My proposal for a revised scoring model

[nas1m]

Based on my initial thoughts here.

Base Points

• Points for killing plain bots equal to their level
• Points for killing boss bots equal to 10 times their level
• Points for virusing bots equal to their virus cost

Special Occasions

• +  1000 points for a destroyed Factory during a Factory mission
• +  2500 points for clearing a Lion's Den
• +  2500 points for assassinating all bots during an Assassination mission
• +  5000 points for destroying a Command Center
• +  2500 points for acquiring an Epic Exo
• +  1000 points for making it through a mission without loosing an Exo
• -   250 points for loosing an Exo during a mission
• -   250 points when a human cryopod (hostage mission) or human reactor (end mission) is destroyed
• - 10000 points when you lose a mission
• +  1000 points when you win a mission

Multipliers

• x 25/50/100 for "It's Dangerous To Walk Alone" for 1/2/3 removed Exos
• x 10 for "Dead Is Dead"
• x 10 for "On Your Toes"
• x 10 for "Who Designed This Circuit"
• x  3 for Victory on Casual
• x 10 for Victory on Easy
• x 15 for Victory on Normal
• x 30 for Victory on Hard
• x 50 for Victory on Expert
• x 70 for Victory on Misery

Please note that the numbers above are mostly diced, so please feel free to nuke them with something more reasonable . Possible further extensions could take into account acquired loot of a certain rarity, the time used to complete a given mission/game or kills under stealth.

But I think this should be a good start for now.
Thoughts?

[keith.lamothe]

On the killing of plain bots, please remind me: how often can you win a mission without killing all the enemy bots?

On the virusing of bots, I guess that wouldn't be any worse as long as they only get counted once (so you get points for virusing them, but not additional points if they later die), otherwise it motivates a lot of virusing beyond what is really needed.

Overall the structure seems fine; I imagine some of the values would need tweaking.  I just want to avoid a system that motivates during-the-game behavior that is really unnecessary to winning the game, i.e. grinding.  But it sounds like this would avoid that.

[nas1m]

On the killing of plain bots, please remind me: how often can you win a mission without killing all the enemy bots?

I'm not sure whether I get what you are after here. I think that you would be able to pull this off fairly regularly, mostly for those mission types which require you finding the exit.

I, on the other hand, tend to kill all bots if I can most of the time - for the credits. On the lower difficulties and even Hard I am able to do this most of the time. I started toying with Expert recently and here I am having a hard time already to go after each bot due to resource limitations. Is this what you wanted?

On the virusing of bots, I guess that wouldn't be any worse as long as they only get counted once (so you get points for virusing them, but not additional points if they later die), otherwise it motivates a lot of virusing beyond what is really needed.

That was how I intended it, yes.

Overall the structure seems fine; I imagine some of the values would need tweaking.  I just want to avoid a system that motivates during-the-game behavior that is really unnecessary to winning the game, i.e. grinding.  But it sounds like this would avoid that.

Cool. Tweak these numbers as you see fit! I mainly tried to discourage grinding by making the points given by regular bots so small. But as you know, some players just ask for it (like me) and try to kill all bots anyway - which is an acceptable self-set goal in my book .

Some more notes:

• I noticed that it does (no longer?) seem to be possible to leave a Factory mission early (i.e. without destroying all factories within the complex) although the description seems to imply it. Would be a reasonable addition in my book. Or is explicitly abandoning the mission using the escape menu to provide this option? Wouldn't be the same as it would cost the player one point of HQ health, right?
• Alternatively or in addition to the scoring model proposed above, each mission type could get assigned a point value that is granted once a mission of this type is completed successfully, This value could even scale with the day of the campaign to reflect the fact that missions tend to get harder along the way. Might introduce an interesting trade-off with regard to shortening the game time by going after the command centers
• Would it be possible to add the respective points granted by a bot (without the special cases like virus etc.) to the respective bot/mission tooltips? Would be cool...
• What do you think about score related achievements? Would you be willing to add some in case I can come up with some sensible point thresholds? These could only exist once (i.e not per difficulty)...
• Lastly: Shall I throw this on Mantis?

[keith.lamothe]

I'm not sure whether I get what you are after here. I think that you would be able to pull this off fairly regularly, mostly for those mission types which require you finding the exit.

That's what I thought, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some reason why players would need to kill all the bots anyway.

I, on the other hand, tend to kill all bots if I can most of the time - for the credits. On the lower difficulties and even Hard I am able to do this most of the time. I started toying with Expert recently and here I am having a hard time already to go after each bot due to resource limitations. Is this what you wanted?

Basically yes, I think.  The idea is that:

- we don't want folks to grind, i.e. be stuck making tons of unnecessary bot kills because it's "optimal play"
- but there's a finite number of bots per mission, so it's not an infinite grind like in lots of games
- and going after those bots isn't completely without risk
- and if it's a hard enough setup they may not be able to clear the missions anyway, unless they gear for it
- so having them give credits (and the occasional drop, iirc) is ok, because it also adds a lot of bubble-popping fun that's not there if killing a bot just gives nothing

So I suppose having them give score isn't a big problem either.

I noticed that it does (no longer?) seem to be possible to leave a Factory mission early (i.e. without destroying all factories within the complex) although the description seems to imply it.

I haven't changed anything like that at all recently.  Are you saying the description implies you can blow up one factory, find the exit, leave, and have it count as a won mission?  I'd rather just amend the description to not imply that   For one thing, there'd probably be some edge cases where mapgen made it impossible to destroy all the factories by putting the exit on a tile in some kind of 1-wide passage splitting the map, etc.

And I think abandoning it with some factories left would still count as a loss, but I haven't tested it specifically.

Alternatively or in addition to the scoring model proposed above, each mission type could get assigned a point value that is granted once a mission of this type is completed successfully

Oh, sure, that's how I'd do most/all of the scoring rules that varied by mission type.

Would it be possible to add the respective points granted by a bot (without the special cases like virus etc.) to the respective bot/mission tooltips? Would be cool...

I'd rather not mix score data into the main interface; there's already sooo much data.

What do you think about score related achievements? Would you be willing to add some in case I can come up with some sensible point thresholds? These could only exist once (i.e not per difficulty)...

That would be fine to do after the score values have settled down, sure.

Lastly: Shall I throw this on Mantis?

Sure, good to have for reference.

[nas1m]

I haven't changed anything like that at all recently.  Are you saying the description implies you can blow up one factory, find the exit, leave, and have it count as a won mission?  I'd rather just amend the description to not imply that   For one thing, there'd probably be some edge cases where mapgen made it impossible to destroy all the factories by putting the exit on a tile in some kind of 1-wide passage splitting the map, etc.

And I think abandoning it with some factories left would still count as a loss, but I haven't tested it specifically.

The description implies that there is an extra benefit (no bots leveling up?) if the player manages to blow up all factory units. I thought the increased granularity for success/effects would be fairly cool if allowing the player to leave early (possibly after destroying at least one factory unit). He's already "punished" for leaving early by omitting some positive effects after all. What do you think?
 

Oh, sure, that's how I'd do most/all of the scoring rules that varied by mission type.

What do you think about the scaling with campaign day part?  Would introduce an additional trade-off when to take high scoring missions...

I'd rather not mix score data into the main interface; there's already sooo much data.

Fair enough . How about only adding them to the mission tooltips then (and possibly to the chat log at the time they are gained)?

Sure, good to have for reference.

Done.

[ScrObot]

- we don't want folks to grind, i.e. be stuck making tons of unnecessary bot kills because it's "optimal play"

If we're just talking about points, they're rather "pointless", in other words there's no benefit to getting more points aside from seeing it on the high score screen. I think the vast majority of players would not bother with griding to get extra points, and those that would, known fully well what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's a fun system for measuring your performance, but it has no effect on actual gameplay.