rises. And I know the parameters affected by infiltration% were overhauled in 1.3. But it's not a given that "enemy readiness" is the defining characteristic for ALL of these parameters.

It seems unlikely that the devs would have put in a "tier" that begins at 87% and *doesn't* end at 99%, yes?
This is more or less correct. The "readiness" numbers affect the alert level of the mission in a discrete way (as in, there are tiers) but there are other parameters (such as reflex action % chance) where every single point of infiltration matters.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

Post by chrisb »

This is not quite so simple to do, and may involve a significant performance hit, or maybe not.

From what I understand, the mission info itself is not updated while you are scanning. It is only updated when you click on the mission itself. So currently the game does not know that the mission is transitioned from Guarded to Normal, and eventually Normal to Vulnerable until you click on the mission to update the mission info. The reason it can stop on infil % is that is handled separately from the mission info in the squad and is a simple matter of looking at the game time clock.

So in order to do what you want, the game would have to refresh every mission very frequently and check the readiness. Depending on how many missions there are (keep in mind there are a dozen or more that you cannot see), and how frequent it recalculates each of those missions could be a significant performance hit. Not to mention it could introduce new bugs as AFAIK it's a non-trivial change to inject stuff like this into an update loop like this that is being sped up.

One thing you can do however is add your own % breakpoints. In InfiltrationSettings, around line 180 there are is an array you can add to.

Code: Select all

+InfiltrationHaltPoints=100.0
+InfiltrationHaltPoints=200.0
If you wanted to make that include 87% then you could make it look like this.

Code: Select all

+InfiltrationHaltPoints=87.0
+InfiltrationHaltPoints=100.0
+InfiltrationHaltPoints=200.0
Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Re: Suggestion: Stop geoscape scanning at Normal, not at 100%

Post by Jadiel »

mattprice516 wrote:This is more or less correct. The "readiness" numbers affect the alert level of the mission in a discrete way (as in, there are tiers) but there are other parameters (such as reflex action % chance) where every single point of infiltration matters.
I had forgotten about the new breakpoint for reflex actions. Especially on Legend, this makes a big difference, and is probably equally as (if not more important than) reducing enemy count. So I guess I retract my suggestion!

ETA: Thanks @chrisb, I hadn't realised you could configure your own break points - I'll play around with that.
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