I must admit, I don't really know how multiplayer works, but is it true that only one person can be moving at the same time? What about as a means enabling scale-up of multiplay (4 vs 4, 8 vs 8, 20 vs 1 base defense
):
* players can be grouped into teams (Phalanx vs civilians vs Aliens)
* you can perform actions at the same time as your team mates (i have been led to believe this would mean messing a bit with the game engine?)
* the former would probably require in game voice chat You'd probably want to tell your team mates you are going to launch a rocket into the door-way before their soldiers cop it in the back of the head!
* enable round time limit (I think this may be in the code already?)
This way, there's only going to be maybe three sides at once alien-civilian-human, civilian would be ai and quick, most you'd have to wait is the round limit. You could even experiment with different combinations of control: 1 dropship with 8 soldiers, 4 players each controlling 2 soldiers etc. all agreed to and setup pre-launch.
Alien campaign musings:
2 player alien (A1 & A2), 2 player human example (H1 & H2)
A1 wants to launch a terror mission to go get some people from earth
A2 wants in too, they only have the one ufo available at the time so A2's squad boards A1's ufo (they could split half/half depending on capacity of ufo)
A1 launches to a spot on the geoscape, negiates with A2 where they thing a good spot for the mission would be, say Tokyo
H1 & H2 notice the ufo on radar and move to intercept, they only have the one intercepter and two drop ships
H1 takes the interceptor
H2 takes the dropship
A1 makes it to land
A1 & A2 launch into battlescape
H2 is close by, while A1 & A2 start to round up/shoot civilians
H2 makes it to the site of the mission and launches in, A1/A2 see the earth shake and the drop-ship land
H1 takes the interceptor back to base to pick up the second drop ship
H1 then heads back to the mission
A1/A2/H2 are engaged in battlescape combat
Alien turn then human turn, 2min limit
H1 arrives at the mission and launches in, A1/A2/H2 see the landing etc
A1/A2/H1/H2 are now engaged in battlescape combat
A1 moves into ambush position, A2 goes for the civilians
H1 & H2 prepare for launch (would be cool that when the dropship arrives it's not automatically on the ground but needs to come down say from height 10 subject to the same turn/TU restrictions, the player would be able to scan for aliens, or even target and fire dropship weapons, aliens would need to hide or have an alien inside the ufo to return fire)
when someone loses all their squad they could keep spectating or go back to their base. They'll need to re-hire a squad (or give their existing squad a penalty? so the squad is persistant/"theirs".
A battlescape win could be:
* kill/capture all enemies
* alien makes escape with civilian
etc...
