Defending downed DROPSHIPs?

[solaris]

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?

[Destructavator]

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.

[Captain Bipto]

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)

[MunkyFish]

could add a turn limit. i.e the survivors must survive for 10-15 rounds befor being able to use the rescuers 

[BTAxis]

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.

[Psawhn]

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.

[BTAxis]

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.

[blondandy]

see

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Entities

and, more generally

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Category:Mapping

[Nevasith]

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

[JerryLove]

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.

[Sophisanmus]

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? 

[BTAxis]

Keep in mind that our dropships are models, so to create crashed versions we'd need a modeler who can destruct those models.

[Mayhem]

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.

[JerryLove]

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.

[Mayhem]

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?