EXACT Effect of Difficulty Levels

[bagelx]

So I am writing my TFTD guide and collecting inputs to fill my knowledge gaps.

 

I want to know what exactly does setting the different difficulty levels (1-5, beginner to superfuman) at the start of the game change.

 

from the game manual, it says:

The difficulty level affects:

 

[Rattler]

Not sure how much this'll help but on Superhuman is semi-common to get a base attack in your first month

[NKF]

Battlescape:

 

As far as I can tell, for the battlescape portion of the game, for enemy units, all the difficulty level does is give them a stat boost. And that's all. The weapons, the types of aliens you encounter, and the AI is pretty much the same.

 

I've also been told many times before that the aliens also get to remember the positions of any of your soldiers that they've seen for a little longer on higher difficulty levels. This gives the overall appearance that the aliens are just that much smarter. It's very annoying if you're up against psionic aliens too -- since if they can mind control anyone, they'll know where that unit is indefinitely.

 

And yes, all aliens have an MC Strength and skill value. You just cannot see the MC Strength value if MC-Skill is 0 (it's only visible when skill is > 0 ). The difficulty level does provide a bonus for MC strength and skill.

 

One more thing: The difficulty level also seems to affect the quantity of aliens that will get spawned in the battlescape. At least this appears to be the case for terror sites. (in UFO, it affects the quantity of aliens you'll see in alien bases)

 

Geoscape:

 

As far as I can tell, the level of success for USOs out hunting for your base gets better and better as the difficulty level goes up. Hence the immediate base attacks on Superhuman if the first USO you shoot down just happens to be on a retaliation mission (no, seriously. it can happen). Basically they can detect you better. It just doesn't seem so bad on beginner as it is on superhuman. On beginner, you can shoot down a USO a good distance away from your base and they'll be none the wiser. But do the same in superhuman, a Dreadnaught will land at your doorstep the next morning. Nasty.

 

For USOs, their hull, sonic cannon strength and range, and speeds are not affected at all, but they do seem to be able to disengage from combat a lot more often on higher difficulty levels. At least it seems that way.

 

For the various methods of losing the game -- the difficulty level doesn't really affect it much. It just makes it easier to achieve complete failure just that little bit faster.

 

You can lose the game by:

 

1. Losing your final base (easy way to get out of this mess it to quickly build a new airlock before the Dreadnaught attacks your base, but you'd have to spend ages and lots of money starting from scratch this way.)

2. You lose all your funding countries due to infiltration

3. You are in debt for a few months in a row (your funds in the negatives)

4. Not completing T'Leth when launching the T'Leth mission.

 

I'm probably missing out a few things in that list, but that's what I can remember off the top of my head.

 

On a less related note, I recall seeing something somewhere that mentioned the superhuman difficulty level in TFTD is actually 6 rather than 5.

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

if your interested in the actual stats, i have a spread sheet with the alien stats at all levels. including some that are not well known like agresion and inteligence.

 

just to add to what NKF said.. in tactical, the harder levels give the alens a boost to their "inteligence" stat. this stat is the number of rounds after spoting you they are in "AI" mode, they will remember were you are and act acording to their 'aggression' stat..

 

when they are not in "AI" mode they are in "patrol" mode and walk set pathes. (at least untill the 'stupididty' bug kicks in and they just stand inplace till they see you)

 

-Blade FireLight

 

[edit]

On a less related note, I recall seeing something somewhere that mentioned the superhuman difficulty level in TFTD is actually 6 rather than 5.

that was the xcomutil manual.

[The Demi-Godly One]

This might be the same as in UFO, in UFO enemy weapons damage changed depending on difficulty.

Very Easy 85%

Easy 90%

Normal 100%

Hard 115%

Very Hard 150%

[bagelx]

First of all, thanks for all the replies.

here goes my response, in order of your posts

 

Rattler: I am pretty sure you are right, on superhuman, base attack definitely happens earlier (possibly more often too). Though, it still depneds on if you shot down enough of alien USOs. Ppl also says that the closer you down the USOs, the more likely they will find your base. I think this is true (it makes sense, since you find alien bases by patrolling close to it) but it's hard to verify since the alien USOs in the beginning are small, fast ones that are hard to catch, so often you have to catch them close or they too fast and run away. NKF also mentions this.

 

BTW, do anyone know if you have to shoot down USOs close to base for them to find you or will just intercepting them make them see you? (ie. if you follow them and maybe shoot at them, but don't crash them)

 

 

*****

NKF: okay, so the aliens types are the same, and their weapons are the same, and the AI prob is the same

 

The difference are the alien stats (incl. MC), their intelligence (which is part of their stat), and number of aliens at terror sites and alien bases.

 

Also, from an UFO ALien stat spreadsheet I forgot I had, it seems the aliens have many hidden stats: height, close combat accuracy, aggressiveness, intelligence and points for kill (the last 2 I know about)

 

This spreadsheet lists all the stats for the 5 difficulty levels, and it shows that the hidden stats I just mention do not change, as well as, bravery, Throwing accuracy, and armor.

 

BTW, this is for UFO: Xcom 1, not for TFTD, I dont' have the TFTD one, but Bladefirelight seems to have one, probably from the same ppl who made the UFO one (aztec, For www.Freelancer.ag.ru, it's a russian site and I can't find it there)

 

Also, I also notice the frequent Disengaging of USOs you mentioned, they sometimes disengage before you even can attack, and maybe right after you fire 1 shot, and choosing aggresive attack doesn't help much (maybe a little).

 

And for the losing condition, I think you misunderstood, because I quoted what Kasey had in the USG, and he states that the diff. affects how negative your montly score is for it to be considered bad (ie. -200 for beginner, -20 for superhuman) and it should be listed in OSG.

 

Next, the difficulty mentioned in the xcomutil readme, does say TFTD uses 6 for superhuman :dontgetit:

 

Excerpt

Set the difficulty level to an EXPerimental difficulty level n not

officially supported by the program. XCOM/UFO used levels 0, 1, 2, 3,

and 4 as supported difficulty levels 1 through 5, while TFTD used levels

0, 1, 2, 4, and 6. This flag lets you set ANY difficulty level you

like, but makes no guarantee that it will work properly.

 

So i am guessing that TFTD 's difficulty are somehow harder than UFO's was. What this actually means, I will have to find out, ie. if you set TFTD to diff. lvl 4, will it make it same difficulty as UFO's superhuman, etc

 

******

Bladefirelight

 

Ya, I want to look at the TFTD alien stats, where did you get it from?

I found a similar spreadsht for UFO and it seems to be from Aztec for www.Freelancer.ag.ru (i forgot if I got it from there).

 

About the "AI mode" and "Patrol mode", Thanks, that's great info. I wonder how you found that out, must have needed to know about what's in the game code, or maybe just watched how the aliens act for a long time.

 

That's definitely going in to the guide and credits will be given out.

Do you have anymore details about how higher "aggressive" stat change how aliens act?

 

*************

Demi-god

 

Wow, is this true? No one else mentioned this before and I certainly didn't know. According to NFK, in TFTD, alien weapons do not change ...

 

It would make sense that they don't change, since when you use the alien wpns, they are the same. I guess, it works like the aliens have a dmg bonus when it's them that's using the weapons.

 

Sorry for being skeptical but can someone else verify this for either TFTD and UFO. no offense, just want to be sure.

 

**************

To everyone:

 

From the UFO alien stat spreadsheet I have (mentioned above), I find that for the different difficulty lvls, the modifiers seem to be

1) 0.92 2) 0.96 3) 1.00 4) 1.04 5) 1.08

 

This of course depends if the spreadsheet data is accurate or not, and I am not sure, since it's different than what Kasey USG and some other sites says. But it is complete and looks professionally done. BTW, since the numbers when you multiply them are not nicely rounded, they may not be exactly accurate, and for this I used (<0.5, round down, >= 0.5, round up) but TFTD seems (?) to always round down?!

 

 

Next, the hidden stats I get from the said spreadsheet have Height, Close Combat accuracy, Aggressiveness which I know very little about.

 

Anyone have "detail" info on Height, C. Combat Acc. and Agg (esp. height)?

For Height, eg. sectoids are 16 and floaters and mutons are 21

CCA: Floater =70, sectoid =76, etc

Agg: Floater Sold/nav = 2, Floater Med/Eng =1, Floater Ldr/Cmmdr = 0

 

Wow, that was long

 

PS. Wow, the post almost didn't make it, the server seemed to be down for like a minute. Good thing I saved it.

Tip: always save your long posts.

[The Demi-Godly One]

Well it doesn't exactly edit the weapons. But I'll rephrase myself:

If an ENEMY fired a shot and it did 100 damage on your unit normally it would do:

Very Easy 85 Damage

Easy 90 Damage

Normal 100 Damage

Hard 115 Damage

Very Hard 150 Damage.

I think this is right, I've heard it somewhere...

 

P.S. This does not affect grenades or anything like that and it only counts towards enemy fire, it doesn't change friendly fire.

[Hobbes]

Next, the hidden stats I get from the said spreadsheet have Height, Close Combat accuracy, Aggressiveness which I know very little about.

 

Anyone have "detail" info on Height, C. Combat Acc. and Agg (esp. height)?

For Height, eg. sectoids are 16 and floaters and mutons are 21

CCA: Floater =70, sectoid =76, etc

Agg: Floater Sold/nav = 2, Floater Med/Eng =1, Floater Ldr/Cmmdr = 0

I've just taken a look at the spreadsheet you mentioned about and here is what I think about it:

 

Height: must be a factor that the game uses when figuring out if your shots hit the target (taller targets easier to hit, lower ones harder). If you look at the stats there are several examples that support this:

-Sectoids are only 16 and you encounter most of them at when your accuracy stats are low. Maybe that's another reason why everyone complains about how the troopers are lousy shots at the beginning

-Reapers and Sectopods are the tallest ones, with 23 and they are the easiest to hit, although in the case of Sectopods their reply is rather deadly.

-Finally the lowest height belongs to Silacoids, with a value of 10 and I've seen my best troopers don't hit them at the first shot a number of times.

 

The close combat accuracy ratings would probably be used with the 'Hit' option that was taken out of the release version and would have allowed you to use any weapon to conduct physical attacks. You can see the option on the screenshots of the UFO manual.

 

Finally about the agressiveness I guess two means that they will engage your soldiers immediately while zero that they will instead take a better position (or something like that). I'm not sure about this though.

[Rattler]

BTW, do anyone know if you have to shoot down USOs close to base for them to find you or will just intercepting them make them see you? (ie. if you follow them and maybe shoot at them, but don't crash them)

 

 

Just intercepting them makes them aware of where your base is. On 7 games my first mission was a base defence mission. And in 5 of them I intercepted the first few USOs but wasn't able to shoot them down. Had about 30 other games in which my second, 3rd, 4th and so forth missions where base defence missions.

 

 

Also in UFO while playing on superhuman it seems the aliens change faster. On Superhuman it seems I spend January fighting Sectoids, 3/4 of Feb fighting floaters, 1/4 feb and half of march fighting snakemen, and half of March fighting Mutons. Then April it's etherals. On the easiest level I don't run into Etherals till like may, and January and feb fighting sectoids. TFTD might have something like this. Though I think the type of alien your fighting is changed due to what technology your using.

[NKF]

As for myself, the aliens have only ever started searching for my base after I shot down their ships. Just popping up and following them has never alerted them to my location before. Assaulting them on the ground when they've landed doesn't seem to alert them either.

 

I can sometimes send the retaliation scouts on a wild goose chase by waiting until they've moved off quite a distance before knocking them out. In UFO, I had a base in Europe, and when the floaters sent out their scouts, I waited until they were well into Africa before shooting them down. The next batch of scouts went and searched there. I then just left the scouts alone and, well, they left me alone. But they kept appearing, searching in vain. But I think this was only possible because it was on an easier difficulty level.

 

But as I said, that's just from experience.

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

the alien stats are stored in geoscape.exe code. they only contain the default level stats and use a multiplyer on them for the other levels.

 

the agresion stat never changes.. this is becaus it is a referance to a AI script and not a actual stat.

 

Yes i think i have spend way to mutch time studying the movement paters of aliens..

 

*** SPOILER BELOW ***

 

What I ment by 'stupidiy bug' is that in UFO the alines will walk along predifined patrol routes for only 10 conbat rounds then they just stand in place for the rest of combat onless they spot you, this makes using motion scaners totaly _useless_ for finding that last alien.

 

Knowing this can take the fun out of the game. but it does help in that statigies using motion scaners may be pointless.

 

I am in the middle of finding out is this is also the case in TFTD. But I have not had mutch free time latley so I dont know when i will know this for sure

 

***********

 

-Blade FireLight