Development > Artwork

Some alien beasts (alien ghost + ... )

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Nutter:
When you want even trained professionals to lose their shit: Chryssalids.

Also the reason I'm happy I never touched the original.

krilain:
I never played Xcom so I've looked around for chryssalid and I found this :


--- Quote ---https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Chryssalid
Chryssalid attacks can cause instantaneous death to civilians and soldiers by planting an egg in them and injecting them with a venom that turns them into a Zombie. The attacks ignore body armour.

A zombie created by a Chryssalid will shuffle towards X-COM forces and attempt to batter the soldiers to death. If the zombie is killed, a new Chryssalid will hatch from its carcass. Essentially, a single chryssalid left to its own devices in a terror site will quickly multiply and populate the city with other chryssalids.
--- End quote ---

Very interesting mechanism :)

Anarch Cassius:

What gets me on the Chryssalid (and many strategy game creatures with similair powers) is making more of something so large so fast. This is particularly bad for a game like UFO:AI that tries to keep it's feet on the ground while it gazes at the stars.

What about something a little less absurd but still a nice reference to Aliens and Chryssalids. A reproducing terror weapon, a bit like the Zuul from Sword of the Stars they are meant to terrorize the local population and feed on them to replenish.

SPOILERS IN DESCRIPTION BELOW (FOR BASE GAME AND IF PEOPLE LIKE IT THE SPIDER)
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Phalanx Suggested Designation: Locust
http://www.blendswap.com/blends/animals/pseudospider/ (This little guy is CC-BY-SA, does that work? If I understand it you can use it for anything, even commercial, if you keep this file free and give credit)


The locusts are a bioweapon, what brains they have are linked to the hive mind but they aren't much smarter than a hovernet. I imagine it would take a full swarm to rival even a pair of Taman mentally, but they come in swarms. They are hermaphroditic, capable of both self-fertilizing and mating with others of their kind. Each adult carries ready to incubate eggs in it at all times. These are already quite developed and unlike the eggs of Earth creatures don't hatch before they begin proper parasitization. The egg itself has a soft living surface, almost like a placenta in nature, that intertwines with the host and begins to siphon vital substances to fuel its rapid growth. On it's own this takes days but eggs can sustain rapid growth in case of the hosts sudden death. They will drain what they can and spend their remaining energy errupting from the host and then birthing a nymph. The nymphs are weaker than adults and do not yet have eggs but are still very dangerous.

Overall it's a little faster than the bloodspiders and probably between the regular and combat model in terms of endurance. Their damage is low but they have special quirks.

Abilties

Bite: Its teeth are sharp but it doesn't seem to have been given molecular edges. They are faster and pack more punch than a combat knife but an armed soldier wouldn't consider these things much of a threat if bite was all they had.
Launch: The locust can leap (Game handling: Hide locust, fire "locust" "grenade", handle attack, move locust to impact location and unhide) both to get over obstacles and provide greater force for its natural weapons.
Implant: The locust implants an egg in the target. Much higher TU cost than bite for only a tad more damage but should the victim die they will produce an egg, which on its following turn will produce a nymph.
Infect: This is the least hammered out. The locusts are teeming with XVI, including strains not seen elsewhere, and their bodily fluids make for a efficient delivery system. None of these strains are able to overcome our vaccine completely, however several were able to survive in vaccinated hosts for up to 36 hours. All of the vaccinated subject who came in contact with these strains seem normal however some have come forward to say they experienced strange thoughts and feelings after exposure. These effects could be psychosomatic or simple fever but we can't rule out the possibility that the unusual XVI strains managed to, hopefully temporarily, establish partial contact with the alien mind.

Infect is my way of adding a path for more psionic/XVI stuff that doesn't rely on the player "lowering shields" in order to go psychically offensive, which is what most of the design seems about. I feel the chance of being drawn in against your choice makes it creepier and more interesting without going to the extreme levels of other similar games.

And tactically speaking, while days is best for the health of the young locust in combat stress they get messy with hurry and civilians will probably not make it to the end of the battle if a locust finds them. The attack won't kill but with bleeding and civilian HP you'll have a nymph on your hands if you don't get a medic to them fast.

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krilain:
Those locusts are quite nice :)

I wont comment every point since it is quite clear. I just find really interesting to associate those locusts to a swarm mechanism. It could give a pretty opportunity for unfolding the terror missions. I mean a terror mission could be displayed in many moments, and we should be able to deal with terror missions from their last moments to their first first. I'll try to explain this :

The swarm has a source (a first egg, or so on). The first thing the aliens do, is to implement this source somewhere on earth, more or less secretly (just as XVI virus). Then the weapon expands, and becomes visible when causing the first big troubles to civilians. At this moment only the Phallanx are called to go at contact with the threat, but actually at the front the terror-beasts wave, not at the source (which I suppose emitting many swarms if not extinguished).

Here could be interesting to introduce a sort of cinetics where our army should have to counter a diffusing threat by fighting very efficiently at his front in order to get the chance to deal at last with the source.

For instance, and more precisely. Suppose a first swarm of your locusts biological alien weapon. Unless we are very lucky, we shouldn't detect immediatly the source until his first moves and first attacks. Eventually, if many attacks, we may have to triangulate the attacked spots... In one other case the game could simply reveal the source at the first attacks. Whatever, there is simultaneously 2 problems to deal with, the swarm front, and the swarm source. If you don't clean well enough the swarm front (for instance if civilians are hit, even 1), terror missions due to it will increase fast from the front (increasing his radius). And if you dont kill the source, the terror mission source will never die.

Ok, from this, a last advantage comes. In the today campain there is no free missions. I mean, if I wanted to train my team by doing secondary missions on demand, or as much as I want ( until you reach a maximum of extra ), today I cant. But imagine the front+source swarm mechanism here described, a skillful player could keep a terror source on, just to let terrors missions come and be a training mission source for his teams.

Ok, that was to show to what more your chrisalyd-like alien can also lead.

For the 3Dmodel you showed, I think it is really disguting, exactly such as a terrorifying beast should be :)

Anarch Cassius:
Actually I was thinking along those lines yes. :)

There's already something similair... MORE SPOILERS... watch the movement of supply ships, the mail about of them being related to bases isn't idle chatter if you ever see a supply ship disappear it have entered a base. When I see a lot of supply ships I send interceptors to scan the area extra carefully and it's worked well.

So the seed ship is small fast and likely more stealth with few armaments. Where it lands it creates a hidden locust colony, like an alien base, which then goes on to send out locust swarms. I'm not sure which is easier for the engine, spawning them directly as missions near the hidden colony or making some kind of ground unit to use the way bases do supply ships.

In any case the point is that ignoring a locust infestation site would cause more locust infestations and more XVI if you didn't catch it.  Assuming XVI system stays on track all this battle map stuff should be easier to do than the jumping attack itself. "Farming" is something that shouldn't be encouraged too much. It can be tempting, even work out if you are very careful but in this sort of gave I'd like it to be a devil's bargain. Really I'd rather the player feel they'd like to wipe out the main colony as soon as they find it because another is probably about to land.

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