4) This is something that I could look into. Whether it would stack with the ARC modifier or replace it is something I'll have a think about happy

It should be possible to enable ARC mid-campaign (and it'll provide you with some supplies to boot so you're not behind!). What weirdness did you encounter when trying that?

; The maximum number of progress points you can get from increasing your mine output. Increases slowly as you
; control more mines and get more loyalty in the towns where the mines are.

rftr wrote on Sat, 05 February 2022 04:50

4) This is something that I could look into. Whether it would stack with the ARC modifier or replace it is something I'll have a think about happy

I hadn't thought of that.
The idea was actually that the loyalty slowdown would be a separate setting for non-ARC playthroughs. As explained, when i enter cities, the loyalty of the first town sector is often way above 20-25%, in some cases even above 30% (playing on Expert difficulty, i find enough patrols around a town to rise loyalty a couple points).
Alma and Balime are always a bit lower, with Balime very often at less than 20% - but what to expect of regime supporters

Hi rftr

It only struck me just now: how "big" is a region, respectively how far do Admin Actions project their effect ?

Mai Ti Miao wrote on Sat, 05 February 2022 18:53

rftr wrote on Sat, 05 February 2022 04:50

4) This is something that I could look into. Whether it would stack with the ARC modifier or replace it is something I'll have a think about happy

I hadn't thought of that.
The idea was actually that the loyalty slowdown would be a separate setting for non-ARC playthroughs. As explained, when i enter cities, the loyalty of the first town sector is often way above 20-25%, in some cases even above 30% (playing on Expert difficulty, i find enough patrols around a town to rise loyalty a couple points).
Alma and Balime are always a bit lower, with Balime very often at less than 20% - but what to expect of regime supporters

While there's currently no global modifier, you can manually adjust how much loyalty is gained in \Data-1.13\Scripts\StrategicTownLoyalty.lua. Specifically, the HandleGlobalLoyaltyEvent function.

(total admin actions in CURRENT region) * 7 + (total number of times you've spent 100 supplies to increase a region's loyalty) * 4 + (tier of admin action to demolish) * (total number times of you demolished in CURRENT region)


maybe with an additional penalty to loyalty
((RND 2-6) * (tier of demolished action) %) loyalty drop in CURRENT region)

Admin Actions

1) Drassen (90% loyal)
- Dead Drops 1. I only activated Intel so that Enrico doesn't spam with Emails about "how to handle delicate info", and to try the Blackmarket. Receiving 2-8 Intel per day feels subtantial, but then again: "i never tried the Intel feature"
- Supply Disrupt 1. Was an afterthought, bought with the last supplies, when i saw the Drassen Counter Attack approaching. That, and later dealing with enemy patrols/attacks in the area "felt" easier (DCA: let the enemy enter the mine sector, only 3 mercs wounded and only minor wounds, 11/40 Militia survived - usually the merc situation is worse and no Militia survive...if i deal with the DCA within town borders, instead of going to the country side), but i lack actual empirical or statistical data
- Scouts 2. Small feature, big effect. I love it
- Harriers 2. Together with Scouts it is pretty good for planning the defense in the region
Yes, i overdid Drassen a little (*)

2) Chitzena (67% loyal)
- Mining 2. Technically a waste (with regards to increasing Supply costs) considering Chitzena's low mining output, but for a slow player every little bit can become substantial over the course of a game. I imagine on "the big 3" mines, this Admin Action will be golden
- Merc Support 2. I love it. Almost feels as if classic JA2 repair speeds would apply, and training and everything else is also much faster

3) overall
- what i sometimes dislike is, that only Admin Action 6 can be changed. If that spot is occupied by something you want, while among the other 4 random AAs is one that you do not want (eg because already present at other towns)...well, only "sometimes" i think of that. This won't matter much over the course of a game and it actually adds to the fun
- it would be nice to have tooltips (like you did for Directives) detailing the AAs, including which is based on town loyalty. If too difficult to change the UI (i know how much coders and modders "love" UI work because of that), at least adding the loyalty info to ini and/or here to the thread would be great
- Taxes. We are the liberators, we don't tax ;)
- (*) thinking about "i overdid the town/don't need action X anymore", maybe you could add a "demolish" feature: for

(total admin actions in CURRENT region) * 7 + (total number of times you've spent 100 supplies to increase a region's loyalty) * 4 + (tier of admin action to demolish) * (total number times of you demolished in CURRENT region)


maybe with an additional penalty to loyalty
((RND 2-6) * (tier of demolished action) %) loyalty drop in CURRENT region)

players could reset Admin Actions. I understand that the cost of an action is determined by formula, and that "demolish" would mess with that, so i'm not sure if it is worth the trouble

Directives

1) Gather Supplies. During testing and fully upgraded, this adds substantial amounts of Supplies.
I do imagine, once i get to the later stages of the game, that i will get back to that directive: i will surely want to "fully build-up" Cambria and Grumm, Alma and maybe Bailime will also need some, thus the Supply costs might explode, even with my slower pace

2) Raid Mines. I went with raiding for the playthrough: as a slower player i was relatively sure i would have enough Supplies once getting to the second town, while fueling the economy would be more important early on.
Raiding...i'm not sure what to think of it. For slow players, it will raise a lot of money.
If i understand it correctly, it is based on the mines "not yet liberated". I come to this conclusion because, after taking Chitzena, the lower limit for raiding went from ca 14$ up to ca 140$ - maybe i'm just lucky, but i haven't seen anything less than 100$ ever since Chitzena Mine is working for our side.
I feel like 1 additional modifier/operand could be useful for balancing:
- maybe "each mine controlled by our side increases fail chance by X"
- or "at start of game we can have a maximum of N raids per day. Each mine controlled by our side reduces N by 1"
Something like that. Maybe my impression is skewed, because i play slower and respectively: i didn't "fully" watch the message/history log (on Strategic Map, which informs about training/repairing progress, weather changes, etc), i never do so when advancing time ("toooo much clicking", sort of ;) )

3) Support Militia. I have already thrown an eye onto it as the next Directive.
Could you check it please: the Daily Expenses overview on Strategic Map only updates, if the Directive was in effect for a full straight 24 hours (eg if changing directive at 19:00, it takes 5+24 hours to update). I was a little confused, because i thought it would update at the first midnight.

4) overall
- Draft. I have a very low atrition rate among Militia - also, we are the liberators, we don't draft ;)
- Create Propaganda (or Rebel Radio). Maxing Drassen's loyalty was easy, but Chitzena has slowed down (well, it was slow to begin with). Besides Support Militia, this is another option i am considering, for when switching out of Raid Mines.

Edit:
Regarding Admin Actions, if a specific feature is turned off, is the linked Admin action blocked from the random pool ? Example, Militia Ressources off -> Warehouses will not be chosen at random.
I saw that Warehouses appear on the list, if you want to manually change AA 6.

Great to hear about the toggling

Regarding the forum: what can(not) be answered or written seems to be random.
Example, i could write this short message, but the rest of my previously planned text doesn't go through

Draft - clearly I'm playing wrong - my militia forces die in droves, especially late game

As for helping faster players, maybe you could double the amount that is stolen from the Aruclo Special Division, but keep the amount that players receive.
Example: players still get only 2.500$, but ASD loses 5.000$.
The difference is taken by Rebels as "their share": they need ammo for the raids and food to survive.

You mentioned the Arulco Special Division feature.
I am scared about the enemy throwing jeeps and tanks into the mix of patrols and assault groups (and garrisions, i guess), so i play without ASD, yet. I wanted to try it out at some point though, but...jeeps and tanks suprised
I think it is actually the jeeps that scare me more, having seen the demo video of it shredding mercs left and right and surviving a direct RPG hit.

The usefulness of HVT Strikes is not quantifyable (game progress and enemy composition ever changing and then still random), but it is among the lines of "player moral": if you are playng while being tired, you make bad choices, overlook details and don't lead your troops effectively. This will make your troops perform poorly.

HVT has a similar, though positive, effect: we are doing them pain, victory will be ours *insert heroic speech*

I've noticed though (almost always having Ira with binocs observe the area), that enemies are much less likely to bandage each other - apparently much fewer medics around

Propaganda was a hot competitor, however.
I picked Alma as town number 3 for our liberation efforts and...for the first time in years i slightly panicked, because the "town no.3" we started to liberate didn't come with 20+ loyalty.
Since it was Alma, i cleared 7 patrols in its vicinity. Add 3 more enemy groups we took out under way to Alma (moving out of Drassen, so the battles were close enough to count). But after the first sector, we had only 12 suprised loyalty.
Immedately went for the second sector (18 loyal) and then moved out to do the Bloodcat Quest (haven't done the quest in a decade or longer).
With the quest completed, militia training for 2 sectors, Rebel Radio lvl2, and 3 more battles, (all that over the course of only 48 ingame hours - i got all sweaty and had a high pulse from all the hectic ;) ) we are at 29 loyalty now.
I guess for Alma (2 more sectors, 1 more quest) i won't activate Propaganda, but Balime and Grumm are different topics, with the loyalty being a serious aspect now.
I'm loving how loyalty works under ARC thumbs up

The ASD can change up the game, especially if you're not prepared to deal with mechanised units attacking you. Personally, I either turn tanks off or set their introduction to be very late-game, since they'll be waiting for you in Meduna anyway.

Yeah, unfortunately you can't reliably tell how well HVT Strikes is working unless it's fully upgraded and you do a few battles with it on/off to compare. Fewer enemy medics is definitely one of the expected benefits though

This is pretty much how I want directives to feel - pick what you need for your current situation, and then swap out as you require. Glad to read that you're enjoying it!