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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Selecting Alien Forces For Battlescape Mission


dteviot

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One of the first things we need to do in order to have a battlescape mission is construct the alien forces that X-Corp troops will fight.

Here's my thoughts. I would appreciate other people's comments.

 

This requires solving at least 3 questions.

  • What alien race is crewing the UFO?
  • How many aliens, by rank, are there? (Including terrorist units)
  • What are the aliens armed with?

Answering "what race"?

  • Simplest solution is have table of probability, and pick at random.
  • A somewhat more sophisticated method would be have several random tables, of differing difficulty, and pick the table based on difficulty level, and how well player is doing.
  • Alternate solution, have one table, but adjust probabilities based on how well each race does against X-Corp. E.g. If race wins big, then add 20% to odds of selection. Wins small, 10%, draws - no change, looses small 10% drop etc.
  • Note, need to apply fuzzy logic to evaluate success. Include size of both sides, all casualties inflicted, number of times player restored game, etc.

Alternate thought:

What if we don't assign single races to UFOs, but give them mixed crews? Using probability table for each species.

 

How many aliens, by rank, are there?

This answers how many there are.

But it doesn't give the ranks we should find. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

What are the aliens armed with?

I haven't thought about this much.

Best guess, again have a random probablility of each weapon type. At start plasma pistols are highest probability.

As time goes by, adjust probabilities by how successful the weapons are. (So over time, PC should move to nastier weapons.)

Other suggestions welcome.

 

Additional questions:

  • What aspects of game play (in X-Com) did the difficulty level impact? e.g. only the Battlescape, or the Geoscape as well? Research/Build times/costs?
  • I know it impacts #of aliens in mission and toughness of aliens. But anything else?
  • What aspects of game play SHOULD the difficulty level impact?

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One of the first things we need to do in order to have a battlescape mission is construct the alien forces that X-Corp troops will fight.

Here's my thoughts. I would appreciate other people's comments.

 

This requires solving at least 3 questions.

  • What alien race is crewing the UFO?
  • How many aliens, by rank, are there? (Including terrorist units)
  • What are the aliens armed with?

Answering "what race"?

  • Simplest solution is have table of probability, and pick at random.
  • A somewhat more sophisticated method would be have several random tables, of differing difficulty, and pick the table based on difficulty level, and how well player is doing.
  • Alternate solution, have one table, but adjust probabilities based on how well each race does against X-Corp. E.g. If race wins big, then add 20% to odds of selection. Wins small, 10%, draws - no change, looses small 10% drop etc.
  • Note, need to apply fuzzy logic to evaluate success. Include size of both sides, all casualties inflicted, number of times player restored game, etc.

Alternate thought:

What if we don't assign single races to UFOs, but give them mixed crews? Using probability table for each species.

 

How many aliens, by rank, are there?

This answers how many there are.

But it doesn't give the ranks we should find. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

What are the aliens armed with?

I haven't thought about this much.

Best guess, again have a random probablility of each weapon type. At start plasma pistols are highest probability.

As time goes by, adjust probabilities by how successful the weapons are. (So over time, PC should move to nastier weapons.)

Other suggestions welcome.

UFO CREW

At least how the original game was programmed, when a mission type was determined, the race for those missions was set to a specific race. I suggest we do the same for the time being as it makes it easier to test and program. Later versions of PX can have mixed missions. (This also answers a lot of your questions, dteviot).

 

We are not too sure how the alien race is picked though. There are a lot of threads discussing alien race progression on this site as well as StrategyCore. It is probably affected mostly by time and difficulty level, but there are other theories which say research plays a role too. But a race doesn't simply disappear when you get further into a game. There is still a chance they will show up. Perhaps a table of probabilities can be used as you mentioned to determine what alien race will predominate as the game progresses. The easiest way would be to have it start to use a different part of the table when the game time reaches a certain point.

 

CREW WEAPON LOADOUTS

Recently NKF and myself found the alien loadouts for EU and TFTD in the corresponding executables. Most of the values found within the code have been decoded but there are still a few unknowns yet. But from what is known, there are three different weapon loadouts possible for a given rank on a mission. There is a light loadout (primarily Plasma Pistol), a heavy loadout (Plasma Rifle or sometimes the Heavy Plasma) and a super-heavy loadout (Heavy Plasma or the launchers). Here again, it is not known how the game chooses when to equip an alien with a Plasma Rifle instead of a Plasma Pistol. Theories are the same as above - difficulty level, time, research or a combination of all three. There appears to be a number which looks like a probability percentage found in the code, but when I edited it the loadout remained the same. *shrugs* Let me know if you would like to see the numbers found in the loadout code. I have it in an Excel spreadsheet with the columns labeled (at least the knowns). B)

 

Additional questions:
  • What aspects of game play (in X-Com) did the difficulty level impact? e.g. only the Battlescape, or the Geoscape as well? Research/Build times/costs?
  • I know it impacts #of aliens in mission and toughness of aliens. But anything else?
  • What aspects of game play SHOULD the difficulty level impact?

Difficulty level seems to only affect #of aliens, toughness of aliens, possible race/loadout progression, the point differential on when to lose and the probabilities when the aliens will directly attack your bases. Other than this, everything remains the same including all costs or times. :)

 

- Zombie

Edited by Zombie
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Zombie,

Yes, I would like to see the spreadsheet.

Can you also tell me the number of each alien rank by UFO type/race?

 

Thanks.

Sure could, but those numbers are also found in the spreadsheet. :wink1:

 

Loadouts.zip

 

Let me know if you have any questions. =b

 

- Zombie

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Zombie,

Yes, I would like to see the spreadsheet.

Can you also tell me the number of each alien rank by UFO type/race?

 

Thanks.

Sure could, but those numbers are also found in the spreadsheet. :wink1:

 

Loadouts.zip

 

Let me know if you have any questions. =b

 

- Zombie

Thanks.

Small point. Column 'B' labeled "Mission Type" appears to be "UFO type"

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Technically, it is correct as the base missions and Mars missions do not have a UFO, yet they still get a number. :wink1: We think that the lower numbers (0-4) were reserved for the X-COM craft, but editing those numbers in a UFO just crashes the game. Bummer. :)

 

- Zombie

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Technically, it is correct as the base missions and Mars missions do not have a UFO, yet they still get a number.

- Zombie

Point. OK, I assume that numbers for the "Base Mission" entry are X-Com attacking an alien base.

For Aliens attacking an X-Corp base, just use the standard crew for the UFO type?

 

At least how the original game was programmed, when a mission type was determined, the race for those missions was set to a specific race. I suggest we do the same for the time being as it makes it easier to test and program. Later versions of PX can have mixed missions. (This also answers a lot of your questions, dteviot).

I think doing mixed race crews will be easier than single race.

Three reasons.

  • I don't need to worry about which terror unit is used by which race.
  • I don't need to worry about case where UFO wants a rank that species doesn't have. e.g. Cloak (Etheral) don't have Medic and Engineer ranks.
  • If Player needs some alien type to unlock a research project, and player doesn't have alien of that type, I can ensure there is an alien of that type provided the UFO carries that rank. Note, if player needs multiple alien types, I can ensure that at least one of the needed types will be supplied,.

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Point. OK, I assume that numbers for the "Base Mission" entry are X-Com attacking an alien base.

For Aliens attacking an X-Corp base, just use the standard crew for the UFO type?

Correct on both accounts.

 

I think doing mixed race crews will be easier than single race.

Three reasons.

  • I don't need to worry about which terror unit is used by which race.
  • I don't need to worry about case where UFO wants a rank that species doesn't have. e.g. Cloak (Etheral) don't have Medic and Engineer ranks.
  • If Player needs some alien type to unlock a research project, and player doesn't have alien of that type, I can ensure there is an alien of that type provided the UFO carries that rank. Note, if player needs multiple alien types, I can ensure that at least one of the needed types will be supplied,.

1) True about terror units, but wouldn't an all-mixed crew loadout kinda defeat the PX backstory and separation between the races? I don't know, it just doesn't feel like the right choice to me. :shrug:

 

2) All the races which do not have a requisite rank substitute a Soldier instead. For Ethereals, they substitute Leaders for the missing ranks. It sounds simple to flag the missing rank aliens to substitute something which exists, but I'm not the one doing the programming. :wink1:

 

3) This makes the game too easy IMHO. Having Ethereals right off the bat allows you immediate access to Psi pending some research. Of course, if we make a table of probabilities, we could prevent them from showing up for a while...

 

- Zombie

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1) True about terror units, but wouldn't an all-mixed crew loadout kinda defeat the PX backstory and separation between the races? I don't know, it just doesn't feel like the right choice to me. :shrug:

I would have thought having mixed crews would make the battlescape missions more difficult for players, as they could not know what they're up against.

 

2) All the races which do not have a requisite rank substitute a Soldier instead. For Ethereals, they substitute Leaders for the missing ranks. It sounds simple to flag the missing rank aliens to substitute something which exists, but I'm not the one doing the programming. :wink1:

Well, that's easy enough to do.

 

3) This makes the game too easy IMHO. Having Ethereals right off the bat allows you immediate access to Psi pending some research. Of course, if we make a table of probabilities, we could prevent them from showing up for a while...

I wasn't quite as generous as I sounded. The thought was, adding an alien type to the UFO's crew to start a research project would only happen if the player didn't have anything else to research. E.g. assume player has a grey soldier in containment, and had not researched greys, then we would not look to see if player needed any other aliens. However, if player had researched all aliens except say, cloaks, and didn't have any cloaks in containment, the system would try and put at least one cloak on each UFO.

 

However, as giving UFOs (and Terror Missions and Alien Bases) single race crews is not much more programming work, I'll implement it. However, as I'm lazy, I need someone to tell me which race each of the Xenocide terror units go with. I can't be bothered spending the 30 minutes or so figuring out/googling for the mapping of X-Com race to Xenocide race, and terror unit to alien race.

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However, as giving UFOs (and Terror Missions and Alien Bases) single race crews is not much more programming work, I'll implement it. However, as I'm lazy, I need someone to tell me which race each of the Xenocide terror units go with. I can't be bothered spending the 30 minutes or so figuring out/googling for the mapping of X-Com race to Xenocide race, and terror unit to alien race.

I'll get that to you in a couple hours. Actually, I made up a list when I first joined PX on what Xenocide thing corresponded to the EU equivalent. I should probably put that up on the PX wiki to save people some time. :)

 

- Zombie

Edited by Zombie
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However, as giving UFOs (and Terror Missions and Alien Bases) single race crews is not much more programming work, I'll implement it. However, as I'm lazy, I need someone to tell me which race each of the Xenocide terror units go with. I can't be bothered spending the 30 minutes or so figuring out/googling for the mapping of X-Com race to Xenocide race, and terror unit to alien race.

I'll get that to you in a couple hours. Actually, I made up a list when I first joined PX on what Xenocide thing corresponded to the EU equivalent. I should probably put that up on the PX wiki to save people some time. :)

 

- Zombie

That list is in the CTD forums as well: http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3764

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That list is in the CTD forums as well: http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3764

That would have saved me some time in the past. Funny I missed it. :blush1:

 

Anyway, here is the list of aliens and their associated terror units, dteviot:

 

Grey (Sectoid) --> Terror Disk (Cyberdisc)

Cloak (Ethereal) --> Artopod (Sectopod)

Morlock (Muton) --> Silabrate (Silicoid) + Ventriculant (Celatid)

Satyrian (Floater) --> Raptor (Reaper)

Viper (Snakeman) --> Spawn (Chryssalid) and when necessary, the zombie

 

- Zombie

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Anyway, here is the list of aliens and their associated terror units, dteviot:

 

Grey (Sectoid) --> Terror Disk (Cyberdisc)

Cloak (Ethereal) --> Artopod (Sectopod)

Morlock (Muton) --> Silabrate (Silicoid) + Ventriculant (Celatid)

Satyrian (Floater) --> Raptor (Reaper)

Viper (Snakeman) --> Spawn (Chryssalid) and when necessary, the zombie

 

- Zombie

Thanks, exactly what I required.

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