2.2 Release: Dead Civilians count?

[peterfarge]

Hello Forum,

what doese this dead civilians count mean? On normal compaign there are only 40 dead civ allowed. Are they sumed overall missions? Or are the dead civs meant if you miss a mission? (This 6 dead civs every 1 or 2 days, if you dont play a mission)

Where can I change this settings?
I found this compaing.ufo in one of the pk3 files, is this the only place where the data is stored?

Peter

EDIT: Where can I see the current DeadCivCount?

[Mattn]

yes, there is a max number of allowed dead civilians, if you reached them, you've lost the game - remember, phalanx is there to rescue the humans

this number is not really shown - it was shown in the stats, but our storywriters told me to remove this count. the count varies with difficulty settings.

[peterfarge]

Where can I change this number? At home I have no internet, so I must ask without knowing what I have done at home. Is the compaing.ufo file in one of the pk3 the only location of this count? I tried it, but in the compaign description on the main screen was 40 written.

[Mattn]

yes, the campaign.ufo is the only file - but keep in mind, that there are definitions for every difficulty settings

[Destructavator]

Is this number fixed or dynamic?  Is it ever reset?

It might be an interesting feature if it could change up or down during the course of the game depending on the player's performance - I remember the original X-COM/UFO had periodic feedback reports from the committee that funded the project on how happy they were with the player, using paragraphs to warn if the player was on thin ice or not.

[Mattn]

we have the statistics, too

but the died-civilians-until-you've-lost-the-game is a fixed number

[Psawhn]

I don't think that's quite a good idea, the way the game is set up currently. There are many maps where there is absolutely no way to save some civilians - they are quite out of range of PHALANX soldiers, and the aliens kill them on their first turn.

Obviously this puts the player on a timer, but I thought that's what infection spread is for? Something like this could cause players to chose to abstain from missions simply because of civilian deaths, or (if an abstained mission counts as full civilian deaths) make some games simply impossible to win - there would simply not be enough time to research the bare minimum of techs needed to finish the game before too many civilians die in missions.

[Ibara]

I do not think it a good idea either.  I am playing a Standard Campaign and I have to win 40 battles before I researched "the Universal Serum" (quite middle in the mid-game, huh?).  A Standard Campaign only allows 40 dead civs, and I believe I lost more than 1 civ per battle====>means that I should have lost the game if the dead civ count was implemented. 

Instead of making it a short stop, I would recommend to put it in the formula of "Nation Happiness", on the assumption that govs are suppose to protect its citizens.  If you let too many of a nation's citizens die, the gov will get angrier with you.

[Mattn]

the lost civs are only counted if you really lose a mission. and only in that case where you don't retry the mission. so 40 is quite high imo

this way you are loosing the game when you ignoring missions or repeatly lose missions. and i really think, that is this ok. you can't just ignore the attack sites and let the civs die - the world counts on you :-D

[wastelandmerc]

Well I got small suggestion, you could make that this count slowly "fade away". For example: After 1 month of game time player loose one death of civilian (i player had 38 civilian dead on list, after moth it lowers to  37).
Would be this nice?

[Arnos]

I agree that to count should at least fade away if it isn't not gotten rid of altogether and replaced with a nation happiness penalty or something.  The user should also be told that they have a limit on civilian deaths and how close they are to it.  The first time I played the game I was suddenly told I had lost because I had let too many civilians die.

[addams013]

I don't mind civilian deaths -- even in scenarios you "win" -- having an impact on nation happiness.  I think the slow countdown could be a recipe for trouble, though; we wouldn't want someone to take a lot longer than expected because they followed a different research order or something and get frustrated with a seemingly arbitrary time limit.

If you want a time limit, I strongly recommend having it be something that makes sense in the game's context.  For example, one of the branches of researching XVI could be the rate at which it infects and spreads and is likely to mutate within human hosts; a countdown could then be established as the time when enough of the population is infected as to make PHALANX's job impossible.  ("It is as we feared, Commander.  The virus has mutated.  Our available time has been cut drastically...")

And frankly, I like the battlescape, so being able to keep going to it as long as I don't lose too many battles appeals to me. 

[BTAxis]

Just to make something clear, we do plan on making civilian casualties count towards nation happiness. But civilians dying in the GEU won't affect how Oceania thinks about you. The loss condition for too many casualties is supposed to be something separate that applies to every civilian loss.

Of course, the hard limit like it is now should eventually be replaced by something dynamic, possibly a decay. That means that you'd only lose the game if you let too many civilians die in a short time. The precise implementation of this is not clear yet, though.

[Takai]

yes, there is a max number of allowed dead civilians, if you reached them, you've lost the game - remember, phalanx is there to rescue the humans

I don't really like this idea at all. I liked the X-COM mission score count system (and dead civilian penalties) much better.

[Sectoid]

I kinda like the dead civ count. Adds an extra challenge to the game and gives you more incentive to go easy on the grenade launchers in populated areas.