IDEA: different approach (landing zone) types

[bartl]

My Idea:
When approaching an alien side you can choose the landing zone. This will result in the distance to the "fight zone".
3 possible zones will be nice.

- Far away: so you have to move 2-3 rounds to see the first alien. Time for taktikal moves an so on. The aliens have much time to kill the civilians.

- In visual range, so the troops are on the border of the fight zone. You see the first aliens in the first round. You have to go in and help the civilians. The aliens can be expected only in one direction. (comparable to the current solution)

- Total inside: ready to fight! Best way to save most of the civilians but also to loose some peaple. The aliens are "everywhere"

Ok, what do you think??

[Bandobras]

Nice idea. I think some of the fun of UFO is that you don't know how far the closest alien is. But this is no problem, just introduce some randomness. Say, 1 in 10 on average, the landing zone is of a totally different type than advertised. I also think for diversity, some maps sould let you choose their versions with close or distant spawn spots, while other should only tell you which variant this is. Again some might by silent...

I wonder how this relates to the current mission and map scripts...

[BTAxis]

From what I've seen of the auto-generated village map (as far as it's auto-generated in revision 1335. I think it's semi-random in that one. Yeah, I'm a bit behind), the maps are fairly small compared to the landing craft tile. I don't think there's enough room for those three options; it's pretty much always the second one. A larger map would not really be desirable, I think, since it would take much more time to sweep all of it with just 8 soldiers.

[Bandobras]

If the ship happens to land at the map's edge... And the sweep problem is real, but if the aliens are aggresive enough it should not be too grave (but then players would be too well off camping and waiting for the aliens). Or use the "call the army"  button (similar to current auto-combat selected before mission start) to get that last alien, when/if it's implemented. An occasional large map is interesting tactically, since you can be ambushed from behind.