We need a way to deal with enthrall. Here's my proposal

[theblitz6794]

Hello, I'm writing this post because I keep running into the early-mid game enthrall crunch and I believe this system needs to be improved. Now, I'm not proposing enthrall should be nerfed. It makes sense that it is a very powerful ability that the aliens have. But I'm frustrated that the only direct tool I have to deal with it is rolling 8% assassinations with 64 ops spent. What I'm proposing are two mechanics to help deal with enthrall.

1. Protect Target on the capital should protect against enthrall. This is a no-brainer to me. I'm assigning a councilor to protect my points. I'd propose this should work against crackdowns, coups, and purges too.

2. A new mission called "interdiction". It would be a general mission (not just for enthrall) that simply causes failure (critical failure on critical success) for the target's mission. It should be difficult but not nearly as difficult as assassinating/detaining. In this case I'm sending my councilor to interdict the alien operation but I'm not actually trying to detain or kill them so it should be much easier. It should also be dangerous where a critical failure on interdiction kills an unprotected councilor. Alien hate generated should be minimal but nonzero.

This will allow a player some tools besides tech or kill to deal with the aliens.

[neilwilkes]

I like these ideas very much - some good thought there.

[11Sebastian11]

Hello, I'm writing this post because I keep running into the early-mid game enthrall crunch and I believe this system needs to be improved. Now, I'm not proposing enthrall should be nerfed. It makes sense that it is a very powerful ability that the aliens have. But I'm frustrated that the only direct tool I have to deal with it is rolling 8% assassinations with 64 ops spent. What I'm proposing are two mechanics to help deal with enthrall.

1. Protect Target on the capital should protect against enthrall. This is a no-brainer to me. I'm assigning a councilor to protect my points. I'd propose this should work against crackdowns, coups, and purges too.

2. A new mission called "interdiction". It would be a general mission (not just for enthrall) that simply causes failure (critical failure on critical success) for the target's mission. It should be difficult but not nearly as difficult as assassinating/detaining. In this case I'm sending my councilor to interdict the alien operation but I'm not actually trying to detain or kill them so it should be much easier. It should also be dangerous where a critical failure on interdiction kills an unprotected councilor. Alien hate generated should be minimal but nonzero.

This will allow a player some tools besides tech or kill to deal with the aliens.

i agree with 1. Maybe make it as a percentage result too, maybe to make it 20-50% more difficult for the opponent, it shouldn't be 100% effective. Maybe it could depend on the security stat of the councilor.

I'm not sure if we need 2. I'd say when "Project target" works better, it should be enough. That assasination is difficult is okay, it's possible to achieve 48% success chance in my experience when you fully investigated the alien and it is in your controlled territory with investing 128ops. It shouldn't be too easy, maybe they can make it a bit easier but a 90% success chance for example, would be too high in my opinion.

[theblitz6794]

I'm not sure if we need 2. I'd say when "Project target" works better, it should be enough. That assasination is difficult is okay, it's possible to achieve 48% success chance in my experience when you fully investigated the alien and it is in your controlled territory with investing 128ops. It shouldn't be too easy, maybe they can make it a bit easier but a 90% success chance for example, would be too high in my opinion.

I think we do need #2

1. Assassination can only get to 48% when you have a security apparatus (ie: not a democracy). In actuality I'm slinging 128 point assassinations at 18%. Not good. But I agree it should be very difficult to assassinate. I do NOT want to change the assassinate mechanics. I want to add a layer in between "ignore" and "kill" called "interdict".

2. Protect Target and Interdiction are thematically different. Protect Target is about my councilor going in, getting in touch with the local elites, setting up patrols, fortifying, creating contingencies, etc. If multiple aliens try to enthrall, PT will protect against all of them.

Interdiction is targeted at a single alien (or other faction councilor). It is "This f***** is coming to our territory. Let's go stop him". The difference is we're not necessarily trying to kill him. We don't need to lure him into a trap or get lucky. We just need to put enough firepower on him to make him retreat.

3. The odds are different for Protect Target and Interdiction. Because how the odds work and enthrall is probably like +50 or something, many protect targets will "only" get the % down to 10%-30%. Interdiction will cost 2 councilor actions (need to protect the Interdictor) so I'd consider this well balanced. Interdiction should be easy to get a high % chance, but remember it doesn't actually *do* anything except make the alien fail (maybe a critical failure on an alien would lean to it's death?)

[spoop]

Spoiler warning about alien mechanics:

Enthrall actualy has quite a low succes chance by default.
It having souch a high succes chance, is a result of the abductions the player let happen, but this is never explained during the game.

The „Enthrall" bonus from abductions is caped at +60, but unless the player has a lot of resistance researched,
that +60 bonus will cause it to be 100% success chance, unless the player aktivly limited the amount of abductions.

[theblitz6794]

Spoiler warning about alien mechanics:

Enthrall actualy has quite a low succes chance by default.
It having souch a high succes chance, is a result of the abductions the player let happen, but this is never explained during the game.

The „Enthrall" bonus from abductions is caped at +60, but unless the player has a lot of resistance researched,
that +60 bonus will cause it to be 100% success chance, unless the player aktivly limited the amount of abductions.

What does the chance increment by?

I don't think it's that easy to prevent abductions. You have to /rush/ the story

[StrykeSlammerII]

Spoiler warning about alien mechanics:

Enthrall actualy has quite a low succes chance by default.
It having souch a high succes chance, is a result of the abductions the player let happen, but this is never explained during the game.

The codex does list abductions as a bonus to many alien activities...
But it's not communicated well:
1) There's not very much pointing the player to check there
2) The codex is updated without the player being notified
3) The amount of abductions, or strength of abduction bonus, cannot be seen by the player--even after researching all alien techs, and occupying alien bases

I can understand if the devs do not want this to be a perfect-information game (#3)--but #s 1 and 2 are UI problems: (Some) information is provided and available, but the player is unlikely to find it.
By the time the codex is updated, the average player will assume they have seen all the codex content, and won't know to check again.

[spoop]

I don't think it's that easy to prevent abductions. You have to /rush/ the story

there is absolutly no need to rush the story to prevent most of them, all you need is a ship with starting tech + a torpedo researched and attached to it

Here you can read more about Abductions
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/c ... ing_about/

[theblitz6794]

Please can protect target just work it'd be so easy to implement