Know your quests - an explanation on the affinity quest system.

[Ryoga]

Having worked on fixing affinity quests bugs for the past week I've learned a few things that you, as a player, might want to know in order to make the best out of what affinity quests can offer.


The first thing that you need to know is that affinity quests are divided into two broad groups "choice quests" and "investment quests" (that's how they are called in the code, don't ask).
"choice quests" are quests that might be given to you during the first turns of the game and precisely before turn 100 (strangely enough this does not change with game speed). These are quests that will always offer several paths so that you can choose whether to get affinity points in Harmony, Supremacy or Purity.

After turn 100 and if you have a dominant affinity (i.e. you have more affinity levels in one particular affinity) you will get "investment quests", which are divided into "general quests", "supremacy quests", "purity quests" and "harmony quests".
These quests do not offer different paths and will always reward affinity points on the affinity you have most level in. The last three groups will only be accessible depending on your dominant affinity.


How are quests assigned
Quests are assigned randomly from defined pools (see above) at fixed intervals plus a random amount of turns (in this case they are affected by game speed).

This means that each game you play you are likely going to get different quests and in different orders.


Hidden quests
The vast majority of quests are immediately added to your quest log as soon as they are assigned to you. However there are a few that do not.
These are quests that are stealthily queued for you and will be only activated depending on a certain action you take. You'll get absolutely no notice about that, and you might end up finishing the game without ever knowing about them.

Now if you prefer to remain unaware and only discover them by chance while you do your normal stuff (which may happen fairly often) skip the next part marked as "spoiler", else you can read it and learn not only which quests they are and how to trigger them, but also how to tell if they are likely to have been assigned to you.

Spoiler :

The first thing you need to know is that you are supposed to get an affinity quest as soon as turn 8 (standard speed) which might be delayed a bit by a random dice roll.

Getting affinity points fast is decidedly of great strategical importance so you don't want to miss your first quest.

Now there are 6 possible choice quests and two of them are hidden quests.
So if you get to turn 15 and you still don't have any affinity quest in your quest log, you got one of those.

The first thing you want to check is if you got "Dogmatic Engineering". This is normally easy to tell, because it spawns a station near you (5 tiles away from your capital), and that station is usually "Far Base One". In order to trigger the quest you must send a trade route to that station.

Unfortunately unless you use my quest fix, Dogmatic Engineering can and will likely be assigned to AI. That is not an intended behavior, it's a bug. All affinity quests are marked as "IgnoredbyAI" and there is a precise check in the lua code for that, but "Dogmactic Engineering" gets through because the code checks the wrong data.
Note also that the quest is supposed to spawn the station 5 tiles away from the capital of the interested faction, but since AI have those staggered starts, they might get assigned the quest before they have any capital, and that means, yes, the station will spawn near you even if you have no use for that.

So well either use my fix, or still send that trade route to "Far Base One", just to check.

Note that this quest might also spawn "Fort Barca" and "Camp Cascade" in case "Far Base One" is already present, but that's not likely to happen. And also remember that all of the above stations might just pop normally and not only because of the affinity quest.

If you didn't get "Dogmatic Engineering", then you got "An Elemental Fate".
This is one of the coolest quests in the game and it gives some pretty nice rewards so you really don't want to miss it.
This quest is triggered by razing a nest.

Note that the supremacy path is broken and will not give the intended reward (reveals all firaxite on the map). Again you can use my mod to fix that.

Since this is a pretty nice quest, I suggest to raze a nest after turn 100, just in case you were given it and you didn't realize it. After turn 100 you can only get investment quests.

The next and final hidden quest is "Beauty in the eye of the orbiter", an investment quest on the "general group" (so you can get it regardless of your dominant affinity).
This quest is triggered by launching a satellite.

The only thing that I can say is, launch satellites often. This is something that you are probably doing already

Special requirements
Some quests have special requirements and will never be assigned to you as long as you don't meet them.
For example there is a quest that requires that at least one of your cities has a canyon in a 2 hexes range, there are then two quests that give as a reward "continental surveyor" and "lifeform sensor" respectively and will not be assigned to you if you have those already.

That is not to say that you need to make sure you meet all those requirements, the amount of quests you will get is still the same, and the affinity points reward do not change, you'll just get some other quest.


Instareward
When a quest is assigned to you it immediately checks if you already meet the completion conditions. This means you might end up getting the quest reward on the very turn you get it. This is likely to happen for the quest "Know Thyself" which requires you to have an "old earth relic" in all of your cities (and this is an investment quest).

I conclude with a list of quests and all the related info:

Spoiler :

Choice quests:
-Solid State Citizen - *Requirement: an unimproved tile between 4 to 7 hexes from your capital.
-Familiar Exotics
-Dogmatic Engineering - *Requirement: either "Far Base One", "Fort Barca" or "Camp Cascade" must not be already present on the map - Hidden quest (Send trade route to nearby stations)
-Occupational Hazards
-Cultural Burden - Requirement: At least one of the main 8 sponsor mustn't be present in the game. However this quest is bugged so it gets assigned anyway and it crashes, making it impossible to complete.
-An Elemental Fate - Hidden quest (Raze an alien nest)

Investment quests (general)
-Beauty in the eye of the orbiter - Hidden quest (launch satellite)
-Startographer - Requirement: must not have chosen "Continental Surveyor"
-Written in stone - *Requirement: an unimproved hex in a 5 hex radius from the capital.

Investment quests (harmony)
-Solitude - Requirement: must have alien hybridization tech.
-Lead foot soldier
-Genetic Entanglement - Requirement: must not have chosen "Lifefrom sensor"
-Acclimation - Requirement: canyon in a 2 hex radius from any city.
-Secure Compounds

Investment quests (purity)
-Know Thyself
-Pure Advantage
-Civil Skies
-No one thing
-From Scratch

Investment quests (supremacy)
-Sky Mine
-Ancillary Adams -Requirement: at least a forest adjacent to any city
-As With Man
-Point of No Return Null - Requirement: a non capital city that doesn't have already a Neurolab built
-Steel Synapse - Requirement: must not have any Cell Cradles


Note: *these requirements are just to make sure the quest objective can be spawned, they are usually always true.

 

[Cyon]

Thanks this is intresting!

I have started to play with only 6 AI's to be able to do the "Cultural Burden" quest, any one else who also does this?

A lot of those are ones that I never seen... like the "An Elemental Fate", Ancillary Adams and the "Startographer" are those less likely to trigger?

 

[Ryoga]

Thanks this is intresting!

I have started to play with only 6 AI's to be able to do the "Cultural Burden" quest, any one else who also does this?

A lot of those are ones that I never seen... like the "An Elemental Fate", Ancillary Adams and the "Startographer" are those less likely to trigger?

Those are all quests that are either "hidden" or that have requirements.

"An Elemental Fate" should be as likely to be selected as any other "choice quests" so it could be the very first quest you get, but it's a hidden quest, so you must trigger it before it appears on your quest log.


Startographer is a quest that you'll never get if you always pick "continental surveyor"

Ancillary Adams is a quest you might never get if you quickly remove any forests from the first ring of your cities, also you must be on the supremacy path for this.

I have started to play with only 6 AI's to be able to do the "Cultural Burden" quest, any one else who also does this?

You could just add one more AI to a small map or removing one from a standard map (thus playing with 7 factions like in AC), this quest will not glitch as long as at least one of the main 8 sponsors isn't present.
Which means that you can still play with 8 or more AI and get this quest fine if you use mod sponsors.

 

[Kaigen]

This is great! I think I got "An Elemental Fate" on one of my first games and then forgot about it because I haven't seen it since. I think I may be missing at least one of each of the specific affinity quests.

Are you sure about Startographer not triggering if you have continental surveyor? I'm positive I've gotten that one several times and I almost always play with CS.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Great work. Now I just need a list of what all the rewards are.

 

[Yzman]

Very nice list.

Sounds like they have some work to fix some bugs.

 

[metagross]

Great list. Do you have the windows when the quests get assigned? Turn number + random roll spread?

 

[Ryoga]

Great list. Do you have the windows when the quests get assigned? Turn number + random roll spread?

Those are defined in "GlobalDefines.xml"

		</Row>
		<Row Name="AFFINITY_QUEST_MIN_TURNS_BEFORE_INITIAL_QUEST">
			<Value>8</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AFFINITY_QUEST_MAX_TURNS_BEFORE_INITIAL_QUEST">
			<Value>12</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AFFINITY_QUEST_MIN_TURNS_BETWEEN_QUESTS">
			<Value>40</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AFFINITY_QUEST_MAX_TURNS_BETWEEN_QUESTS">
			<Value>60</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AFFINITY_QUEST_INVESTMENT_TURN_THRESHOLD">
			<Value>100</Value>
		</Row>

All those values are affected by a gamespeed modifier (standard = no change) except for the last one.

 

[Bkeela]

Does anyone know how to get the quest/reward from building Ultrasonic Fences so that trade routes become immune to alien attack? Do you need to build two fences, or just wait a certain amount of time?

 

[Ryoga]

Does anyone know how to get the quest/reward from building Ultrasonic Fences so that trade routes become immune to alien attack? Do you need to build two fences, or just wait a certain amount of time?

This is off topic, anyway you need to build an ultrasonic fence, then the game will "throw a dice" so to say every turn henceforth. It will keep generating a random number until a certain outcome occurs, when that happens you get the quest.
I heard that the probability increases with the number of buildings, but I didn't check if that's true myself.

 

[Bkeela]

This is off topic, anyway you need to build an ultrasonic fence, then the game will "throw a dice" so to say every turn henceforth. It will keep generating a random number until a certain outcome occurs, when that happens you get the quest.
I heard that the probability increases with the number of buildings, but I didn't check if that's true myself.

Ah, okay. Cheers.