Death from above

[Gedaliah]

Anyone else question how your dropships land unharmed? Or how it has some awesome firepower and just sits there?

Wile maybe unrealistic at this point it would be nice to treat the dropship as a flying unit, have to find a landing spot, drop the troops, take off, rain hell from a move, and pick up the troops after the dust settles.

If nothing else it has a nice shiny gun sticking out of it's noise. It would be nice to be able to point that at something and ruin it's day. Maybe after unloading order the ship to take off out of the line of fire. Have it or a fighter craft stay in the area then have one of your unit paint a target, and watch hell rain down on the enemy. Bunker Buster anyone?

If nothing else it would make securing the area easier, and the game more interesting. When your ship is in the area it will give the enemy reason to run for cover with all haste. When the alien have a ship in the air it would make for a interesting battle for you to find cover, move affectively, or as the ground fight plays out have the two ship duke it out there. Either as the fight rages on or take off and cut to a airel fight as if you just intercepted the UFO.

Seems only fair you should be stranded and have to call for backup if you can (capture/secure) the alien's drop ship.

[blondandy]

nice idea.

i am not a dev. i suspect this would be a lot of work to implement. i vote for this on the TODO list of ufo:ai version 16.9  

[Alex]

I'm not sure about having the ship flying around acting like an air strike unit...  It would probably add too many complications to the game.

It would be nice to be able to select the forward turret though, and use it to target any aliens who come near the ship.

[Gedaliah]

Getting it to move is the biggest hurtle I gather, and that is being fixed to get the interceptors and UFOs fighting. Following that would be a animation for loading/unloading, maybe the ability to be able to fire from a open door wile in the air.


Once the current To-Do list is finished I really don't expect many technical hurtles. Having played the quake series, iirc, it support having larger then normal units being able to turn and fire. It also support lifts, iirc. At the worst, after modeling, I expect the next technical hurtle will be just combine the functions of these two objects into a new class header, if they are already not the same.

[Wanderer]

One problem I could see here is that currently the dropship(s) are map models, not animated models.  This makes a big difference.  Also afaik, the designers, for at least this first pass, are trying to stick close to the first game's gameplay.

Giant monster ship vs. giant monster ship makes the ground pounders pretty pointless.

For now I'd like to see the little tanks and whatnot working before we got into huge firefights over the battlefield.  You'd also have to picture the maps being near gigantic.  Picture the dropship, a non-hovering aerodyne vessel.  It would need to do strafing passes or it would run out of fuel rediculously fast.  You're also putting a huge asset at risk against much more technically advanced forces.

While from a realism standpoint I understand your thinking, the idea is also to *reduce* civilian casualties, not increase them.  Bunker Busters do not reduce civilian casualties.

Besides, who wants to spend hours on hours building a guy up to Seargent to watch him flattened by an alien interceptor as he leaves the ship?

[Gedaliah]

Oh...I'm becoming a troll...

Eek, I guess I'm a bit cold. I was thinking in a infantry vs low flying vertical takeoff craft fight(and all of the player's ships are according to the Ufopedia description of the hangers.) that the infantry could take cover from different angles outside the vehicle's firing arc(s), and eat it a live like a ant swarm taking down a large insect. That is to say it being more dangerous for the craft then then craft was to the infantry .

Your right though, having that much firepower on-demand does limit what your squad can do, and where they can do it considering that almost everywhere expect a terror site will have at least one ship on each side. On the other hand it's insurance the aliens will not kill everyone near them for fear of getting reduced to a pair of smoking boots with no shield left.

Just seems a waste that in all the X-Com(save inteceptor) games that you put all that effort into research, upgrading, and building new ships just so they could be a lawn decoration.

[Wanderer]

Oh...I'm becoming a troll...

I fail to see how, and I've accused people of it already.

Eek, I guess I'm a bit cold. I was thinking in a infantry vs low flying vertical takeoff craft fight(and all of the player's ships are according to the Ufopedia description of the hangers.) that the infantry could take cover from different angles outside the vehicle's firing arc(s), and eat it a live like a ant swarm taking down a large insect.

Let them get the tanks working.  You'll have your fight.

Just seems a waste that in all the X-Com(save inteceptor) games that you put all that effort into research, upgrading, and building new ships just so they could be a lawn decoration.

Does bring a new meaning to "Keeping up with the Jones'".  Remember also that (eventually, I hope) the bigger ships means more troops on the ground, and better ability to drop larger UFO ships.  Those first interceptors you have going up a Battleship's tailpipe are nothing but space debree.