The following are a few ideas/suggestions on
the proposal for Mission Briefings:
- In addition to displaying the briefing on the loading screen for tactical missions, the briefing should be available on the geoscape before dispatching a dropship. This would be realistic, as some basic information would be known quickly (downed-UFO, kind of terrain, special mission objectives if available). And it would play a key role in deciding which soldiers to dispatch and how to equip them.
- Perhaps additional intel could be linked to research programs. As we learn more about their mission profiles, more information could be provided in the mission briefing, such as how many and which aliens are likely to be in a particular downed UFO.
- For terror missions, information could be added over time. Initially, no information would be available except the existence of an attack and the location. A short time later new intel such as reported aliens and strength could be added as more intel comes in.
- Caution should be used when giving suggestions to the player about weapons. The current example briefing could be taken by many players to imply that the game does not allow the use of grenades and indirect fire in civilian areas.
- Not part of the core feature, but a possible expansion later on would be to add generated satellite imagery. For RMAs, if each tile had a small screenshot on file, with a standardized height/width (32x32 image for each 256x256 block of a tile?), then these could be spliced together and have a grid overlaid to cover the seams. The screenshots could have some post-processing that made them look like satellite images. One thing that would need to be overcome would be displaying the dropship tile without the dropship.
