UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Design => Topic started by: BTAxis on April 07, 2006, 11:42:03 pm
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Purpose of this thread: Brainstorming the basic storyline and setting to use in the main UFO:AI game.
Preliminary ideas here (http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/src/docs/storyline.txt?view=markup) (Hoehrer, update this with the improvements you made, please.)
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Excerpt from my other post:
Idea 1) The Antareans are agressive and warmongering by default and are constantly seeking to expand their empire. Now they think they found a new inferior race which they deem easy to overcome and integrate into their collection of slave races.
Idea 2) They face extinction if they don't find a new planet suitable for relocation
or
a race which genetical make-up suits their need for repairing a bodily degration but need a constant supply of "spare parts" due to the fact that they can't reproduce the needed material artificially. Therefore they need to invade.
Everything started with an obduction here and there and animal mutilation for the purpose of studying what's available.
Conclusion for both ideas:
Getting what they want proved more difficult than expected due to heavy resistance. Therefore the attack on Bombay.
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Idea 1) The Antareans are agressive and warmongering by default and are constantly seeking to expand their empire. Now they think they found a new inferior race which they deem easy to overcome and integrate into their collection of slave races.
Idea 2) They face extinction if they don't find a new planet suitable for relocation
Well, as it is, the draft is leaning towards idea 1. Idea 2 had occurred to me, but in that case some things just don't add up. If they face extinction, why gather information about earth? They don't need to know who we are, they just need us dead. Also if they face extinction, they would be migrating with their entire race at once. That wouldn't be in line with the typical build-up of alien military strength.
or
a race which genetical make-up suits their need for repairing a bodily degration but need a constant supply of "spare parts" due to the fact that they can't reproduce the needed material artificially. Therefore they need to invade.
Everything started with an obduction here and there and animal mutilation for the purpose of studying what's available.
That sounds very improbable to me. If they can't reproduce or even sustain themselves, how did they manage to evolve into a space-faring race? Chances are they'd have fallen apart due to a lack of parts on their homeworld far before then. No, I say we stick with warmongers.
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I'll update the text files as soon as possible .. until then consider the information in this post:
http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=393#393
the most recent one.
Also FYI: overridetzx posted another version which i could'nt ready yet completly:
http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=450#450
Werner
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I've updated the storyline file in SVN:
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/src/docs/storyline.txt?view=markup
And i've added most (but not ever detail) of overridetzxs version.
Test readings and critics are welcome, but i think the basic background story is finished.
Now a more extensive storyline-progression is needed, including major plot points that are effected by the player and something like that :)
Werner
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I've gone over that sotryline, and I have fixed some typos, rewritten some sentences, and changed a few things. The result is here (http://home.student.utwente.nl/f.s.fournier/storyline.txt), commit this, please.
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commited
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Hey I just realised it's not Bombay any more, it's now known as Mumbai.
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I've gone over that sotryline, and I have fixed some typos, rewritten some sentences, and changed a few things.
Nice edits :D
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Committed a few more edits - changed Bombay for Mumbai, the odd spelling mistake corrected, and changed some grammar here and there so hopefully it will flow better.
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have a large disagreement about the Storyline:
If Aliens can kill hundres of thousands in a city,and are barely driven back,then an initial tiny base and 10-12 soldier Unit PHALANX is ridiculous against such an armada,no matter how high tech.
Didn't mankind colonize Europa,Mars or at least Moon when it had fusion tech and sufficient prosperity at home?What about them?At least make a fine excuse.
PHALANX should be established after an abduction scene of a famous person in front of camera(NOT LIVE though),maybe the daughter/son of a president,vicepresident,or CEO,or at least after a lost Interceptor chasing a small metal shape.The fat big guys realize something is awfully wrong and pay up to establish PHALANX.World Governments take pains not to announce the threat,especially NOT NOW,just now,when wheels of a capitalist world is set finely enough to make the majority flourish and enjoy the world's bounty.
And yes I'm a nerd and a social democrat.And have no girlfriend.
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See this (http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76&start=30#645) post.
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Hello,
I read the doc about storyline and I'd like to share some ideas about it.
I think what is presented in the document is rather backstory than storyline. Only one part of the text suggests a storyline but does not go into detail. It is told that its progress should be built on development in research on items secured by successful tactical missions (I think paragraph three with the sentence "the story develops in a classic manner"...)
My first reaction to this focus on backstory was that I remembered that many sci-fi stories do not reveal any information about the alien species at all. War of the Worlds and Alien for instance... The aliens come and kill... and are defeated. The rest is unknown. Some do, but never the whole story right from the start. So I thought it is a bad idea to have a Ufopedia entry right from the beginning telling us what the alien want and who they are.
I'd suggest that the only thing we should find out about aliens immediately is that they come uninvitedly and shoot at us. And if we don't organize soon and learn to use the means we have available to answer their attacks, it appears, we lose the game. This is the only information that we need to get a good kick in the ass at game start.
Any other info should be obtained as a result of successful missions. Best is that the info rewards us with a new item that solves a problem that we could not quite solve before. At least we should enjoy a few easier missions until the aliens come up with another lethal thing. If no new items, then the info should prepare us to possibilities of the game world that we'll be introduced with in later stages of the game. Not really revealing what it is, but helping us to feel comfortable with the new parametre of the game world... enhancing believability. (You don't get sceptical when the hero finds an axe in a hut in the forrest to defend himself against a monster when you showed the hero talking to the owner of the hut before - while he was cutting wood.)
Another thing is that you treat "story" as some information to be provided to the player beforehand and not as the planning of a row of interesting events that regards the gathering of this information as one of the ways to keep the player immersed and entertained by the game. Don't give information when noone asks for it. Make them beg for it first. Then they will appreciate that you share with them what you know.
Many players have enough knowledge of popular sci-fi culture and they will love to fill the gaps of the story themselves... and it will be more surprising when you tell them later that it is quite different of what they initially were thinking.
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You're right, what's written down right now isn't a storyline. It's meant as a background from which we can build the storyline. However, you labour under the misassumption that the information in the documentation is given to the player at the start of the game. It's not. It's just design documentation.
As for keeping it a "secret", well... That kind of goes against the "open" nature of this project. This project has had closed development before, and that ended up in the usual hiatus of the people involved. It's probably better this way.
If you have any concrete ideas about story development, please do share them.
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First I shall apologize: I hope you didn't perceive my comments as disrespect to all the effort that people put into this project so far. It's a great project and it seems to have progressed very good. So my comments are not critiques, they are my concerns on how I believe this project would be even better. I would feel really bad if you think "Hell, who is this guy? He's falling from the roof into this forum and thinks he can give us advise?"
I see what you mean with "secret" and why it isn't possible for an "open" project to keep things as a "secret". But you say this from a "community" or "designer" perspective, isn't it?
I am speaking of a "player" perspective. The person I have in mind is someone who downloads the "finished" game, installs it and starts to play it. Now the question is, what is the best way to lead the player through the story that we as designers know all aspects of, but which the player has to discover and figure out step by step? All my comments are regarding this question.
I'd like to give this example: If we write a detective story, we know the whole plot of the story and who the murderer is and why he did it etc. But we would keep the murderers identity as a secret until the end of the story and make it the goal of the detective to find out. We would mislead the detective (and readers) by introducing bits of new information that result in a theory on what happened. But then we would introduce additional information that cancels this theory in order to maintain the mystery. For example I'd let the autopsy expert say that the the victim was killed by a left-handed person and voila, during investigation of neighbors our detective would toss at a left-handed man... who had an argument with the victim a few weeks ago. But just a minute later the neighbor would introduce his girlfriend... which is left-handed too... and who, so it turns out, is still the wife of the victim etc
So I am talking about a knowledge regime for the story, of creating point-of-view, mystery etc... not about the knowledge sources that the open source community naturally must have access to in order to realise this project.
As players, when are we going to find out that the Aliens already have conquered other planets? When are we going to find out about the mothership on the dark side of the moon? What impact will these bits of knowledge have on the players perception of the game. Is there a better, more shocking or intriguing moment to reveal this info? Is it relevant info anyway, e.g. does it succeed to elevate the story on a higher level?... Things like this are my concern.
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It will be my pleasure to share ideas about story development.
The risk here is, that the development is quite far in progress and that suggestions must meet a certain level of applicability in regard to the game engine and other assets that are already there. However, I do not know this project well enough yet, so some of my suggestions might simply seem out of scope or would suggest changes in things that you consider already as cleared. Until I have a better idea about the things that make up this project, I might sound quite silly with my suggestions. So be warned :-)
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One idea I had last night was to put the whole story into the frame of an alien conspiracy and limit the war between worlds to a struggle between two "secret services": One human and one alien secret service.
Human-Phalanx versus Alien-"Phalanx"?
On one side we have the Phalanx, on the other hand we have the Alien "Elite Forces", trying to implement a secret agenda assigned to them by their leaders. Thus we avoid a setting in which a big war between worlds is going on. Instead we find ourselves as part of a struggle between secret services. This will allow us the eliminate the David vs Goliath situation that has been subject to critique before. (I remember some people saying that it sounds unrealistic that a tiny little force has to fight against an invasion of huge alien forces.)
The Secret Agenda of the Aliens
So what is the secret agenda of the alien secret service? They are assigned to carry out certain mission (the installation of sophisticated devices) that result in a climatic change on earth. This climatic change will turn our planet into one that provides ideal conditions for their own race. As a side effect the human race and other earthly species will be eliminated. The idea is simple: They don't need to carry out a real war. If they succed to set up the mechanism that creates the climatic change, they can change the "grammar of civilizations" and get rid of rival species over time.
But they have to carry out this plan carefully. In order to prevent suspicion to raise amongst humans, they aim to "stage" this climatic change as an "approaching Judgement Day". They want to exploit religious belief in order to camuflage their endeavour. This will keep any conscious resistance at a minimum. In short, while the aliens deploy their devices, they also use other smaller devices to cause a number of natural disasters to hit the globe. Some magazines and channels already broadcast programs that interpret these disasters as the sign of an approaching Judgement Day and refer the religious texts. Public Opinion shifts more and more towards a metaphysical or religious explanation of the row of disasters.
On the other hand, some nations seem to have gained access to certain technologies that they are normally not capable of to produce. It appears that some of these nations start to put a distance between themselves and Sector 911, eventually resulting in withdrawal from the organisation and followed by hostile actions towards 911 agents.
What is tbe objective of the Alien Special Forces? Their objective is to set up a number of gravitational devices on earth and on the moon which will fix the moons position in such a way that it results into a constant eclipse of the sun. This will cool down earth as a whole, starting a new ice age, creating famine and leaving only a few humans alive... only a bunch of humans survive, which can be exterminated easily once the colonization of the "new and comfortable home" has started. On the other hand they install some devices that cause natural disasters... so that the shift in the moons behavior is related with the idea that Judgement Day has come. All this causes a stronger interest into religion and metaphysical explanation of the situation. Organization like the Vatican think their time to rule has come and they contribute a lot in making the "Judgement Day has come" idea even more popular.
In order to "work" comfortable, the aliens seek for allies around the globe. They contact leaders and bureaucrats, infiltrate institutions and services in order to gather intel and other support. They bribe or brainwash agents in order to make these services or nations to act in favor of their agenda. This is dangerous for the Phalanx, because a growing secret alliance between pro-alien nations and secret services means that Sector 911 weakens. These nations start to regard the Phalanx as an enemy and deny its access to their territories. They also deny the trade of unique products and services of their nations. Finally they dare to attack our HQ and other buildings.
Our goal as the commander of Phalanx is to gradually find out about these evil goals and objectives, and eventually, to defeat all enemies.
The Phalanx
But who is the Phalanx? It is a special research unit founded under control of the CIA during the increase in "flying saucer" incidents in the 1950s. Its goal is defined as "conducting research on extra-terrestial life forms in order to prepare the earth for a possible encounter with the "third kind"". It is a a group of experts coming from fields like computer engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Genetics, Biology etc... They search for evidence of other forms of life by making tests on everything that is believed to some extend being of extra-terrestrial origin. They also do research on rocks and stones brought from other planets or on asteriods that hit the earth.
After 9/11, the worlds secret services, led by the USA, decided to fight Terrorrism on a global scale and established a Global Intelligence Service, also knows as "Sector 911". Sector 911 was an umbrella organization that combined the databases and resources of almost all the secret services of the world in order to maintain global intelligence and to conduct counter-strike activities against enemies. In 2027 a report titled "The Possibility of Extra-Terrestial Terror" resulted in fear and paranoia amongst the leaders of "Sector 911". They decided to set up a unit that would prepare for a fight against such Extra-Terrestrial Terror. As a solution, they came up with the idea to integrate Phalanx into "Sector 911" and give a Elite Force into its command.
The Phalanx is now a special research organization that enjoys the comfort of making use of the resources, technology, funds and intel of a global intelligence service. It also enjoys having its own Elite Forces. However, the paranoia of Sector 911 leaders never proofed to be true and until today, the Phalanx Elite Forces never had an encounter with the Third Kind in any of the missions they were assigned to.
But that, my friends, will change soon :-)
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Mission 1
Mission Brief
Commander,
Our centre recently developed an interstellar listening device capable of tracing nano-wave signals. Thanks to this device, we were hoping to listen into frequency levels not known to the humans race before.
The device was activated yesterday at our interstellar observatory at Palo Alto. Immediately we received signals of an unknown nature. To our surprise, we found out that these signals were not originated from a source in space. The signals came from earth.
A few minutes ago, our scientest succeeded to locate the coordinates of the signal source. Whatver it is, it is located at the southeast point of the Mariana Deep.
Your task is to go down there and find out what causes this signals. Secure all items and -in case of an encounter- all forms of alien specimen to be found there.
Good Luck!
Prof. Hoehrer
Director
Phalanx Research Center
Sector 911
Preparation for the mission
We arm our squad members.
We assign soldiers to the mission
We assign a vehicle
We assign the location that the squad has to go to
We send them to the mission
Upon Arrival...
Tactical Mission
Our squad members stand at several of the entrances of an oceanic cave. They enter the location. Soon we find ourselves in sort of a underwater station. We start to investigate the location and discover the presence of other beings, some humanoids, but also other strange creatures. They attack us, we take position and fight back. The ambush continues throughout the investigation of the location. Finally we arive at a circular hall with a device at its centre. We overcome the last group of humanoids gathered around the device. After the last humanid is killed or looses consciousness, the mission is over.
Post-Mission
We get a report on our tactical mission.
Duration of the mission
Our Losses
Our Injuries
Our Lost equippment
Death aliens
Living aliens
Alien equippment
etc
Due to space constraints we are asked which of the secured items, bodies or devices we want to leave there. We are asked to confirm our decision.
Once confirmed, our squad returns to the HQ
After arrival at the HQ:
We receive a message from the Lab Director:
Commander,
Quite interesting what you've found there. However we could not really sort out the pieces. You should come to the lab and take a look.
Thank you!
Prof. Mattn
Director
Phalanx Laboratory Unit
A "Go to Lab" button invites us to go to the lab.
Here we find a list of items to be researched. If we click the name of an item, we find a menu on the bottom of the screen with a variety of pieces. Above is a window which is displaying sort grid that resembles the shape of the whole item. We can take pieces from the menu and drag them to the matrix window in order to reconstruct the item or the death body. To start research we should be able to reconstruct a certain percentage of it. In other words, we have to solve sort of a simple puzzle. Often pieces will be missing and only after a row of successful missions we will be able to complete the missing parts and reconstruct an item or a body as a whole (We will appreciate it a lot if we can secure whole items or living aliens therefore, since we can start with research immediately)
Once an item is reconstructed sufficiently we assign our scientists to conduct experiments and tests. This will take a certain time and once research is complete we find a new entry in the Ufopedia.
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You're completely right about the story development from the player's perspective, of course. That's exactly how it's going to be. But this is a design thread, so naturally I talk about things from a designer's perspective.
I get what you're saying in the above. While, as you predicted, some of it may not fit in with the basic gameplay premise (a secret organization would hardly fly around in special aircraft, shooting down UFOs. They'd leave it to the military, or a front organization), there is no reason why you couldn't make a mod that does exactly what you describe. It might be quite good.
One question in particular. You headed your last post with "Mission 1". That implies the missions are sequential rather than randomly generated, as is the case in classic UFO gameplay. Would your idea then turn into a string of missions that the player plays out in order? The way I envisage the story development is indeed through scripted events and scripted missions, but these missions don't necessarily appear at set times. Rather, they emerge from research and special occurrences in battle.
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I simply called it mission 1 because I imagined it as the starting point of a story that might develop in various ways depending on the research topics that the player prefers to complete. The story that the player experiences would vary according his choices, or even better depending on his learning curve. We think the same way here I guess :-)
Of course the story arc would be a pre-defined one, but its progress would depend on new backstory elements that are revealed through research activities of the player. That means we set constraints one the story, but it is up to the player how and when he reaches the pieces of the puzzle that make up the story. All we'd need to do would be writing the research reports that gradually reveal the story. These would glue the single missions together and turn them into scenes of a single coherent story. We could narrow the research tree at certain points, so that it feels like we have reached a cornerstone. The cornerstone moments could be used to make the player receive a report that summarizes the situation and enhances the feeling that he is in midst of an interesting story. Otherwise we would face the risk that he just feels like that missions are piling up and the content gets repetitious.
Btw, I had no idea that you were rather looking for stand-alone missions.
In the sample that I wrote, I imagined a story arc as it is the case in X-Com Apocalypse. And I only sent you the introduction part of what I have in mind.
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I kinda like some of your suggestions altgui.
But i have to agree with BTAxis here that it's kinda hard to hide alot of this 'secret' activities from anyone .... e.g the terror-attacks are pretty hard to hide from public view. Of course this could be steer into another direction by media and government regulations, but i think this isn't really possible world-wide - not in the world/time the game is set in.
We could change that, but we'll always find inconsistencies in any backgroubnd-story we pick, so sticking with one and try to make the best out of it seems to be the better solution.
This doesn't mean we can't include your ideas, but we just need to fit them in nicely with the existing background story.
What i personally had in mind for the storyline development-wise:
What we have
- We currently have a message system that reports nearly everything that happens to Phalanx&the world. These things currently are mostly static (see below for the future plans)
- A research system that you all know from the original games (not quite finished, but it'll get better)
Planned
- The Ufopedia currently contains information about 'items' such as weapons/aliens/technologies but it will be extended to display "plot-points" and certain news.
- To make it short: There will be a timeline.
Long description: I plan to implement a pre-defined event-system where you can define certain plot-devices at a certain time with dependencies on prior encountered/researched/etc.. things or events.[/list]
Using this event system we then can not only produce _real_ events like the following...
after the year 2010 day 40 a huge alien attack will follow after they find out you interrogated one of their alien commanders. (This is by no means a seriours plotpoint, but could be ;) )
... but we can also produce fake news where friendly forces (military) counter attacks from the aliens in placed we do not have access to yet or where no special equipment is needed. And of course this will also be the case when we can't handle a mission at all sometimes. This will hopefully contribute a lot to the athmosphere.
At least you can't expect the player to believe that Phalanx is the only thing standing between thousands of alien forces alone, can you?
I think if we start a basic timeline (begin and end of the game) and then fill it with certain (major and minor) events we'll go places. As mentioned above these events may drive the story forward, but they could just be telling you what happens around you and don't help you at all.
Thanks for contributing :)
Werner
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X-Com Apocalypse had a perfect system to feed-in new enemy squads: The spaceships. Their function was basically to deploy alien squads in buildings. There where three results of their visit:
1) Generating tactical missions in buildings
2) Generating tactical missions in alienships that we succeeded to shoot down
3) Creating hostile behavior against X-Com through the infiltration of organizations, resulting in tactical missions in buildings & shortage or denial of valuable resources.
Almost all research was possible through certain items we collected in those tactical missions. Also an increase in the economical situation was managed by a surplus of cellected items that we could sell... and later by selling items that we were able to produce ourselves. This decreased the dependency on the weekly goverment fund. Also we were less depending on the expensive and ineffective weaponry that the city factories were supplying (often in insufficient numbers... like 5 flyers, but only 3 engines)
Research enabled us to develope in two ways:
Strenghten our squad with new weaponry and other high-tech
Building stronger vehicles
The result simply was:
More success in tactical missions
More success in shooting down alienships
At the end we managed to stop the feed-in mechanism, because we were as strong as to shoot down alien motherships before they could even reach the walls of the city.
Gain control over the feed-in mechanism and defeat the enemy. So simple.
I think this summarizes the story arc.
The goal then, was to revert the starting position (someone coming in our dimension and shooting at us) of the game: At the end, we were the ones that got into their dimension and raid their buildings. This continued until we killed the mother alien and destroyed the dimension gate.
Congratulations. You defeated the aliens. :-)
The most important breaking point in this story arc was to develope the mighty Annihilator, enabling us to stop alienships outside of the city before the deployment of alien squads. That meant a decrease in tactical missions in buildings.
The story arc went on into Conclusion when we could go to their dimension and start to raid their buildings.
Now my question is: What is the mechanism to feed-in aliens in ufoai and can we revert it? Is there a final point where we can stop this mechanism?
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One clever decision of the designers of X-Com Apocalypse was to limit the game locations. We were part of a city state. Actually our role was to protect the city. And we were paid for this by the city senate.
The city was designed in a quite functional way:
1) All buildings had to offer a certain service that was valuable to us. And infiltration was a danger because it would result in denial of the service.
2) Also we had gangs that didn't like us that much and attacked us from time to time.
3) Damage to the city or to civilians caused our budget to decrease, since it meant we are less successful.
So we can say, that the city was one great asset with many valuables.
In ufoai we have the whole world instead. What is our role as Phalanx? Are we the protectors of the world? Whom has the Phalanx to report to? The UN for instance? What assets and valuables has the world to offer? How are we "punished" when cities or civilians receive damage? Are there some natural enemies in the world that cause us trouble (but also give us items if we raid them?) Is it possible that we loose the support of some nations through, say, alien infiltration? What resources will be denied if we loose their support?
:-) Just some questions that might help us for some design brain exercise.
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Werner,
I understand BTaxis' and your thoughts regarding the difficulty of secrecy in the game.
Actually in the X-Com series the city and the citizens know about the existence of Aliens. There is no secrecy in those games. Nothing is hidden from the public. More than that, X-Com is hired by the public (by its representant, the city senate) :-)
So if we would need some secrecy in our story, it had to be justified.
In the story "mod" that I propose, Aliens have a reason for secrecy. They want to keep their endeavour secret in order to prevent consciouss human resistance. They don't need to really fight. If they have their mechanism installed, the changing conditions on earth will do the war for them. Eventually the mechanism will create a nice environment for them.
Governments also have a need for secrecy, because they want to prevent chaos and disorder. More than that, for a long time in the game, the Phalanx will not really find out what is going on. So they would prefer to stay silent about it. Only if there is no other chance, the world would be alerted. As long as the secret services believe they can fix teh problem, they'd stick to this policy of remaining silent. By infiltrating these services aliens gain even more advantage. They gradually conquer the secret services... meaning the infiltrated ones will never ever reveal any info about it and make it even more difficult to fix the problem.
Also the increasing popularity of the "Judgement Day" idea helps to support the thought that the public is not really aware of what's going on. Maybe the Vatican would be the first org to be infiltrated by aliens, because noone would get suspicious if the Vatican spread rumours about the Judgement Day.
This was the "cycle of secrecy" that I had in mind.
Hard to implement tough. But it depends on how we put the player into this cycle of secrecy. If the Phalanx' knowledge is limited to what it could finds in tactical missions, and if it reports to a boss, that prefers to keep things secret, and if at the beginning there is no reliable info on what causes the disasters, I think the player would get used to the idea that this is a secret mission.
Comments?
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One clever decision of the designers of X-Com Apocalypse was to limit the game locations. We were part of a city state. Actually our role was to protect the city. And we were paid for this by the city senate.
Yeah, and in just defending one city you end up saving the whole world by invading the alien dimension and end up destroying the dimension gate ... that sounds even _more_ realistic than the story of the original games. ;)
But i think we'll have some missions that take place in company-buildings (all over the world) and the like, but you'll not get much out of it (the company equipment) ...at least not now.
How the entry of soldiers and aliens into the map/mission will be solved is still open though :-/
2) Also we had gangs that didn't like us that much and attacked us from time to time.
Yeah, that's a nice idea, and quite possible without limiting it to one place.
3) Damage to the city or to civilians caused our budget to decrease, since it meant we are less successful.
Since destroying the terrain is not an option (no support in the 3d-engine) we'll be limited to 1.) certain destroyable objects and 2.) the killing of civilan (or friendly militars).
In ufoai we have the whole world instead. What is our role as Phalanx? Are we the protectors of the world? Whom has the Phalanx to report to? The UN for instance? What assets and valuables has the world to offer? How are we "punished" when cities or civilians receive damage? Are there some natural enemies in the world that cause us trouble (but also give us items if we raid them?) Is it possible that we loose the support of some nations through, say, alien infiltration? What resources will be denied if we loose their support?
Currently this is answered easily ... We are protectors of the world, but we are not alone ... it would be quite strange if the 'normal' militar just vanished and/or does nothing against the alien threat. The only advantage we have is the advanced technology and quality of employees we have or get from the different nations. We are mor flexible and can act on a global scale more easily (Maybe there are other Phalanx-like organisations out there, but this needs to be discussed more deeply before including it in the storyline.)
If we 'lose' the support of a nation currently the following things will vanish/change as well:
* monthly money (minor factor in the later game)
* monthly new scientists
* monthly new soldiers
* (planned) number of buyable items from the free market.
* (planned) Additional alien bases will pop up in this nation.
* (maybe) We'll even lose the control of bases located in this nation. (or at least the location is revealed to the aliens and attacks will follow)
* (maybe) This nation even tries to attack us.
Currently there are no 'natural' enemies of Phalanx out there... except for the aliens.
For the future: I added an "alien-friendlyness" factor to each nation that indicates how much support this nation will give (see above fot he influence). And this factor will be influenced by your actions and those by the aliens.
Who Phalanx is answering to is a quite interesting question, but i would vote for some sort of council of all the nations involved in funding the Phalanx project (in the beginning).
Werner
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altugi, you seem to think mostly from the basic premise of X-COM Apocalypse. There's nothing wrong with that. But keep in mind that Apocalypse is the third game in the series, and the the first two games *did* have the entire world as the stage. This game is inspired on the first game (the second used the oceans as the main area of activity, rather than the land masses). Also, on a side note, Apocalypse was originally meant to have more than one city at a time, but it proved to be too much to realize, so it was cut down to a single city.
More than one "Phalanx" organization could work in theory - one that would be backed by an extremely powerful individual or corporation, for instance. But the only globally acknowledged organization should be Phalanx. The other ones could have ulterior motives, like gaining alien technology to increase the wealth or power of whoever backs them. They might even have an interest in allowing the aliens to continue to attack citizens for whatever reason. There are many possibilities. I personally like the idea, but a lot depends on implementation and modeling capacity.
About the issue as to whom Phalanx answers to, as Hoehrer already said, the main feedback from the people you're protecting is through funding. Other than that, Phalanx is completely independent. There are no civilian or corporate "factions" like in Apocalypse that actively work against Phalanx. I like the idea of nations turning against Phalanx resulting in items disappearing from the free market, and a decreased supply of personnel. But I'm against losing bases in hostile territory just like that - that has too great an impact. Hostile military forces attacking a base is okay with me, though.
While I'm on the subject, what exactly do we mean by "nations", Hoehrer? In the general background text, we have five or six large blocks of countries. That may be too few for the purpose of alien influence, as the blocks each occupy a pretty large area of land. Maybe we should divide each into a number of "provinces", and use them as our elementary "nations"?
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BTaxis,
yes, you are right. I played X-Com 3 for many many years and it is definately the version I refer to when I come up with this ideas. I haven't seen X-Com 1 and only had a few little chances to play X-Com 2 (Terror from the Deep?) but I never could make it far in that game.
I still need to figure out what ufoai is exactly about and how it feels to play it. After all I have no concrete idea what possibilities the ufoai engine has to offer in terms of gameplay etc. And I think the engine's features and capacity mean a lot if you want to come up with appropriate and applicable story content.
So please don't worry if all my musings sound too much over the spot. At this point and level of knowledge that I have about ufoai, I think almost everything I say will sound problematic. But I hope you regard my tryings as a way of adapting myself to the needs of this project.
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Actually, I think you have a lot of interesting ideas. Some of them may not be practical given the game's framework, but at least they are food for thought. That's what brainstorming is all about, after all. Keep it up.
About those provinces, this is something like what I had in mind. It looks a bit like a RISK board:
(http://home.student.utwente.nl/f.s.fournier/world_outline.png)
I tried to keep the areas more or less equal sized, so there is no one spot "better" for creating a base than another. But possibly the lines could have been drawn better.
[EDIT] Hell. The colors could have been chosen better, too.
By the way, here (http://misserickson.com/world_outline.gif) is the image I used as a base.
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Might I ask why did you divide my country in two?(Turkey)
...or is the rumor about that they really sell Turkish maps in EU countries which make the good old bird Turkey divided in two parts,the eastern part named as Armenia and Kurdistan?
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It's a rough map. Don't split hairs.
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btw, how do you upload images to the forum?? I can't do that directly from my machine? I have to give a URL? [/img]
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Yeah. I uploaded that image to the web space I have at my college, and did a [img]. The only exception are avatars, you can upload them to the PHPBB.
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Wouldn't it be better to split north and south america into two groups?
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I read through the "official" story, and I read through some of altugi's suggestions. Even though some of them are a bit too extreme, in general I think his suggestions are good.
My problem is, PHALANX (x-com whatever) shouldn't "start" after the first serious attack, but rather before it.
IMO Mumbai could've captured a live alien (someone like Will Smith may have captured it) who was "scouting" before the Terror mission. Suddenly the whole world is panicking, and a new task force is created (or just revived - which would plug the gap of the base already being built half-way). They are so little because the response time is so small. (Best-of-the-best-of-the-best!)
However new recruits (those you can buy) should become somewhat better/elite as time goes by.
This could give you the +- month that you had in UFO 1 to do some research etc. before your first "terror" mission.
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Well, you didn't have that much time in UFO 1, especially on higher difficulty settings. Also, someone actually capturing an alien before the attack would not make any sense. The aliens operate from UFOs, so they wouldn't be able to infoltrate a big city unnoticed. Capturing an alien alive is hard even for "X-COM" troops, so it makes very little sense that a civilian would do it.
You can do it another way, though. "X-COM" might have been a secret contingency plan set up by the UN after astronomers picked up strange signals from space (this being the alien armada approaching Earth). The project would be in a stage of preparation, to be deployed swiftly should the worst-case-scenario come to pass. Which it does. As for the base being halfway done when you first build it, there is no excuse that can make it any less absurd, since you get to decide where to build it. The workers must have been able to know what you were going to choose weeks in advance in any case. Best not to try and rationalize it. It's a game, live with it.
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As far as I remember, in X-Com: Terror from the Deep, X-Com Apocalypse and also in UFO: Aftermath you are just put into a de facto situation. You have a base and a squad and some vehicles, and then there is just the prompt to equipp your squad and go to a mission since somewhere some aliens have been spotted. You are simply thrown in the situation. The games do not really explain much on how things came to this point. They went to the core of the game, the tactical mission.
Now in my opinion, in the TBS genre, as a designer, the thing that you have to care about most, is the tactical mission itself. Even without a tech-tree and a story, a tactical combats basic features should offer a great variety of actions and challenges.
Imagine you have only the tactical mission feature, no tech-tree, no story. What could you come up with in order to make combat interesting and challenging, give it twist and variety, enrich it with surprises and shocks?
You would come up with maybe hundreds of ideas. You could implement them all into one single mission without referring to any story or tech-tree.
But what if you were allowed to introduce these features gradually? You would want to introduce this features to create a feeling of increasing difficulty. In other words you would strive to create the illusion of progress.
At first you would decide on which features to keep as basic combat elements and which ones to be introduced later. You would try to figure out how and when to employ or reveal the remaining features and how this to do this in a merely dote-antidote fashion which creates the feeling that we climb onto new levels in the game. This activitiy is actually what creating a tech-tree is about. Posing new threats, presenting solutions, posing new threats, presenting solutions and so on... As you see, the tech-tree itself, already imposes sort of a story.
Embed this tech-story in a broader sci-fi narrative with a surprising final. And you have even a better game.
So we have three layers then, not more actually. Tactical Mission, Tech-Tree and Story. I strongly believe that the tactical mission is the basic layer, the fundament. Theoretically it contains all basic gameplay elements. But if we wish we can present these elements along a row of discoveries guided by a tech-tree. You could design the tech-trees quite differently and that would mean you can create different stories with the same tactical combat elements. It just depends on how and when you want to introduce them. You could merge certain research topics to shorten the game or split them to produce longer playing hours. As it turns out, tech-tree and story are rather form than content here.
I'd like to refer back to X-Com Apocalypse. X-Com had a tech-tree, which meant the designers preferred to not reveal everything at one time. They chopped down the bulk of features into smaller pieces which then would be gradually revealed. Nice effort to turn a bunch of features into a progressing sci-fi adventure. BUT on the other hand, the initial combat features were actually more than sufficient for satisfactory gameplay.
Remember the core tactical missions in X-Com Apocalypse... I mean the first few ones you were going through, at the very beginning of the game, when nothing yet had been researched and nothing had been yet really told about what was behind the story. The basic tactical mission was already rich and posed many challenges to the player. I wonder how much (in percentage) the initially presented gameplay features in tactical combat make up of the total number of tactical combat gameplay features. I think within the first "week" in the game, at least one third of them, maybe even more, were actually enabled for player use.
I argue that the basic tactical mission could have been a stand-alone one and would have been quite entertaining without any tech-tree and story.
But what made these missions already so good? For example the basic spectrum of unique and challenging aliens types we encountered: I mean especially those without guns and grenades (remember the Hyperworm for instance). They couldn't shoot, instead they had surpising features. And all of these features were functional. They were meant to exploit certain attributes of our units, their mental or physical powers, their gear, their weapons and accessories. And they were meant to thoroughly put to test the ways in which we tried to overcome AI or how we'd strived to manage the units within the constraints of game physics and environment. Last but not least they were based on simple techniques and tricks to surprise the player and make him doubt his chances to succeed.
For example some aliens had metamorphosis features as the surprise element: The Hyperworm "giving birth" to smaller worms. The brainsucker pod, rather perceived as a grenade, turned into a brainsucker. But the chain could go quite far: We were even more surprised to see a brain sucked out and our unit starting to shoot at its own squad members.Then we had an alien that was itself designed as a weapon. This skyblue alien, a walking bomb, running at us at high speed. A good example for creating shock at the first encounter. Once we understood what it could do to us, the shock turned into suspense to last throughout all missions of the game.
See how much gameplay and variety is already there... And I haven't yet mentioned the armed aliens, for example the andropod. Add now the features of the humans: What they could do, what could happen to them etc... add also the terrain and building features.
Quite a lot, uh?
What I want to say is, even without tech-tree and story, the basic tactical mission was already a high quality combat game.
Now, what I want to ask is: Do we have really investigated all our options iregarding core gameplay. Are we rushing into the tech-tree and story layers too fast? I think that the belief that we must have a tech-tree and a story to make the game better, causes us to consider the question of better gameplay as already cleared. But I think if we want to bring more interesting things into the game we should be able to focus on the nature of our engine, game physics etc in order to develope interesting gameplay features, without potential ideas being mutilated by tech-tree or story. Our task as designers should be to use tech-tree and story as supporting layers of satisfactory tactical combat gameplay. Not the reverse. I fear we could miss chances to develope better gameplay features because we think tech-tree and story will do this for us.
Let me put the question in another way: "What is the most surprising, challenging and entertaining stand-alone tactical mission that you can imagine for UFO:AI? Imagine it, but without referring to tech-tree, without referring to story. Just think what you would like to be able to do during a tactical mission. Just think what would be a cool challenge of an alien.
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Actually here I have a suggestion for the tech-tree.
I think autopsy of dead squad members could be a way to put forward certain research topics. By finding out what has caused the death of the units, solutions could be developed to protect endangered units in future missions. This could provide ground to introduce certain types of protective gear or preventives such as vaccines.
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Well blow me down. I have been known to write some insanely long posts in my time, and I'll be damned if that isn't the longest post I've seen :roll:
After reading through it, the ideas seem logical (battlescape needs to be good as a higher priority than the other parts of the game, since this is where the core of the game is).
However, I also strongly believe that the other parts of the game, geoscape, bases, techtree, storyline need to be polished too. At the expense of Battlescape? No. In addition to battlescape? Most definately.
I like your idea (to some extent) about examining how KIA squad members were killed, and developing enhanced protection based on that. However, is there a risk that players would deliberately want to get lower-ranked / less skillful squad members killed to advance research?
-PsyW
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Hehehe... writing is the only thing I can do I guess :-)
You are right, players would definately exploit the autopsy feature. But I am not sure if this is all too bad.
I used to create two "slaves" in my Sims family. They did all the cooking and cleaning stuff. And they also managed all relationships with friends. They were sharing one bad in turn and barely ever found time to take a shower. The rest of the family was busy having children and making a career :-)
In war, love and games, everything is justified :twisted:
I hope I can also come up with ideas that would keep exploitation of this feature on a certain level.
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Low-Intelligence Alien Life Forms
Alien Class:
Breeders and Feeders
(Sources for inspiration from mother nature
Pomegrenade types, moonflower types (spreading seeds through bursts), carrier types, metamorphoses types, egg-layer types, cocoon types…)
Characteristics:
-Low intelligence
-No artificial weapons and arms
-Biological defense or hunting systems with lethal impact on human bio-system
-Behavior is instinctive, They rather carry out genetically "inscribed" tasks such as providing food for their young or stilling their hunger
-They consider humans as food
Types:
Large Arachnoid
Spider-like big alien with 3 to 5 youngs on its back. Moves slowly, but fires a sticky substance towards humans within its range. Once fired, the sticky substance will slowly turn into a gas cloud that seems to be attrackted by humans. Once the gas reaches a human, it paralyzes him and enters his body. As a result the inner organs of the victim will start to melt and will be ready for consumption by small arachnoids.
It turns out that this “substance/gas†is alive. It is actually a swarm of nano organisms. It has difficulties to organise itself, so it floats rather slow. Soldiers will need masks with nano-filters in order to prevent to be paralyzed by the swarm. However they won't go away easily and will try to find access to the body, so they should be killed before they succeed to find an entrance. :wink: The swarm can be killed with flamethrowers or spraydoses containing anti-organic gas.
Small Arachnoid
They will follow the swarms in the hope to find food ready for consumption. They will bite and sting angrily, should they find out that the “food†is still alive.
Egg-Layer
The Egg-layer lays eggs at relatively quick intervals, which turn into hungry larvae chasing the humans around them. The egg-layer will continue to lay eggs until he is killed. A last effort before death will unleash 3 to 5 larvae.
Larvae
They’re hungry.
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I really like the idea of researching your KIA soldiers... However, you could research your "injured" soldiers too. :-)
But it won't be exploited if the returns are small enough.
Typically:
Just increase the effectiveness of the medikit. Which would basically mean smaller recovery periods necessary.
Or, a slight upgrade in armor against that particular alien attack.
You could "research" it everytime someone gets injured/killed and it would just be a research with diminishing returns. Eventually your soldiers will be ready for battle in hours instead of days.
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Hi !
Hey Altugi, I like some of your ideas, some I have to disagree. By the way, you seem to be quite productive ;)
First: I am one that believes that an excellent story is actually more important than anything else. The next thing in order of priority is immersion and atmosphere. Once a game gets these two right, I can excuse any flaw or bug. In fact, a tactical mission has no reason to be if it doesn't fit into a particular story. It can be the most challenging, funny or anything, if it doesn't fit into a story, it's just another tactical mission.
I know that tac missions are important, and I think that's why the first dev team started by programming this aspect of the game. Because making challenging missions in a 3D map is a technical task. Everything else belongs to the setting and the immersion ! For example I would rather have an editable log for each soldier than a super realistic physics model for the game.
Without a strongly believable storyline and techtree, tac missions are just what their name tells. On the other hand, if the mission fits perfectly in the story line, we can have great fun with a very simplistic mission. Any one ever tried to capture an alien commander in UFO ? I may have tried a hundred times to intercept a big enough ship, risked my agents' lives, developed tactics, felt stupid when the alien tried to shoot his blaster next a wall... This felt right because I wanted to capture him alive, because I had to if I wanted to have intel on the enemy.
Next : I wanted to know, are weapon stats fixed in game ? I mean, can a weapon or any object stat be changed during the game by a specific event (like a technology) without using a new model ? This could prove useful, like for the medikits for example.
"Recent firefights with the enemy left us with many wounded and killed operatives. After a study of last month causes of death by enemy fire, it has been decided to improve our operatives' medical abilities on the field. The medikits in dotation have been upgraded to a new standard, better reflecting the actual threats encountered during battle, giving better chances of survival for wounded soldiers."
Malick
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Malick,
By the way, you seem to be quite productive ;)
Thanks :) I just try to do the best I can.
I think we both agree that we have to work towards a balance of layers in design, which will turn the game as a whole into a unique experience. However, at the moment I try to discipline myself to isolate the tactical missions in order to think on them without having tech-tree and story constraints as a limiting burden on my creativity. I want to sqıeeze out more game features from the already implemented/cıded combat features. Because sometimes it is really cool how much things you can discover by experimenting with functions without yet referring to a tech-tree or a story. Regard it as an exercise with a certain layer of the game.
For example what would happen if I assign the AI of a certain enemy type to one of the Phalanx members? As player I would lose control over my unit and it would start to shoot at me, right? Well, that is a nice challenge and as players it would be something that I want to prevent from happening. I would like to have means to reverse the situation.
But how could I "stage" this interesting experiment as a believable combat event?
I could introduce "fear" as a psychologic element. Actually a simple bar. Events would increase its level and at a certain point my unit would be assigned to enemy AI. It would shoot at me for a while, but each shot would distracts a bit fear from the fear bar and eventually my unit would normalize. The AI would release it and I could control it again. I would name the event by displaying a message when AI takes the unit over: "Unit has gone berserk". This will name it and the player will be aware of it.
Another option: I would come up with an alien that causes the unit to be given under control of enemy AI. For example the brainsucker in X-Com was used to stage and trigger the handover. If you couln't prevent brainsucking, your player was controlled by (I guess) Antropod AI.
But since brainsucking has been tried, why don't we use a swarm of nano-aliens? They get into you body, and once they are in, they control the unit. Actually they are all different ways to stage the same scripted event, the takeover of units by enemy AI.
Once you have found an interesting thing to stage the event, you can further develope it. From the swarm we can reach its antitode. You can kill the swarm with a flamethrower. But trying to free an attacked unit before it is converted would definately leave it injured. So we would develope an anti-alien spray and a spraydose (haha) as a better solution. Or we would develope a vaccine and a vaccine gun that, once the unit is hit, releases it from AI control. In order to develope these devices we'd have to research/autopsy an injured or killed unit. We could also develope grenades that freeze the swarm for a while or reduce it to the sticky substance it was initially. And once we have researched the sticky substance, we could come up with our own swarm, enabling us to convert aliens...
You see, so many things from an experiment on AI use. (The swarm idea, btw, was inspired by Michael Crichton's "The Prey") My experiment with the given code, results in a quasi-story, suggest a tech-tree and is a good way to nurture story and progress in the game.
After all I think i just try to suggest a method. There will be many others and all might have nice results. The other ends you mentioned to approach design are of course equally important.
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Low-Intelligence Alien Life Forms
<snip>
One thing about this. The current alien design prefers a mechanical-based alien force over an organic one. Examples are the Cyborg Ortnok nand the Hovernet. Motivation for that decision is written here (http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=79&start=0#593).
As for the tactical missions, there will be some more stuff in there than there is now. There will be flying enemies, flight ability for human soldiers, 2x2 aliens and tanks, psionics. But don't expect things like grappling hooks or walking on walls. And, before someone mentions it, NO destructable terrain.
I think the tactical missions, given the additions mentioned above, are pretty good already. Of course, there are bugs, but there are always bugs. I think the brunt of the development should now go into geoscape, notable UFOs and UFO interceptions. Almost equally important is the storyline. The storyline is, as Malick already pointed out, what ties the tactical combat missions together into one game experience, rather than a hundred times the same thing.
So, let's stop bickering about layers and singling out things and all that other bollocks, we're not getting anywhere. Since this is the storyline thread, let's talk about the storyline in concrete terms. Take ideas for other parts of the game to other threads, please.
I've mentioned this a few times before, but one element of the storyline I'd like to see is a "The Gloves Are Off" research item, which basically becomes available after an x number of terror missions. The idea is that humanity decides "fair" warfare (as laid down in the Geneva Conventions) does not apply to aliens. Thus, alien corpses may be studied in whatever way the scientists see fit, and live aliens may be interrogated and researched in any way deemed necessary. Effectively, this research topic would open up the autopsy research tree and the live alien research tree.
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Here's a description for the UFOpaedia entry. I suggest it be included in the design docs.
#####################################################################
The Gloves Are Off
In the weeks that have passed, the aliens have attacked several of our population centers. Representatives of the major political blocks have growing increasingly vehement in their requests that something be done. Today, in a special UN Security Council meeting, it was unanimously decided that the aliens are not subject to our laws and conventions - including the Geneva Conventions. To put it another way, the aliens don't have human rights, as they're not human. Commander, you are now authorized to perform research on alien corpses in any way you deem necessary. You are also authorized to take alien prisoners, interrogate them, and even perform experiments on them. The gloves are off, Commander. Our future depends on you.
researchtime 120 days
requires <x number of terror attacks>
#####################################################################
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Reeden,
I was so intrigued by the autopsy idea, that I simply could not think of expanding it to also cover injured units :-)
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Here's a description for the UFOpaedia entry. I suggest it be included in the design docs.
#####################################################################
The Gloves Are Off
In the weeks that have passed, the aliens have attacked several of our population centers. Representatives of the major political blocks have growing increasingly vehement in their requests that something be done. Today, in a special UN Security Council meeting, it was unanimously decided that the aliens are not subject to our laws and conventions - including the Geneva Conventions. To put it another way, the aliens don't have human rights, as they're not human. Commander, you are now authorized to perform research on alien corpses in any way you deem necessary. You are also authorized to take alien prisoners, interrogate them, and even perform experiments on them. The gloves are off, Commander. Our future depends on you.
researchtime 120 days
requires <x number of terror attacks>
#####################################################################
I'd like to add a twist to this. Until the Council makes this decision, you could have a interrogation station in orbit, like the interrogation airplanes the CIA has nowadays (it appears, that Arabs are also not considered as humans in these days). The backside of it would be that it is quite expensive to run such a station. So having the "gloves off" would be a release in terms of available financial sources.
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Anything in orbit would be shot down by the UFOs in no-time. That would never work. Besides, the research topic is meant to unlock a research tree, not to make it cheaper to research.
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I like the idea of "taking gloves off". It seems credible that after a certain amount of terrors and alien's actions, the governments of the world finaly give Phalanx full power to deal with the enemy. Now, war is total and all actions will be taken to prevail. This may in fact allow the player to research some techs, like:
Live aliens experiments : better knowledge of the alien organism and may allow to find new ways of killing them (see below).
Biological warfare : a gas is developed to be specifically efficient against aliens, can be used in grenades or modified flame thrower.
Active interrogation methods : better knowledge of their way of life (who cares ? :twisted: ), better knowledge of their general intentions and plans.
Could be many more. This could be a major step in the story and the tech tree. Thinking of this, could there be a counter part, like, let's say a notable drop in recruits morale or something like this ? Or aliens become harder to capture alive, now that they are aware that they'll be tortured...
Malick
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BTaxis,
I accept it was a bad suggestion with the station in orbit. :oops:
I see that you regard suggestions about tactical combat as rather unneccesary in the current stage of development. But just to clear the issue, I never meant to "hold up" something and I am sorry if my suggestions sound like they take the project back.
Of course, tactical missions in the game are already good. I play them, and I like them. But the rest of the beta is quite empty, so I understand that geoscape, tech-tree and story have to proceed to fill these blanks.
If you think it is a better idea, I can stop talking about combat, until other game elements in the game reach the completion level of the tactical missions. Do you think that would be less distracting?
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It would happen fairly early in the sotryline, though. So it wouldn't have too many different effects. We don't want the story to progress all in one go, do we?
As for the aliens becoming harder to capture, that will happen anyway as more powerful enemies show up. I see no need to make them harder to capture after this research, especially since you CAN'T really capture them prior to researching it (Alien Containment is part of the live alien research tree).
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aliens become harder to capture alive, now that they are aware that they'll be tortured...
Malick
Maybe committing suicide when it seems hopeless to escape?
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Altugi, I didn't mean to say you should stop making suggestions about the tactical combat. You just shouldn't do it in this thread.
Aliens committing suicide? I think that's both unrealistic and annoying to the player. Besides, there might be situations where the AI considers the situation "hopeless" while it isn't. Then we'd end up with UFO: Lemmings Invasion.
Capturing some of the mechanical aliens alive is quite a task. Stun gas is ineffective, so you need EMP weapons or other tricks. It's probably hard enough already, but since there's no support for capturing aliens yet, it's too early to tell.
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Altugi, I didn't mean to say you should stop making suggestions about the tactical combat. You just shouldn't do it in this thread.
Believe me, I am relieved to hear this, since I had this feeling of guilt that it seems to you like I am talking too easy on things that others had to code for months to bring it onto this level. Ok, I'll be more careful to post in the appropriate forums.
Aliens committing suicide? I think that's both unrealistic and annoying to the player. Besides, there might be situations where the AI considers the situation "hopeless" while it isn't. Then we'd end up with UFO: Lemmings Invasion.
Hahaha... Lemmings Invasion! Cool :lol:
However, it might be not that annoying. If you know that you have to capture them alive, but might kill themselves as a final solution, it could be an interesting challenge. It would establish stronger ties between combat skills and the research feature.
It would also not that unrealistic. Since prefering death over death through torture seems to be understandable.
What I definately agree with is that the AI should be capable of making the appropriate decision. Or it will be a farce.
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Anything in orbit would be shot down by the UFOs in no-time. That would never work. Besides, the research topic is meant to unlock a research tree, not to make it cheaper to research.
Of course a orbit station would be not much convincing. What I meant to suggest was to have something that allows you to go around the Geneva Convention until aliens are announced not being subject to it. That would enhance the feeling that this Geneva thing is actually a storyline, not just a one-time event. If we accept that it would be more interesting as a storyline, then going around the Geneva Convention before we are allowed to do it, shoud have its price. You would have to run a secret place that causes additional costs and demands longer research time.
It hasn't to be a "real" place at all. Could be just a name and a figure in the finanical sheet activated by a tick on a box. The tick would just cause alien life cycle topics to appear in the researchable items list. You could cancel it at any time if you run low on money. But when you achieve the "gloves off" cornerstone, then the option simply dissapears. No additional running costs any more.
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What would be the point, though? As I said, this event should happen fairly early on in the game. It seems a waste of resources to set up a special facility when it becomes "legal" at the start of the storyline anyway.
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In combat situations, many aliens will be captured alive. The Geneva Conventions stipulate that all POW be treated fairly and given food and medication. Does this mean that prior to the "take the gloves off" event, these prisoners serve no purpose to Phalanx ? Or is Phalanx combat unit given the ability to capture live aliens only after the event ?
I'd rather say that the "Total War" doctrine gives little chance to take prisoners, in my opinion. So in the first stage of the "war", there would be a lot of prisoners, mainly foot soldiers. They will be well treated, but would give little to no intel as they wouldn't be fully interrogated. On the other hand, the latter stage of the war would allow a fewer number of prisoners, some units precisely targeted as being of some value by intelligence sevice, which would then be squeazed until they reveal whatever they know.
Malick
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What would be the point, though? As I said, this event should happen fairly early on in the game. It seems a waste of resources to set up a special facility when it becomes "legal" at the start of the storyline anyway.
The point is that it would not sound as some excuse for allowing us to research aliens, but that it would feel like an improvement in a certain matter, thus making up a coherent storyline. It will not "become" legal at start, you will "make" it legal through certain efforts.
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In combat situations, many aliens will be captured alive.
This is one hundred per cent wrong.
Aliens don't get captured - they fight to the death. It is only through special efforts at capturing them that the human forces get to study a live one. Of course, before the "gloves off" event, aliens can be captured alive, but scientists can't perform adequate research on them because of their POW rights. In terms of game effects, this means the alien research tree is not available prior to the event.
The point is that it would not sound as some excuse for allowing us to research aliens, but that it would feel like an improvement in a certain matter, thus making up a coherent storyline. It will not "become" legal at start, you will "make" it legal through certain efforts.
I don't understand what's incoherent about not being able to research live aliens until a certain event. An improvement in a certain matter through certain efforts, as you put it, is not equal to a more "coherent storyline". Sometimes, events just happen even if you don't act yourself.
I digress, though. Let's get back to your original idea, of a separate facility to study aliens in secret. This would then be a separate base with only an alien containment? People would want to base a squad of soldiers there too, since they have the base anyway. And if you have a fully functional base, well, then what's the difference with having the alien research tree right from the start? Maybe because it's a bit more expensive? That's too insignificant to be part of any sort of plot. Especially since, as I said, you will be doing it "legally" very soon after the start of the game anyway.
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(...) Of course, before the "gloves off" event, aliens can be captured alive, but scientists can't perform adequate research on them because of their POW rights. In terms of game effects, this means the alien research tree is not available prior to the event.
OK, that's what I wanted to know. Aliens can be captured, though unlikely, but they won't really be of use because of their "rights" as POW until this event. What I wouldn't like is being told that the war gets on another level, and that now I am allowed to take prisoners... It would seem to work the other way around.
Malick
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Well, on an intellectual level, you're right, of course. But I was thinking in terms of game mechanics. Since you can't perform research on live aliens, it's pointless to capture them until you can, ergo you don't. It's of course TECHNICALLY still possible to capture them alive, but as you don't have any alien containment, the aliens would be killed anyway.
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Still it is a bit strange of Earth Governments to treat Aliens mercifully at the beginning.But that may be explained with the complacency due to global prosperity and lack of wars.
Anyways,will there be a picture file for "the gloves are off" research?I think I have one for such a thing,drawn by a friend and scanned it.It is a sectoid like Alien in chains,with a grim-looking scientist before him,with a bloody tool...wait let me look up for it in the computer,sadly,the filename is freaking long....
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What about this storyline? (PsyW, I kept it especially long for you :lol: )
Note: I added a conspiracy to the initial story line.
1st event. (News) Activated almost at game start.
Aliens attack our world. Thousands of people are dead, injured or missing. UN Security Council announces urgent meeting.
2rd event. (News) Triggered x hours before our first tactical mission
Minor alien incidents reported all around the globe. Demand for specialized rescue forces increases rapidly.
3rd event. (News) Triggered immediately after completion of alien container research.
UN council decides on contacting alien leaders in order to clear intentions and to work out possible peace deal. All security forces are strictly ordered to only conduct preventive or protective actions. (Translation: No Experiments! Put that dammit aliens into the fridge and wait.)
4th event. (News) Triggered 3 days after completion of alien container research
Corps of tortured soldiers found. Officials fear the soldiers have been subject to alien experimentation. However, motives of experiments remain uncleared.
5th event. (Mission) Triggered after event 4.
Aliens introduce new weapon in combat.
6th event. (News) Triggered 1 day after event 5
UN establishes first contact with Aliens. Aliens propose scientific cooperation as first step towards peace. However attacks continue.
7th event. (News) Triggered 3 days after event 6
Aliens propose to exchange genetic maps. Scientists excited.
8th event. (News) Triggered x hours after event 7
Corps of tortured soldiers found.
9th event. (Mission) Triggered after event 8.
Aliens introduce yet another new weapon.
10th event. (Dialogue) Triggered after event 9
We are approached by a politician. After hearing latest news from the combat locations he believes that his "collegues" are too blind to see the truth about the aliens. He urges that immediately something must be done to expand our knowledge on the alien species or it will be too late to develope the means to stop them. He offers help to establish a secret Research Lab at our base. However that is all he can do for us at the moment due to the restrictions put by the UN Council. Unfortunately, all research costs will be on us.
11th event. (Message) Triggered immediately after event 10
Secret Research Lab available.
12th event. (News) Triggered x days after event 11
UN Council agrees to exchange genetic maps as a first step towards peaceful relations.
Note:Event 13 has been removed... Seemed like an distracting reminder of the torture cases to me.
14th event. (News) Triggered x days after event 13
Scientists raise concern that alien gen map could be fake.
15th event. (News) Triggered x hours after event 14
Aliens start big wave of attacks. UN Building under fire. World worries about missing UN Council members.
16th event. (Mission) Triggered x hours after event 15
We are informed that the location of the missing UN Council members has been found. We are assigned to carry out a rescue mission.
17th event. (News) Triggered immediately after event 16
Phalanx receives special praise. Freed UN Council members announce that at this point, declaring war is inevitable. Human forces are ordered to use all means at their disposal to defeat the enemy.
18th event. (Dialogue) Triggered immediately after event 17
The politician contacts us again. He announces that the lab is now legal and that research will be from now on subvented by the UN.
***
Issues: What if we fail the mission in which we have to rescue the UN council members. Or what if we win, but all of them are dead? :roll:
***
Comments?
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RolePlaying-alike Storyline.Niice.Could add a lot of spice on gameplay.
However after the 17th Event you need an explanation why nukes,enhanced with the technology of that time,aren't used.If I'd be a politician,and a UFO is attacking my capital and the situation is REALLY DESPERATE,I wouldn't hesitate to push the button.And yes I stopped worrying and loved the bomb.
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I like the idea of having a progression of the 'atrocities' story, building up to a "Gloves are Off" event. What I particularly like in altugi's storyline (apart from the length :P ), is the idea of the 'news' reports. It makes sense to me that you (Commander of the Elite Force assigned to defend earth) would have an intel officer to inform you of the latest alien related events around the world (not discovered directly by Phalanx, picked up either through civilian news sources or from contacts in UN, NATO, etc).
I think it would be a good thing to have background events shown, just in small dialogues, that the player doesn't directly experience. Example:
Heading: Intel Officer
Attacks Confirmed
Sir,
Reports of alien attacks are confirmed, thousands are dead, injured or missing in various places around the globe. The UN Security council is preparing for an emergency meeting at this time.
I'll keep you apprised.
--
However, having said this, I'm not convinced about the idea of illegal labs / research, because it seems to reduce the impact of the 'gloves are off' pronouncement. It seems like better story progression to me to build up the alien atrocities, have a couple of terror attacks and the news reports of other things happening - corpse of tortured soldier / civilian found - I like the idea of an attack against the UN, followed by a rescue mission, and then finally the message comes through revoking their POW rights.
If there is any possibility of having an illegal lab, the player should be able to decide to refuse it (maybe there's a possibility of losing some funding or something if an illegal lab is constructed and (random chance) UN discovers it).
-PsyW
EDIT:
BTAxis, I like your proposed description of the 'Gloves are Off' event.
EDIT2: Yay, I managed to post without BTAxis getting in first! My counter-intelligence system is working...
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RolePlaying-alike Storyline.Niice.Could add a lot of spice on gameplay.
I'm glad you liked it :wink:
...after the 17th Event you need an explanation why nukes,enhanced with the technology of that time,aren't used.
Your argument already opens a door to answer it. You say the things "of that time"... But, really, what do we know about "that time"? Actually nothing, we just assume that things must have progressed (have become better) beyond our current state. But a story can say that things went into a different direction.
Actually a story is not responsible towards the real world and the assumptions we nurture about it. That is not its priority, especially not since it is a fiction, trying to maintain its own agenda and put itself forward as a unique world, a world of its own. A story is in first stance only responsible towards itself and to its agenda. And a good designed game utilizes story telling techniques to suggest its agenda and prioritize certain things over others.
Why didn't we ask for nukes in X-Com Apocalyse? Because its whole game world was a suggestion not to ask for them. The game play, the mechanics, its emphasis on tactical missions and UFO interceptions, its storyline... everything was suggesting that nukes are not an option in this design. We never asked ourselves why we couldn't nuke the alien planet. Using nukes in the game wouldn't just have killed the aliens, but also the game itself.
If our game world with all its features and its presentation of the situation can suggest strong enough that nukes are not relevant to what this game is about, then noone will ask why the world in 2084 doesn't use nukes. Not even the story, but the gameplay will make us forget it.
As aristotle once said, fiction has to be real, but it doesn't have to be realistic.
[/quote]
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First, some comments on altugi's chain of events. Most of it is pretty good, but the bits where the aliens offer to exchange genetic maps and offer scientific cooperation are out of place. It just doesn't make any sense. It's not even justifiable by saying it's some kind of scheme to trick the humans, because nobody is going to be tricked by someone offering peace while at the same time carrying out attacks. So I say scratch those bits (and, by extension, event 14). Let's go with purely malevolent aliens who do not communicate except during interrogation.
Now, more generally: in the current story background, the year is set at 2084 (a no-prize for the person who knows where that came from). Technology won't have progressed that far by then. No space age, no lasers, no Scotty beaming up people. But things like the ICE giving way to something else, yeah, that's likely.
Of course, this date can be changed at any time if it is more convenient for a believable storyline, so don't pin yourself down on it. But I think it's a reasonable date - it's sufficiently far into the future to be science-fiction, and to allow for a unified earth to be saved rather than a warring one, but it's close enough for most of the human technology to be contemporary.
As for nukes... Yeah. altugi is right when he says it would kill the game. Besides, people don't nuke themselves in self-defense. They don't. Not even the most deranged dictator wouldn't do that. They'd nuke alien bases if they were sufficiently far away from population centers (like, in a desert or something), but not their own people.
But, even that scenario must be ruled out. It's just not part of this particular game. You want nukes? C&C is the game for you, not UFO.
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PsyW,
actually you are right, it would work well without the secret lab. I read it by skipping the secret lab related events and it still seemed to work.
By the way, I liked BTaxis wording too. It is a good text.
To go back to an earlier issue, I didn't mean that BTaxis suggested an incoherent text, I just meant that the text could be used as a base to expand it into a coherent story. Meaning, I suggested to reach the "Gloves Off" with a appropriate build up.
What I was unsure about was the idea to prevent people from doing alien research and then suddenly saying that now they can do it, because a bunch of politicans said that that was cool so. Somehow this was asking for a built up. That was why I came up with the secret lab suggestion and later on with that 18 events.
On the other hand, if we can research weaponry etc right from the start, then just missing the alien life cycle research topics wouldn't be such a big deal anyway. You could then prefer this event built up rather to contribute to the games overal atmosphere.
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What I was unsure about was the idea to prevent people from doing alien research and then suddenly saying that now they can do it, because a bunch of politicans said that that was cool so. Somehow this was asking for a built up. That was why I came up with the secret lab suggestion and later on with that 18 events.
Well, see, the point to that research isn't the research on aliens per se. It's just that prior to the "gloves are off" event, you can't do any USEFUL research. Scientists can take pictures of them, and say "look, it's got two legs", but that doesn't help. After the event, though, they can say "Well, we covered one in petroleum and set him on fire, and he seemed to be in a lot of pain! I suggest you use flamethrowers against this type of alien". And THAT's useful information. So that's the reason why the research tree would only be unlocked after the event.
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but the bits where the aliens offer to exchange genetic maps and offer scientific cooperation are out of place. It just doesn't make any sense. It's not even justifiable by saying it's some kind of scheme to trick the humans, because nobody is going to be tricked by someone offering peace while at the same time carrying out attacks.
Actually, I tried to use a technique often referred to as counter-identification. You present an obvious thing, obvious for the player of course, but the "people" ın the game dont seem to be aware of ıt. This gives the player a certain feeling of superioty as he believes to see something that others cant -meaning the player actually identifies with the problem against the game characters, not together with them, therefore the "counter"prefix- . But in this way you relate him to the story, because if someone feels he knows better what goes on and believes that another way of conduct is needed, then he has already adopted the problem as one of his own. Usually this will also make him want to see how the "people" will react when they have to face the consequences of their ignorance. That is usually the "I told you, but you didnt listen" moment.
Many movies start with scenes that build up such counter-identification. The aim is to lure the player into the story by making him adopting the problem. Then you introduce the hero who seems to be the only person that is aware that something else is going on, even if he doesnt know exactly what it is. But at least he is sceptical about things and this creates closeness between him and you, because only him and you seem to think in the right way. The result is identification with the character.
But in a game, that hero is already there, its the player himself. So you cant introduce someone whos already there. You would rather introduce someone who affirms your position as being a right one. So I used the politican. He is a replacement for the moment in which the hero would enter a movie.
I also thought that conter-identification would be a technique that is in harmony with the "savior" position that the player has in the game, because of the superiority feeling that it utilizes.
Anyway, I dont argue that I implemented the techniqe well. I just say that I tried to do it. 8) If you think that the "formula" is ok, then we just need to come up with some other coherent content that makes it work.
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I thinks it works pretty well if you just leave out the bits that make no sense. It's really not that complicated.
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This is the updated storyline. Simple, full of sense :wink:
1st event. (News) Activated almost at game start.
Aliens attack our world. Thousands of people are dead, injured or missing. UN Security Council announces urgent meeting.
2nd event. (News) Triggered x hours before our first tactical mission
Minor alien incidents reported all around the globe. Demand for specialized rescue forces increases rapidly.
3rd event. (Mission)
First time we go to combat aliens.
4th event. (News) Triggered x days after event 3
Corpses of tortured soldiers found. Officials fear the soldiers have been subject to alien experimentation. However, motives of experiments remain uncleared.
5th event. (Mission)
The first mission following event 4. Aliens introduce new weapon in combat.
6th event. (News) Triggered x days after event 5.
Corps of tortured soldiers found.
7th event. (Mission)
First mission after event 6. Aliens introduce yet another new weapon.
8th event. (News) Triggered x days after event 7.
Corps of tortured soldiers found.
8th event. (News) Triggered x hours after event 7.
Aliens start big wave of attacks. UN Building under fire. World worries about missing UN Council members.
9th event. (Mission) Triggered x hours after event 8.
A mission brief tells that the location of the missing UN Council members has been found. We are assigned to carry out a rescue mission. During combat Aliens introduce yet another new weapon.
10th event. (News) Triggered immediately after event 9.
Phalanx receives special praise for UN rescue mission. In a statement immediately after the mission, a spokesman of the UN Council stated that Aliens are not subject to the Geneva Conventions since they are not human. Experts say statement suggests experimentation on aliens.
***
BTAxis,
still one point I have against this explanation: Does the "Geneva Convention" make any sense here? Who on earth would ever consider aliens being subject to the convention? It makes as much sense as if aliens would say "we torture your soldiers because we haven't signed the Geneva Convention".
If we want to tell the player "now you can do reseach on live aliens", then the simplest solution is to use a game feature as a prequisite. That works better than an arbitrary explanation. For instance in X-Com Apocalypse it was put quite simple: If you could develope a means to carry aliens to the base, then you could start with research on them.
If you want it really simple, here is my alternative then: Let's only provide a ballistics lab at game start, and have "biogenetics lab" as a research topic. After completion of this research topic you can build the lab and start to research aliens, dead or alive.
No story, no headache.
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It's just that prior to the "gloves are off" event, you can't do any USEFUL research. ...snip... So that's the reason why the research tree would only be unlocked after the event.
Why would we offer useless research anyway? Don't you think the player would find this odd? Or even annoying?
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We don't offer useless research. That's exactly my point. That's why you can't research the live aliens before the event, because doing so would be useless.
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We don't offer useless research. That's exactly my point. That's why you can't research the live aliens
before the event, because doing so would be useless.
Research is useless unless it is not useful? This sounds a bit tautologic.
Anyway, if you consider this as an event almost at game start, as an informative element that notifies the player that he can start with research, then that is ok. I believe it makes sense if the event is triggered right after the first mission in the game. "Oh, I can research aliens! Cool..." and who really cares what convention allows me to use it. We understand the funtion of the event, and continue playing.
However, if I have to wait too long into the game, then things really become different. It is rather annoying if I suddenly hear that a convention that hasn't been mentioned in the game before is now lifted and that I have been granted to do researh. I'd ask why the heck I had to wait for 120 days for a merely meager explanation of why I couldn't have this thing before. Actually it could feel like it is an arbitrary decision of the makers of the game. One would think he was just subject to sort of a experimentation and it might even feel unfair.
Let's assume that the first time I play the game, it makes me happy to hear that I can do research on aliens, even if the reason why I couldn't have had it for 120 days doesn't make much sense to me. Despite the waiting for nothing, I can live with it. But imagine the same person playing the game a second time, a third, a fourth time: I'll have to wait for this dammit Geneva Convention event. If at least I would have been given a chance to make it happen earlier.
Why would you build a dam into something which obviously would have flown otherwise? For the sake of delaying it? For the sake of the event?
If you built that dam into the game stream, either give a better explanation for it with a more believable background story, or give the player at least a chance to to make it happen with his own efforts. Otherwise you just force passiveness on him.
Doesn't "unlocking a tech-tree" imply some player action that makes it happen? In the way this event is put, we don't unlock research. We are arbitrarily granted to do research. So either it should be granted right after the first alien attacks have happened, then it doesn't feel arbitrary and is just a notification, sort of a reminder to not ignore the research feature. Or, if for whatever reason you want the event to be delayed for a while, you should present it as something that can be unlocked by meeting certain conditions. Granting it after quite a while based upon an arbitrary event shouldn't be our option here I think.
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Regarding the application of the Geneva Conventions, remember the Laconia incident during WW2. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
"Now that it was apparent that the Americans would attack rescue missions under the Red Cross flag, Dönitz ordered that rescues were prohibited, survivors were to be left in the sea."
The german Kriegsmarine still applied some traditions : saving the lives of the crew of the boat they had just sank. And tradition is just what it is all about. After that event, forget your feelings, because the enemy does not seem to have any...
Malick
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How does this branche of the tech-tree develope until the event?
Biolab (default at game start)
:arrow: completion of alien container research
:arrow: event with Geneva Convention
Does it just function as kind of a notification message then?
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After that event, forget your feelings, because the enemy does not seem to have any...
Meaning, we do have some feelings before the event? I think the problem with this Convention thing is that it refers to a feeling that doesn' apply to the subject of this game.
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What do you mean? It's not about feelings, it's about a set of rules that apply to warfare. That's all. And, until the event, those rules apply to the aliens. Afterwards, they don't.
How does this branche of the tech-tree develope until the event?
Something like this:
Rescinding of Geneva Convention -> Biolab research and alien containment research -> live alien research
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Let's assume that the first time I play the game, it makes me happy to hear that I can do research on aliens, even if the reason why I couldn't have had it for 120 days doesn't make much sense to me. Despite the waiting for nothing, I can live with it. But imagine the same person playing the game a second time, a third, a fourth time: I'll have to wait for this dammit Geneva Convention event. If at least I would have been given a chance to make it happen earlier.
Well, sorry, but that's how X-COM games work. You sometimes have to wait until you get to uses some technology, or until some research becomes available. If you want it earlier, that's too bad. That's like saying you want all the technology right at the start of the game, because "why should I have to wait for it". Might as well start off the game as the winner.
Why would you build a dam into something which obviously would have flown otherwise? For the sake of delaying it? For the sake of the event?
For the sake of delaying it, precisely. You want to keep new things coming towards the player at a steady trickle, not all at once. That's what keeps the game interesting. At the start of the game, you have plenty of research to do on alien corpses, alien weaponry and UFOs. But when the first wave of technology dries up, then what? Right, then you need something else popping up.
If you built that dam into the game stream, either give a better explanation for it with a more believable background story, or give the player at least a chance to to make it happen with his own efforts. Otherwise you just force passiveness on him.
What's unbelievable about it? It makes perfect sense to me. And with that chain of events you came up with, it doesn't come out of the blue. I really don't agree with you that it "forces passiveness" on the player, because the player has a lot to do in the mean time. It's just that not everything that happens is a direct result of the player's actions. It would be boring if it was.
Doesn't "unlocking a tech-tree" imply some player action that makes it happen?
No. Not in this case.
In the way this event is put, we don't unlock research. We are arbitrarily granted to do research. So either it should be granted right after the first alien attacks have happened, then it doesn't feel arbitrary and is just a notification, sort of a reminder to not ignore the research feature. Or, if for whatever reason you want the event to be delayed for a while, you should present it as something that can be unlocked by meeting certain conditions. Granting it after quite a while based upon an arbitrary event shouldn't be our option here I think.
Okay, then we disagree on that. I think having everything depend on the player makes it boring, as the player could always follow the "best" strategy. If events happen without the playir having any influence on them, though, then the player whill have to cope with it, and that makes it more of a challenge. It's also more realistic. It makes no sense for something not to happen until the player decides it will.
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XCOM Apocalypse had an in-built solution.Remember?
If the Player has earned whoop de do-ing high combat points and score and all the shit,the tech level of the invading alien forces increased enormously.When I made over 5000 in the first week,on Sunday they came with boomeroids and disrupter guns.Just ONE week later,with devastator gun-toting Skeletoids.
When I deliberately f***ed up,next week their tech level and attack numbers were same,I could even say,reduced.
See?If you mean business,talk the talk then walk the walk,the game deems you worthy of a sped-up tech tree.
If you are a n00b,you build and learn slowly.
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Well, sorry, but that's how X-COM games work. You sometimes have to wait until you get to uses some technology, or until some research becomes available. If you want it earlier, that's too bad. That's like saying you want all the technology right at the start of the game, because "why should I have to wait for it". Might as well start off the game as the winner.
Of course you wait for things until they become available. But as long as the game has a pattern in how it makes you wait for things, its not waiting per se, its a rule. However, if the game makes an exception in its waiting pattern, then you ask yourself why it doesn't go according the rule that the game normally has. If the excuse is not convincing, then the waiting really becomes waiting. And well, I am sorry too, but its too bad that players ask themselves why they have to wait now, if waiting happens for a reason that does violate its own pattern. That is how it works in games.
For the sake of delaying it, precisely. You want to keep new things coming towards the player at a steady trickle, not all at once. That's what keeps the game interesting. At the start of the game, you have plenty of research to do on alien corpses, alien weaponry and UFOs. But when the first wave of technology dries up, then what? Right, then you need something else popping up.
IMHO, if we want the game to climb gradually onto higher levels, we would do better if we improve the balance of our tech-tree. Artifical delays do not create balanced progress. Making things pop up at the right time is a matter of tech-tree balance and integrity. You don't say, lets have an event here that denies access to the other branch of the tech-tree, or there will be nothing left for the later stages. You try to arrange the tech-tree in such a way that this dry-up doesn't happen. And you think twice before you ever consider a "outside" solution like an event.
What's unbelievable about it? It makes perfect sense to me. And with that chain of events you came up with, it doesn't come out of the blue. I really don't agree with you that it "forces passiveness" on the player, because the player has a lot to do in the mean time. It's just that not everything that happens is a direct result of the player's actions. It would be boring if it was.
See, its not that I have a fixation to kill this event thing :) It's really written nice and I really liked to write a built-up for it. And it's really ok for me if we prefer to go with it. But I say it bears its risks if you use events to rod-balance a tech-tree, but the game doesn't have that pattern in general. And you know, saying that the player has many other things to research meantime, is exactly the point why you force him into passiveness. You don't put a clause on other research, but when it comes to live aliens you say "my friend, you must wait a bit now, because we want't things to be interesting in this game."
Okay, then we disagree on that. I think having everything depend on the player makes it boring, as the player could always follow the "best" strategy. If events happen without the playir having any influence on them, though, then the player whill have to cope with it, and that makes it more of a challenge. It's also more realistic. It makes no sense for something not to happen until the player decides it will.
I don't say it should happen when the player decides it should. And I don't say that everything should depend on the player. I say you can't just decide to make a thing "not happen" because you think the player needs to be challenged now. It's not realistic at all.
First things first: If we want the research to flow in a balanced way, without things drying out, we first have to try to design the tech-tree accordingly. Have appropriate research times or a prequisites structure within the tech-tree, which create the necessary "delays" in a natural way. Artificial delays such as events shouldn't be our first option to solve this issue.
Yes I agree. We disagree in this :lol: As long as it doesn't result in avoiding each other, its not a big deal to disagree though. :wink:
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As an alternative, how about when you do get around to performing live research it provokes the aliens and leads to the next level of alien attacks?
In other words, the _aliens_ take the gloves off.
Tom
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If the Player has earned whoop de do-ing high combat points and score ...snip... ,the tech level of the invading alien forces increased ...snip....
When I deliberately ...snip :lol:... up,next week their tech level and attack numbers were same,I could even say,reduced.
This is also a nice way to create balance, challenge and rythm. Would it be difficult to write code that increases or decreases alien strenght according to the players success rate? I think the difficulty levels are already based on code with a similar function. You would need to make it more "sensitive" to player status, uh?
I don't know how it works and if it is doable, but Mattn and Hoehrer surely would be able to explain the pros and cons of such a thing.
I suggest the following algorithm:
if player reaches status x, then enable alien feature y. :P hehehe
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As an alternative, how about when you do get around to performing live research it provokes the aliens and leads to the next level of alien attacks?
In other words, the _aliens_ take the gloves off.
Tom
Nice idea.
It would fit well, in particular when we would decide to have the secret lab in the game, as the story would develope in a stimulus-response fashion. As you now can provide a reasonable motive, increased alien aggression would not bear the risk to be seen as a designer-trick to keep the story difficult.
Also, it would be a nice additional penalty for illegal research, and wouldn't just keep things with a rather typical running costs penalty.
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If the Player has earned whoop de do-ing high combat points and score ...snip... ,the tech level of the invading alien forces increased ...snip....
When I deliberately ...snip :lol:... up,next week their tech level and attack numbers were same,I could even say,reduced.
This is also a nice way to create balance, challenge and rythm. Would it be difficult to write code that increases or decreases alien strenght according to the players success rate? I think the difficulty levels are already based on code with a similar function. You would need to make it more "sensitive" to player status, uh?
I don't know how it works and if it is doable, but Mattn and Hoehrer surely would be able to explain the pros and cons of such a thing.
I suggest the following algorithm:
if player reaches status x, then enable alien feature y. :P hehehe
In moderation, this effect could work, but the game should definitely NOT adapt itself to the player in any big way. If, to put it in XCOMTurcocalypse's words, the player is a n00b, then the player should simply select an easier difficulty setting. If the game would become easier just because the player was having a setback, then where's the drive to play it safe? Where's the need to keep your soldiers alive? In fact, it might encourage players to intentionally play badly to keep the difficulty down (as XCOMTurcocalypse did, in fact). I don't want that to happen.
But if you approach it from the other way, then it could be interesting. Make the difficulty go up if the player turns out to be overwhelmingly good. But again, in moderation. On "easy", the game should be easy no matter how strong the player is.
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Of course you wait for things until they become available. But as long as the game has a pattern in how it makes you wait for things, its not waiting per se, its a rule. However, if the game makes an exception in its waiting pattern, then you ask yourself why it doesn't go according the rule that the game normally has. If the excuse is not convincing, then the waiting really becomes waiting. And well, I am sorry too, but its too bad that players ask themselves why they have to wait now, if waiting happens for a reason that does violate its own pattern. That is how it works in games.
I want to clear up a misunderstanding here. My aim is NOT to make the player sit around with nothing to do until the game allows him to, as you seem to think. Rather, I want to keep the player from being able to access the entire tech tree at the start of the game. When the event happens and the live alien research tree opens up, the player should not be done researching all the stuff he could research before the event yet. So there shouldn't be any "pointless waiting" involved.
IMHO, if we want the game to climb gradually onto higher levels, we would do better if we improve the balance of our tech-tree. Artifical delays do not create balanced progress. Making things pop up at the right time is a matter of tech-tree balance and integrity. You don't say, lets have an event here that denies access to the other branch of the tech-tree, or there will be nothing left for the later stages. You try to arrange the tech-tree in such a way that this dry-up doesn't happen. And you think twice before you ever consider a "outside" solution like an event.
You're really, really wrong about this. If this were a 4X game, I would agree, but it isn't. More on that below.
Of course the tech tree should itself provide a gradual progress through the storyline, but an outside event affecting the tech tree are plain, clean necessary in this type of game (though this particular event, I will concede, isn't).
See, its not that I have a fixation to kill this event thing :) It's really written nice and I really liked to write a built-up for it. And it's really ok for me if we prefer to go with it. But I say it bears its risks if you use events to rod-balance a tech-tree, but the game doesn't have that pattern in general. And you know, saying that the player has many other things to research meantime, is exactly the point why you force him into passiveness. You don't put a clause on other research, but when it comes to live aliens you say "my friend, you must wait a bit now, because we want't things to be interesting in this game."
It's not as if the live alien research is really holding up the player's progress through the tech tree. The technology research tree and the live alien research tree should not come together until long after the event. So the player really isn't left waiting.
I don't say it should happen when the player decides it should. And I don't say that everything should depend on the player. I say you can't just decide to make a thing "not happen" because you think the player needs to be challenged now. It's not realistic at all.
I'm saying the opposite, though. You make things happen to give the player a challenge. You make UFOs appear. You make bigger aliens appear. You make better weapons appear on the aliens' side. All this is completely unrelated to the player's progress through the tech tree (and before you argue this, it must be. Else it can and will be exploited). On higher difficulties, these "events" will happen earlier in time, giving the player less time to prepare, thus increasing the challenge (again, it's not about waiting. Time is not on the player's side!). At first glance, that might seem to be comparing apples with oranges, but it isn't. Those events, too, open up new parts of the tech tree (new weapons to research, new aliens to poke at). It's the same thing, except in this case the tech tree is opened up for free, so there's no "challenge" involved.
First things first: If we want the research to flow in a balanced way, without things drying out, we first have to try to design the tech-tree accordingly. Have appropriate research times or a prequisites structure within the tech-tree, which create the necessary "delays" in a natural way. Artificial delays such as events shouldn't be our first option to solve this issue.
Most of it will be done this way. But as I illustrated above, you can't NOT impose certain restrictions that are lifted as time passes. Because if you did, all the player would have to do is build a massive amount of labs and research the whole tech tree in a minimum amount of time. That would lead to paradoxes like X-COM having advanced alien weaponry before the aliens did. That's what I meant with my 4X comment. In X-COM games, you are always running behind on the aliens, no matter how fast you run. You can momentarily catch up, but you cannot overtake. You can do that in 4X games.
Now, with that said, there obviously will be bottlenecks, during which labs will sit idle. I'm thinking about needing a high-ranking alien commander to research, or needing to complete certain missions first. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Research isn't the whole game. The tactical battles are what it's all about, and they will be plentiful, research or no research.
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Btaxis is right.Accessing the tech tree in all of a sudden is only for a Starcraft maniac.ANd yes,the most important thing in XCOM series is,you can never catch up with the aliens (at least in weapon tech,since I had the entire Alien Dimension overrun with Annihilators in Moderate setting,no aliens could transport themselves to Mega Primus except ONCE in a week,for the game builds alien crafts at every Monday unless you blew up their factory.Still the Entrophy Gun gave me nightmares.)
However BTaxis,the game should have at least a mode or a feature which is n00b friendly.When I look back at the gaming community,very few people recognize the value of XCOM since the series had a stunning ruthlessness about them:
You were outgunned,outmaneuvred,outnumbered,outfinanced.(since Aliens were simply infinite in numbers,equipment and guns)
You must outsmart them.Well,XCOM fans do that for sure,but this game doesn't have to be a game exclusively made for XCOM fans.A bit dulling the Alien juggernaut can spawn a fan group enough to spark interest in this forgotten legendary series.
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However BTaxis,the game should have at least a mode or a feature which is n00b friendly.
I completely agree. And if it's up to me, that n00b-friendly feature is called "easy difficulty setting".
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I think Alien containment should be available from the start, but can be used only for detention as letting them die would be worse.
When built you could get a message that says torture etc. is not allowed.
Basic interrogations like Alien language and maybe the purpose of missions can be done.
After several terror missions, and the rescue mission, you can then build the Bio Lab? (Isn’t the Bio Lab for autopsies, are they not allowed?), do more “Intense†interrogations and live research.
I don’t think a secret lab would fit or be necessary as the things you would research are ether plot related and should wait or are just useful information that does not really matter.
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Hmm, yeah, good point. The humans would be interested in how the alien language works, if only so they can try to communicate and/or intercept alien messages. Okay, that means the alien containment would be buildable from the start.
I think autopsies are allowed. There's nothing "inhumane" about that. Though I haven't actually read the Geneva Conventions, so I don't think what they say about that. But for the purpose of the game, i say we allow autopsies right from the start.
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Its not so complicated and maybe doesnt need events or secret labs.
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What does a tactical combat mission produce?:
Dead human and alien bodies - anatomy, inner organs etc
Injured people and aliens - healing processes
Live humans and aliens - research behavior PLUS all the above
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Broken Equippment -research material they are made of
Equippment - research design, functions, mechanism, PLUS the above
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These we have at game start:
Container -default -enables equippment to be transported to base
Ballistics Lab -default -research weapons
Medi Bay -default -research healing processes
Morgue or Autopsy Room -default, capacity of three bodies
Theyd already allow you to
transport equippment to the base
investigate equippment,
investigate dead or injured humans, find death causes and understand healing processes - imporved medi-kit? shorter recovery times?
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In order to start advanced research I think of a tech-tree like this:
Alien Container -enables aliens to be transported to base
Due to Morgue or Autopsy room, you can research dead aliens, basic physionomy and biological structure, death causes -basics on alien life forms -enables design for more efficient weapon and ammo types?
Alien Contamination Room - You can keep live or injured aliens at the base
Due to medi bay you can research healing processes of injured aliens - increase impact of ammo?
Behavioristics Lab
-Enables you to research alien language
-Enables you to research behavior of certain alien types
-read alien documents, tap into communication lines?
-research psifare?
TBC
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Other...
Special containers and labs might be introduced... You could claim some alien weapons to be radioactive at a certain degree or whateve,r and ask for special containers and labs to research them.
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I also want to remind of the puzzle like thing that i offered for research. You can return from missions with certain body or machine parts, and only if a certain number of parts or percentage of the whole is brought together, your scientists will have a sufficient basis to start with research on them. Otherwise they face a lack of data problem. This would increase the value of captured live aliens or whole equippment since you can start with all type of research immediately. This would make stun guns and grenades more important and maybe you could even make them part of the tech-tree, as they are so important in capturing live aliens.
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Hmm, radioactive weapons? If you'd need to transport them in a special container, then what's the real use of researching the weapon, other than the basic technology involved? After all, you wouldn't be able to use them in battle (as there is no way to de-irradiate something except by waiting, usually waiting a VERY long time).
Also, one thing I'd like to mention here is the way the tech tree works. Hoehrer implemented it using reverse dependency. He claims it works well. But it basically means that once you collect one alien weapon, you're automatically able to research ALL weapons that are in the same weapon tier (plasma, tachyon, etc). You don't need any of the other weapons to research them since (according to Hoehrer) the scientists can design the weapons themselves. I'd rather require the weapons to be found first and then reverse-engineered, but right now it doesn't work that way. In the future, there may be fields that you can use to require one or more items. Just thought I'd mention it.
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EDIT: Sorry, forgot to add an intro here... I was just elaborating more on the idea of a simple puzzle type research that could change the way in which we present the research feature in the game. It's not really the point here if it works in particular in this game. I just wonder if it would change the feel of research and make me it more immersive.
Assume that an alien is made up of 6 pieces... the torso, the head, 2 arms, 2 legs. If you have the head and click research, the ufopedia reveals certain info... say on brain structure, revealing certain info on psionic abilities or weaknesses. If you find two more pieces, say one leg and one arm, they reveal some info of their own. But If you have arm AND torso and research their relation, you come up with info on, say, mechanism. If you have all pieces, then a whole body can be reconstructed and that reveals all info that can be obtained from the particular pieces + the mechanism of the whole (as single pieces wouldn't allow you to)
Then you can research types of wounds or you can observe heeling on an injured alien... and language, behavior etc on live aliens.
All this meaning, the entry in the Ufopedia would maybe have just one paragraph if you only have an arm; but the more you research other pieces and their relations, further paragraphs of the Ufopedia are unlocked. Also researching wounds could complete a table displaying which weapon causes which wounds. And researching behavior would display other info.
Sometimes not a whole item, but only the understanding of a certain piece might reveal another research topic. Like a investigation of a wound could reveal an upgrade for a piercing type weapon.
This mechanism could be nice to change the façade of the commonly used tech-tree implementation and could make the research part more interesting for the player as it requires more of his involvement. Also the outcome of combat actions had more influence on research.
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Hmm, radioactive weapons? If you'd need to transport them in a special container, then what's the real use of researching the weapon, other than the basic technology involved? After all, you wouldn't be able to use them in battle (as there is no way to de-irradiate something except by waiting, usually waiting a VERY long time).
One thing we need to clear in order to understand each other better is, that at many times I rather want to point at a "function" of something I suggest, rather than its ways of implementation (the way we stage it). A funtion, in this case, is rather a class of a storytelling/game elements and it can be implemented (staged) in many ways. For example the "villain" is a function... in star wars this function is performed by the Darth Vader character, in Seven its performed by the psychopat character. But they both are of the same class and as a function they are means to create and maintain the conflict of these stories. So a "special purpose" container or a lab as a "function" is something that needs extra research or opens a somewhat distinct research path to follow. Its implementation can be "special" nuclear weapon, "special" biologic weapon... utilize whatever you can, as long as it is coherent in itself and in accordance with the games pattern and the "possibles" of that games world.
Another thing is that we shouldn't come up all the time with what would the case in real life is. You can implement story elements or types of presentation that would ask us to forget everything what we know about real life... You can't be invisible - but Invisible Man can. See what I mean?
That doesn't mean that "anything goes", but it means "if you use certain ways, you can make it go".
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Altugi, prehaps a slighter simpler system of your idea could be used.
Rather then have an assortment of body parts that would give a mortician a headache, why not just have a system where you can do multple autopsies on the same type of alien corpse. Thus there'd be a a reason to have several corpses of the same alien.
i.e
The first time you do a autopsy you'd reveal basic information. The second time you'd have a chance of revealing more critical information such as weakness and vunerabilites. If you fail to uncover something, the chance of suceeding the next time around would increase. Once you were sucessful, the next critical bit of research would have a considerably lower chance of discovery.
To encourage autopsies later in the game, you could set it up so that certain advanced discovers would only be possible if other aliens had been significantly researched.
A similar system could be used with equipment and interrogation. Obviously the item would be destroy during the research. I think this would work rather well with weapons:
i.e the first set of research allows you to use the weapon, the second tidbit would allow you to reproduce it, and the third allow you to design weapons using the technology.
Moving off track for a brief moment:
I noticed that most of the plot/gameplay is based on the idea the aliens have already made a frontal attack. This was pretty much used in UFO Aftermath, and not recieved too well by XCOM fans.
One of the key features of the XCOM series is that the alien threat gradually built up (somewhat faster on the harder difficulty). You weren't thrust into a situation, instead you watched the situation grow and attempted to control it (initally without much success). The player was more involved because they were there from the beginning, when it was all grass roots. About midway the game explodes into full scale warfare, with the organisation having met maturity and grown to a small army.
In the finale, the aliens are on the run and the organisation is at its finest hour.
Rather then repeat the same old thing, I think attempts should be made to improve upon original ideas. Prehaps the Phalanx group can start out as a private organisation, with goals to prove that an alien threat exists and thus be sanctioned and funded by the UN. The existance of rival factions would also add flavour to the gameplay, not only fighting off the aliens but cults that wish help them. Additionally there might even be parts where your organisation is outlawed by the UN, and you're operating in secret.
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Altugi, prehaps a slighter simpler system of your idea could be used.
Rather then have an assortment of body parts that would give a mortician a headache, why not just have a system where you can do multple autopsies on the same type of alien corpse. Thus there'd be a a reason to have several corpses of the same alien.
i.e
The first time you do a autopsy you'd reveal basic information. The second time you'd have a chance of revealing more critical information such as weakness and vunerabilites. If you fail to uncover something, the chance of suceeding the next time around would increase. Once you were sucessful, the next critical bit of research would have a considerably lower chance of discovery.
To encourage autopsies later in the game, you could set it up so that certain advanced discovers would only be possible if other aliens had been significantly researched.
Yeah, I also thought of research iterations that gradually increase the number of revealed paragraphs in the ufopedia + unlock new research topics. I just hadn't it written down as nice as you did. It sounds nice.
But I wanted to go for the puzzle type version for a while, just to see what comes out of it. Somehow I feel it could be a nice way to make something different with the tech-tree... but of course it shouldn't turn into a puzzle game. However, I am not quite sure if I could manage to divide every item and unit into enough "functional" pieces... and of course another risk is that the tech-tree itself could turn into sort of a maze. I already felt it when I was writing it down. I think your suggestion is the easier way to do it and it maintains mystery equally well.
A similar system could be used with equipment and interrogation. Obviously the item would be destroy during the research. I think this would work rather well with weapons:
i.e the first set of research allows you to use the weapon, the second tidbit would allow you to reproduce it, and the third allow you to design weapons using the technology.i.e
I see, following sort of the logic of the alien research. It sounds pretty cool.
Rather then repeat the same old thing, I think attempts should be made to improve upon original ideas. Prehaps the Phalanx group can start out as a private organisation, with goals to prove that an alien threat exists and thus be sanctioned and funded by the UN. The existance of rival factions would also add flavour to the gameplay, not only fighting off the aliens but cults that wish help them. Additionally there might even be parts where your organisation is outlawed by the UN, and you're operating in secret.
A while ago I also proposed a war between two "secret services", similar to what you propose... but I think especially the motive I came up for the aliens was not quite the thing... and to be honest I just wrote it down in an hour, so it was far from being complete or so. Actually I like the "small scale organizations in secret engagement" more like the open and frontal war thing. You should give that post a read btw, I'd really like to hear what you think about it. I think its on page 2 or 3 of the "storyline" thread.
Additionally there might even be parts where your organisation is outlawed by the UN, and you're operating in secret.
Which is also a nice idea, given our storyframe would support such development in the story... Actually in a movie that would be a nice idea for the middle -the zero point of the character-. Phalanx is in such a bad situation that it even loses support of the UN, his initial partner... and from here up he it has to climb up the ladder to gain back a superior position to bring the game to a conlusion.
Your suggestions sound all pretty nice. Also thanks a lot for reading.
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<snip>
See what I mean?
Um... No. I seriously have no idea what you're talking about. How does a movie character relate to having to transport radioactive weapons in a special box, BUT being able to use them on the battlefield just like that? See, I'm not thinking anything complicated here. It just doesn't make sense.
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Additionally there might even be parts where your organisation is outlawed by the UN, and you're operating in secret.
Which is also a nice idea, given our storyframe would support such development in the story... Actually in a movie that would be a nice idea for the middle -the zero point of the character-. Phalanx is in such a bad situation that it even loses support of the UN, his initial partner... and from here up he it has to climb up the ladder to gain back a superior position to bring the game to a conlusion.
Let's go with this idea for a bit. Let's say that at a certain moment in the game, you actually lose your backing with the UN. What then is Phalanx' source of funding? How will it operate, now that it's no longer endorsed? Where do new recruits come from? What if the player wants to build a new base?
Basically, I don't see it happening because I don't really have answers to those questions. If Earth becomes your enemy, then it would feel pointless to shoot down UFOs, do terror missions and clear enemy bases. After all, nobody's going to reward you for it. And for reasons I've stated earlier in this thread, Phalanx operating "in secret" just isn't believable.
Towards the end of the game, though, that more or less does happen. Once you're at the end of the road, more and more earth territories will fall under the influence to the aliens, reducing funding and resources. This mechanism will force the player to launch the final assault on the mothership (or equivalent. We had this conversation elsewhere). I think that's important. Does anyone remember the endgame for Apocalypse, where you could just waltz into the alien dimension at the start of every week, shoot down all the UFOs and be safe for the rest of the week? Well, that's one anticlimactic endgame I definitely want to avoid. It should be more desperate, a good old Millennium-Falcon-Blows-Up-The-Death-Star-In-The-Nick-Of-Time last gambit.
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I'm not thinking anything complicated here.
No, not complicated... rather too flat. You take it too literal. :-)
Look, when I am talking of a function, which is the case above, I refer to a universal class or method that is utilized in storytelling. Meaning, not the content, but rather the form is important here. You think of a form or a formula in which content could be presented. So when I talk of a special container "function", I refer to any additional storyline, initiated by a container that has a special purpose and opens a seperate branch of the tech-tree. You don't really need to know yet what content that branch will develope on, but you just need to know that it would create a further storyline or sidestory.
To give an example of what content this function could be used for, I said this COULD BE for example something based upon radioactive elements, causing several research items under this "radioactiveness" thing... this could be used to make-up some objects, which are then fed back into the game, creating overall depth and variety in gameplay. At some point, you could allow this particular branch to dry up and soon after you could start a function that utilizes the content "toxines"... Whatever the content is, the function counts here: The special container "function" is a form that you could utilize to create many additional branches in the tech-tree... and all would result in an additional storyline or sidestory.
Usually, someone more experienced with story stuff, would rather recognize the function, than the content. And then he would start to think what potential that function has, i.e, if other content could be used to fill it. But if you don't recognize the function and go directly over to the content, chances are, that you refuse the whole function, just because you didn't like the content. It's like you are throwing away a bottle of wine, because there is wine in it. Just empty the wine, and see if you can use the bottle to fill it with something that you like. Do you understand?
So, either you have to understand what a function is, or I have to stop to exemplify them, because otherwise you ignore the function part and go over to the content... and then it seems we can't follow each other.
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And from the content thing here I come to the second problem: When you approach content, for example "radioactivity", you look at it in terms of realism. You say, it's not realistic that someone carries it in a special container, but then uses it without protection... because it takes centuries for radioactivity to dissapear. Ok, that is true.
But realism, or should I call it realicism is a problem when you approach games and stories. If you'd approach the Invisible Man story with realistic expectations, then the story is bullshit. "Come on, there are no invisible people, noone would believe such a story", you would say. But when you apply the appropriate storytelling techniques, then he becomes real... real in its own world.
So, being realistic, the radioactive thing is BS. But making use of the appropriate storytelling techniques you can make it feel real within its own fictional world. Because there the rules of the fiction exist. Fiction doesn't mean you can make up any rule for that fictional world. It rather means that every element utilized in it has to be possible in the setting that this world suggest to be real for itself. So superman is not realistic, because noone seems to recognize that clark kent is superman... just because of his glasses :-) But that what the story managed to make us believe to be true. So if you find a way, then yes, a radioactive element comes with a special container, but after that you go into war with that, without any protection, because the scientists managed to do it.
If we go to the root with this realism thing, then there is no reason even to make this game, since it is utterly bullshit. A squad of soldiers fighting aliens? C'mon, there are no aliens. But in ufoai there are, because that is the ufoai world. It builts upon this premise and makes it feel real. And when we move our unit, we don't think that it is just a bunch of pixels, illuminated by a electronic scanner a few hundert times a second... we think its our unit and call it by name. As I said, a story has to be real, not realistic.
Technically, there is nothing that you couldn't make feel real. You just need to figure out how. This is why I always say yes to any content offer and why I become especially excited when I see the function that shapes it.
You must say no, only if it feels wrong in regard to the game's world, but not if its wrong in the real world. If I forget to underline in the games design that in the ufoai world, scientist can de many unbelievable things, then the radioactivity thing get strange, because the real world calls for correction. But if in design I utilize scientists in an appropriate way for the "explaining" function, then the real world stays out. But you can also use protect-gear as the "explaining" function. Whatever solution you find that manages to deflect the questions that the real world calls, is fine.
Still not clear?
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I'd like to correct you. I never used the word "realism". I said it makes no sense, which isn't the same thing. Sure, I allow for stuff that might not be considered "real". This is science-fiction, after all. But there's only so much stuff you can make up before it becomes, as you put it, bullshit. And the radioactivity example is such a case. You can't hide behind "well, in OUR world it works that way", because then your world simply isn't believable anymore. It's the difference between a good sci-fi movie with good special effects and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The former is believable fiction, the latter is so stupid that you can't take it seriously. That's your problem, I think. You take ideas to a point where they stop being believable. It was that way with the alien contact thing, a few pages back. I objected to the aliens offering peace AND attacking at the same time because it's not believable. I objected to the secret society idea because it's not believable. But I did NOT object on the grounds of realism. Realism takes a back seat, for reasons you've pointed out. But believeability? A storyline is nothing without that.
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And the radioactivity example is such a case.
I wrote eight paragraphs to explain that I talk about function and not content. Forget about radioactivity, it could be toxines or anything else. I just care about the extra branche in the tech-tree that could be opened under any special-purpose container. We dont like wine? We fill the bottle with something else. We think the bottle itself is unnecessary, we throw the bottle away.
That's your problem, I think. You take ideas to a point where they stop being believable.
When you think of solutions for story it happens that you start with or end up at extreme points. But that is not a big deal in itself. Since it is a process. Next morning you look from another perspective and say, well this doesnt sound as cute or logical as I thought last night when I wrote it. You can always take a step back, modify, rewrite or eventually throw it all into the bin.
But you should allow people a bit to go through this process. We pose suggestion here and come with raw ideas. So talking about the ideas is cool. Its nice to have feedback and you learn from it. And you strive to make it better. But I think we really dont need a design police around that just stops us at the first minute of every creative attempt.
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And I stop this conversation now. Because its not about design anymore. Its seems to have turned into a debate of whos d*ck is longer. And that is really not what I meant to produce in this forum. My apologies to all that had to read through irrelevant messages.
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I wrote eight paragraphs to explain that I talk about function and not content. Forget about radioactivity, it could be toxines or anything else.
But it wasn't. It was about radioactivity, and you just dodged the subject. You DID write eight partagraphs about function and not content, and then believed that somehow made it better. It didn't. I don't CARE about "functions". I care about a good storyline, which is what all your talk isn't producing (except that cain of events bit, that was all right).
So, before I'm going to talk about something else, I say to you: Forget about functions. Start looking at the issue at hand. If I ask you a question about radioactivity, give me an answer about radioactivity.
But you should allow people a bit to go through this process. We pose suggestion here and come with raw ideas. So talking about the ideas is cool. Its nice to have feedback and you learn from it. And you strive to make it better. But I think we really dont need a design police around that just stops us at the first minute of every creative attempt.
I didn't mean to act like that, though it might seem that way. It's just that I have my own ideas about what the story should be like, and they're pretty different from most yours. You don't have to like that. But I'm not going to just say "that sounds interesting" when I think it's a bad idea. I'm critical. Deal with it.
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My apologies to all that had to read through irrelevant messages.
Good, apology accepted. Now, let's start being constructive, shall we? There's work to be done in the area of the alien background. What I wrote up so far is that the aliens are a warlike species who like to conquer their neighbours, but maybe we should flesh that out a bit. Earlier, Level spoke about the alien language. I hadn't considered that yet. What if we do something with that? For example, what if it turns out a bit like this (excuse the pseudocode that I invented on the spot):
[event: after alien written language research]
The aliens turn out to use a written language that is uncannily similar to the old Egyptian hieroglyphs. Though most of the glyphs are radically different, some are almost verbatim. Phalanx scientists suggest a more detailed comparative study be undertaken at the old Egyptian buildings.
[mission: Giza]
In this scripted mission, Phalanx soldiers must secure the area near the Egyptian city of Giza. so scientists may study the pyramids in safety. Resistance is unexpectedly high, and as it turns out the aliens have built a military installation in the area.
[event: after research on giza]
Scientists have made a stunning discovery. Not only do the ancient Egypian hieroglyphs resemple the alien language, but with new insights in the working of the alien language, the old texts may be re-interpreted. It seems the aliens are actually mentioned on the walls of the pyramids, where they are referred to as gods. This would indicate the aliens have been to Earth before, thousands of years ago. How this is possible, our scientists can't say, but they think the aliens must already have been a space-faring race back then.
[event: some time after the previous event]
Our scientists have improved their understanding of the alien language, and have begun to understand some of the messages the aliens are sending each other. Though most of the messages are obscure and don't help us much, it is clear that the aliens do not talk about the current conflict in terms of warfare. It seems more like business, which is a puzzler to our scientists. To find out more, we must interrogate an alien who has more knowledge of the operation than regular foot soldiers. We recommend you capture a live ranking officer aboard a Warship-class or higher UFO, so we can question him.
[event: after research on live alien officer]
The picture is becoming clearer. The officer we interrogated was not very cooperative and refused to say much at first, but we found ways to change his mind. As far as we understand it, he said the alien fleet is here for what roughly describes as "annexation". Apparently, from the aliens' point of view, Earth is rightfully part of the Antarean Empire. It seems they don't consider the current conflict an invasion. They see it as finishing up business. Together with the revelation we found at Giza, this leads us to research the Egyptian connection more thoroughly.
[insert all sorts of requirements here, be creative, people]
[event: after research on "The Egyptian Connection"]
All the pieces have fallen into place. This conflict starts five thousand years ago, at the dawn of the Egyptian civilization. During this time, the Antareans first came to earth. They found a primitive world, rich in natural resources but devoid of any useful inhabitants who could manage the planet for them. The aliens singled out the humans as the most likely creatures to rise to dominance on the planet, and decided to set up a development project.
The aliens approached the humans and, after years of effort, managed to close a deal with them. The aliens would give the humans power, in the form of technology, to help the humans grow and gain mastery over planet Earth. In return, the humans swore allegiance to the Antareans. The aliens calculated that in five thousand years, the human race would have developed far enough to be ready to serve their Antarean masters.
For a few thousand years, all went according to plan. The Egyptians rose to power, and built a mighty empire. On hindsigth, many of their cultural traits make a lot of sense in the knowledge that the aliens seedes their civilization. Slavery, for example, is a typically Antarean trait. The godlike status of the pharaos might also be lead back onto alien technology, as may the famous curses of mummified pharaos.
But the plan went awry. Rather than grow into their role as vassals of the Antarean Empire, the humans degraded into superstition and decadence. The alien technology broke down, and today almost nothing of it remains. The Egyptian civilization was overtaken by the Roman Empire, which in turn collapsed under the weight of its own decadence.
Today, there is nothing left of the legacy of the first alien visit to Earth. Nothing remains that tells us of the pact the humans made five thousand years ago. But the aliens have not forgotten. They claim Earth as their own, and they are not about to haggle.
[after this, the fight continues, and research focuses on how to effectively defeat the alien annexation fleet. Basic ideas have been put forward, for now we're going with a large mothership.]
So, thoughts?
Note: though I didn't mention it explicitly, it is implied that old Egyptian gods like Ra, Bast, Osiris, Ptah, Indra, etc. are in fact names of aliens who came to Earth in 3000BC.
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My apologies to all that had to read through irrelevant messages.
Good, apology accepted.
Silly, that wasnt meant for you :)
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I have a question in particular to Mattn and Hoehrer.
As people who are coding all the stuff, I wonder what flexibility you would allow for the tech-tree. I have to admit that I rather follow my own desires right now.
However it would be good to know better how you look at things. Do you have definately decided how the tech-tree should work (BTAxis mentioned one of Hoehrers preferences regarding the tech-tree) and is code designed to only support your recent ideas about the tech-tree, or would you/the code allow for flexibility at a certain degree? I want to know that, because you are the ones that are going to write the stuff that will make the ideas work, and its after all lots of work to sit down and do it. So ideas should meet at least the level of complexity that you want to stick with. Also the time you can afford for certain things is an important factor.
I'd like to know about anything else that the code you plan to produce wouldn't allow for...
Thanks
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As a result of an earlier discussion about that "gloves are off" thing, I think a mechanism was added (or planned) that allows for the engine to count events. I don't know exactly how it works, or if it's even in yet, though.
I said this before, but currently the tech tree does not allow for items to be necessary for a research topic. More on that here (http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42&start=30#517).
Otherwise, I'm also pretty interested to know.
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As a result of an earlier discussion about that "gloves are off" thing, I think a mechanism was added (or planned) that allows for the engine to count events. I don't know exactly how it works, or if it's even in yet, though.
the counting is implemented as far as i know - but you have to ask hoehrer for more infos about this topic.
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A small addition.After completing research in one category,we could have a human interpretation weapon.Like when we learn about plasma gun,pistol,rifle,we could develop plasma shotgun,or a similar thingy.
Or Tachyon blaster,technically a bazooka with a tachyon explosion.
and :
For a few thousand years, all went according to plan. The Egyptians rose to power, and built a mighty empire. On hindsigth, many of their cultural traits make a lot of sense in the knowledge that the aliens seedes their civilization. Slavery, for example, is a typically Antarean trait. The godlike status of the pharaos might also be lead back onto alien technology, as may the famous curses of mummified pharaos.
Stargate,anyone?No,Antareans must be morons not to monitor a tiny sword wielding empire against Romans,raiders and stuff.
I believe we should use a lost continent,like Mu,Olothae or somesuch city found in Lovecraft Books.THat dude KNOWS how to make Alien-Human relations.Fghtahn!Fghtahn!Aiyeee-Nyarlahotep!
Or Aliens could visit BEFORE the Ice Age,and lose contact during that Age.
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Remember my first post with the secret phalanx thing? When I had this story down with the aliens installing some devices on earth, I was thinking that these devices could have maybe caused the Ice Ages. Say they could be sort of cooling aggregates. (However, I could not find an idea why it was good for aliens to have Ice Ages continuing here... maybe it was a way to "reserve" the earth for themselves, because it seems that Ice Ages do not prove to be very good settings for civilizations to grow.)
As far as I know there have been four Ice Ages in the last 4 or 5 million years and inbetween there were short periods of 30-40 thousand years. But only in the last break the earth witnessed something like civilizations.
So I thought it might be an idea to say that these devices had a duration of one million years or so (working with nuclear energy? thus a chance to intoduce radioactivity into the tech-tree?), and then they have to be renewed. And this explains the few thousand years inbetween, since aliens need to come here from far, re-charge the devices, need to make sure that the installed devices work etc.
Until this last break between the ice ages it all worked well for the aliens, but this time a little problem occured. One of the species on earth developed civilizations: The humans. A million years ago they were rather ape like. So when the last group of aliens came approximatley 3000 BC, to check the status of the cooling aggregates, to their surprise they found a few civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Ganges, the Yellow River (China) etc... They werent sure how to solve that problem, but as these were rather underdeveloped civilizations they didnt smash them, but rather experimented with them a bit. Like teaching cuneiform writing etc. They thought they could control these civilizations, or they thought that these wont pose a threat, so they didnt destroy them. But the development in the last 5000 years didnt leave them any other chance than to attack humans, because these civilizations seemed to grow too fast and already started to exhaust some of the sources which were meant to be reserved for themselves. So their goal is to eliminate the human race and re-install the Ice Age conditions.
Something along these lines...
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If I might break into this discussion, I would like to make a few suggestions, particularly to the Mumbai incident (and subsequently, altugi's idea about Phalanx v Alien "Phalanx"). It has been commented that if the aliens were capable of such an attack then an uppity upstart organization like Phalanx wouldn't have a hope of defeating them. This is quite true, if the aliens were capable of performing such an attack on a regular basis. The key to winning almost any war, especially a war of invasion, is to destroy the morale of the opponent.
In short, what if the Mumbai incident was the alien equivalent of going "Hiroshima & Nagasaki†on humanity? That is, they staged a dramatic attack that they are incapable of following up in a similar manner. They had absolutely no intention of occupying the city, but rather they wanted to make humans believe that they are an unstoppable force. Imagine that after weeks of heavy fighting, as humans take back the city block by block, they continuously see mangled human corpses, destroyed buildings, flaming wrecks, but slowly they begin to notice something is missing. There isn't a single dead alien, there isn't a single bolt from one of their machines, to prove that they were actually there. What if it appeared that they weren't driven out of the city but choose to withdraw (as indicated by lack of corpses).
Now this isn't to say that in reality the aliens didn't sustain any damage, just that it appears to the public that they didn't. Indeed, it might trigger some groups to claim that the attack was entirely a ploy by the government (after all, there would be no hard physical proof of aliens in the city). In short, it would become known as the Phantom Invasion. A symbol of alien power (which opens up the possibility of Phalanx researching the event and eventually discovering that it was staged and that the Aliens can't actually throw such overwhelming might against humans). From what I have gathered, the aliens only have one (or, at any rate, a limited number) of colony ships waiting in the solar system. They have finite resources and as such are actually at a disadvantage to the humans, who have all the power of a race to throw against the invaders.
The aliens know that they don't have the "manpower" to actually occupy the ground, so they have to make the humans think that they have already lost. Basically, the aliens know that humans will win the war by not loosing (that is, as long as humans are around resisting, then we are winning). This can still preserve the feel of an escalating combat system (as with X-Com), where the aliens are trying to establish a foothold with limited resources in order to amass the materials necessary to increase their robotic army, while preserving the original “they’ve bombed m’bai!†color.
Additionally, in this future world, it sounds like the world's military has been left to atrophy. Peacetime generals are incompetent enough as it is, but a fighting force that hasn't seen heavy combat in decades isn't capable of picking it up at the drop of a hat. Add to that the fact that militaries always prepare of the last war (such as France building the world's largest trench system right before WWII) and humans wouldn't really have a hope of a full scale military reaction.
Besides, how does one mobilize a limited fighting force to defend every human settlement? The military would protect major cities, key strategic points, but you'd still need a highly mobile reactionary force to defend everyone else. Thus, Phalanx. It wouldn't be designed to fight a traditional war with the aliens. Indeed, it isn't even David and Goliath syndrome; it would be mosquito and goliath. Phalanx wouldn't see that it has the ability of actually defeating the enemy, but it could distract it enough so as to give humanity time to think of something. They don’t plan to drive the aliens back by brawn but rather by brain.
Since it was brought up, in this world of 2084 where peace rules doubleplusgood, wouldn't all nuclear weapons have been disarmed and stored? Indeed, even assuming some of them could be rearmed, they would be in such a sorry state of condition that they would be more of a threat to humans trying to use them than Aliens. Depending on if Fission power is even still used, producing more nuclear warheads could take such resources and time as to be totally impractical.
As for Phalanx itself, if it was up against such an overwhelming enemy, it seems like its goal wouldn't be so much as to defeat the enemy, but to find out how to beat the enemy (different focus). This does include protecting innocents from terror attacks and preventing governments from being infiltrated (in classic X-Com style) but each action is taken with the intent of determining enemy weaknesses, not so much killing the enemies. Indeed, I would expect that as soon as Phalanx discovers new technology that that information would be passed along to the military and that it would see all sorts of field action. Some people have wondered about its role in the world prior. Perhaps I missed it, but why should it even exist prior? Some form of it is good, perhaps the U.N. had passed the "Phalanx Protocols" decades ago but they were never implemented (like so many UN resolutions). After the attack on Mumbai, or maybe after the first alien appearance 3 days earlier, the Phalanx Protocols were thrown into effect. Within hours, certainly within days, a commander had been selected and it began to operate out of established military bases until its own structures could be built. Since after the Mumbai incident humanity would need a morale boost, whoever Phalanx reports to wanted a symbolic victory and fast. That commander failed and was replaced (sort of like in the Civil war, with Lincoln going through generals like bread). Thus where the player picks up Phalanx has been in existence for a little while, its first base is ready to be built, but it has yet to score a victory (and the player has to get one soon or fail).
Indeed, since the need for a human victory is so critical, other organizations like Phalanx might be formed by other groups. Perhaps the riches individuals in the world pool their resources to create “X-Com†(as a reference to the spiritual parent of UFO:AI, which should be within fair use laws) or “Ex-Calibur.†Perhaps private states formed similar units to specifically protect their territory. These organizations might occasionally help Phalanx, but they could also be infiltrated (it might be interesting to have missions where the enemies are actually human turncoats).
Curiosity, but how long have the aliens been watching earth? 5,000 years is not old enough (humans had technology well before then). Indeed, Egypt has been “civilized†in one form or another for about 12,000 years. However, f we went with a multi-millennium time line, then were could throw in Chariots of the Gods mythos and include “archeological†missions were Phalanx has to find and retrieve certain alien storage devices hidden in the Sphinx, Pyramids, the Mediterranean, Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Aztec temples, Templar Churches, etc. That is, the aliens were here, but they also left information storage devices (as well as other devices of power) that humans can use to further their understanding of the aliens. This would be more than just a single mission or two to establish the Egyptian connection (though a more mythological connection might be advisable, such as Atlantis being a floating alien city or some such, from which they influenced the Egyptians, rather than being in Egypt itself). Sort of like the artifact missions in TFTD, but focusing on search and retrieval rather than search and destroy. Such mission might even open up research avenues, and it might also diversity the sort of people working in Phalanx to include more than just “scientists†and “engineers.†You might need “Historians/Archeologists†to point you in the right direction for finding these artifacts and “Linguists/mathematicians†to crack the alien language and to encrypt your own messages in greater complexity (because the aliens would be trying to do the same, right?)
But as for the aliens finishing “business,†don’t forget that under the Egyptian connection they only made plans with one part of humanity. They might be finishing up business, but they are also taking care of usurpers. Those uppity Greco-Romans, those savage Germanics, Sumeria and Persia, China and the Americas, they aren’t under such a contract. If we want an earlier connection, personally I would recommend a more passive role in human history. They were here to research the planet, find out if it was even worth keeping on their star charts. Besides, from what I have gathered about these aliens, would they have even bothered making a deal with humans? They believe that they are superior, and as such they may well believe that Earth is theirs by divine right and that subservience is the natural state of all other species (including humans). Or perhaps they are all just Xenophobes.
And finally (to make a long, disconnected post longer and more chaotic), in terms of alien technology, would it be possible to design similar but alternate variations on the weapons? One thing I never liked about X-Com was that humans only advanced through mimicry. Oh they got lasers/gauss weapons, but then there were plasma/sonic and for all of humanities supposed creativity, they weren’t improved upon. While human interpretations of weapons (like the above mentioned plasma shotgun or Tachyon bazooka) might be interesting, adjusting weapon stats to fit humans would still be a nice touch. That is, let us say that physically the aliens are fairly weak, thus an alien rifle has to be lighter than a human could carry. As such, it is less powerful. The human version would be more powerful but perhaps the greater power would affect recoil/accuracy. A basic pallet swap would allow for the same models to be used for both but with an easily recognizable difference. Also offers players a little more in terms of choice, “mmm… these aliens are tough, so the Tachyon Rifle H would be nice, but those nasty Crystalides that are with them are just to scary to risk missing… guess I will have to go with the Tachyon Rifle A.â€Â
I do really like XCOMTurcocalypse’s suggestion of a Lovecraftian theme, but I am not sure how we’d even go about implementing it.
Just a,
Thought
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Plus the explanation why aliens forgot to destroy us during the WWII,or earlier before we ruined the ecology.Visiting Egyptians and forgetting to monitor human expansion is just plain stupid.
I suggest an ancient city built deep within the Ural Mountains which got ruined during the Ice age.
Other ideas:
Mariana Rift (Alien city)
Mount Vesuvius (Alien city)
The Labyrinth of these Greek dudes (children brought in are used as Test subjects in the Laboratory deep within Labyrinth.Minotaur was a droid with a shell resembling a bull to scare humans and carried the children to the Lab,Theseus learned and used EMP grenade on Minotaur.EMP Grenade is carried in our culture as a mythical Ariadne's Clew.)
Hittite Ziggurats (Alien-Human city)
the place where the Legend of Beowulf took place.(once again,a human fights against an alien)
An underground base in the Temple of Zeus (Alien Human Town)
Northern Korea (maybe thats why they are isolating themselves)
A set of caves within the Himalayan Chains.Tibetian Monks tried to keep some Aliens inside the caves asleep,and a secret to the outside world.But after some missions,Dalai Lama comes and tells you this secret.Good for some VERY dark,deep cavern missions.
Dark side of the Moon (not the album)
Sun's core,the Big Spot on Jupiter or at least Earth's core (uh...ok I'll go to sleep)
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A problem we might face when we have many unique locations is that, accordingly, we would need the unique maps for them. If there are enough skilled people in this project that can do mapping and can also add the significant landmarks to the maps + the appropriate landscape design and interior design, then it is not a problem.
But we should also think of the worst case scenario in which we don't have these mappers and have to stick with the current maps, which are mostly "neighborhood" maps.
Somehow I think it would be good to have a plain stand-alone story that works fine with the current assets. And we should design the special events and mission in such a way that they are like modules that can be added onto the plain storyline, rather being an essential part of it right from the start. Otherwise we face risk that the story gets bound to content that simply can't be realized due to lack of means in the dev team.
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Plus the explanation why aliens forgot to destroy us during the WWII,or earlier before we ruined the ecology.Visiting Egyptians and forgetting to monitor human expansion is just plain stupid.
Hm, yeah, true. Though you could make up any number of reasons why the monitoring force (supposing there was one) would be recalled. Civil wars, etc. It may sound a little too convenient, though, so maybe we'd better not do something like that. Believeablility again.
But let's reverse the situation. Let's say the aliens DID post a guard dog. And let's say this guard dog noticed how humanity was progressing a little too rapidly for comfort (after all, humans really haven't progressed much technologically until the last two centuries or so. It was all swords and sticks from ancient history all the way up to the middle ages). The alien fleet that's attacking Earth in the game would be a contingency force, meant to stamp us back into the stone age. How's that?
By the way, I don't know Stargate. If my scenario resembles it, it's pure coincidence.
Thought, about the Egyptian civilization, they might have been civilized 12,000 years ago, but the pyramids and other structures didn't get built until after 3000BC (based on this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/timeline.shtml). That's mainly the reason why I picked that period. I also considered other peoples, like the Incas, but they're not as romantic.
I like the idea of the aliens trying to make themselves appear more powerful than they actually are. It would fit in with the contingency idea I described in this post, too, BUT we'd have to get rid of alien FTL. Consider the watchdog sending off the alert in, say, 1800AD. The task force would then be dispatched with something like Victorian England in mind. But what they find as they arrive 280 years after the alert was sent is an organized, advanced civilization. It's not an option to call for reinforcements, so the aliens try to suppress the humans by winning a psychological victory.
Not going into the rest of your post in detail, but you make some really good points in there. Though you have to allow for at least some far-fetchedness, because the player still has to Save The World(tm). It's not much fun if you're playing the distraction.
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A problem <snip> dev team.
This is absolutely true. If we are to build up the storyline in a modular way like that, though, then we'll inherently lack story arc integrity. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, this game is more than story alone. But let's give it a try.
So, for the basic storyline framework we have:
- building bases
- responing to UFOs, terror missions, alien bases
- mimicking alien weaponry and, possibly, modifying their designs
- once powerful enough, big showdown. Possibly at alien mothership or moonbase.
Did I miss anything?
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If we are to build up the storyline in a modular way like that, though, then we'll inherently lack story arc integrity.
Yeah, integrity of later modules would be a major problem. But it's worth a try since it would make life easier for coders (and almost anyone else) I believe. If we have a plain story that works with the current codebase, chances are that we can go for modules that re-use this base or require only little code from scratch... unique storylines with unique content would be quite coder-friendly and would rather require the efforts of artists, since once the assets are finished, they work with the same code.
Actually what came now in my mind is, that you could have a group of modules, but that the players decisions during the plain story, would determine which modules are activated into the game. You could play many game sessions and still there would be some new modules (or storylines to discover) ;-)
Did I miss anything?
We have basic soldier stats
An event scheduler...
ummm, what else??
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We're having difficulty coming up with ONE decent storyline. I don't think we should be considering multiple ones at this point.
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So do you think it could work like this:
Plain story: a game mostly based on "neighborhood rescue" type tactical combat and Ufo interceptions, until the point where the player finds the alien mothership on the dark side of the moon (the source of all enemy attacks). Tech-tree research reveals already an important part of basic story elements like what the aliens are like, what weapons and technology they use etc. Also basicly we know that Phalanx reports to the UN and goes to special missons to rescue civilians, rather than engaging in the battlefield. So we need something very simple that does not exceed the possibilities that we have at hand.
Modules: They COULD have
-their own stories, which add something to the plain story and gives it depth... like revealing something about the backstory of the aliens interest in our planet (but still without any modules, the plain story should makes sens)
-branches unlocked in the tech-tree, that reveal unique research items and eventually introduce this items for use... these would add depth to the tech-tree and the different arrays (weapons, vehicles etc) we have already at hand... but even without the unique items, basic array is sufficient to maintain the plain story.
-New unique units dicovered(?)... new types of aliens, some of them even just one-shot types, that dissappear after the particular module is played to end
-new types of base facilities in order to hunt down the mystery of that particular module... say the Egypt module would start with a mission where you discover something about language, but the follow up would require a linguistics lab, from here you would be able to research a parser or whatever...
Following the coder-friendly approach, many assets part of module could be also re-used in other modules with little modification... like once you have a parser or whatever, it can be utilized in another module... that other module would require you to research an upgrade for the parser...
Also chance is, that we could create "hybrid" modules that are based on two former modules, but which have their own outcome.
Options seem to be plenty.
I think we REALLY need Mattn and Hoehrers feedback for this...
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We're having difficulty coming up with ONE decent storyline. I don't think we should be considering multiple ones at this point.
Yeah, first plain story...
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Plain story: a game mostly based on tactical combat and Ufo interceptions, until the point where the player finds the alien mothership on the dark side of the moon. Tech-tree research reveals already an important part of basic story elements like what the aliens are like, what weapons and technology they use etc. Also basicly we know that Phalanx reports to the UN and goes to special missons to rescue civilians, rather than engaging in the battlefield.
Yes, this is the basic premise. Now we'll have to flesh it out. If we disregard the whole thing about aliens having to Earth before for a moment (more thought needs to go into that), we have the Gloves Are Off event as part of the ongoing storyline. Not a big part, but it's something that will fit regardless, I think. What else can we think of? Weapon technologies. there's been some thinking about that, but the weapons that are being added to the game have nothing to do with the proposals. Yes, we need mattn and Hoehrer on this one. What else? We have aliens taking over governments, possibly as a result of the regular army failing. We have aliens building bases. Maybe a stage of the game where you have to destroy a certain number of bases to gather required intel? We don't have a fixed endgame yet. Proposed are moonbase or mothership, but we have maps for neither. Perhaps an earth-based cannon that is to blow up the mothership? Not believeable. Plus we don't have a map for that.
So... Other than weapon and alien descriptions (those will come along eventually), what can we do to fill up the elementary storyline?
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We have then:
-basic premise
+
-aliens taking over governments
-We have aliens building bases (Do we?)
+ event scheduler
We don't have a fixed endgame yet.
Big problem.
But a much bigger problem is to make up an endgame for something that has only neighborhood maps at hand. It seems to be a hard task to find a final that has to be played on a neighborhood map and still would be believable enough to represent the defeat of the aliens :roll:
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what different terrain options do maps have right now? can we use the mapping tools you mention in the tutorials to modify maps, so that we could at least create some sort of variety depending on which spot on earth tactical combat takes place? say, we have snow for a mission in scandinavia and canada, lots of vegetation in a mission in the amazone, desert for missions in egypt?...
is it dificult to have code of an invisible grid that chooses the appropriate terrain according to the spot where the mission is going to be? or do we have something like this already implemented?
I ask the same for architectural elements... do the mapping tools give us chances to implement different architectural styles? Or does that need also support of modellers or texture artists?
I think in X-Com you had 40 unique buildings... alien incidents happened in these building based on random selection I think. That was quite a lot to keep variety in the game, even if missions were basically the same.
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I haven't been able to get the beta to run on my computer yet, but it seems like it would be relatively easy to turn a human neighborhood into an alien city/ship. That is, aliens need buildings too and we could add the details in the texture and skins of the buildings, while keeping the same models (or so it seems). Heck, a simple invert of colors could make for an unusual location (until players realize it is only an invert). Even at that, however, given the limitations of what is actually implemented so far, some of the storyline will have to reference things that aren't present. Intercepting UFO's for one (random side note, it would be really cool if it were possible to board a UFO in flight, but that is a thought for a different time).
How is the majority of the story to be revealed? In X-com it was mostly through the Ufopedia. You didn't really have to engage in the story line if you didn't want to. However it appears that popup message windows have already been added to the game (at least, I think it has) so part of the story could be revealed in that manner. Assuming we have both options, it might be best to have a bare bones story progression in the message windows, with greater detail presented in the Ufopedia. I would expect that there would be entire research branches that only really provide information, rather than practical benefits.
Thus, ignoring the Ufopedia side of the storyline for now, it appears that the messages that will add to the story currently are:
1) Introduction (assuming the story begins with the player assuming supreme command of Phalanx)
2) Gloves Off (The Geneva convention really is nonsensical as applied to non-humans, but given the world culture of 2084 we could just play off of basic human decency instead).
3) Something unknown, possibly several somethings.
4) End Game event.
If I may fill that in a little from the X-com story.
3a) Nature of Alien Threat (what are their short term goals)
3b) Source of Alien Threat (where, generally, are the aliens coming from: Earth, Near Earth, Solar System, Extra-Solar, Interstellar, etc)
3c) Specific Source of Alien Threat (where specifically in the solar system, so an attack could be launched)
3d) Preparations (discovering the tech necessary to reach the alien source)
3e) Specific assault plan developed (basically, when the attack is possible, you'd still need a plan of what you're doing when you get there)
4) End Game event (currently alien city, be it on the moon or in a space ship, seems most probable)
There is also the possibility of throwing in discoveries of what, exactly, the aliens want from earth, and the relation between the different sorts of foes that the player faces. Of course, that has been done before so we'd want to expand on it and add intrigue.
Given that the aliens appear to use tachyon technology, it can be assumed that they are capable of very limited FTL travel (tachyons travel between 1 and 1.5 x the speed of light, if I recall). As such, the aliens can't expect reinforcements for a while (though they will be coming, possibly in 100 years or some such). Since their army is mostly machines, they might even be mining other planets in the solar system for their resources (which humans would eventually discover).
Anywho, just a
Thought
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As far as getting the plain storyline together, how about we brainstorm the individual bits seperately. That is work out some possible reasons for the Aliens invading, work out some possible scenarios for how the Phalanx has come into existance and why the player is running it etc.
so the 'modules' of the story would be:
Reason for Invasion
Phalanx Birth
Phalanx Duties
Complications - the various conflict the player encounters.
ENDGAME - how we stopped the invasioned.
Reason for Invasion:
Annexation (as sugested earlier)
Warmongering (taking other people's stuff by force)
Searching for some artifact (There's something on earth that they want)
Hunting someone (there's an alien on earth that these aliens want)
Phalanx Birth
UN planned for it, and finally needs it.
Private Organisation that goes paramilitary
Secret Organisation that comes out of the closet
UN agency that gets 'rennovated' once the threat becomes real
Phalanx Duties
Stop the alien invasion
Save civilians
Protect the earth
Carnage and mayhem.
Develop tech.
Phalanx Conflict
Rival organisations
Peacemongering (somebody wants to do it diplomatically)
Outlawed Activities.
Funding cuts.
Biohazards.
ENDGAME
Deus Ex (we get a more powerful alien race to help us)
Negotiation ( we talk our way out of it)
Heroics (nuke 'em)
Cunning (biological warfare)
A rather ingenious plot I think would be for the Phalanx to start out as a private committee formed by an Anonymous Benefactor. The player is the committee's leader. You're given goals by the benefactor, and get bonuses for completing them. Evenutally you'd be come a UN sanctioned organisation. Before that, you'd have the option of convince countries to privately fund you.
You could work some interesting ideas, such as having the first goal of the phalanx being to PROVE the existance of aliens & UFO by capturing one. Having the UN explode in you face after finding out what you'd be doing, and my favourite:
The anonymous benefactor being some intelligent alien that the Antareans are after and we were setup to protect him (unbeknownst to us).
As for a more plausible theory on aliens seeding earth. What they were responsible for sending bacteria to earth to make it fertile. and the SETI project let them know that the planet was ready for colonisation.
The idea that the aliens would make a once off attack needs to be carefully thought out. Why attack unless they thought they'd be sucessful. Why only one main attack. Why not a bigger army. Why there and somewhere else.
As for setting goals, I'm sure we can use the UFOpaedia to that effect as done in XCOM.
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<snip> how about we brainstorm the individual bits seperately. <snip>
Cool. :)
Below is a summary of what has been posted in the last few days. I cut and pasted the relevant parts together... Let's see if we can work out a core plain storyline.
What the engine supports
Basics
What we have
-a message system that reports nearly everything that happens to Phalanx&the world. These things currently are mostly static (see below for the future plans)
-A research system that you all know from the original games (not quite finished, but it'll get better)
Planned
-The Ufopedia currently contains information about 'items' such as weapons/aliens/technologies but it will be extended to display "plot-points" and certain news.
-a pre-defined event-system where you can define certain plot-devices at a certain time with dependencies on prior encountered/researched/etc.. things or events.
-'news' reports. you (Commander of the Elite Force assigned to defend earth) would have an intel officer to inform you of the latest alien related events around the world
-background events shown, just in small dialogues, that the player doesn't directly experience
Mechanisms
system to feed-in new enemy squads
Ufo Interceptions + aliens building bases + human enemies(natural or as result of infiltration)
create/result in...
1) tactical missions in buildings, neighborhoods, alien bases, own base
2) tactical missions in alienships that we succeeded to shoot down
3) Infiltration that causes human organizations to attack us
What does a tactical combat mission produce?:
Dead human and alien bodies - anatomy, inner organs etc
Injured people and aliens - healing processes
Live humans and aliens - research behavior PLUS all the above
Broken Equippment -research material they are made of
Equippment - research design, functions, mechanism, PLUS the above
Soldier stats
an editable log for each soldier
Objects etc
weapon or any object stat be changed during the game by a specific event (like a technology) without using a new model ? This could prove useful, like for the medikits
The functions of the world and its regions
1) All regions have to offer a certain goods and service that are valuable to us. infiltration results in denial of these goods and service.
2) Rival organizations or human enemies attacking us from time to time.
3) Damage in these regions or civilian losses cause our budget to decrease or sympathy towards aliens to increase (making infiltration easier)
support of a nations currently the following things will vanish/change as well:
* monthly money (minor factor in the later game)
* monthly new scientists
* monthly new soldiers
* (planned) number of buyable items from the free market.
* (planned) Additional alien bases will pop up in this nation.
* (maybe) We'll even lose the control of bases located in this nation. (or at least the location is revealed to the aliens and attacks will follow)
* (maybe) This nation even tries to attack us.
nations turning against Phalanx resulting in items disappearing from the free market, and a decreased supply of personnel
bases
ways of building facilities
Tech-Tree
-puzzle type research
-research iterations that gradually increase the number of revealed paragraphs in the ufopedia + unlock new research topics
AI
aliens prefering death over death through torture
-difficulty levels which are "sensitive" to players skills
--Make the difficulty go up if the player turns out to be overwhelmingly good.
General Story Structure
Reason for Invasion
Annexation (as sugested earlier)
Warmongering (taking other people's stuff by force)
Searching for some artifact (There's something on earth that they want)
Hunting someone (there's an alien on earth that these aliens want)
to "stage" a climatic change
Phalanx Birth
UN planned for it, and finally needs it.
Private Organisation that goes paramilitary
Secret Organisation that comes out of the closet
UN agency that gets 'rennovated' once the threat becomes real
Introduction (assuming the story begins with the player assuming supreme command of Phalanx)
The military would protect major cities, key strategic points, but you'd still need a highly mobile reactionary force to defend everyone else. Thus, Phalanx.
the U.N. had passed the "Phalanx Protocols" decades ago but they were never implemented (like so many UN resolutions).
After 9/11, the worlds secret services, led by the USA, decided to fight Terrorrism on a global scale and established a Global Intelligence Service, also knows as "Sector 911". Sector 911 was an umbrella organization that combined the databases and resources of almost all the secret services of the world in order to maintain global intelligence and to conduct counter-strike activities against enemies. In 2027 a report titled "The Possibility of Extra-Terrestial Terror" resulted in fear and paranoia amongst the leaders of "Sector 911". They decided to set up a unit that would prepare for a fight against such Extra-Terrestrial Terror. As a solution, they came up with the idea to integrate Phalanx into "Sector 911" and give a Elite Force into its command.
Phalanx Duties
Stop the alien invasion
Save civilians
Protect the earth
Carnage and mayhem.
Develop tech.
Research the enemy
As for Phalanx itself, if it was up against such an overwhelming enemy, it seems like its goal wouldn't be so much as to defeat the enemy, but to find out how to beat the enemy (different focus).
This does include protecting innocents from terror attacks and preventing governments from being infiltrated (in classic X-Com style) but each action is taken with the intent of determining enemy weaknesses, not so much killing the enemies.
Indeed, I would expect that as soon as Phalanx discovers new technology that that information would be passed along to the military and that it would see all sorts of field action.
-Nature of Alien Threat (what are their short term goals)
-Source of Alien Threat (where, generally, are the aliens coming from: Earth, Near Earth, Solar System, Extra-Solar, Interstellar, etc)
--Given that the aliens appear to use tachyon technology, it can be assumed that they are capable of very limited FTL travel
-Specific Source of Alien Threat (where specifically in the solar system, so an attack could be launched)
-Preparations (discovering the tech necessary to reach the alien source)
-Specific assault plan developed (basically, when the attack is possible, you'd still need a plan of what you're doing when you get there)
researching your KIA soldiers
Live aliens experiments
Active interrogation methods
--needing a high-ranking alien commander to research
or needing to complete certain missions first in order to start certain research
Complications - the various conflict the player encounters.
Rival organisations
Peacemongering (somebody wants to do it diplomatically)
Outlawed Activities.
Funding cuts.
Biohazards.
the Phalanx [is a] private committee formed by an Anonymous Benefactor. The player is the committee's leader. You're given goals by the benefactor, and get bonuses for completing them. Evenutally you be come a UN sanctioned organisation. Before that, you have [to] convince countries to privately fund you.
the first goal of the phalanx [is] to PROVE the existance of aliens & UFO by capturing one. Having the UN explode in you face after finding out what you'd be doing,
discoveries of what, exactly, the aliens want from earth, and the relation between the different sorts of foes that the player faces.
Perhaps private states formed similar units to specifically protect their territory. These organizations might occasionally help Phalanx, but they could also be infiltrated (it might be interesting to have missions where the enemies are actually human turncoats).
organisation is outlawed by the UN, and you're operating in secret
aliens trying to make themselves appear more powerful than they actually are
ENDGAME - how we stopped the invasion.
Deus Ex (we get a more powerful alien race to help us)
Negotiation ( we talk our way out of it)
Heroics (nuke 'em)
Cunning (biological warfare)
good old Millennium-Falcon-Blows-Up-The-Death-Star-In-The-Nick-Of-Time last gambit
The anonymous benefactor is some intelligent alien that the Antareans are after and had us set up to protect him (unbeknownst to us).
aliens {were] seeding earth and the SETI project let them know that the planet was ready for colonisation
How to reveal story
bare bones story progression in the message windows, with greater detail presented in the Ufopedia.
Modules
General mechanism and structure of modules
Modules: They COULD have
-their own stories, which add something to the plain story and gives it depth... like revealing something about the backstory of the aliens interest in our planet (but still without any modules, the plain story should makes sens)
-branches unlocked in the tech-tree, that reveal unique research items and eventually introduce this items for use... these would add depth to the tech-tree and the different arrays (weapons, vehicles etc) we have already at hand... but even without the unique items, basic array is sufficient to maintain the plain story.
-New unique units dicovered(?)... new types of aliens, some of them even just one-shot types, that dissappear after the particular module is played to end
-new types of base facilities in order to hunt down the mystery of that particular module... say the Egypt module would start with a mission where you discover something about language, but the follow up would require a linguistics lab, from here you would be able to research a parser or whatever...
-module related events
players decisions during the plain story, would determine which modules are activated into the game resulting in different game story depending on content of triggered modules.
suggestions for modules to implement
Chariots of the Gods mythos and include “archeological†missions were Phalanx has to find and retrieve certain alien storage devices hidden in the Sphinx, Pyramids, the Mediterranean, Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Aztec temples, Templar Churches, etc. That is, the aliens were here, but they also left information storage devices (as well as other devices of power) that humans can use to further their understanding of the aliens.
Sort of like the artifact missions in TFTD, but focusing on search and retrieval rather than search and destroy.
Such mission might even open up research avenues, and it might also diversity the sort of people working in Phalanx to include more than just “scientists†and “engineers.â€Â
You might need “Historians/Archeologists†to point you in the right direction for finding these artifacts and “Linguists/mathematicians†to crack the alien language and to encrypt your own messages in greater complex
"Mariana Rift"
"Egyptian Connection"
"Ice Age Devices"
Events
Basic Events
Module Specific Events
"The Gloves Are Off" + built up + separate facility to study aliens in secret
-performing live research it provokes the aliens and leads to the next level of alien attacks
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About the maps: I don't think we can make a believable endgame with the maps we have now. We need additional content to make the game any sort of complete. This means new maps for special areas, but it also means more models for aliens, UFOs, weapons an armor types. I don't think any attempt to work with what we have is likely to result in something that cuts the cake. So, if any of you knows some artists, make them create some content.
The maps are to be built up randomly from smaller parts. These parts are pre-compiled and can't be changed ingame. So:
I ask the same for architectural elements... do the mapping tools give us chances to implement different architectural styles? Or does that need also support of modellers or texture artists?
Yes, you can implement any architectural style you wish. Of course, you have to model it all from scratch.
Okay, random time.
Given that the aliens appear to use tachyon technology, it can be assumed that they are capable of very limited FTL travel (tachyons travel between 1 and 1.5 x the speed of light, if I recall).
I don't know if you can say that so easily, though, since while tachyons can (supposedly) go FTL, that doesn't mean ordinary matter can. But that's not a discussion I want to go into, as this is a game and all. 1,5 times light speed is still peanuts at those distances, though. However, it might help explain away why the aliens didn't die off from old age during those 100 years of travel.
1) Introduction (assuming the story begins with the player assuming supreme command of Phalanx)
There's a basic text for this already in the design docs. It's not too terribly long and maybe it needs a rewrite, but it's there, kind of.
1) Introduction (assuming the story begins with the player assuming supreme command of Phalanx)
As you rightly predicted, the UFOpaedia. However, altugi came up with an idea for a newswire feature. I thought that was nice, so maybe mattn or Hoehrer can add it in the future. [EDIT] The basic mechanism is already there, see events.ufo in /base/ufos. Not functional yet.
The idea that the aliens would make a once off attack needs to be carefully thought out. Why attack unless they thought they'd be sucessful. Why only one main attack. Why not a bigger army. Why there and somewhere else.
Read Thought's post a little bit back. He came up with reasons why the alien force would be small. In addition to that, it's not really a once-off attack. It's just the first in a series, the only attack you don't get to respond to as Phalanx.
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what different terrain options do maps have right now? can we use the mapping tools you mention in the tutorials to modify maps, so that we could at least create some sort of variety depending on which spot on earth tactical combat takes place? say, we have snow for a mission in scandinavia and canada, lots of vegetation in a mission in the amazone, desert for missions in egypt?...
we have desert, arctic and gras right now. the decision what mission appear at what place is done via campaign.ufo (http://ufo.myexp.de/wiki/index.php/Campaign.ufo) the bases are assembled automatically as the terrain type they were build
is it dificult to have code of an invisible grid that chooses the appropriate terrain according to the spot where the mission is going to be? or do we have something like this already implemented?
the code is there already - just have a look at the map_earth_mask image im base/pics/menu
I ask the same for architectural elements... do the mapping tools give us chances to implement different architectural styles? Or does that need also support of modellers or texture artists?
what exactly do you mean?
I think in X-Com you had 40 unique buildings... alien incidents happened in these building based on random selection I think. That was quite a lot to keep variety in the game, even if missions were basically the same.
well, we have as many building as we have random map tiles
see here (http://ufo.myexp.de/wiki/index.php/Mapping:Random_map_parts) and here (http://ufo.myexp.de/wiki/index.php/Mapping:Random_map_assembly)
each random map assembly can have several "themes"
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I ask the same for architectural elements... do the mapping tools give us chances to implement different architectural styles? Or does that need also support of modellers or texture artists?
what exactly do you mean?
I think BTAxis gave the answer. I was wondering what additional help would be needed to have buildings of say, far east style, modern style, arabic style etc..
it all needs to be modelled ...
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As this thread is now too chaotic to be very useful, I've made a new thread for talking only about the contingency scenario. I suggest you guys make new threads for other scenarios, so we can discuss them separately and stay on topic.
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There hasn't been much talk about storyline recently... so what's going? Anyone having new ideas? Or is Storyline/Final already the final?
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There's nothing in there except the background thing that was there all the time. I'm willing to flesh out the contingency scenario, but there's not been much discussion about that, so I don't know. I haven't seen any really concrete alternatives either. There have been some ideas in this thread, but they're mostly fragments, not a workable whole.
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I think Alien containment should be available from the start, but can be used only for detention as letting them die would be worse.
Sounds good. This should help in the build-up of the "gloves off" thing. You already detain aliens, but you see you have to wait to interrogate them. It also precludes the frustration when I knock out an alien with a lucky grenade throw, but he dies on my hands, because of lack of Alien containment.
...6th event. (News) Triggered 1 day after event 5
UN establishes first contact with Aliens. Aliens propose scientific cooperation as first step towards peace...etc...etc...
Brilliant. I guess even the current messages system can be used for that, not dialogs needed right now.
I particular I like the idea of aliens hiding their purpose and even deceiving humans about their intentions. This is coherent with the build-up of alien missions and of Phalanx power. I also like the counter-identification trick. It made me scream "bullshit --- everybody should know aliens are no good" and that was an anger aimed at the politicians not the the game-creators; in other words I became immersed. I guess BTAxis said the same "bullshit!" and though he shouldn't put nonsense into the game. Oh, yes, sometimes you should. ;)
I also like the secret lab, if it costs you nothing, but makes costs of interrogation very high. Then you have an interesting strategic option of using the lab to obtain some crucial technology early on or rather build another base with the money and thus have more missions. This only works if "gloves off" are not very early and there is a very important technology, for example the ability to use a single kind of recovered alien weapons for your soldiers, obtainable from an early alien interrogation (ask him where is the trigger). The choice of strategy may then depend on difficulty, e.g. with higher difficulty you would rather opt for additional weapons, unless you really rule the battlefield even with knives...
But I would just as well do with no interrogation at all before "gloves off" and even with "gloves off" as only a story item with no game-play effect (what you keep doing just becomes legal and you have the nice feeling that you were right from the very beginning).
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At least you can't expect the player to believe that Phalanx is the only thing standing between thousands of alien forces alone, can you?
Actually, I think this is the most important thing to make the player believe, so that he can feel really special, his every desicion gravely important, his every victory unbelievably profound. It is our job to make this believable. At worst, we can build this in stages...
But since brainsucking has been tried, why don't we use a swarm of nano-aliens? They get into you body, and once they are in, they control the unit. Actually they are all different ways to stage the same scripted event, the takeover of units by enemy AI.
Once you have found an interesting thing to stage the event, you can further develope it. From the swarm we can reach its antitode. You can kill the swarm with a flamethrower.
I don't like the PSI thing, but I like (very limited) taking over units and yours is the best scheme I every heard. I also thing one could try to take over fully robotic human or alien units by taking over their communiaction channels, etc. Just, please, no psychic, levitating, half-robotic, half-ghostly, after-life-dwelling aliens reaching into your head through the fifth dimension. UFO AI is not horror, it is science-fiction. Straight science-fiction.
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There are, or will be, half-robotic and psychic aliens, though. That's got nothing to do with horror. It's just an aspect of the game that's there to add variety.
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I do not object to half-robotic aliens. But I do object to half-robotic, half-ghostly aliens with horns that spew antigravity-propelled steel balls filled with plasma with one hand and draw pentagrams with the other, reaching into your concience with their demonic power. I do object to spaghetti pulp-fiction. :)
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Hah. Yeah. That's Warhammer stuff, I don't think that would fit in. Simple psionic panic attacks are quite a step removed from that, though. As for mind control, well, some people love it, some hate it. Fact is that it's traditional for a UFO game.
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Hah. Yeah. That's Warhammer stuff, I don't think that would fit in.
I'm glad we agree.
Simple psionic panic attacks are quite a step removed from that, though.
Well, panic attacks are easy to fit into science-fiction without any meta-physical connotations. For example some infrasounds are known to cause panic. Not mention just battle situations with overwhelming odds.
As for mind control, well, some people love it, some hate it.
I do like it, though not as much of it as in X-com 1. I think mind-controll is a nice tactical suprise and a nice spice to the game-play. Just don't put too much spice in. :)
This is not my problem. My problem is that ESP, PSI, etc. are not scientific in any way, so they do not fit in pure science-fiction. I'm not an expert, but I've heard often psychic experiments fail and the ESP people say this is because the guiding spirits that give them their powers feel offended by being experimented upon, or just the spirits are not in a mood. etc. So this is meta-psysical matter that would fit in a horror, but is risky in science-fiction. Indeed many setups with PSI end up in theories about an almost-omipresent alien collective mind and the joys of joining it even for a while, or locate their endgame in Hell, when the aliens are discovered to come from. I don't despise horrors or meta-physical musings, but they are just a totally different kind of stories, and very easy to turn into cheese, IMHO.
I mean, do you feel confident in your knowledge of psychological theories of free will, in anthropology, in demonology, in theology of Egyptian myths, etc. as much as you are confident in your knowledge of today's basic technology? I'm not, because I know how a rifle works and I can extrapolate that to a tachyon rifle in a simplistic but not pathetic way, while I don't know how ESP works and I can only tell total cheese about how being a part of a collective mind feels.
On the other hand limited mind-control can be satisfactorily explained by extrapolating today's science. For example mind-control over alien or human drones, by intercepting their communication channels. Or Altugi's idea about swarms of nano-robots that enter your body, sit in your nerves and steer you hands and legs witout caring for your will, soul and concience. Surely other explanations can be found...
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Hmm, so you think it can't be science-fiction if it doesn't involve highly advanced technology. Well, fair enough, I am inclined to agree. But I think you should know that not everyone thinks of it that way. In fact, there are books set in worlds LESS technologically advanced than ours that are considered science-fiction.
Not telling you you're wrong, you understand, just telling you to keep an open mind.
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While Science Fiction often rides upon advanced technology, that's not all there is to it...
There are many who theorise that the human mind is much more powerful that we know about, and that we only use a tiny amount of our brain / potential.
That's nothing to do with spirits or collective alien minds... It's biological or psychological, it's science... isn't it?
-PsyW
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Precisely. If you've read some of Ursula LeGuinn's work, then you know what I mean. It's definitely science-fiction, but there's hardly any technology involved in some of her books.
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While Science Fiction often rides upon advanced technology, that's not all there is to it...
Surely. The problem is, the other sciences, those that do not contribute directly to technology, usually only help us understand our world better and do current things better (like, e.g. better psychoterapy, better plant cultivation, better religious service) and not do new things. And the fun of science-fiction worlds is about the new things and how people react to those, I think.
There are many who theorise that the human mind is much more powerful that we know about, and that we only use a tiny amount of our brain / potential.
This is old talk with, arguably, nothing except books and movies coming from it.
That's nothing to do with spirits or collective alien minds... It's biological or psychological, it's science... isn't it?
Yes, it's discovering about our world. But if you try to force such non-technological thinking about world to produce a techonology-like, visible, new way of doing things, you end up in pseudo-science. There is actually a huge market of those widgets that claim to activate the dormant 90% of your mind. Go ask biologist or psychologist about them... But they will often not be able to prove that the widgets do not work, just as they would not be able to prove that a truly working widget is not a fraud --- this is a part of the non-technological, non-mathematical nature of those sciences. So, actually, a theologian or salesman may have a more accurate theory of these widgets and their apparent success, but again the account would not be provable and would not allow you to construct a woriking widget yourself nor to prove that such construction is impossible.
If you've read some of Ursula LeGuinn's work, then you know what I mean. It's definitely science-fiction
Isn't it, mostly, fantasy?
Are we making a fantasy game? I do not object, but if the game starts with movie of a frowned UN councilmen looking out of the window of his office at the fall of a nicely animated alien spaceship, and then you find yourself bashing at such spaceships with swords and conjuring hordes of bears to beat at the aliens, the game will turn into yet another genre --- farce.
I claim that PSI, just as X-rays coming from a hero's eyes, just as forcefields generated by a hero's willpower, are based on wrong understanding of science (as is pseudo-science). In this, they are worse than magic swords and summoned bears, that are based on good understanding of fairy-tales and, more generally, myths.
Putting magic swords together with laser weapons may be good joke, but putting PSI and laser beams from a superhuman eyes with anything else is cheese. We don't see it, because our childhood fairy-tailes were full of it, and because current social perception of science is full of pseudo-science.
Sorry for the rant. :P
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You have a way of overreacting, yes. You say putting magic swords together with lasers is a joke, but I would like to draw your attention to a popular science fiction title that does just that. This title is popular around the world, and it cannot possible be called fantasy in favor of science-fiction. It has a sort of magic, a sort of PSI, it has sword fights, and it has lasers. Its name? Star Wars.
And it's not just in Star Wars. Star Trek has its Betazoids. Babylon 5 has its telepaths. Even in the Foundation series, written by Isaac Asimov who, by the way was a scientist, telepathy, or PSI if you will, plays an important role.
I understand that you feel all science-fiction must be able to be scientifically sound, but I think that's taking too narrow a view. There's another part to the word, namely "fiction". You should allow some room for things that can't be explained or that are plain impossible. It doesn't matter how realistic it is, as long as it's believeable. I made a post going deeper into that particular statement elsewhere, but I can't be buggered to fish it up.
On that note, I just want to clarify that the Warhammer comment I made does not mean I think Warhammer 40K is stupid because it has magic (which clearly isn't scientific). I consider it a solid universe that is quite believeable. It's also doubtlessly science fiction.
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Star Wars
Shame on me, but I like Star Wars (I mean, the first two episodes). For my defence I have to say, I was very young when I saw it first time, and I had no way of seeing good science-fiction, fantasy or mixed movies at that time (not that there are many, anyway).
And it's not just in Star Wars. Star Trek has its Betazoids. Babylon 5 has its telepaths.
Do you have any examples of good movies or books with such mish-mash? BTW, Star Trek, and I guess Babylon 5 too, qualify for the "joke" category. Do we want to make a joke game? I don't object, I just insist that we know what we are doing.
Even in the Foundation series, written by Isaac Asimov who, by the way was a scientist, telepathy, or PSI if you will, plays an important role.
Tha was only one book of the series, the one about the Mule, wasn't it? And, paradoxically, it was scientifically sound, becaue the PSI was a one-time phenomenon. Pseudo-science begins only when you make a technology from a non-technological domain, like religion, parapsychology, normal psychology, mythical topics, etc.
For example Bible is not pseudo-scientifical, because in it the miracles are not explained scientificaly nor employed technologically. On the other hand Star Wars is not cheese because it has Jedi, it becomes pseudo-scientifical only when the Jedi can be reliably trained and reliably bred/found/explained/whatever it was, and becomes total cheese when the Force is explained with some microscopic-mumbo-jumbo in a later episode (I laughed so hard, that I didn't quite get it; but I guess I actually didn't want to remember it).
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Sorry again for the rants. As I've said before I can live with PSI, I just wanted to point out some dangers of PSI, the effects of which I will most probably point out in the future. So that nobody can say: "Why didn't you tell us earlier?".
Now back to the topic --- what about our Storyline? We have several versions of the "reason for invation" block. Which one do we choose? How do we choose? As I've said before, I'm fine with most of them, but I'd neither want to choose one randomly, nor to spend another year deliberating... :)
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Do you have any examples of good movies or books with such mish-mash? BTW, Star Trek, and I guess Babylon 5 too, qualify for the "joke" category. Do we want to make a joke game? I don't object, I just insist that we know what we are doing.
Well, since you put it that way... Yes. YOU obviously consider the titles I mentioned jokes (and you are welcome to), but you are a member of a minority. So yes, I'd rather have a game that is fun and that people will enjoy than one that meets your particular standards. If the two can be combined, so much the better, but the former has priority as far as I'm concerned.
Even in the Foundation series, written by Isaac Asimov who, by the way was a scientist, telepathy, or PSI if you will, plays an important role.
Tha was only one book of the series, the one about the Mule, wasn't it? And, paradoxically, it was scientifically sound, becaue the PSI was a one-time phenomenon. Pseudo-science begins only when you make a technology from a non-technological domain, like religion, parapsychology, normal psychology, mythical topics, etc.
Four or five books, in fact. Asimov connected the Foundation series to the Elijah Bailey series through the development of telepathy. The last three Foundation books, as well as the last few R. Daneel books all deal with telepathy.
Admittedly, the last few Foundation books are nowhere near as good as the first three, but that's not the point. The point is that PSI/telepathy/etc. is commonplace in science-fiction, and it should not be shunned because it's not scientific.
For example Bible is not pseudo-scientifical, because in it the miracles are not explained scientificaly nor employed technologically. On the other hand Star Wars is not cheese because it has Jedi, it becomes pseudo-scientifical only when the Jedi can be reliably trained and reliably bred/found/explained/whatever it was, and becomes total cheese when the Force is explained with some microscopic-mumbo-jumbo in a later episode (I laughed so hard, that I didn't quite get it; but I guess I actually didn't want to remember it).
Yeah, I'm not saying you have to like it. I'm just saying there are a lot of people who don't share your views, and you should keep them in mind.
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Now back to the topic --- what about our Storyline? We have several versions of the "reason for invation" block. Which one do we choose? How do we choose? As I've said before, I'm fine with most of them, but I'd neither want to choose one randomly, nor to spend another year deliberating... :)
This is exactly the question I've been asking myself for a while. There is no decision-making process to speak of. Hoehrer has more or less put me in charge of writing the "official" story on the wiki, but I haven't done so yet because, yes, the storyline to be used hasn't been decided yet. So, what do you suggest we do? I was hoping to create a number of alternatives in the storyline variant threads, work out those variants in general lines, then have a poll or something to decide which one to use. But if you have a better idea, I'll be glad to hear it.
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So yes, I'd rather have a game that is fun and that people will enjoy than one that meets your particular standards. If the two can be combined, so much the better, but the former has priority as far as I'm concerned.
Me too. But we have a real chance of combining the two, because we are not under pressure of commercialization, so we can actually choose for what kind of people we make the game for (e.g. for people like us). We do not have to put lots of goo because, say, male teenagers are known to be fascinated by goo between 12 and 16. We also don't have to put the Force, because Star Wars has it, not PSI, because it was hip when we were kids and is now a widely accepted, though laughed upon folklore (OK, so laughed upon by minority, until no more money can be sucked from this theme, at which point it will be ridiculed for money in openly joke movies and then die).
As for Star Trek and joke movies, we are already ahead of Star Trek in that our aliens are not obviously humans with rubber implements on their heads. That may loose us some Star Trek fans, but I say: let's go ahead that way!
Four or five books, in fact. Asimov connected the Foundation series to the Elijah Bailey series through the development of telepathy.
Oh, what a pity. I guess I stopped at the right moment. :)
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As for Star Trek and joke movies, we are already ahead of Star Trek in that our aliens are not obviously humans with rubber implements on their heads. That may loose us some Star Trek fans, but I say: let's go ahead that way!
Hah. Hell yeah.
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Hoehrer has more or less put me in charge of writing the "official" story on the wiki [...]
There is no decision-making process to speak of. [...]
Well, so you are the decision-making process on two legs. (And you are the one to blame, if anything goes wrong --- what a relief. :P )
So, what do you suggest we do?
I'd suggest you be active. I may be ranting and overeacting, but I spare leaders --- they have already a pityful life. I hope others will also be thankful for whatever you do and enocurage others to do (as opposed to nobody doing nothing).
I was hoping to create a number of alternatives in the storyline variant threads, work out those variants in general lines, then have a poll or something to decide which one to use.
Good idea, but I'm afraid our forum is too small for a meaningful poll (e.g. the percentage of random votes may get too high). OTOH brainstorming polls (not decision-making) could be a lot of fun.
But if you have a better idea, I'll be glad to hear it.
Perhaps start with the "reason for invasion"? We already have lots of talk about that. Perhaps make a thread "Give your three best reason for invasion variants here" where everyone (including you!) describes his three most favourite variants (one sentence each) and rates them on 1--10 scale. Make sure to force all project members to participate (they will hide behind coding duties and such, but insist). ALso PM previously active people (e.g. Altugi) to participate. Perhaps also announce this somewhere (homepage News at the least).
Then, after say a month, decide on the variant, and describe the reasons for your decision in the thread. I would propose that the basis of your decision is "how to make the game as most fun as possible for all of us that took the effort to seriously participate in the thread". That's it.
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The thing with making the decisions is that you can't please everyone. By default. Even so, I'm hesitant to just write down something I like on the wiki, because that would be hypocritical, after all the arguing I did about keeping in mind what people would enjoy.
Your suggestion about making people give their opinion on the storyline variants makes sense, but the problem there is that there aren't really any concrete storyline variants to rate yet. Most of them are vague, and filled with "what if"s and "possibly"s. I'll try to flesh out the contingency thread a bit and make it a little more solid when I have some time. I suggest you do the same for the ones you posted.
Also, I'm not a leader, okay? I'm just some dude who involves himself with this part of the design. My word is not law.
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No offence, dude. :P
With all respect for you as a leading non-leader, I would rather not flesh out a story (and not even the "reason for invasion" fragment) knowing that only one of the the several stories will be actually used. Both the individual preferences and your final decision will be obviously guesses, even if the stories are fleshed out, because one has to play the actual game to make a fully informed decision. And, after all, we can always batcktrack and this will still be cheaper than fleshing out all the variants.
For an informed guess I think it is enough to have a sketch of possible variant such as the one in
http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=173
for the "artifact as the reason for invasion" family (though I should update it with some recent additions by other people). The "reason for invasion will remain a mystery" stance needs not further fleshing out. Your "contingency" as reason for invasion presentation is already overdone (unless you want to give some more variants, but with less detail). There are already some nice texts, but with not many variants, about the "alien hiding on Earth" reason.
I think it might be a good idea to link to those topics and perhaps shortly summarize 10 main categories of reasons for invasion for the people that do not have time to read through all the topics. It's all guesswork, anyway, but already people know they hate some variants, so let's start eliminating dead branches. When we have the reason for invasion, we will have much less alternatives to follow, we will focus more on next things, and still, when the next things are decided the "reason" things can be refined or even redecided.
P.S. There are also some more ideas, like warmongering, revenge for unintended harm done to them, revenge for killing their scouting missions, etc. Most of them are quite clear and nobody volunteered to study them, but surely they should be among those 10 categores.
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I believe the reason why certain plot ideas, i. e 'warmongering, revenge for unintended harm done to them, revenge for killing their scouting missions', have been overlooked is because most people see their use as futile.
Warmongering is at best cliche. Its not to say it couldn't be done as a reason for invasion, but it would need to be done very well. This invasion scenario has been over used in film, and the original Xcoms technically used it as well. The person who sucessfully works this into a plot will undoubtly be hit upon by some kind of epiphany beforehand. Attempts to develop this purely from scratch will prove impossible
'Revenge for Killing their Scouts' seems completely unrealistic to me. I would think as a player, this use of this in plot would be seen as a choice of convenience /laziness. A scout is a military unit, and is sent when a military response is expected. The idea of getting upset because your miltary units got attacked is childish.
The idea is reused in 'Revenge for Unintended Harm'. Invasion is never about revenge. The resources and time can never be justified by retribution. Military revenge is generally carried out through the use of guerillas and insurgency. Alot more bang for your buck.
I will attempt to explain the rationale behind invasion, in terms of economics and strategy:
To commit to an invasion, the results of the invasion must offer more value then the projects time and resources to be used.
To commit to an invasion, it must be possible to continue the invasion as long as necessary, that is 5 to 10 times the expected time frame. That is you must have the resources and units to sustain the warfare.
The sucess of the invasion must seem tactically possible will the available units & resources plus the units and resources from future production and gathering, based on current intelligence.
A retreat option must be possible if there is a likely chance of failure.
The motivation for the invasion must be rational enough that all troops employed will agree or understand it.
And before anyone starts off on the tangent, you can't justify a war purely on revenge. There's got to be a solid return, like land, resources or status.
Its just stupid.
Lastly, the whole Mumbai scenario really needs to get thrown out. Its no way to start a game plot. You don't start a plot straight off with a climax, because the plot intensity will be going down hill from then onwards until its ready to start building up again.
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Maybe that's true, but the fact is that you need to make it clear prior to the start of the game that the aliens are hostile, and that we intend to fight them. You can't really do that without some climactic event or chain of events. In fact, that's how many stories of this type start.
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You may be right. The fact that nobody explored the other mentioned ideas may be not because of the lack of time, but because of our collective gut-feeling. Then, indeed, do not include them individually in the 10 top variants listing, but reserve for them
10. Other (cliche, unbelievable, too hard to implement without the "authors are lazy" feeling, other)
'Revenge for Killing their Scouts' seems completely unrealistic to me.
I agree. Civilized aliens would just come and resolve the misunderstanding or make us punish the wrongdoers (e.g. CIA :) ). And warmongering aliens do not need pretexts.
Invasion is never about revenge. The resources and time can never be justified by retribution.
I think you quietly assume Aliens live under democracy/oligarchy/etc. What if they live under single-person tyranny? Then there is a plenty of examples of wars fought merely for personal revenge (even if WWI was actually not). Of course if a mad tyrant rules aliens, again his particular reasons are not that important and their believability even less so, which makes it quite cheap.
I will attempt to explain the rationale behind invasion, in terms of economics and strategy:
Nice reading. I have a warm feeling our mainstream variants are in accordance with your analysis.
To commit to an invasion, it must be possible to continue the invasion as long as necessary, that is 5 to 10 times the expected time frame. That is you must have the resources and units to sustain the warfare.
Unless no resistance was expected and still the goal of the expedition is very important and urgent. (We do not want a total war so that our beloved squad combat actually has any importance.)
The motivation for the invasion must be rational enough that all troops employed will agree or understand it.
Again a lot of assumptions about alien psychology (I like that, I dislike the cheap explanations "do not try to understand; aliens are just very alien"). But then you exhibit some strange assumptions about the lack of propaganda, chauvinism, brain washing, wishful thinking, rationalizing in the face of brutality and trauma, etc. in the alien army. Is it so different from our armies?
Lastly, the whole Mumbai scenario really needs to get thrown out. Its no way to start a game plot. You don't start a plot straight off with a climax, because the plot intensity will be going down hill from then onwards until its ready to start building up again.
I'm with BTAxis here. Yes, starting with nobody certain about ufos, the need to convince UN, peacemongering, etc. makes for a very interesting plot, but not quite for this kind of game. I feel the openning scene where the aliens are shown as very powerful and very cruel is very good. Then you start the game, prepare your squad for the worst, sit on your hands for a day, for the second day, for the third day, a UFO appears, but nobody is able to chase it down, the fourth day, the fifth day...
Then the siren rings and you begin experiencing the Mumbai horror on your own skin, step by step, consious all the way that what you see is a fraction of the Mumbai forces and still you return to base with half you squad dead or wounded, or most civilians killed to the outrage of your sponsors. And the aliens start bring better weapons and soldier than the onces in Mumbai and their number increases.
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Look, I'm not disagreeing with you two outright.
I'm just saying that the Mumbai Incident is not the way to go about things.
I'm not trying to peddle my idea of a story, I'm just trying to ensure that certain mistakes aren't made. I feel that the currently plot resembles that of UFO Aftermath, of which I felt was poor executed. Good engine, good concepts, shit story.
There are ways to make the aliens appear hostile. But the complete destruction of a city by ground incursion with no enemy casualities is not the way to go about it.
Can't remember who brought it up before, but there was mention about a suspension of belief etc. The game's plot needs to present a realistic scenario, and be a functional plot.
We want the players to believe that this could be real. We want them to believe that this could be happening in real life, starting tomorrow. Pull them into the story.
Didn't XCOM feel real to you?
Let me propose a more fitting alternative to the Mumbai Incident.
Ideally this would be a player mission (you personally experiecing the mumbai incident), but could always be presented as a back story.
----BEGINNING----
Aliens have been monitored entering known space. Phalanx Protocols followed with the organisation of a Extraterrestrial Combat Force (codename Phalanx) to defend against incursions.
Aliens land a ground force at 'Mumbai'. Phalanx Deployed. Civilians evacuate as a huge arse firefight occurs, aliens neutralised at the expense 90% of the phalanx team killed (alt: aliens self destruct their landing craft killing all surviving the phalanx or if the humans lose they deploy a tactical nuke to wipe out the aliens).
Phalanx forced to start reassembling their team (all the decent soldiers having been killed at mumbai), as the Aliens change their strategy (knowing the humans just kicked their arse) to hit and run attacks with small forces.
----END----
Normal play can continue from here.
Just don't make the plot mistakes they did in UFO Aftermath & Aftershock.
Bandobras:
I don't see an advanced alien race having radically different logic to ourselves. They might be biologically & Culturally different, but tactics and strategies are always going to be similar albeit superior. Simply because good tactics and strategies work, bad ones don't. Darwinism.
I don't see a mad tyrant amassing a large army and travelling across the galaxy. Just oozes B-Movie plot to me. The crazy Tyrants generally get taken out by an associate anyway.
I'll think you find that wars supposedly started for revenge, generally have other motives behind them, with someone ending up alot better off then they were before. I can't honestly think of any war solely fought for revenge.
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----BEGINNING----
Aliens have been monitored entering known space. Phalanx Protocols followed with the organisation of a Extraterrestrial Combat Force (codename Phalanx) to defend against incursions.
Aliens land a ground force at 'Mumbai'. Phalanx Deployed. Civilians evacuate as a huge arse firefight occurs, aliens neutralised at the expense 90% of the phalanx team killed (alt: aliens self destruct their landing craft killing all surviving the phalanx or if the humans lose they deploy a tactical nuke to wipe out the aliens).
Phalanx forced to start reassembling their team (all the decent soldiers having been killed at mumbai), as the Aliens change their strategy (knowing the humans just kicked their arse) to hit and run attacks with small forces.
----END----
I actually think this sounds LESS believeable that the plot as it is now. The aliens killed all the decent soldiers in one attack, and THEN start attacking in smaller numbers? Come on. The aliens would realize in a matter of days that Phalanx has lost most of its fangs, and attack in force again.
Also, I would like to point out that in the current plot, Mumbai is not destroyed. There are just lots of civilian casualties, and no alien ones. The reason is not because the aliens are all-powerful, but because the police forces in the city are unable to deal with them, and the army is too slow to respond to urban attacks like that. I think you misunderstood that part. I think you have a point about the bit about there not being alien casualties, though. Suppose the army shows up (late), and then kills a number of aliens before they retreat. That would still fit into the current plot, and it wouldn't be a climactic event. It would just be a normal terror attac like you get them at the start of the game, except the army failed to react appropriately, hecte Phalanx taking over. That wouldn't create a discontinuity in the plot development, I feel.
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There is are lots of things said in this thread, and I somehow feel bad to contribute some more. 1) Maybe one should open a new thread "information given at the start", because here we come to the vital part. XCOM 1 - THE game, one which could keep you playing for years, had actually very little information at the beginning.
Old-Intro: Alien [mutones] land in a city and start a massacre, x-com gets alarm. Men in [hard-armors] run with [plasma rifles] and after landing in a [avengerlike] plane defeat the aliens. All in very static, dark & mystical style with no comment. !! important !! this is not any explanation, its more of a preview what you can achive in the game, if you stick to it (all []-technologies are only achiveable after 2months game time).
With the mysterious music and the little you get to know about your troups it all had a feeling of playing an "X-Files" episode, where the Ufopedia was almost the only source of information. While the good music and graphics in the x-mas release remind me of that good old time, the messages "You let some of them get away, get after them" really bothered me.
2) And we need to check the intention of the aliens. In http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1318#1318 I already mentioned the FAILURE screen in X-Com 1, which I got a couple of times when aliens invaded my first base. At the time I dont see any implemented.
I fully support the current backline and BTAxis view, that the backline is somehow more than the storyline, but at the two points I mentioned theres need for adjustment, because we need at the same time to leave enogh gaps to fill with imagination and supply enough information to make it somehow realistic.
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As I have posted in another thread my idea for the sorry was:
An experiments of Teslar (or other scientst) in the begining of human industrialisation has a side effect not even noticed on our planet. This side effect wipe out the complete peaceful alien homeworld. The few that have survieved on the colonies have swear to eliminate this evil bastards (the humans). The preperations begin...
On the journey towards our world they have received our tv transmissions which have been full pictures of world war I, II and ... So for them the humans are bloodthirsty monsters they have to eliminate on their holly mission.
The mothership or main fleet is still on the way, but the aliens are outnumbered by the human civilisation. So they send some faster alien scout ships which are now reaching the earth and making experiments and research how they can effectively eliminate the humans.
As the world leaders (just noticed the scout ships, do not even have an idea about purpose and and and) do not want to provocate a panic the alien invasion is keept secret and the team and the player as team leader have a mission to stop ... the aliens
Ok, what do you think ??
Bartl
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Well I think this guy is called Tesla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) and studying physics I really dont like the "physical experiment has major unexpected consequence far away"-type scenario. Violates laws of conservation...
Though you didnt make any comment on my 2 points. I guess youre aiming at an "aliens wipe all of us out" ending. At the moment I'm working on 3 possible failures:
* wipe out
* part of empire
* "rational" explotation
I relly dont know which one to prefer yet.
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This is my first post here.
In Relation to the story. I don't think that the Aliens should be type casted as evil warmongering people who like to fight and so they come to kick as and chew bubble gum, and they are all out of gum ... which is why they are here.
That plot line has been done many times over.
I think that the alien race should be similar to the Roman Republic, ie the roman empire just before Julis Ceasar. The Aliens are a collection of different races bound together by a form of government.
The reason the aliens are here: its a planet in the life zone. It has oxygen, water, plant life, and they wish too have it all to them selves. Much like any other empire in human history.
This would affect the way the game is played in that, a) They came to earth with a major army. Not one small mother ship or something insignificant. That would mean they came with an Armarda that was equiped to fight a war. PHALAX is not they army to battle the aliens. i mean really. 8 men against thousands just doesn't work. PHALAX should represent the commandos. The special ops of earth that get sent on the delicate missions. ie, destroy a specific building, capture a alien leader, etc. However all the time there is a full scale war going on. armies on the move( think what happened to europe in ww2 and that is what will happen to earth)
so you could have missions in where the PHALAX commandos support earth military.
the introduction to this would be: earth has started to colonize the moon and the aliens appear and destroy the colony. a couple thousand people die and earth realises that they are no longer alone. That gives the player an idea of the deadly nature of the aliens but it isn't a major event. in fact its more like a single shot.
by changing Phalax to the commandos and have a war i feel that gives a more plausible game setting.
best example i can think of would be ... phalax = rainbow six and earth military = the cops.
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Nice ideas, but too much work: if there is a huge war, the conditions under which Phalanx operates are usually not dependent on the Phalanx. So some game-scripts would have to model the outcome of the various phases of the war and tell the player what to do. As opposed to the current model, where the aliens are not very much opposed or very much active, so what happens next is very much dependent of the mission results. So less scripts and bigger satisfaction for winning the missions, I think.
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Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum and a big and fervour fan of the x-com games. Here comes may help for this amazing project goes even further. I hope you like it and do coments about why you like it or not and how it could be bether.
Chapter 1: The Elerium Wars
•The Aliens discover the presence of Elerium at the Core of the Earth.
•They begin to do research at our planet to validate the extraction and discover that we have a huge amount of Elerium and at a significant easy extraction.
•The Elerium is a mineral that are “incrustrated†at others minerals, in really small amounts, so that’s why we never discovered them.
•After they know about it, they decide to take the planet.
•Then, they begin to study us, to understand us as a life form and social beings.
•At September, 2010, during studies of mineral samples, a Japanese researcher, Kenshiro Wanabe, discovers almost insignificant particles of an unknown mineral, incrustrated at the particles of the mineral he is studying.
•At the same time, the invasion begins. A huge Alien Ship lands at Mumbai city and there it creates his first operational base on Earth.
•All the inhabitants of the city and from cities near Mumbai are decimated. Almost 10 millions people died at the invasion. In History, this event is now know as “The Mumbai Incident†and marks the beginning of the invasion.
•All the most powerful nations at the world recognize the gravity of the event and send troops to the place, subordinated to the UN.
•The UN army attacks the Alien Mumbai base and even with grate loses; they manage to destroy the Aliens. But some of them flee to the space.
•The Worls midia divulges that the UN army was victorious and the Alien treat is for ever ended.
•The leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth reunite and agreed that the Alien treat is far from over and decide to create a secret organization to monitor and fights this treat.
•The PHALANX is then created with the support of all these nations.
•At the same day that PHALANX is created, a small news comes to the world midia. A Japanese researcher discovers an unknown mineral.
•The humans discover the presence of Elerium at their planet, but they don’t already know what it really is or what it do.
•The game begins at this point, and the player needs to discover the Elerium at Alien ships, and the link with the new discovered mineral of the news. After this the plot continues to be unveiled until the total understand of the Aliens reasons and the ways to fights them.
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I may be mistaken, but I remember there was already a discussion about minerals as the Reason for Invation and people agreed other kinds of loot are more interesting. Have you found the discussion on the forum?
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No, i didn't, sorry :oops:
But to defend my plot, i dont know if every one knows, but Elerium is the main energy source for the Aliens (at the original x-com series at last) and a very important matter for them...
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Well, this is not a strict remake. For both ambitional and legal reasons...
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...6th event. (News) Triggered 1 day after event 5
UN establishes first contact with Aliens. Aliens propose scientific cooperation as first step towards peace...etc...etc...
I also like the counter-identification trick. It made me scream "bullshit --- everybody should know aliens are no good" and that was an anger aimed at the politicians not the the game-creators; in other words I became immersed.
Thanks a lot for the feedback, Bandrobras. I am glad to hear that the trick worked at least on one person. :lol:
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Glad to have you back, altugi! I saw you lurking on the wiki lately and I hoped you will do some weapons/techs creative writing, while the storyline thing is undecided. Or do you have some fresh storyline ideas or storyline decision process ideas?
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Glad to have you back, altugi! I saw you lurking on the wiki lately and I hoped you will do some weapons/techs creative writing, while the storyline thing is undecided. Or do you have some fresh storyline ideas or storyline decision process ideas?
Thanks! Yeah, I have been on the wiki last night and I was really curious about the situation of the storyline. But I was a bit dissappointed to see that only a few paragraphs had been added. They were rather corrections or some minor additions.
Actually I am sorry, because I have no fresh storyline whatsoever at hand right now. I had some time to make up my mind about UFO:AI and I came to some conclusions on what to do and how to approach things. They are just for me, say, they are a clarification on how I see things.
First conclusion is that it is just to early to decide on any "big story" for the game. I will prefer to wait until more features and mechanism are implemented in the game. In the past we had a lot of debates with BTaxis about storyline; now they seem obsolete to me (not just because BTaxis sometimes really gives you the feeling that you can't discuss with him, but because we were discussing about something that can't be really decided in this stage of development.) I think the game's core functions and features need to reach a more mature status. Otherwise we just get into each others hair for things that most possibly will never be there.
Second conclusion: As a extension of my first conclusion, I rather prefer to play the game and see what features can be added to make core gameplay more fun and immersive. Here of course, it is more important what coders, modellers and mappers can or will contribute, since it's their products that are the raw material to built a believable story around. It simply doesn't make sense to talk about big big stories while Mattn and others work so hard to make a functional core game. It's just so much over the spot when you talk about a Egypt scenario while on the other hand you miss mappers, see my point? It is not really realistic. I just want to stick with what is there and I don't want to fly too high. It must just sound stupid to people that do the real work when you talk about big big stories.
Third conclusion: Believe it or not, this game already has a story, or a premise that guides the programmers and the artists: "One day the earth was attacked by aliens. We had to fight back in order to survive." You can see this premise in the current version of the game. I think this is what Mattn and others do implement right now. They did not need any big story to bring the game to this point. So I think it works already healthy somehow. As long as this premise is alive, the programmers and artists will stay on track, this is the track they are on for months now and we don't really need more story for the moment. We just need to think of more funtions and details that can be created out of the things that are already there. (The geoscape, tactical missions etc). I believe that, whatever bigger story we wrap around it, our story will basicly consist of the tactical missions and the way the tech-tree develops. That is my opinion.
***
In these days I am working on a personal project (totally different genre; sports simulation) and I have to do my military duty in October (it will be just for a few weeks though), so I was and I will be still a bit busy with myself. I will be around, but I can't say anything on my degree of contribution right now. All I want to dofor the moment is to see the games latest version to make up my mind if any bigger working story can be written for it.
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While both ideas for the story line are interesting, I believe I have a story line that is both unique and explains why both the human and aliens slowly build up forces.
Story Start
The story starts on earth where the UN (United Nations) creates a secret organization to investigate an increasing number of alien abduction stories. The organization starts off as a small classified unit (hence small team). The organization is under funded (hence choices must be made is allocating limited resources).
Form the alien’s perspective they view us as a limited but interesting species and send nonmilitary units to the area to study the plant. The aliens begin abducting humans and conducting experiments.
Game Start
The first few missions involve the earth team (random number) trying to prevent abductions of humans by aliens in remote areas where the aliens are not likely to be identified. This plot continues until the first milestone occurs where an alien aircraft is captured on the ground.
Situation Report Human Perspective
The capture of the aircraft confirms aliens are abducting humans and warrants increased resources. As the information is shared more nations begin contributing more and more resources. In order to avoid a panic the information about the abductions is withheld from the public until more information can be obtained.
Situation Report Alien Perspective
The loss of the aircraft begins additional resources to the research team to investigate why the aircraft was lost. Some aliens begin debating if the humans are capable of destroying their aircraft and suggest we are a violent race.
Situations continue to escalate until near the end of the game a full invasion must be prevented.
Please comment about the above plot. I have several milestones to suggest but wanted to keep this message small in size. I am interested in creating a detailed story line.
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We already have a storyline, no further input in this thread is needed.