UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Design => Topic started by: jffdougan on October 16, 2013, 04:29:50 pm
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Food for thought:
Now that (in the current state of 2.5) live aliens can't be captured until the Alien Breathing Apparatus has been researched, would it make story sense for the Alien Containment Unit to not be buildable until after the research is completed, and increase starting player money by the cost of an ACU? I can make the case either way.
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Food for thought:
Now that (in the current state of 2.5) live aliens can't be captured until the Alien Breathing Apparatus has been researched, would it make story sense for the Alien Containment Unit to not be buildable until after the research is completed, and increase starting player money by the cost of an ACU? I can make the case either way.
You always needed to research the breathing apparatus to keep aliens alive. And we have discussed this matter before and decided to keep AC built default on a new game.
-geever
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No, the first base needs to have an alien containment unit, or it's all too likely that inexperienced players would build out their base and make it impossible to fit a containment unit, and not have funds to build another base with AC
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You always needed to research the breathing apparatus to keep aliens alive. And we have discussed this matter before and decided to keep AC built default on a new game.
-geever
I'll take your word for it for the first -- my current 2.5 game is the first one where I'd been stunning aliens rather than killing them prior to researching the breathing apparatus. As for the latter, I skimmed the first two or three pages of threads on this board and didn't spot them. However, TallTroll's reason was one of the arguments I would have made for leaving things as-is.
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no
-geever
Before you can capture aliens you must kill em.
I am seeing what you say, but its a free building and its free; that is you will prolly damage stun enough enemy unit to fill up the Alien Containment...vs being paid to kill Aliens? To be honest, if it wasnt auto built, I wouldnt both4r withn the main base slash and if it wasnt already built I would build it by the second base.
To make it quick I'd split the globe and end up with two AC; otherwise they may die in the transfer. But if you make it an option, it becomes at most a tech tree hurdle we'd all complain about.
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First of all: I did not say a simple "no". Please don't quote something I did not say! Its not nice.
In general: Whoever criticizes the initial building list/layout forgets that the Player becomes the new commander of PHALANX not building it up from nothing. You can decide to demolish a building but not that if it was built in the past or not. You know, without time machines, it works like that.. ;)
About the AC thing: PHALANX Scientists and engineers designed a containment facility that can hold extraterrestrial species in captivity and built one. But; that happened before they met these ones. Of course they need to study these new aliens so they can adjust the AC's life-support systems for them. I see no problems here.
-geever
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You also need the contaiment to store the BODIES as well. If you cant store them, you cant research them, and cant research the briefing apparatus. And captur aliens as result. Thus you need to have the contaiment in the begining.
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I'm not quite sure if this is still true technically but could be a reasoning too.
The situation of the alien corpses is not clear right now. It was a decision that we don't sell them as X-Com did, and yet we do store them (count, transfer) and do not store them (takes no actual store space) at the same time. Probably the solution will be dropping the dead counts.... when I get there..
-geever
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I could also make the argument for being able to sell them for modest sums (say, 1k or less), but that's also something that's been discussed & done with.
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I have no problem with there being a kill count, and a few corpses of each species being kept on hand for "research" purposes, but have a divided opinion about them being sold off. If there was not a ready supply from other combat not involving PHALANX, then there might be a market for them, otherwise they would have no inherant value.
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>> , otherwise they would have no inherant value.
Anything rare has value. I guarantee that about 20 mins after the alien invasion, recipes for Tamanburgers would have appeared on the Interwebs. In real life, people eat/drink bird spit (swallow nests), fried insects, coffee that has first passed through a cat, cheese that has first passed through a maggot and the fluffy bits inside crocuses (which have sometimes cost more than gold, weight for weight)
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Food for thought:
Now that (in the current state of 2.5) live aliens can't be captured until the Alien Breathing Apparatus has been researched, would it make story sense for the Alien Containment Unit to not be buildable until after the research is completed, and increase starting player money by the cost of an ACU? I can make the case either way.
What exactly IS ANy one buying with this increased starting player money? I usually start off selling equipment so I like the idea of more money, and I am unsure how this much moremoneyismorefavourable, like what am getting instead?
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What exactly IS ANy one buying with this increased starting player money? I usually start off selling equipment so I like the idea of more money, and I am unsure how this much moremoneyismorefavourable, like what am getting instead?
My intended/expected course of action is that, once the Breathing Apparatus is researched and the ACU became possible, the money increase would go toward it.
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And I'd Expect that a new player -who doesn't know the ACU is coming- would probably have spent the money long before it is available...
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Food for thought:
Now that (in the current state of 2.5) live aliens can't be captured until the Alien Breathing Apparatus has been researched, would it make story sense for the Alien Containment Unit to not be buildable until after the research is completed, and increase starting player money by the cost of an ACU? I can make the case either way.
I think its like this. You build an alien prison but you dont know much about aliens so they die. Than you chech whats wrong with it and you rebuild it. You baisicly only do a research.
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I highjack this thread about Alien Containment Unit (ACU), because my topic is right about it.
It's about an automatic transfer of bodies to main base ACU.
Given that:
- an ACU is present in main (first) base at the beginning of the campaign, as recalled above;
- the ACU's capacity doesn't seem to be limited, so that any number of bodies generated inside a campaign could be stored in it;
- the "hunting board" functionality of such ACU is lost as soon as a second PHALANX team starts operating from another base without ACU;
- current workaround for an absent ACU in another base allows to transfer dead alien bodies (and even living aliens), and thus helps in keeping the "hunting board" functionality, provided it triggers once per base per game session (i.e. the local team brought back a living alien);
- there's no other way to have a knowledge of the "hunting board" without opening the console (I didn't try, though);
We could have:
- automated bodies transfers from bases without ACU to base with ACU (or rather, to first base);
Message:"Base has no Containment unit; collected alien bodies are transfered to #s" - either
- keep current workaround as it is (though it creates an ACU until game is exited),
or - automatically kill the aliens (as when no ACU is present at all), adding their bodies to the other ones being transfered;
Message:"Base has no Containment unit; any prisoner died and collected alien bodies are transfered to #s"
This would allow for keeping the track of every killed aliens, provided:
- first base has always one operational ACU at least;
- if ACUs were moved, correct alien management was dealt to avoid unwanted deletion.
This would force the player to keep one ACU in first base, even if he wants to build a R&D base with labs and ACU.
TL;DR
In v2.5, the game features no hunting board. The Alien Containment Unit could be use to count down ALL the collected bodies, provided the player doesn't destroyed all of the ACUs in first base (simplest solution?), or in any base.
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The ACU is limiting live aliens. It is true that currently the dead body count is not used. The solutio will be not storing/counting dead bodies in the ACU, for the gameplay we only need to know if we brought home a single dead body (that starts the research).
For the scoreboard thing, I would rather add it as a separate feature, it has nothing to do with the ACU or base building capacities.
-geever