Custom difficulty?

[Erk]

I really enjoy the challenge brought on by the tougher aliens on higher difficulty, but I prefer the pacing of easy games. This had me thinking, would it be that hard to implement a custom difficulty setting?

Basically, I'd like to be able to set some of the following variables when I create my game:
-human/alien damage multipliers
-rate of alien craft appearances
-rate of alien difficulty increases
-starting cash
-minimum nation happiness
-all the other things that vary by difficulty, like number of soldiers and stuff.

This part seems like it would be easy to implement, since the variation is already present. If it's possible, I'd love to also be able to set:
-research speed multiplier and production speed multiplier
-rate of nation happiness decay
-multipliers for human and alien time units (another Handicap button)

There are probably other things that could be changed that I haven't listed. Really, just setting the first several options myself would make for a fun game setup option, and to my understanding shouldn't be that tough to establish.

[Bonzo]

Sounds like a great idea. Sharing/collaborating over custom difficulties (and, of course arguing over which is best) sounds like a right laugh

Of course, a little knowledge of modding would let you do most of that stuff, but it'd be nice if it was more accessible so those without 't3h l33t hax'/'programming witchcraft' could join in.

On the other hand, I can imagine being halfway through a campaign, thinking 'this is too easy', jacking up the difficulties, accidentally unleashing an unstoppable alien armada on myself... and being too British to put the difficulty down again.

"I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked!"

[H-Hour]

You'll want to look at the .ufo files, particularly the campaign.ufo. Many (but not all) of these kinds of parameters can be easily customized by creating your own .ufo file with a new campaign definition. I keep one around just for testing purposes (loads of cash, I can start at any alien interest level).

[Erk]

campaign.ufo requires a compile to set up, as far as I can tell... I don't really have the free time to learn to set up a compiling environment for C on my computer just to adjust the difficulty. It's all I can do to find twenty minutes of uninterrupted playtime :/

[DarkRain]

That's wrong, .ufo files don't require recompiling the game, you can even switch mods within the game options.

[Erk]

Oh... thanks then. I'm going to have to figure out where these are then, I've looked a few times and finally gave up on it.

Edit: I think I found them. Thanks for the heads-up DarkRain, I'd just assumed that since all the scripting pages talk about downloading SVN that ufo files were source.