Keeping the Nations Happy in 2.4

[ETBuster]

In 2.3.1 I never had any issues with keeping the nations happy, however now I have 3 bases, one in north america, one in russia, and one in Australia, north america and Australia are strictly mission bases I have 16 soldiers between them and Russia is right next to my ufo yard for production, currently Im unable to un-assemble any ufos since their needed to keep my nations from giving up, I have 6 sam sites strategically placed wherever my stilettos cannot reach.

I am currently taking every mission possible and as far have not missed any of the terror missions that pop up from time to time and shooting down every ufo and selling them to the worst off nation.

It is rare that I lose any civilians in terror missions, most of my units are currently amazing shots especially with reaction shots, Ive been trying to retry ever mission where I lose a civilian however I didn't think that losing 1 would be taken so harshly.

Most of the nations are tolerant some are mad, and 1 or 2 become angry. Im desperately trying to acquire enough money to create a 4th base, perhaps I need to drop back a few saves and convert my 3rd base into another mission base instead of having it be full of workshops...

Im not sure if this is a glitch.. or perhaps just a new addition to the 2.4 version to add more of a challenge to the game, however in 2.3.1 I could easily miss a few missions with out losing an Exuberant nation.

[ManicMiner]

I can second this.

I built four new bases in the first month of a fresh game on standard difficulty, and shot every UFO out of the sky. I STILL ended up with one nation "giving up" before halfway through April and lost the game before the end of May. Tried another game with just two bases built up as fast as possible and lost that game before I'd even finished researching Plasma Pistol!

[Duque Atreides]

You make all terror misions? i never lose a game for nation happness. It´s rare...

[ManicMiner]

Every one I've seen.

As a test I started a new game, put a new base on every continent in the first two months, played every mission that came my way for the first month, built one more lab and replaced the engineers with scientists, and sold all but one of each alien tech to keep the cash coming. I sold alien ships to the countries which were least happy but The Revolutionary Countries and Oceana were both "mad" by first of May.

Even then I got as far as building CCs and power plants in all bases - 20th May - before I lost the game.

I think there needs to be a "honeymoon period" whereby you get given a 12 week free pass to at least build the barebones of a base (power plant, control room, stores and radar) and show some willing to protect it before they get unhappy.

[H-Hour]

ManicMiner, can you supply some more information?

- what version of the game are you using?
- if you are using a development version, when was the last time you downloaded/compiled?
- what difficulty level are you using?

I have not played a campaign with the latest development version in a month or so, but your experience is completely different from my experience on a medium-difficulty campaign. Perhaps something got changed recently.

[ManicMiner]

I don't have access to my laptop right now - will post later. It is 2.4 Dev and was freshly recompiled from source this week, including rebuild of all maps. Medium difficulty.

I optimize the compile for dual core and run it on Win7 x64. Will post the affected savegames etc later.

[ManicMiner]

Game and logs attached. This is one where a nation's happiness will drop shortly after load and whether you destroy the ship and complete a successful mission or not, the game will be lost in a matter of days.

[geever]

My question is if you fought the crash-site missions. If you did them manually or using (mostly) automission.
Shooting down UFOs is not enough, you should kill them all...

-geever

[Duque Atreides]

Ok. This was a quesion dancing on my head :-D

It´s neccesary make all crash missions? How affect the game if i leave some crash sites intact? i mean, it´s very tedius to do all missions, when all days the ufo are flying massively.

[Nutter]

Let's just say you might as well put your dick in a blender for all the happiness that will net you.

This game really has an annoying tendency to get tedious rather fast.

[geever]

Ok. This was a quesion dancing on my head :-D

It´s neccesary make all crash missions? How affect the game if i leave some crash sites intact? i mean, it´s very tedius to do all missions, when all days the ufo are flying massively.

Crash-site missions are like other missions. If you win them nations get happier if you abandon them, nations get unhappier. Very simple.

-geever

[ManicMiner]

I played every mission I could but hit problems with my best grunts being on <20% health.

[geever]

I played every mission I could but hit problems with my best grunts being on <20% health.

Manually or automatically?

I played the game on normal difficulty a few months ago and didn't experience the problem, and I'm almost sure nothing has changed in nation happiness code part since then. The only flaw I can imagine is related to automissions, that code changed much.

-geever

[ManicMiner]

I did most of them manually, and only lost half a dozen civilians in the first two months.

I've started another game and this time round created only one new base in the first month, focused on building HQ up for research only (even took out the workshop) and built more bases in the second month and workshops in the second base. This time round it's a lot easier to maintain happiness across the board. BUT: here's the thing. If I position the bases so they overlap nations I seem to find it a lot easier to keep them all happy. If you stick a base in the middle of North America so the radar doesn't cover any other nation, for example, that seems to have a detrimental impact on happiness outside of North America but if you build a base with radar to cover Europe, most of the Middle East and Africa instead, then I have three marginally happier nations instead of one.

[homunculus]

i have only been playing on hardest difficulty, so i don't know a bout the rest, but what i do is this: build a second base asap.

i want to have a quick research base that is not my first base, but in the beginning i just build a second lab in the first base.
and using just one stiletto and some sam turrets looks like a good idea, because you can attack scouts with stiletto and attract fighters to the sam by hovering your stiletto over the base.
the alternative seems to have three stilettos to attack a fighter, but even then you would be loosing stilettos sometimes, and it gets expensive, and you only have so many available.
and sam turrets are really quick and cheap to build.

as for the missions being tedious, have bases with sam where most ufos drop into the sea, like the marshall islands or tip of antarctic peninsula, or central america.
that goes well with the base placement that is optimized for radar coverage.