Design: Storyline

[altugi]

It will be my pleasure to share ideas about story development.

The risk here is, that the development is quite far in progress and that suggestions must meet a certain level of applicability in regard to the game engine and other assets that are already there. However, I do not know this project well enough yet, so some of my suggestions might simply seem out of scope or would suggest changes in things that you consider already as cleared. Until I have a better idea about the things that make up this project, I might sound quite silly with my suggestions. So be warned :-)

[altugi]

One idea I had last night was to put the whole story into the frame of an  alien conspiracy and limit the war between worlds to a struggle between two "secret services": One human and one alien secret service.


Human-Phalanx versus Alien-"Phalanx"?

On one side we have the Phalanx, on the other hand we have the Alien "Elite Forces", trying to implement a secret agenda assigned to them by their leaders. Thus we avoid a setting in which a big war between worlds is going on. Instead we find ourselves as part of a struggle between secret services. This will allow us the eliminate the David vs Goliath situation that has been subject to critique before. (I remember some people saying that it sounds unrealistic that a tiny little force has to fight against an invasion of huge alien forces.)


The Secret Agenda of the Aliens

So what is the secret agenda of the alien secret service? They are assigned to carry out certain mission (the installation of sophisticated devices) that result in a climatic change on earth. This climatic change will turn our planet into one that provides ideal conditions for their own race. As a side effect the human race and other earthly species will be eliminated. The idea is simple: They don't need to carry out a real war. If they succed to set up the mechanism that creates the climatic change, they can change the "grammar of civilizations" and get rid of rival species over time.

But they have to carry out this plan carefully. In order to prevent suspicion to raise amongst humans, they aim to "stage" this climatic change as an "approaching Judgement Day". They want to exploit religious belief in order to camuflage their endeavour. This will keep any conscious resistance at a minimum. In short, while the aliens deploy their devices, they also use other smaller devices to cause a number of natural disasters to hit the globe. Some magazines and channels already broadcast programs that interpret these disasters as the sign of an approaching Judgement Day and refer the religious texts. Public Opinion shifts more and more towards a metaphysical or religious explanation of the row of disasters.

On the other hand, some nations seem to have gained access to certain technologies that they are normally not capable of to produce. It appears that some of these nations start to put a distance between themselves and Sector 911, eventually resulting in withdrawal from the organisation and followed by hostile actions towards 911 agents.

What is tbe objective of the Alien Special Forces? Their objective is to set up a number of gravitational devices on earth and on the moon which will fix the moons position in such a way that it results into a constant eclipse of the sun. This will cool down earth as a whole, starting a new ice age, creating famine and leaving only a few humans alive... only a bunch of humans survive, which can be exterminated easily once the colonization of the "new and comfortable home" has started. On the other hand they install some devices that cause natural disasters... so that the shift in the moons behavior is related with the idea that Judgement Day has come. All this causes a stronger interest into religion and metaphysical explanation of the situation. Organization like the Vatican think their time to rule has come and they contribute a lot in making the "Judgement Day has come" idea even more popular.

In order to "work" comfortable, the aliens seek for allies around the globe. They contact leaders and bureaucrats, infiltrate institutions and services in order to gather intel and other support. They bribe or brainwash agents in order to make these services or nations to act in favor of their agenda. This is dangerous for the Phalanx, because a growing secret alliance between pro-alien nations and secret services means that Sector 911 weakens. These nations start to regard the Phalanx as an enemy and deny its access to their territories. They also deny the trade of unique products and services of their nations. Finally they dare to attack our HQ and other buildings.

Our goal as the commander of Phalanx is to gradually find out about these evil goals and objectives, and eventually, to defeat all enemies.


The Phalanx

But who is the Phalanx? It is a special research unit founded under control of the CIA during the increase in "flying saucer" incidents in the 1950s. Its goal is defined as "conducting research on extra-terrestial life forms in order to prepare the earth for a possible encounter with the "third kind"". It is a a group of experts coming from fields like computer engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Genetics, Biology etc... They search for evidence of other forms of life by making tests on everything that is believed to some extend being of extra-terrestrial origin. They also do research on rocks and stones brought from other planets or on asteriods that hit the earth.

After 9/11, the worlds secret services, led by the USA, decided to fight Terrorrism on a global scale and established a Global Intelligence Service, also knows as "Sector 911". Sector 911 was an umbrella organization that combined the databases and resources of almost all the secret services of the world in order to maintain global intelligence and to conduct counter-strike activities against enemies. In 2027 a report  titled "The Possibility of Extra-Terrestial Terror" resulted in fear and paranoia amongst the leaders of "Sector 911". They decided to set up a unit that would prepare for a fight against such Extra-Terrestrial Terror. As a solution, they came up with the idea to integrate Phalanx into "Sector 911" and give a Elite Force into its command.

The Phalanx is now a special research organization that enjoys the comfort of making use of the resources, technology, funds and intel of a global intelligence service. It also enjoys having its own Elite Forces. However, the paranoia of Sector 911 leaders never proofed to be true and until today, the Phalanx Elite Forces never had an encounter with the Third Kind in any of the missions they were assigned to.

But that, my friends, will change soon :-)

[altugi]

Mission 1


Mission Brief

Commander,

Our centre recently developed an interstellar listening device capable of tracing nano-wave signals. Thanks to this device, we were hoping to listen into frequency levels not known to the humans race before.

The device was activated yesterday at our interstellar observatory at Palo Alto. Immediately we received signals of an unknown nature. To our surprise, we found out that these signals were not originated from a source in space. The signals came from earth.

A few minutes ago, our scientest succeeded to locate the coordinates of the signal source. Whatver it is, it is located at the southeast point of the Mariana Deep.

Your task is to go down there and find out what causes this signals. Secure all items and -in case of an encounter- all forms of alien specimen to be found there.

Good Luck!


Prof. Hoehrer

Director
Phalanx Research Center
Sector 911


Preparation for the mission

We arm our squad members.
We assign soldiers to the mission
We assign a vehicle
We assign the location that the squad has to go to
We send them to the mission

Upon Arrival...

Tactical Mission

Our squad members stand at several of the entrances of an oceanic cave. They enter the location. Soon we find ourselves in sort of a underwater station. We start to investigate the location and discover the presence of other beings, some humanoids, but also other strange creatures. They attack us, we take position and fight back. The ambush continues throughout the investigation of the location. Finally we arive at a circular hall with a device at its centre. We overcome the last group of humanoids gathered around the device. After the last humanid is killed or looses consciousness, the mission is over.


Post-Mission

We get a report on our tactical mission.

Duration of the mission
Our Losses
Our Injuries
Our Lost equippment
Death aliens
Living aliens
Alien equippment
etc

Due to space constraints we are asked which of the secured items, bodies or devices we want to leave there. We are asked to confirm our decision.

Once confirmed, our squad returns to the HQ


After arrival at the HQ:
We receive a message from the Lab Director:

Commander,

Quite interesting what you've found there. However we could not really sort out the pieces. You should come to the lab and take a look.

Thank you!

Prof. Mattn
Director
Phalanx Laboratory Unit


A "Go to Lab" button invites us to go to the lab.

Here we find a list of items to be researched. If we click the name of an item, we find a menu on the bottom of the screen with a variety of pieces. Above is a window which is displaying sort grid that resembles the shape of the whole item.  We can take pieces from the menu and drag them to the matrix window in order to reconstruct the item or the death body. To start research we should be able to reconstruct a certain percentage of it. In other words, we have to solve sort of a simple puzzle. Often pieces will be missing and only after a row of successful missions we will be able to complete the missing parts and reconstruct an item or a body as a whole (We will appreciate it a lot if we can secure whole items or living aliens therefore, since we can start with research immediately)

Once an item is reconstructed sufficiently we assign our scientists to conduct experiments and tests. This will take a certain time and once research is complete we find a new entry in the Ufopedia.

[BTAxis]

You're completely right about the story development from the player's perspective, of course. That's exactly how it's going to be. But this is a design thread, so naturally I talk about things from a designer's perspective.

I get what you're saying in the above. While, as you predicted, some of it may not fit in with the basic gameplay premise (a secret organization would hardly fly around in special aircraft, shooting down UFOs. They'd leave it to the military, or a front organization), there is no reason why you couldn't make a mod that does exactly what you describe. It might be quite good.

One question in particular. You headed your last post with "Mission 1". That implies the missions are sequential rather than randomly generated, as is the case in classic UFO gameplay. Would your idea then turn into a string of missions that the player plays out in order? The way I envisage the story development is indeed through scripted events and scripted missions, but these missions don't necessarily appear at set times. Rather, they emerge from research and special occurrences in battle.

[altugi]

I simply called it mission 1 because I imagined it as the starting point of a story that might develop in various ways depending on the research topics that the player prefers to complete. The story that the player experiences would vary according his choices, or even better depending on his learning curve. We think the same way here I guess :-)

Of course the story arc would be a pre-defined one, but its progress would depend on new backstory elements that are revealed through research activities of the player. That means we set constraints one the story, but it is up to the player how and when he reaches the pieces of the puzzle that make up the story. All we'd need to do would be writing the research reports that gradually reveal the story. These would glue the single missions together and turn them into scenes of a single coherent story. We could narrow the research tree at certain points, so that it feels like we have reached a cornerstone. The cornerstone moments could be used to make the player receive a report that summarizes the situation and enhances the feeling that he is in midst of an interesting story. Otherwise we would face the risk that he just feels like that missions are piling up and the content gets repetitious.

Btw, I had no idea that you were rather looking for stand-alone missions.
In the sample that I wrote, I imagined a story arc as it is the case in X-Com Apocalypse. And I only sent you the introduction part of what I have in mind.

[Hoehrer]

I kinda like some of your suggestions altgui.
But i have to agree with BTAxis here that it's kinda hard to hide alot of this 'secret' activities from anyone .... e.g the terror-attacks are pretty hard to hide from public view. Of course this could be steer into another direction by media and government regulations, but i think this isn't really possible world-wide - not in the world/time the game is set in.
We could change that, but we'll always find inconsistencies in any backgroubnd-story we pick, so sticking with one and try to make the best out of it seems to be the better solution.
This doesn't mean we can't include your ideas, but we just need to fit them in nicely with the existing background story.

What i personally had in mind for the storyline development-wise:

What we have

• We currently have a message system that reports nearly everything that happens to Phalanx&the world. These things currently are mostly static (see below for the future plans)
• A research system that you all know from the original games (not quite finished, but it'll get better)

Planned

• The Ufopedia currently contains information about 'items' such as weapons/aliens/technologies but it will be extended to display "plot-points" and certain news.
• To make it short: There will be a timeline.

Long description: I plan to implement a pre-defined event-system where you can define certain plot-devices at a certain time with dependencies on prior encountered/researched/etc.. things or events.[/list]

Using this event system we then can not only produce _real_ events like the following...

after the year 2010 day 40 a huge alien attack will follow after they find out you interrogated one of their alien commanders. (This is by no means a seriours plotpoint, but could be )

... but we can also produce fake news where friendly forces (military) counter attacks from the aliens in placed we do not have access to yet or where no special equipment is needed. And of course this will also be the case when we can't handle a mission at all sometimes. This will hopefully contribute a lot to the athmosphere.
At least you can't expect the player to believe that Phalanx is the only thing standing between thousands of alien forces alone, can you?

I think if we start a basic timeline (begin and end of the game) and then fill it with certain (major and minor) events we'll go places. As mentioned above these events may drive the story forward, but they could just be telling you what happens around you and don't help you at all.

Thanks for contributing
Werner

[altugi]

X-Com Apocalypse had a perfect system to feed-in new enemy squads: The spaceships. Their function was basically to deploy alien squads in buildings. There where three results of their visit:

1) Generating tactical missions in buildings
2) Generating tactical missions in alienships that we succeeded to shoot down
3) Creating hostile behavior against X-Com through the infiltration of organizations, resulting in tactical missions in buildings & shortage or denial of valuable resources.

Almost all research was possible through certain items we collected in those tactical missions. Also an increase in the economical situation was managed by a surplus of cellected items that we could sell... and later by selling items that we were able to produce ourselves. This decreased the dependency on the weekly goverment fund. Also we were less depending on the expensive and ineffective weaponry that the city factories were supplying (often in insufficient numbers... like 5 flyers, but only 3 engines)

Research enabled us to develope in two ways:
Strenghten our squad with new weaponry and other high-tech
Building stronger vehicles

The result simply was:
More success in tactical missions
More success in shooting down alienships

At the end we managed to stop the feed-in mechanism, because we were as strong as to shoot down alien motherships before they could even reach the walls of the city.

Gain control over the feed-in mechanism and defeat the enemy. So simple.

I think this summarizes the story arc.


The goal then, was to revert the starting position (someone coming in our dimension and shooting at us) of the game: At the end, we were the ones that got into their dimension and raid their buildings. This continued until we killed the mother alien and destroyed the dimension gate.

Congratulations. You defeated the aliens. :-)


The most important breaking point in this story arc was to develope the mighty Annihilator, enabling us to stop alienships outside of the city before the deployment of alien squads. That meant a decrease in tactical missions in buildings.

The story arc went on into Conclusion when we could go to their dimension and start to raid their buildings.


Now my question is: What is the mechanism to feed-in aliens in ufoai and can we revert it? Is there a final point where we can stop this mechanism?

[altugi]

One clever decision of the designers of X-Com Apocalypse was to limit the game locations. We were part of a city state. Actually our role was to protect the city. And we were paid for this by the city senate.

The city was designed in a quite functional way:

1) All buildings had to offer a certain service that was valuable to us. And infiltration was a danger because it would result in denial of the service.

2) Also we had gangs that didn't like us that much and attacked us from time to time.

3) Damage to the city or to civilians caused our budget to decrease, since it meant we are less successful.

So we can say, that the city was one great asset with many valuables.

In ufoai we have the whole world instead. What is our role as Phalanx? Are we the protectors of the world? Whom has the Phalanx to report to? The UN for instance? What assets and valuables has the world to offer? How are we "punished" when cities or civilians receive damage? Are there some natural enemies in the world that cause us trouble (but also give us items if we raid them?) Is it possible that we loose the support of some nations through, say, alien infiltration? What resources will be denied if we loose their support?

:-) Just some questions that might help us for some design brain exercise.

[altugi]

Werner,

I understand BTaxis' and your thoughts regarding the difficulty of secrecy in the game.

Actually in the X-Com series the city and the citizens know about the existence of Aliens. There is no secrecy in those games. Nothing is hidden from the public. More than that, X-Com is hired by the public (by its representant, the city senate) :-)

So if we would need some secrecy in our story, it had to be justified.

In the story "mod" that I propose, Aliens have a reason for secrecy. They want to keep their endeavour secret in order to prevent consciouss human resistance. They don't need to really fight. If they have their mechanism installed, the changing conditions on earth will do the war for them. Eventually the mechanism will create a nice environment for them.

Governments also have a need for secrecy, because they want to prevent chaos and disorder. More than that, for a long time in the game, the Phalanx will not really find out what is going on. So they would prefer to stay silent about it. Only if there is no other chance, the world would be alerted. As long as the secret services believe they can fix teh problem, they'd stick to this policy of remaining silent. By infiltrating these services aliens gain even more advantage. They gradually conquer the secret services... meaning the infiltrated ones will never ever reveal any info about it and make it even more difficult to fix the problem.  

Also the increasing popularity of the "Judgement Day" idea helps to support the thought that the public is not really aware of what's going on. Maybe the Vatican would be the first org to be infiltrated by aliens, because noone would get suspicious if the Vatican spread rumours about the Judgement Day.

This was the "cycle of secrecy" that I had in mind.

Hard to implement tough. But it depends on how we put the player into this cycle of secrecy. If the Phalanx' knowledge is limited to what it could finds in tactical missions, and if it reports to a boss, that prefers to keep things secret, and if at the beginning there is no reliable info on what causes the disasters, I think the player would get used to the idea that this is a secret mission.

Comments?

[Hoehrer]

One clever decision of the designers of X-Com Apocalypse was to limit the game locations. We were part of a city state. Actually our role was to protect the city. And we were paid for this by the city senate.

Yeah, and in just defending one city you end up saving the whole world by invading the alien dimension and end up destroying the dimension gate ... that sounds even _more_ realistic than the story of the original games.

But i think we'll have some missions that take place in company-buildings (all over the world) and the like, but you'll not get much out of it (the company equipment) ...at least not now.
How the entry of soldiers and aliens into the map/mission will be solved is still open though :-/

2) Also we had gangs that didn't like us that much and attacked us from time to time.

Yeah, that's a nice idea, and quite possible without limiting it to one place.

3) Damage to the city or to civilians caused our budget to decrease, since it meant we are less successful.

Since destroying the terrain is not an option (no support in the 3d-engine)  we'll be limited to 1.) certain destroyable objects and 2.) the killing of civilan (or friendly militars).

In ufoai we have the whole world instead. What is our role as Phalanx? Are we the protectors of the world? Whom has the Phalanx to report to? The UN for instance? What assets and valuables has the world to offer? How are we "punished" when cities or civilians receive damage? Are there some natural enemies in the world that cause us trouble (but also give us items if we raid them?) Is it possible that we loose the support of some nations through, say, alien infiltration? What resources will be denied if we loose their support?

Currently this is answered easily ... We are protectors of the world, but we are not alone ... it would be quite strange if the 'normal' militar just vanished and/or does nothing against the alien threat. The only advantage we have is the advanced technology and quality of employees we have or get from the different nations. We are mor flexible and can act on a global scale more easily (Maybe there are other Phalanx-like organisations out there, but this needs to be discussed more deeply before including it in the storyline.)

If we 'lose' the support of a nation currently the following things will vanish/change as well:
* monthly money (minor factor in the later game)
* monthly new scientists
* monthly new soldiers
* (planned) number of buyable items from the free market.
* (planned) Additional alien bases will pop up in this nation.
* (maybe) We'll even lose the control of bases located in this nation. (or at least the location is revealed to the aliens and attacks will follow)
* (maybe) This nation even tries to attack us.

Currently there are no 'natural' enemies of Phalanx out there... except for the aliens.
For the future: I added an "alien-friendlyness" factor to each nation that indicates how much support this nation will give (see above fot he influence). And this factor will be influenced by your actions and those by the aliens.

Who Phalanx is answering to is a quite interesting question, but i would vote for some sort of council of all the nations involved in funding the Phalanx project (in the beginning).

Werner

[BTAxis]

altugi, you seem to think mostly from the basic premise of X-COM Apocalypse. There's nothing wrong with that. But keep in mind that Apocalypse is the third game in the series, and the the first two games *did* have the entire world as the stage. This game is inspired on the first game (the second used the oceans as the main area of activity, rather than the land masses). Also, on a side note, Apocalypse was originally meant to have more than one city at a time, but it proved to be too much to realize, so it was cut down to a single city.

More than one "Phalanx" organization could work in theory - one that would be backed by an extremely powerful individual or corporation, for instance. But the only globally acknowledged organization should be Phalanx. The other ones could have ulterior motives, like gaining alien technology to increase the wealth or power of whoever backs them. They might even have an interest in allowing the aliens to continue to attack citizens for whatever reason. There are many possibilities. I personally like the idea, but a lot depends on implementation and modeling capacity.

About the issue as to whom Phalanx answers to, as Hoehrer already said, the main feedback from the people you're protecting is through funding. Other than that, Phalanx is completely independent. There are no civilian or corporate "factions" like in Apocalypse that actively work against Phalanx. I like the idea of nations turning against Phalanx resulting in items disappearing from the free market, and a decreased supply of personnel. But I'm against losing bases in hostile territory just like that - that has too great an impact. Hostile military forces attacking a base is okay with me, though.

While I'm on the subject, what exactly do we mean by "nations", Hoehrer? In the general background text, we have five or six large blocks of countries. That may be too few for the purpose of alien influence, as the blocks each occupy a pretty large area of land. Maybe we should divide each into a number of "provinces", and use them as our elementary "nations"?

[altugi]

BTaxis,

yes, you are right. I played X-Com 3 for many many years and it is definately the version I refer to when I come up with this ideas. I haven't seen X-Com 1 and only had a few little chances to play X-Com 2 (Terror from the Deep?) but  I never could make it far in that game.

I still need to figure out what ufoai is exactly about and how it feels to play it. After all I have no concrete idea what possibilities the ufoai engine has to offer in terms of gameplay etc. And I think the engine's features and capacity mean a lot if you want to come up with appropriate and applicable story content.

So please don't worry if all my musings sound too much over the spot. At this point and level of knowledge that I have about ufoai, I think almost everything I say will sound problematic. But I hope you regard my tryings as a way of adapting myself to the needs of this project.

[BTAxis]

Actually, I think you have a lot of interesting ideas. Some of them may not be practical given the game's framework, but at least they are food for thought. That's what brainstorming is all about, after all. Keep it up.

About those provinces, this is something like what I had in mind. It looks a bit like a RISK board:



I tried to keep the areas more or less equal sized, so there is no one spot "better" for creating a base than another. But possibly the lines could have been drawn better.
[EDIT] Hell. The colors could have been chosen better, too.

By the way, here is the image I used as a base.

[XCOMTurcocalypse]

Might I ask why did you divide my country in two?(Turkey)

...or is the rumor about that they really sell Turkish maps in EU countries which make the good old bird Turkey divided in two parts,the eastern part named as Armenia and Kurdistan?

[BTAxis]

It's a rough map. Don't split hairs.