Playable Intro and Civilian Life Cut-Scenes

[Viento]

Hiho!

Intros in UFO-themed games always work the same: Aliens come to Earth, everybody is surprised, aliens murder lots of people. The armies seem powerless, so X-Com, Plallanx, etc are founded. Okay. That's pretty standard. It's not bad, but I have a idea how to make this standard beginning more interesting.

Mumbai: Why not start with small cut-scenes from the battle? You control a small number of normal soldiers (crappy stats, bad weapons => much worse than Phallanx equipment and soldiers) and basically you lose. You may save some of the men (perhaps at some point the group  is ordered to retreat) and some might join Phallanx (which would be an incentive to play these scences and not skip them).

Especially in the beginning of the game when Phallanx basically only guards 1 or 2 continents, it would be cool in my opinion to show - again via cut scenes - what is happening where Phallanx is not present.

Ideas for cut scenes:

> a rural farm in the US with a family inside and an ufo in the backyard next to the barn. A shotgun, a few simple weapons and try to survive or (likely) die.

> shopping malls and their big parking spaces: private security guards are playable inside and some hastily assembled police force outside.

> many more scenarios are possible, basically every time the enemy is rather strong and your non-phallanx equipment is weak. Bit losses don't "count" (these are only nameless NPCs that won't appear again) so I think the feeling would be much different.
 

I think you get what I would like to propose.

I would love to have these sort of mini-missions which breathe life to the real invasion and the real threat outside the "standard Phallanx reality" of flying there, busting them, flying back. Because basically Phallanx wins all the time (because we players need to win to enjoy the game). Thus the alien threat becomes somehow weakened. I think it would be nice to see that the aliens are cruel, effective, that they do a lot of harm and that Phallanx is really important to protect those people. 

I'm curious for your comments.

Andreas - enjoying the game like very few other games before.

[Montague]

I like this idea, especially the "Assault on Mubai" senario you mentioned. A squad of 6 or 8 crappy soldiers with a few basic human weapons slaughtering civilians you while you are nearly powerless to stop it.

I dunno about having special "crappy" versions of the same human starting weapons though, if that would be a pain to impliment or whatever, the squad could just have same weapons. Handwave by having the mission dialogue mention that your squad is the elite vanguard of the Indian Army with all these neat weapons.

Maybe make it into the sorta tutorial/ introduction level, just leave it as a bit of a random sandbox situation where a newbie can safely experiment with the controls and the varied weapons, without failure having any negative impact on the real portion of the game.

[Gunner]

I dunno about having special "crappy" versions of the same human starting weapons though, if that would be a pain to impliment or whatever, the squad could just have same weapons. Handwave by having the mission dialogue mention that your squad is the elite vanguard of the Indian Army with all these neat weapons.

well you could probably hack it by raising the difficulty of that mission, so if your on the medium difficulty you play that mission on the medium rules, of you on medium you play with the hard rules etc

personally i think you should start with 'crappy' human weapon and have to use research to turn them into weapon that can face the aliens by say replacing ammo.

i know the designers have tried to balance the game so that no weapon is useless. but for the aliens to march through the human like they do then it just doesn't make sense that guys with assault rifles can fight them on equal terms.

or maybe altering the story line so that one of the government's nuke an attack site, and then phalanx take over ground intercepts while the threat of nuclear retaliation prevents the mass assaults that wiped out cities around the world or some other explanation why it suddenly goes from aliens in total control of the war wiping out cities at will to tiny probing attacks that have minimal strategic or tactical value.

[ojasper]

Sounds like a good idea too me, might also help with the wall'a'text encountered at the start.(Splitting it, putting part in the early missions.) For it to be a massacre, perhaps there should be more civilians, too.

It is probably also a good idea to distinguish these troops from the Phallanx ones. Make them look more sloppy, more mono-cultural, perhaps even use a different interface theme. Also an idea to store survivors which and may turn up as hires later.(Prolly not worth it though.) Other stuff, like background fighting far away(at Mumbai), seems like a good idea too. Existing weapon sounds could probably be mangled to sound as from far away, at least so it seems with a quick look at openAL.

[Destructavator]

I kinda like this idea, although I wouldn't consider it a development priority.  I don't think anything like it will be in 2.3, although at some point in the future, perhaps a few releases down the line when adding additional things to make the game more interesting makes sense, An idea at least something like this would be nice - Although I'd personally push for making the introductory missions optional so some players could jump right into the main game if they wanted to.

[Sepelio]

An easier way to do this is perhaps to simply generate soldiers for it with utterly rubbish stats?