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Disruptive changes to stat calculation in latest 2.5-dev

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Telok:

--- Quote from: H-Hour on September 06, 2013, 12:19:47 pm ---When I play, I am always rotating soldiers in and out throughout the campaign as they get injured. This ensures a decent stable of "backup" soldiers in place even in the late game. With the faster stat gain, though, if your new guys can survive 5-10 missions, are they able to wear the power armour?
--- End quote ---

Lets see, noobs have 35-39 strength (weaklings get assigned to radar garrison duties and don't get to wear armor or carry med-kits, high damage weapons and low survival rates). Nano weighs 9kg and power weighs 14kg, med-kits run 2kg, sniper rifles are 6.4 plus a 0.5 clip, a GL is 6kg plus the 1.5 ammo, PB rifle is 3.4 plus the 0.5 clip almost the same as the plasma rifle.

Minimum, without reloads or smokes or anything else will be about 15kg with nano-armor (everyone can do this but nano isn't cutting it any more by this time) and almost 20 with power armor. So we need a 40 strength score for the least equipped rifle man in power armor, 46 for a sniper and 47 for an exploder.

Looking at the stats I posted it will take 10 to 20 missions for a soldier to be capable of wearing power armor. If you want ammo reloads, IR goggles, and grenades it's definitely going to be 20 missions. Given the alien preference for shooting the noobs first (lowest health targeting priority) trying to build these guys up late-game is just not happening for me. It's really uncanny how often the new guy on the team gets blasted when the aliens have a choice of targets.

As for the randomness of UFOs appearing, is it always a fixed chance or does it modulate based on recent activity? For example is it something like a fixed 10% chance per day or is it closer to 10% - 1% per UFO/landing in the last three days?

H-Hour:
Ufo appearance: every four or eight days a new cycle starts. The game rolls x number of times a number between 1 and 100. If the number is higher than the ufo reduction rate (maybe 65 on normal if memory serves) then a ufo is spawned. With this mode it is possible that every possible duo spawns in a cycle - or none. Though most of the time it will tend towards Total Rolls * Ufo Reduction Rate.

Telok:
So it's a flat % chance with no modification.

Let's say there are 8 chances for a ufo every 4 days at a 35% rate. You can expect two or three ufos every four days but if the RNG hates you there can be a streak of 24 ufos in nine days. So I've just hit a RNG streak that gave me eight to ten ufos in two or three days so far. I suppose it's fair in that it balances out the time I didn't get any ufos for six weeks, but both extremes annoy the player.

Would it be considered to change the ufo spawn rate to modify based on the number of days since the last ufo spawned? It's an attempt to move the spawn rate towards a smoother and more constant rate and level out some of the peaks/valleys. Something like: 1 chance for a ufo every 12 hours at a 35% +  (number of days since last ufo mission * 5%) - (number of ufos/missions currently in progress * 5%) rate? What would that do to the number of ufos? We may need to make and compare some graphs.

H-Hour:
I understand it can be frustrating for some players, especially considering the lengths that modern games go to to ensure players experience little to no "friction"  in their games. But to me, the potential for outliers is an important pact between the game and the player. I know, as a player, that I face a randomly generated challenge, that the game has jot been deliberately engineered to ensure I face only mild challenges, and that makes the victory mine in a way that I don't feel in other modern games. The peaks and valleys are an integral part of what makes a sandbox game meaningful. We already have some hard limits - the game can not sustain more than 8 missions on the roadmap at once, and will discard New spawns - but it's important to me as a gamer that the game does not "auto-tune" itself to safeguard me from outlier moments. In a game like this, where the narrative shape emerges dynamically from the unique circumstances of each campaign - and my own successes and failures - such outlier moments provide the game with the uncertainty and struggle which gives the game meaning. We can gate the experience and narrow the range of possibilities as mass-marketed games do, but in my view doing so undermines the power and investment that comes from forcing responsibility onto the player.

Beren_Erchamion:

--- Quote from: H-Hour on September 05, 2013, 11:07:36 pm ---Yes, thanks.

--- End quote ---

These were the stats before the first mission with the new calculation:

No.MissionsKillsStrengthSpeedAccuracyMindCloseAssaultSniperExplosivesHealth1.352847293637272938231242.313043233538232438301173.391247323539302721261114.424642253341233625241105.241440273441282232201136.381943233246273126271077.453348243245272228401248.422947263238212821211219.4537443236472521273411410.29194423344023332727104
These were the stats afterwards:

No.MissionsKillsStrengthSpeedAccuracyMindCloseAssaultSniperExplosivesHealth1.36nn73515979384386291732.32nn70395679323882481653.40nn80595671565236511504.43nn73525590437843461615.25nn65495369403768341566.39nn73465684356346481487.46nn84494991393948921778.43nn74484979306229351699.46nn776057974232448817110.30nn7147497632644644141

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