Local troops?

[Sophisanmus]

My biggest concern with the inclusion of local defenders and potentially armed civilians would be keeping the equipment dropped by killed defenders separate from items PHALANX will loot upon victory...

My take on the setup would be three groups:
Civilians: Rare - Pistol.
Police: Common - Pistol; Uncommon - SMG; Rare - Shotgun.
Military: Common - Assault Rifle; Uncommon - Machine Gun; Rare - Rocket Launcher/Sniper Rifle.

The following model assumes that the number of aliens and their types are not set for each map, and can be re-evaluated while on the geoscape. 

An alien incursion appears on the geoscape.  Should PHALANX arrive within the first hour, they find the full alien force, civilians, and maybe the odd single or pair of cops.  Should PHALANX fail to arrive within the hour, the aliens kill a handful of civilians.  The second through fifth hours, police presence increases, civilian decreases.  Each hour the aliens kill a slightly smaller number of civilians, with a low chance that police kill one alien.  After five hours (less later in the game) the military arrives.   Each hour a few civilians (well, in this case they are military, but still count as local non-PHALANX) are killed, with a moderate chance to kill 1-2 aliens.  Should PHALANX arrive, they will find the map mostly vacant of civilians, with the exception of military units in groups of 2-4.  Along these lines, the Country may also lose respect for PHALANX for each alien their military has to kill; "If PHALANX isn't going to help us, we need to invest in our own interests instead."

There's my proposal.

[TrashMan]

sounds good.
Adda sniper to the list of equipment.
Also, all soldiers should have a pistol as a backup.

Maybe add a possibiltiy to have soldeirs get some other man-made equipment later (bolters), since you can sell (and later buy) some higher tech stuff.

[ZebTa]

An alien incursion appears on the geoscape.  Should PHALANX arrive within the first hour, they find the full alien force, civilians, and maybe the odd single or pair of cops.  Should PHALANX fail to arrive within the hour, the aliens kill a handful of civilians.  The second through fifth hours, police presence increases, civilian decreases.  Each hour the aliens kill a slightly smaller number of civilians, with a low chance that police kill one alien.  After five hours (less later in the game) the military arrives.   Each hour a few civilians (well, in this case they are military, but still count as local non-PHALANX) are killed, with a moderate chance to kill 1-2 aliens.  Should PHALANX arrive, they will find the map mostly vacant of civilians, with the exception of military units in groups of 2-4.  Along these lines, the Country may also lose respect for PHALANX for each alien their military has to kill; "If PHALANX isn't going to help us, we need to invest in our own interests instead."

There's my proposal.

I'm thinking as well that a time dependance would be kind, could be represented on the geosphere by helicoptere coming from nearest big city/army camp.
Do they arrive on a crash site because of phalanx interception -> does phalanx warns authority about crashed ufo; may be player could choose ?

[Sophisanmus]

I'd think the military response would mostly be for dealing with terror attacks, a reaction to the aliens slaughtering civilians and wiping out the local police resistance.  For crashes, I'd suggest the chance/rate of alien-death be increased, and civilian death be reduced, since crash-aliens wouldn't usually be equipped or prepared to go on terror-rampages, and would already be injured/stunned from the impact.  The military would probably arrive about as quickly, possibly faster having detected the dogfight and crash.  Also, the "aliens-killed-without-PHALANX's-help" penalty should probably be smaller, considering PHALANX already did some of the work in shooting the ship down.  Should the locals secure the site, though, they keep the craft and loot.  Maybe if you piss that country off enough, they'll start using that gear against you.

As it is, the sniper rifle may be too strong; it may over-power the military units in-battle, especially in comparison to their poor performance on the geoscape.  I think the following may create a system that would allow for the military to be perceived as using the more powerful end of military hardware, without actually having them easily overwhelming the aliens or, worse, out-performing PHALANX. 

If civilian/local equipment can be easily excluded from combat spoils, I would actually suggest having a second set of equipment instead of the weapons available to PHALANX, but with lower damage or accuracy ratings.  PHALANX gets the pick of the best equipment from participating nations, but the individual nations have their own, mass-produced, not-quite-the-best-there-is gear, especially when it comes to civilians and police.  Thus the pistols, shotguns, rifles, etc., would be less effective than what PHALANX uses.  The models of the weapons could just be recycled from the existing ones, so I don't think much work would be needed other than re-stating and making sure the locals draw from the right weapon sets.

[TrashMan]

Wouldn't any military that sends it's soldiers after aliens, make sure they are decently equipped?
IIRC, All human stock weapons PHALANX uses are on the market. Thus, why wouldn't nations buy a supply and equip troops they plan on sending after aliens?

I don't know if it pays off to make more weapons, just for the civies/military.

EDIT:
Speaking of which, a sniper rifle would fall into the uncommon or rare category of weapons for the military.

[Sophisanmus]

The different nation's general militaries are not going to have access to the same grade of equipment as PHALANX.  Most will be using their own nation's standard issues, not the international best PHALANX can choose from.  Now, having specially-armed troopers for dealing with the aliens would alleviate that to some extent, but that's what PHALANX is supposed to be.  Of course, the more often PHALANX sits on its hands before responding, the more the country under attack will question this logic, and the more likely it is to withdraw and invest in its own program as a last-ditch.  And if these nation-specific programs had much chance of success, PHALANX would be a waste of time. 

I think it may not involve much work, mostly copy-paste.  The models can be recycled, as can most of the stats.  The damage value and accuracy value would be reduced.  There would need to be some code in the battlescape preventing PHALANX from taking weapons dropped by locals back to base, but that would need to be done anyways if the locals are going to be armed at all.  Hell, having a roster of local-specific weapons might even make it easier to keep track of what PHALANX can loot, and what they have no claim to.

I edited in the Sniper Rifle under Rare.  It strikes me that the Rifle requires more trainings and ability to use than the Launcher, so it may be even less common.  Then again, the AI will still suck with it, and players may get the impression the military hands them out to every "imma b a sn1pa!@!!1" who survives boot camp...

[TrashMan]

The different nation's general militaries are not going to have access to the same grade of equipment as PHALANX.  Most will be using their own nation's standard issues, not the international best PHALANX can choose from.

IIRC, all standard weapons PHLANAX has are on the open market (in the game world). I really don't see why those new super-countries couldn't afford a sizable supply of those. Not enough for the whole military, but enough to equip a lot of troops. And it would probably be exactly those troops that would be sent to fight aliens.

I think it may not involve much work, mostly copy-paste.  The models can be recycled, as can most of the stats.  The damage value and accuracy value would be reduced.  There would need to be some code in the battlescape preventing PHALANX from taking weapons dropped by locals back to base, but that would need to be done anyways if the locals are going to be armed at all.  Hell, having a roster of local-specific weapons might even make it easier to keep track of what PHALANX can loot, and what they have no claim to.

It's not a problem of new models - such simple guns are easy enough to make.

[shevegen]

"IIRC, all standard weapons PHLANAX has are on the open market (in the game world). I really don't see why those new super-countries couldn't afford a sizable supply of those."
I agree somewhat. In the past I complained that in the beginning of the game there was not enough equipment to buy in general, especially ammo. I think there should rarely be a shortage in ammo, especially not if one can pay for it, nice sums.

However on the other hand, I agree that "simple" soldiers should have worse armour + weapons than the elite soldiers we can control. It would look weird if soldiers are better at killing aliens than our trained warriors


"Not enough for the whole military, but enough to equip a lot of troops. And it would probably be exactly those troops that would be sent to fight aliens."
One problem is - is your military everywhere? How fast can they reach an area.

However, it brings me to another idea. The aliens could sometimes launch surprise attacks on military complexes. I think a decently equipped UFO could wreak quite some havoc

[Sophisanmus]

You've convinced me to some extent... this 20XX future is supposedly a relatively peaceful one, correct?  Most of the weapons strike me as somewhat aged, as if hardware had fallen by the wayside without much use for it; following that logic, manpower has also diminished to more security-level counts, armed for urban engagements (terror/criminal). The scaled-down military model would be smaller and more spread out, and thus slower and weaker in responding to alien threats.  They could get better with time, as they ramp up their own agendas, if PHALANX is sufficiently successful at protecting them and keeping their infrastructures intact and uncontaminated.

I do still like the idea of differentiating a second set of weapons that PHALANX cannot loot from the battle, even if they are exact clones of the weapons.  There may be other ways to accomplish that, I wouldn't know.  Still, there is the advantage of tweaking the second set's damage and other characteristics to adjust them if the military is too effective against aliens, from a gameplay perspective.  Cloning weapons and tweaking their stats would save time in brainstorming and modeling, even if it would not have taken a large time investment to model, skin, and stat new weapons to serve generally the same roles in NPC hands.

[Nevasith]

I see no problem with giving local militia ordinary assault rifles and shotgun rifles or a combat armour we start with, as SWAT teams normally use it, and in 2084 its probable that terror attacks and crime will get decent equipment forcing the law enforcement to respond accordingly. The main thing should be the AI for local troops- its really unlikely that this man would rush to hunt aliens, instead they will rather guard positions and try to cover civilians without putting themselves to risk, so crouch, hide, cover, reaction fire, and try to group in one building.
I wont mention the military base or convoy that be definition has strong security team armed to teeth with a sufficient firepower to raze down a small village.

On the other hand, aliens killed be locals would also reduce founds from that nation, as there is no point in paying phalanx if our own soldiers do the job better.

[das]

Since the PHALANX are supposed to be the best of the best, the local soldiers should probably also be fairly weak as far as basic stats are concerned, and they indeed should have inferior equipment. They should be able to hamper or even kill aliens if they get lucky, but PHALANX assistance will ofcourse remain critical.

(And, ofcourse, as I proposed in the other thread, the local forces of infested nations should attack PHALANX)