How I would revamp the strategical layer for flavor mostly, but also a bit of rebalance and giving the player more choice when it comes to choosing missions. (I might try to mod the game that way):
- Guerrila Ops are rumors now and stay in the map until their dark event triggers.
"Oh, look, at the exact same time, this group deactivated a train and WE HAVE TO GO NOW and this tygan found a relay and WE HAVE TO GO NOW and a hacker set up a device we have to protect and WE HAVE TO GO NOW. It is amazing how these coincidences happen every month".
All rumors would be replaced with a Guerria Ops rumor; so when you are feeling ready for a mission, you go and scan for it.
Since you are possibly doing 3 times more guerrila Ops then normal, that should balance with not receiving any reward from rumors anymore; while also adding the inherent risk of going into a mission.
- You no longer lose the region when failling a VIP mission (both kinds), instead, it triggers the dark event that reduces retaliation time. Failing a retaliation would, in turn, make you lose the region.
The flavor of losing the region after failing to save a VIP seems to be that he informs Advent about the guerila on that region. Very well, then they go and attack.
Retaliation also gives no reward whatsoever (other than faceless bodies, which is arguably one of the most important things you can have in the entire game, but let's ignore that), so if you choose not to do a VIP mission, you miss out on their reward and have to do a mission later anyway (maybe right away).
- You no longer lose the region when failing a supply or UFO raid. They also stay on the map longer.
This might have to be accompanied by an increased difficulty of those particular missions, although they tend to be on the hard side of things already. Anyway, those missions should be seen as risk/reward stuff. Do you want to go on this harder-than-usual mission for the rewards? If not, then it's ok.
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I guess that's it. The game would stop being about waiting for missions and become more about deciding when to go. It only forces your hand when it makes sense to (i.e., when the aliens are the ones attacking on retaliation). Other than that, the penalty to skipping a bunch of missions would be to just not have resources. And the risk for going on all of them would be that going on missions is something dangerous by itself (or should be, anyway).
Talk to me GAF. I might actually try to mod this stuff into the game. What do you think?