Gameplay Proposals/Scoring

It's unclear if this proposal or any part of it has been implemented since it was created in 2008. Please add a note if you know if this is obsolete, still relevant or not. --H-hour 14:29, 7 October 2012 (SAST)

Scoring

Author: BTAxis (talk, contrib)

This article describes the scoring screen the player receives after completing (or abandoning) a tactical mission.

A player's total score is the sum of the following individual scores:

• Aliens killed. This score depends on the number of aliens killed during battle, and the types of aliens killed.
• Aliens captured. This score depends on the number of aliens captured alive, and the types of aliens captured. Capturing aliens is worth more than killing them. Stunned aliens that can not be taken to base because of a lack of space in AC are considered killed.
• Alien equipment captured. This score depends on the equipment initially given to the alien team that is taken back to base.
• PHALANX soldiers killed. This score is a negative value. For every PHALANX soldier that dies or is infected, this score is lowered by a value appropriate for that soldier's rank.
• Civilians killed or infected by aliens. This score is a negative value. For every civilian that dies or is infected, this score is lowered by fixed value. No penalty is awarded for civilians that were infected before the start of the mission.
• Civilians killed by PHALANX. This score is similar to the one above, but the penalty is more severe.
• Civilians saved. This score is equal to a fixed value multiplied by the amount of civilians that remain unharmed.
• Infected civilians spared. This score should not show up unless the mission contained infected civilians. For every civilian that was not killed but stunned, this score is raised by a fixed number. Note that this fixed number should be less than the penalty for letting civilians get infected.
• The time PHALANX takes to get to the mission. The longer it takes, the lower this score. This score can be positive for very fast responses (for example when PHALANX immediately lands at a crash site after shooting down a UFO with a combat dropship), but will usually be negative. The score decreases increasingly rapidly down to a certain minimum value. This means that the player is given at least some time to get his dropship to the scene before the penalty really begins to hurt.

Based on this score, an overall assessment should be given at the bottom of the list. This assessment is based on the relative performance on this mission. This can be calculated because the score for the best case scenario (all civilians saved, all aliens captured, all equipment taken to base, no PHALANX losses) as well as the worst case scenario (all PHALANX soldiers dead, all civilians dead, no aliens killed, mission failed) can be calculated at the start of the mission. Let's call the best case scenario score 100% and let's call the worst case scenario score -100%. Assessments can then be given as follows (as an example):

-100% ~ -75%:  Disastrous
-75%  ~ -50%:  Awful
-50%  ~ -25%:  Bad
-25%  ~  0%:   Unsatisfactory
 0%   ~  25%:  Mediocre
 25%  ~  50%:  Good
 50%  ~  75%:  Very Good
 75%  ~  100%: Excellent

Note that the effect on nation happiness should depend on the relative score, but scaled by the absolute score. In other words, botching a big mission hurts more than botching a small one.

Maybe scoring could depend on difficulty, for example by increasing the negative factors, making it harder to get a good score.