RNG Mod

Changes to the random number generator used to determine if a shot hits to make it feel more "fair" to players.

Purpose

Ever do all the work of getting your soldiers into position, flanking the enemy, making all the right moves to set up the perfect shot, and your soldiers can't miss BAM, that 95% chance of hitting a miss? But no big deal, you plan for it and have another shot, holy crap aside, the next 90% of shots are spot on too! You played perfectly and made all the right decisions, but now you're out of action, your turn is over, and the enemy wipes out the entire squad before it's their turn. That's it, mission failed and all to no avail. How do you feel about UNFAIR?

Then this mod is for you! In short, its purpose is to make the random number generator and the resulting battle roll "FEEL" fairer. You won't miss those 95% shots very often, as you would naturally expect. Double extremely low chance misses should happen so rarely that you hopefully won't be bothered by them. Basically this mod aims to change the RNG and make it feel more fun!

**Disclaimer: "But that's not X-COM Baby" If you're not the kind of person who resonates with the above, which is fine, everyone has their own taste, this mod may not be for you. This mod is an experiment and you will see the above mentioned sentiments whenever these games come out. So I wanted to see if changing the RNG actually made the experience better.

reasoning

Okay, first let me state the obvious, the RNG in XCOM is already fair, it has been proven to be mathematically accurate many times. So why this mod and why this name?

For many who have played the game and have been serious players before, you quickly realize that despite the mathematical guarantees, it certainly doesn't feel fair. Losing 90% of your shots twice in a row is like a shock to the impact, especially after all the work maneuvering to get set up in the first place. And depending on the difficulty level (especially in the sequel XCOM 2, which seems even harsher), what these critical missteps mean for the success/failure of a mission. Yes, it's technically accurate, and it's "good" math and statistics, but it's also BAD* game design. (Obviously I'm a modder, not a game designer, so this statement is a bit of a stretch for me. But this mod/experiment is an attempt to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak)

A little background (if you're not interested that's fine, just skip to the objectives/description section for a detailed explanation of how the mod works). My personal theory is that the RNG's sense of unfairness is actually just a quirk of human psychology. It has often been shown that we are terrible at accurately guessing probabilistic outcomes and chances. It's just not intuitive. Chalk it up to our natural pattern-matching brain's tendency (great for surviving in the wild!) or something else, the reason doesn't matter, we're just clearly not good at it. A 95% chance of hitting means it will miss 5% of the time. To put it into perspective, that's about 1/20th of a shot. However, the chance of this happening twice in a row is 1/400 (from 5% to 0.25%), which seems pretty low on the surface until you realize how many times you end up shooting in a typical game. The chances are low, of course, but when you "roll" long enough, even those low-chance items will eventually appear. When they do, it always seems like more is happening than it feels like it "should" be.

We can't change human psychology these days (no matter how hard we try), so if RNGs are often unfair to players, why do game designers continue to use them? My personal answer is: they shouldn't, it's just a leftover quirk from pre-computer (board and tabletop) gaming. If we look at what the goal or "randomness" of an RNG is in a game, they are often used as a source of "variety". If the same thing keeps happening over and over, games will be boring and you'll never want to play them again. So we need a way to change things so they don't h …