UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Design => Topic started by: solaris on May 14, 2008, 10:08:00 pm
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Great game! Great visuals! ... so my first (almost obligatory) suggestion for an easy? addition.
Downable Firebirds! (now the tables have turned!)
PHALANX dropships can be downed if not destroyed (damage threshold) resulting in a rescue mission.
RESCUE:
Send another dropship with enough available space for survivors
Equipment and peeps automatically picked up - no mission
DEFENSE:
UFO gets to rescue site before your dropship. (the big coding challenge?)
Benefits and Challenges:
UFO is perfectly working, its also loaded with baddies ready to waste your team. These missions should be much harder than the reverse (crashed ufos). Your men are likely wounded and chances are some are dead. (I miss fatal [tunbased] injuries - ...now thats morbid) Good news is if you somehow manage to survive, you can secure a healthy UFO. (provided you get to the site before another UFO does) Bad news is its very unlikely you will win.
What say you guys?
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I recall proposing rescue missions myself for interceptor pilots (kinda like in UFO: Aftermath), but I admit this is a nice idea I haven't thought of.
Then again, I can't speak for the devs and project leaders.
On the other hand, whether or not such a mission would be necessary might also depend on how friendly the nation is where the dropship crashes - If it's a funding and supporting nation, their government and local law enforcement/rescue/disaster response/whatever may help out and eventually return the soldiers. On the flip side, if the nation isn't very supporting, well, I think the resulting situation is rather obvious.
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Wow that is an awesome idea!
Wouldn't it suck if the rescue team had to start on another side of the map! (suck=be awesome)
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could add a turn limit. i.e the survivors must survive for 10-15 rounds befor being able to use the rescuers
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Adding a mission type like that wouldn't be too hard I think. All we need is someone to provide us with crashed versions of all four dropships, and we can just pretend it's a crashed UFO.
THe tricky bit is getting the human soldiers to start at the "crashed UFO". Normally the spawn points there are for aliens only.
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Are the spawnpoints defined by a flag setting their team, or by which tile they're in?
Alternatively, it could essentially be a 'landed UFO' mission, focusing on the UFO that is coming to assault the Terrans, but the player's dropship tile uses a crashed version.
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There's spawn points for aliens and there's spawn points for humans. That's it, really. Which one it is depends on which one the mapper put on the map.
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see
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Entities
and, more generally
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Category:Mapping
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Space for the survivors is not a good idea- you may have to send an empty dropship ;)
But the idea itself sounds great. maybe some new maps- since the game needs more maps anyway- how about crashing in the forest or mountains?
Its all up to mapmaker skill and imagination. The soldiers would have some chance to be lightly wounded, heavily, dead or not wounded at all. This will need more thinking and balancing as it might be difficult if you have 3 badly wounded survivors with light arms
I would also welcome an ability to send fighters as an escort for the dropship
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It would be another signifigant odd-behavior for the aliens. I would think their perspective would be to finish off the dropship on the ground with weaponsfire from above. There's also the problem that smaller UFOs are not supposed to be landing capable. I'm sure some apologetic could be devised.
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Mapping a crash-map would be fairly easy. The damaged dropship would be the only new asset requirement, everything else is already available. Drop points on the map are determined entirely by the map maker, so merely set human drop points around the downed dropship, and everything else can be done just as any other map. Hell, you could have an alien ship landed nearby, with alien drop points, if you want. For random maps, I can't see why this would be a problem, either. Just replace the landed dropship tile with a crashed dropship tile, and the crashed alien ship tile with an intact tile. Pre-injuring the soldiers may take some work, but for now that feature is not necessary.
Now, the other aspects to these mechanics need fleshing out. Alien craft behavior after shooting down a dropship, for one. Does the victorious alien immediately land and attempt to engage, does it torch the ship and retreat, or does it patrol while awaiting a larger troop transport to fly in to engage the crew? What options does the player have? Can he order his troops to flee, decreasing the chance that they are engaged on the ground by a superior transported force? Can they stay nearby to the crash to defend it in the hopes of quick rescue/salvage? Can the ship be scuttled, to deny the aliens PHALANX intelligence?
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Keep in mind that our dropships are models, so to create crashed versions we'd need a modeler who can destruct those models.
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It would be another signifigant odd-behavior for the aliens. I would think their perspective would be to finish off the dropship on the ground with weaponsfire from above. There's also the problem that smaller UFOs are not supposed to be landing capable. I'm sure some apologetic could be devised.
In fact, the aliens want specimens, so landing to engage in battle would make more sense than nuking the site from orbit.
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In fact, the aliens want specimens, so landing to engage in battle would make more sense than nuking the site from orbit.
But there are easier specimines. If some types of deer carried rifles and shot back, we would de-preference hunting them for meat (though I cannot comment on what sport-hunters would do).
There's more than one reason we don't have badger farms.
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Au contraire - if you are gathering info for an invasion, which type of
"animal" bears the most investigation?
a) The ones that scream alot and run away, often straight into the jaws of a tissue-harvesting blood-spider?
b) The ones that fight back, appearing to work together despite being individuals - something almost incomprehensible to the aliens?
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Indeed, good point. Also, there would be the infiltration values of captured PHALANX operatives; even if the subject cannot be reasonably re-inserted into PHALANX after infection, information gleaned from the subject could assist in other infiltration or assault efforts.
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One could even do it as a defense mission with time limit. Basically, the story would be that the survivors needs to survive for a fixed number of turns, based on how far away the rescue ship is, and that the aliens will take off once it arrives/is in range.
It would make for nice "desperate last ditch defense"-missions, where, instead of having the initiative of being the aggressor, the player must assume a defensive responsive tactic against superior forces, trying to hold out until the cavalry arrives. Maybe even some random loss of equipment in the crash?
It would make a nice change of pace and provide more variation to gameplay and tactics.
"OK, boys, dig in, and hold your fire until you see the facettes of their eyes!"
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Could make a cool little game in game too if you had a chance to pit a single team member against a squad of alien scum.
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Agreed, nice idea!
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Alternatively, it could essentially be a 'landed UFO' mission, focusing on the UFO that is coming to assault the Terrans, but the player's dropship tile uses a crashed version.
sounds fairly simple to do from a mappers perspective.
certainly the Aliens would take interest in the only "resistance" around. they might try and snatch downed personnel for study. But I propose this would be a mid-late game behavior. Takes awhile for the aliens to notice PHALANX and take interest. Perhaps this would make a good precursor mission to a PHALANX base assault???? (seems the aliens learned something from the troopers they captured.... Don't ask how... it's messy.)
as for how the mission should go:
From a military perspective. in the event of a downed vehicle your not sending in SAR (Search and Rescue) right away. while a priority, SECURING THE CRASH SITE is the first priority. Send in a vehicle to SECURE the site fully loaded with troopers and gear. they set-up a perimeter, secure the site, kill any aliens around and begin initial Medical care and recovery of sensitive items and take control of the scene. Then the SAR types move in with specialized equipment to effect recovery of equipment and medl-evac of wounded personnel. I assume that local Militaries still exist? They have Equipment and SAR/special forces troops that can be pressed into simple recovery work. Especially after PHALANX has secured the site and collected the sensitive information. No real need to simulate that part of the operation. Just have a friendly craft land and "secure" the site for several hours. If you simulate actual flights for "transfer" of supplies, just initiate a "transfer" of recovered personnel and equipment after the "secure crash site" mission ends.
what this means in game terms:
Scenario 1: is that the aliens may assault the crash site before the cavalry arrives. in which case you defend the crash scene with what you had on the crashed bird. (minor mechanics with wounded troopers before the fight/ lost equipment aside.) Put a time limit on it to represent the arrival of the rescue party and the aliens bugging out because they don't want to be caught with a UFO on the ground with PHALANX craft overhead shooting them up.
Scenario 2: Cavalry is on scene holding the Crash site, since they made it first. Aliens assault the crash anyhow. typical UFO on ground mission but you have TONS of troopers to fight them off. you might only map a few maps for this or random generate them if you can. since your talking about a whole PHALANX DROPSHIP, Wreckage, and a LARGE/Assault UFO. This would really only be a late to ENDGAME type scenario because it means the Aliens are picking a FIGHT with PHALANX instead of just trying to do a snatch and run.
scenario 3: Phanlanx Dropship arrives and secures the site, sits for several hours to recover craft/Personnel. Mission ends, no aliens show, routine transfer of recovered items to home base they came from generated and happens in the background like any normal transfer between bases.
pretty straight forward.
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Au contraire - if you are gathering info for an invasion, which type of
"animal" bears the most investigation?
a) The ones that scream alot and run away, often straight into the jaws of a tissue-harvesting blood-spider?
b) The ones that fight back, appearing to work together despite being individuals - something almost incomprehensible to the aliens?
This is a plausible idea, considering that the aliens want to infect us with XVI.
Plus, i am sure aliens are trying to maximize the potential of capturing earth faster, and like Sun Tze's Manual of War Tactics, knowing the enemies is the best way to winning a battle. :D
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This is a plausible idea, considering that the aliens want to infect us with XVI.
Plus, i am sure aliens are trying to maximize the potential of capturing earth faster, and like Sun Tze's Manual of War Tactics, knowing the enemies is the best way to winning a battle. :D
But Sun Tzu also wrote that the best way of winning was is to avoid many battles and causulties...
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That seems like a great idea! finally the humans have to empathesize with the aliens when their ships are shot down
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This could be a great multiplayer mod and a great thing to add to singleplayer like the ship crashes and then time stops and the mission starts sure there will have to be alot of coding but whatever
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Without any consideration for the storyline or militaristic realism and just thinking about the game fun, I really like the idea of having to keep your soldiers alive for a set number of rounds, against an infinite wave of enemies.
I think this could be 'quite' easily possible to do. The only real need in ressources is the crashed dropships.
An evacuation point to reach on one of the borders of the map could also be added ?
Side note : Aliens from crashed ufo do receive damage on the crash. Yup, they have a great 15% chance of being hurt a little, and more percent of being more-easily stunnable. Imo they should be lucky to still be alive (a crash a 880kmh ?!), and so far I feel like attacking a landed or crashed ufo does not really make any difference, if it isnt for the ufo look.
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I wouldnt like INFINITE enimes but i would like it so you have at least a 50% of dieing to make you think alot
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Pretty good idea. Maybe make it so if the bugs capture any of your men, there would be a ?% chance of the bugs finding out the location of the base which launched the dropship, so there would be extra incentive not to bodger it up.
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Yah thats smart and theyll just turn your guys with the XVI virus