UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Design => Topic started by: OrderlyChaos on January 06, 2008, 06:46:36 am
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I initially spoke with Winter about this particular idea on IRC, and he encouraged me to make a post and get feedback from the community about it, so I'll submit it here as both a request, and a topic for discussion.
The Vector Lance:
The Vector Lance can be accurately thought of as a giant, weaponized syringe. Essentially the weapon is a hollow, short lance about the size of the Kerrblade made from lightweight alien composites. At one end is an extremely sharp, monomolecular spearhead. At the other, a hinged lid. The spear is loaded with cylindrical tubes at the lidded end. These are compartmentalized into two sections; one filled with XVI and nutrient solution, and another with powerful tranquilisers. Two buttons are present on the device; a toggle to open and close the lid and eject or install the tubes, and another to extend and withdraw the spearhead by means of powerful integrated pneumatics, which cause the spearhead to thrust into a target with a great deal of force, rendering it capable of penetrating even heavier armours.
Shortly after activation of the pneumatic mechanism, the contents of the cylinder begin to rapidly discharge through the spearhead into its victim. The tranquilisers have the effect of inducing a short lived, near instantaneous unconsciousness, and also act as a facilitating temporary immunological suppressant while the XVI goes to work. After a period of time (several turns, approximately, the exact length may be determined by the health of the target), the XVI successfully subverts its victim, and it becomes a new member of the alien hive mind, awakening shortly after its infection is complete.
If PHALANX possesses a working anti-viral cure, it may prevent an infected victim from turning by administering it via the medikit, before the infection resolves. A fully turned victim however, cannot be saved, and must be pacified along with the remainder of the alien presence. If a battlescape scenario ends before a turning is complete, the victim is considered to be saved if PHALANX possesses a functional anti-virus. Otherwise, that victim is lost and is counted as a casualty.
The aliens will use this weapon on civilians as well as PHALANX soldiers. Civilians that are turned will attempt to assist the aliens however they can; commonly by serving as reconnaissence or engaging PHALANX soldiers in combat if armed.
Obviously, PHALANX cannot effectively utilize this weapon against alien forces. While the spearhead is easily capable of penetrating most types of armour to inflict injuries, these will prove non-terminal in nearly all cases, as it was designed to infect enemy forces, not to kill them. Given its size and relative lack of lethality, nearly all alternative melee weapons will make for superior choices in close quarters combat.
Bloodspiders may also be retrofitted to use similar devices. Given their speed, resilience, and increased fluidic capacity they would prove to make ideal transmission vectors, each being easily capable of administering many fast-acting doses within a relatively short period of time.
So, what does everyone think?
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In short, I think it's a great idea, I think it would indeed make the game more interesting.
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While a spear punctures armor, it doesn't stop just there. To an unprotected target it might as well just go all the way through the body, just like arrows do. Unless you know what protection your target has, this weapon is prone to be ineffective or deadly.
A) balance it for civilians. PHALANX soldiers that have armor has very little chance of being injected.
B) balance it for armor. unprotected civilians and soldiers are almost killed on the spot and not injected. Others sustain damage because of the impact as well
C) new spearhead design
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A ring around the shaft preventing it from entering the body too deep so you are sure they are infected regardless of the armour. This stopper of course does crush damage to the target, maybe knocking them out. It also seriously hampers the aerodynamic shape of the spear. The impact shock on short distance will be heavy for is quite weak at longer distances. That means it has a distinct short parabole trajectory. It might even fail to reach for distances greater then 50m.
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There is no projectile component to the lance. It is a melee weapon.
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At the risk that the powers that be will outright reject your idea as a consequence, this has my full approval. The concept is grounded and sensible, and is highly complimentary to the storyline. Gameplay wise, meaningful tradeoffs are clearly inherant to the weapon; while the plasma blade may result in instant and certain death, the lance exchanges this surety for the potential, but not guarantee to turn a soldier after a delay. As well, the combat viability of the Bloodspider is also seemingly maintained as stronger armours become availible. A superb concept all told, and one that I hope finds its way into the game.
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If someone is willing to model and texture this concept (with some adjustments), then it's worth trying in-game.
I'd insist on a dagger-sized pneumatic syringe rather than a lance, however, a bit like the syringes in Dark City. It would have to be melee-only. Then, if it works out, we'll need a retexture of the Bloodspider as well.
Anyone interested in modelling it (sitters?) should post or PM me, at which point we can hash out the details.
Regards,
Winter
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Posible model for it:
(http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7902/jeringafinal1ni2.th.jpg) (http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jeringafinal1ni2.jpg)
Just wanted to update the thread with some info
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I do not want to counter your efforts so far but I have ideas on that concept of bio warfare.
First of all I do not see an alien species that can travel to other solar systems running around hoplite style. They should have a more creepy stealthy and efficient technology for bio warfare.
I am no friend of syringes used by technological advanced species as well. Even given the technology of our days you do not need to inject DNA altering "poison" directly if you want to infect the whole organism anyway.
How about something like that black oil stuff from x-files or borg nano probes?
It will still be needed to get close to the victim and you can give some protection to your soldiers by not letting them run around with eyes and mouths wide open. :o
As you already now I love it to be logical it is nearly impossible to think of a battle situation in which an enemy manages to inject something subcutaneous into a weak spot using a syringe while you are able to run or fight (i.e. being concious). In logical reality there is no message "no more time units left, you need to let that guy put the syringe into you deep enough!" ;D
A liquid or gas that needs to be used within short range with some tazer like weapon would feel much cooler imho. 8)
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I do not want to counter your efforts so far but I have ideas on that concept of bio warfare.
First of all I do not see an alien species that can travel to other solar systems running around hoplite style. They should have a more creepy stealthy and efficient technology for bio warfare.
I am no friend of syringes used by technological advanced species as well. Even given the technology of our days you do not need to inject DNA altering "poison" directly if you want to infect the whole organism anyway.
How about something like that black oil stuff from x-files or borg nano probes?
It will still be needed to get close to the victim and you can give some protection to your soldiers by not letting them run around with eyes and mouths wide open. :o
As you already now I love it to be logical it is nearly impossible to think of a battle situation in which an enemy manages to inject something subcutaneous into a weak spot using a syringe while you are able to run or fight (i.e. being concious). In logical reality there is no message "no more time units left, you need to let that guy put the syringe into you deep enough!" ;D
A liquid or gas that needs to be used within short range with some tazer like weapon would feel much cooler imho. 8)
The XVI organism is much heavier than air, and requires direct blood transfusion to succesfully infect a host. This is not impractical, and certainly not outside the realm of believability given the full writeup of XVI's history and capabilities.
Also, the syringe won't be the only XVI-transmitting weapon. The proposed Bloodspider upgrade would have the same sort of functionality as the syringe, and the planned Breeder alien will be even scarier, with powerful psionic attacks, a melee range of around five squares, and a near-instant takeover of anything it attacks.
Regards,
Winter
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I do not want to counter your efforts so far but I have ideas on that concept of bio warfare.
First of all I do not see an alien species that can travel to other solar systems running around hoplite style. They should have a more creepy stealthy and efficient technology for bio warfare.
I am no friend of syringes used by technological advanced species as well. Even given the technology of our days you do not need to inject DNA altering "poison" directly if you want to infect the whole organism anyway.
How about something like that black oil stuff from x-files or borg nano probes?
It will still be needed to get close to the victim and you can give some protection to your soldiers by not letting them run around with eyes and mouths wide open.
As you already now I love it to be logical it is nearly impossible to think of a battle situation in which an enemy manages to inject something subcutaneous into a weak spot using a syringe while you are able to run or fight (i.e. being concious). In logical reality there is no message "no more time units left, you need to let that guy put the syringe into you deep enough!"
A liquid or gas that needs to be used within short range with some tazer like weapon would feel much cooler imho.
The thing is that XVI as Winter has said is blood-borne, and large quantities are apparently required to fully infect someone in a timeframe that would permit them to be practically subverted in combat. That leaves out projectiles (which would have to be huge) and gases. Personally, I don't find the weapon to lack plausibility given the armour penetrating pnuematics, which makes discharge of the lance (or gun/dagger/whatever) quick, viable and efficient, while tranquilisers effectively eliminate the afflicted soldier as a threat until he turns, which is in itself a powerful effect worth pursuing at risk given the tactical squad scale combat.
Further, TUs basically represent what your character can do in a limited timeframe versus what an opponent can do. In reality, what this translates into, assuming a syringe equipped alien was able to get into melee range and inject your soldier, is his reactionary measures to avoid attack proving ineffective.
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In my opinion at this point the turn based gameplay would contradict reality. What would happen if someone would get close to you with a syringe? Even if it is a 6 foot muscle hero it would take more than a few seconds to inject me considering we are fighting in the same reality of time and space. :D
That is why we use close range tazers to stun someone and do not fight him in melee and then inject tranquillizers with a syringe (this cannot be done in a 1:1 fight).
I do not contradict the neccessity of direct injection but how about some kind of flechette gun/smart organic projectiles that creep under your armor after beeing shot on you...
There is plenty of possibilities but the hoplites lance as well as the smallpox vaccination syringe thing botchers me. In my opinion it simply does not fit evil alien technology. It is too human like. But that is a matter of opinion of course.
:)
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In my opinion at this point the turn based gameplay would contradict reality. What would happen if someone would get close to you with a syringe? Even if it is a 6 foot muscle hero it would take more than a few seconds to inject me considering we are fighting in the same reality of time and space.
That is why we use close range tazers to stun someone and do not fight him in melee and then inject tranquillizers with a syringe (this cannot be done in a 1:1 fight).
Here's the thing though. All they have to do is press it against you, anywhere that it could conceivably perform an injection, and tap a button. That's it. Game over. That's not to say that a struggle would always prove futile and ineffective, but it is to say that it's not even close to an absolute guarantee of protection. No combat knife or other standard military melee weapon to my knowledge can deliver such instantaneous results, which is why, in addition to the relative safety and convenience of ranged combat, we rely on firearms. Further, existing military melee weapons cannot subvert a soldier. The syringe can. It doesn't merely kill, but gives your squad an extra man. Such actions also come with a TU cost. Presumably this cost reflects not only the time required to perform the injection, but also to overcome resistance.
Ranged stun weapons that would facilitate injection is an interesting and worthy idea though. Personally I think the aliens should possess such instruments myself. It only makes sense when you're looking to subvert a population or opposition, or extract tissue samples (for human XVI development) with minimum complications. To that end, an alien electrolaser/stun grenade/flashbang has an indisputable purpose.
I do not contradict the neccessity of direct injection but how about some kind of flechette gun/smart organic projectiles that creep under your armor after beeing shot on you...
There is plenty of possibilities but the hoplites lance as well as the smallpox vaccination syringe thing botchers me. In my opinion it simply does not fit evil alien technology. It is too human like. But that is a matter of opinion of course.
Again, the projectiles would have to be implausibly gigantic given the quantities of XVI that must be injected. A taser like arrangement where the needlehead is connected via a tube to some sort of viral reservoir ala the Breeder might work, but other than that, it would be impractical to allot combat infection any sort of ranged capability.
As for similarity to human technology, plasma and particle beams are essentially high tech counterparts to existing human weaponry :P. The medium of killing and aesthetics are about the only differences (considerable ones, but the principle concepts remain homogenous). Subversion by injection of an alien pathogen is easily one of the most exotic weapons in the alien tactical arsenal for the time being.
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I don't see what "giantic" amount of anything is needed for an infection. Viruses compared to cells are nano-sized. You can have a liquid full of viruses for every single cell -this would lead to an immediate DNA conversion- in less than a single syringe. Taking into account the alien technology you clearly do not need any huge amount of water with a little bit of virus in it like we use it in vaccines.
Furthermore you do not need to infect every cell since viruses can reproduce themselves inside the cells and then spread the infection at a vast rate. This can take litte or much time in nature.
An artificially designed virus can be very potent in every respect.
As I said I do not want to interfere with you efforts. Do as you like. I will even use the "lance". ;D
But it is not a good explanation and it does not feel very comfortable for me.
Just my opinion.
PS: If you try to put some kind of melee syringe weapon near to me and I have any kind of weapon this will be a tough task no matter how quick you are. It just feels like beeing fooled by the game mechanics in order to push the injection thing if that is made possible. ;)
Again just my opinion.
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Well hey, I'm not the one who came up with the concept, but the basic idea is that an infection takes a prohibitively long time (combatwise/tactically) to set in with the amount of XVI that can be fit into a viable projectile. Were that not the case, I'd be totally for a flechette type infection vector.
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I don't see what "giantic" amount of anything is needed for an infection. Viruses compared to cells are nano-sized. You can have a liquid full of viruses for every single cell -this would lead to an immediate DNA conversion- in less than a single syringe. Taking into account the alien technology you clearly do not need any huge amount of water with a little bit of virus in it like we use it in vaccines.
Furthermore you do not need to infect every cell since viruses can reproduce themselves inside the cells and then spread the infection at a vast rate. This can take litte or much time in nature.
An artificially designed virus can be very potent in every respect.
You confirm here that you haven't read any of the XVI writeups in either the game or the wiki -- where it's stressed that XVI is not actually a virus but a multi-celled organism many times larger and more complex than a virus, merely behaving in a virus-LIKE manner -- but are still complaining about it?
Regards,
Winter
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Well you are right about that but if you are saying that XVI is a rather complex organism than my obvious question about this would be:
What's the gain from a complex organism to "infect" (parasite, whatever) someone if it is less efficient than a virus? Are aliens extremely advanced in weapons and space travel but merely stupid in biotechnology?
As I said before I do not want to raise anger because I counter the invested efforts. To change the text sayings would be quite easy though. I do not like the main concept of XVI at all. And the name neither. ;D
I'm just expressing my feelings about the concept, no offend. If you do not like critics that is fine for me, I will not give further comments on that one.
Thanks for hearing me anyway. :)
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In my various notes on UFO:AI, I have written "Alien stun weapons -- needed?" :) I think the Aliens definitely needs some non-lethal, but still weird, armaments, to facilitate the capture of specimens for XVI. My 2p :)
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Just a thought -- how much material does this syringe inject? And how quickly?
I'm just thinking -- it may be easy to score a hit on someone in "real-time melee" with this thing, but then you have to wait for the injection to finish, while the target just stands there? Or else it is very fast-acting anaesthetic that it injects in parallel...
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Just a thought -- how much material does this syringe inject? And how quickly?
Quickly enough to be a valid melee weapon.
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XVI is not a virus?
So, all aliens are biological, DNA+RNA+Proteins+Cell-based life organism??
Very strange and it should mean, there are no any other lifeforms.
But the same problem even if XVI is virus, it need in correct cells mechanismes to grow.
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I'm just thinking -- it may be easy to score a hit on someone in "real-time melee" with this thing, but then you have to wait for the injection to finish, while the target just stands there? Or else it is very fast-acting anaesthetic that it injects in parallel...
From what I've read in the description, a powerful, fast-acting anaesthetic is indeed used to pacify the victim. I'm guessing the discharge of the XVI solution is expedited by pressure.
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But, that's my point: if the Aliens have a quick-acting anaesthetic, then why not use it before the XVI lance as a general-purpose weapon? If you need to inject 100ml (lets say) of XVI into a victim to infect them, then you can't inject it too fast, or else their body will not be able to absorb it!
Maybe the XVI lance takes a ton of TUs to use it, so that an Alien using it has to basically spend the next round standing over their victim, sort of like the Medikit.
This leads me to: Alien psi/tech/chem stun weapons. Stun the target, and the XVI lance becomes much more easy to use! "I felt a malevolent presence in the room, but was unable to move or even scream. Then they started injecting me with horrible alien tools... It was awful..." ;) You know what I mean?
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IMHO it would match the Alien agenda if stun weapons were a common part of their arsenal... even before the stage of the game where XVI becomes a problem.
As a side benefit you could revive any stunned soldiers if you won that mission... so it might might allow us to nerf the alien strength in the beginning a little less, without changing the difficulty.
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I wouldn't be terribly opposed to alien stun weapons, as long as they're incorporated well. The thing is, it needs to be useable by aliens on humans, but not by humans on aliens.
The ideas I've come up with so far are either a stun dart launcher or simple gas grenades, with or without launcher.
Regards,
Winter
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Those sound good, if a little low-tech :( What about these as well:
- ultra- or infra-sound paralysis weapons. Aliens could be immune to these due to physiology.
- psi or hypnosis. Humans have little or no psi capacity.
- the Alien Death-Ray :D well, some kind of tractor beam or raygun-type effect, perhaps grav-field manipulation. Not sure how the aliens would counter it?...
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The dart medium is probably the best of Winter's ideas because it differs from Phalanx's core stun methodology (gas grenades).
Something more exotic might be interesting though. Psionic stunning specifically attuned to the human physiology proposed by Nemcheck as an example.
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Aliens already use Plasma Technology. A small plasma burst could possibly ionize the air around a target enough to shock like a taser hit. Armour would lower it's effects requiring multiple hits.
An alternate option is to use the particle beam technology which has already been defined as well out of our capability to replicate. A low level particle beam is used to ionize the air between the weapon and the target which then carries a heavy electrical charge. Maybe an alternate fire mode for the Particle Beam Blaster?
Brett
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Ooh, nasty! :D
It would be nice to have a *paralysing* weapon, too. Not stun as such, just paralysis. Just seems more gruesome to see your guy standing there, but unable to do anything about it! ;)