PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

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Alketi
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PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Alketi »

There's now a mod that displays Force Level and Vigilance on the strategic map. It actually looks amazingly useful and would give insight into possible future troop movements, decay rates, etc. However, I'm wondering if this information was originally omitted for a strategic reason (beyond the fact it's a bit too "technical" for the average Joe and/or translation issues) and whether or not PI believes this would give an unfair advantage to the player?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =925598042
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johnnylump
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by johnnylump »

I'm interested in hearing how it goes for players who use this, but it was a deliberate call to not expose that bit of info to the player and no plans to change that. It's really intended to be an internal AI variable that guides its strategic decision-making, not a player-facing variable to manage.
Alketi
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Alketi »

Cheers. Thanks for the response. As someone with an engineering background, I'd like to have this information and use the mod, but I also want the challenge of beating the game "as intended".

If this information is viewed internally as more of something the player shouldn't need to worry about, rather than something that is "game breaking" to have knowledge of, then I think I'll try the mod.
Antifringe
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Antifringe »

I disagree, at least partially. Vigilance isn't just an AI variable, it's also a mechanic that directly affects the AVATAR timer, and the in-game documentation hints at this. Knowing the vigilance scores is important when making decisions about whether to liberate or not, since liberation sets local vigilance to one. It's also an important number to keep track of when deciding whether to run Intel or Recruit/Supply at a given haven, since the really high value missions dry up past a certain vigilance score.

Anyways, I've been using LWDumpHavenInfo for a long time now, (and also hastily installed this mod once I learned about it), and I personally found that it enhances my enjoyment of and engagement with the strategy layer.
Cloista
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Cloista »

Using the mod with my new 1.3 playthrough and I agree, it is really nice to have that information, as it allows better strategic thinking.
Lisranda
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Lisranda »

I'm going to be trying this mod out as well. I agree overall with the design decision to obfuscate much of the mechanical information or just entirely lock it away from the player in a lot of cases. You play a resistance movement with limited access to information after all. I disagree that the rationale behind it does not hold up at all difficulty levels. When the beta testers (public faces) are making comments saying that people playing on Legend are expected to know the mechanics inside and out and how to game them if they want to succeed (ie. gaming the game rather than playing the game) I honestly don't see anything wrong with having that information available.

And hey, at the end of the day it's a mod. People will play the way they want.
chrisb
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by chrisb »

Lisranda wrote:I'm going to be trying this mod out as well. I agree overall with the design decision to obfuscate much of the mechanical information or just entirely lock it away from the player in a lot of cases. You play a resistance movement with limited access to information after all. I disagree that the rationale behind it does not hold up at all difficulty levels. When the beta testers (public faces) are making comments saying that people playing on Legend are expected to know the mechanics inside and out and how to game them if they want to succeed (ie. gaming the game rather than playing the game) I honestly don't see anything wrong with having that information available.

And hey, at the end of the day it's a mod. People will play the way they want.
Legend is really not that bad. I think people tend to have the illusion that Legend is some kind of unbeatable hardcore difficulty when it's really not that bad. You are more likely to get soldiers killed, but that's not really a big deal. Most people beating Legend are losing something like 30-40 soldiers in a campaign and manage to walk through end-game pretty easily. Especially with Smash N Grab being the new 0% mission, you can get a lot of ranks quickly and snowball your barracks pretty well.
Flintrok
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Flintrok »

You can mostly keep track of Vigilance by region with a paper and pencil (missions run +1, week's time -1 kind of thing)...so the mod helps by cutting out that tediousness. Thematically, XCOM should have a good idea of how 'on alert' Advent is within a given region to XCOM's activities.
LordYanaek
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by LordYanaek »

Honestly, i don't think it's all that useful or even necessarily a good idea for players to have that information. Only global vigilance affects AVATAR timer and you already have an indication of how well you are doing it in resistance management screen. Local vigilance is not really something we need to know and we can perfectly play without.
Knowing the vigilance scores is important when making decisions about whether to liberate or not, since liberation sets local vigilance to one. It's also an important number to keep track of when deciding whether to run Intel or Recruit/Supply at a given haven, since the really high value missions dry up past a certain vigilance score.
In 1.3 liberating is probably always a good idea if you can do it as Network Tower gives you a free relay and Liberation itself removes a doom pip from the alien fortress (those you can't remove by blowing facilities) so passing on a Liberation opportunity to maintain a high vigilance region exactly looks like the sort of bad idea noone would have without access to data they are not supposed to have.
When deciding where to run Intel/Recruit/Hide, strength is certainly much more important. If someone suddenly notices a region drops in vigilance and wants to run Intel there to get the "useful" missions without paying attention to strength, they are good for bad surprises when they will attempt an extraction with str 5. If they do pay attention to str, low str regions are usually also the low vigilance regions. Having a second value to watch will be a very small help at best, and can actually put someone who doesn't really understand how it works in a worse situation.

I think players who understand the game well enough to benefit from this information don't really need it. Other players are probably better planning their strategic moves based on strength only rather then being confused by multiple and partially overlapping information.

Too much information usually hurts less than too few but it still hurts.
Goofych
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Goofych »

If you can keep track of something with pen and paper then it should be available as an ingame info. Only question is why it had taken so long for such a mod to appear.
Swiftless
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Swiftless »

johnnylump wrote:I'm interested in hearing how it goes for players who use this, but it was a deliberate call to not expose that bit of info to the player and no plans to change that. It's really intended to be an internal AI variable that guides its strategic decision-making, not a player-facing variable to manage.
That's the catch. Now that people know it's there they're managing it whether they can see it or not.
Zyxpsilon
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Zyxpsilon »

Since the Resistance management screen has been given me a subtle hint on the global Vigilance values (as a total rather than individually) -- i would instinctively presume some Regions were progressing faster than others.. without knowing which & how many precisely.

The normal strategic flow should be treated as a global mechanic from the "decision making" standpoint (presumably why PI judged it to be satisfactory to reveal as global --elevated .. severe-- verbose set of figures only) and yet, with that new MOD.. we now have a supplemental tool in the planning arsenal that fine-tunes our target goals & where we decide to intervene as much as WHEN (To Liberate or NOT being one of the concerns) exactly.

The whole argument could be made that without such details -- we are risking a few or more bad decisions while letting Vigilance (itself) control how and where Aliens develop rapidly. While showing it does give us informed facts about the generic patterns on the basis of campaign "Events".

I think.. it's somewhat useful to just know directly instead of having to "guess around" more often than not. And thus.. there goes our familiar RNG factors -- we simply bite the dust or we're proud to outsmart the mysteries. Honestly, it's still all up to ya. :lol:
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johnnylump
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by johnnylump »

It's not a binary. The documentation describes the relationship (ADVENT will behave differently and focus on in regions you've been running ops in). Hand-tracking it presents some problems, as there are occasions RNG determines how much it'll go up, and the formula for it going down is quite a bit more complex in 1.3.

A criticism I find reasonable is that there's no visible 'memory' on the screen, which is a PITA for people trying to remember where they've run ops after loading a campaign, and I've kicked around doing some kind of three-color clue (ie vigilance <=3 green; <=6 yellow; else red), but haven't convinced myself it's necessary, and am worried people would game the cut-points in unintended ways.

The global indicator and the vig/Avatar relationship came later in development as we were looking for ways to make late-campaign missions more meaningful.
hewhoispale
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by hewhoispale »

Swiftless wrote:
johnnylump wrote:I'm interested in hearing how it goes for players who use this, but it was a deliberate call to not expose that bit of info to the player and no plans to change that. It's really intended to be an internal AI variable that guides its strategic decision-making, not a player-facing variable to manage.
That's the catch. Now that people know it's there they're managing it whether they can see it or not.
That was true of the alien resources and many of the hidden behavior determining stats in LW1 too. Despite watching JoInrbs being a math-wizard and finding his xeno-metrics money-COM approach interesting to watch, I've never felt disadvantaged not keeping track of those internal variables when I've played.
MacroNova
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by MacroNova »

One thing a vigilance indicator could do is solve the problem of infiltrating a mission that is supposed to get to a certain advent strength, only to find the strength higher than anticipated when the mission expires because strength entered the region. Isn't that based on vigilance? I can tell you I've wasted my squads' precious time infiltrating missions like this.
RantingRodent
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by RantingRodent »

johnnylump wrote:A criticism I find reasonable is that there's no visible 'memory' on the screen, which is a PITA for people trying to remember where they've run ops after loading a campaign, and I've kicked around doing some kind of three-color clue (ie vigilance <=3 green; <=6 yellow; else red), but haven't convinced myself it's necessary, and am worried people would game the cut-points in unintended ways.
Rather than colour coding by current vigilance value, maybe coding by weekly vigilance delta would be better? At a glance you can see which regions you've been heating up or allowing to cool without any direct hint of the current vigilance value.
Psieye
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by Psieye »

johnnylump wrote: A criticism I find reasonable is that there's no visible 'memory' on the screen, which is a PITA for people trying to remember where they've run ops after loading a campaign, and I've kicked around doing some kind of three-color clue (ie vigilance <=3 green; <=6 yellow; else red), but haven't convinced myself it's necessary, and am worried people would game the cut-points in unintended ways.
This is indeed a valid user desire - for better or worse, handwritten notes for a long game is considered a thing of the past. I don't think vigilance clues are the solution. Without any contextual knowledge of what is and isn't possible for a mod, my solution would start along the lines of a 'missions history' log per region. Maybe just condense it to "missions won in month X for region Y".
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
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hewhoispale
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by hewhoispale »

RantingRodent wrote:
johnnylump wrote:A criticism I find reasonable is that there's no visible 'memory' on the screen, which is a PITA for people trying to remember where they've run ops after loading a campaign, and I've kicked around doing some kind of three-color clue (ie vigilance <=3 green; <=6 yellow; else red), but haven't convinced myself it's necessary, and am worried people would game the cut-points in unintended ways.
Rather than colour coding by current vigilance value, maybe coding by weekly vigilance delta would be better? At a glance you can see which regions you've been heating up or allowing to cool without any direct hint of the current vigilance value.
Or perhaps even just an indication of relative vigilance. I.e. green if vigilance in below strength, yellow if equal, red if above.
cryptc
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by cryptc »

I like the mod, same as with most mods that give additional information. Most the information is something that a very experienced player might otherwise know, but since I'm not on that level I like mods that help me give me information like this.

When I watch vids like xwynns he's always talking about information he knows, and 90% of it is stuff I wouldn't know for a mission, like force levels, how many enemies, what time enemies might start to spawn, etc etc... and while I like games that reward player knowledge, I like that I can use mods to replace hundreds of hours of experience.
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SonnyWiFiHr
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

Wasting Avenger time and rebels on wrong job will force player to reload or even restart game. (My first starts)
I founding myself reading LWactivities ini. even today just to find clue what to do with rebels.

Proper way of playing seems to be two jobs - Intel / max 5 active rebels rest on hiding or bust (120 Strength on map ).
Intel for detection and hiding for Vigilance maintenance. There is no workaround even with LW2 Information display.

Why ? 2nd and 3rd Jailbreak is worth more supply and detection than rebels on same job in two havens
I will not even start about Scientist/Engineer spawn (150 supply) if you manage to keep it really low (below 5 - haven must be on hiding or have max 5- 7 active rebels )
7 active rebels will lower vigilance in week. 5 active rebels will decay Vigilance in 5 days ? Not sure about last

LOCAL_VIGILANCE_DECAY_RATE_HOURS=168
BASELINE_OUTPOST_WORKERS_FOR_STD_VIG_DECAY=7
MAX_VIG_DECAY_CHANGE_HOURS=48
BUSY_HAVENS_SLOW_VIGILANCE_DECAY=TRUE

0 rebels on duty (non - busy) = strong region (Jailbreaks and Vip-s). This is important thing. Switch rebels from intel to hiding for good rewards. Expansion is just for hunting dark events after you have bigger barracks and you even don't need LW2 Information display for that.

Colored indicators should be enough to move Avenger to next region not for Vigilance (unimportant) but for max missions allowed. This is usually biggest waste of Avenger - working in two hot regions for some intel missions making them even hotter. After Vigilance 15 you can't even get Supply Raid line of mission and you don't have even clue what is going on.

P.S. I found this thread after searching about clue what is hiding region decay rate.
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SonnyWiFiHr
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Re: PI thoughts on mod that gives player vigilance information

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

Must correct my self.
5 rebels on job is equal to 0 rebels on job.
Decay rate is 5-7 days in both cases. It is random. Had fastest decay at March 6, slowest on March 8.
Knowing that I can actually do some Strategy if RND loves me.
(Just got my personal record in detection. Avenger only - 9 days mission)
The Preacher
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