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And how about that some civilians protected themselves in terror- and crashsites? For example, with shotguns or pistol? I'm not sure that all of them realy will be panic. 1-2 brave guy could be shoot at the Alien ...or marine (if he's do not know them in new armor and with a plasma guns) :D

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I don't like that. You're trying to save them, it would be terribly annoying if they then turned around and killed your man.

Would it be possible to implement this: If you get a man within say 2 tiles of a civilian, they then become controllable for that turn. So you can then choose to run them away from the aliens until their AP runs out, or if you're really mean run towards the aliens, or use them to pick up the alien gear that is a little more exposed than you'd like. I mean that might save your men, but you might take the score hit.

And while it may not really make sense, you can always just say that it represents the frightened civilians just blindly following orders, and not thinking for themselves as they are in a state of panic.

Then when they are away from your men, then next turn they return to their senses and are hopefully away from the frontlines and can make their way to the 'safe' zone =]

Thoughts?

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S.Alex: There will likely be local armed forces on some missions. THe likelyhood that civvies will be armed is rather low because of this. and realisticly people would only be armed on maybe farm maps or in America. I'd prefere if Civvies weren't armed tbh.

AD: I'm not that fond of your idea. would be an immersion breaker for me. I much prefere Xentas 2 set behaviour where they have a chance to switch into herding mode by themselves and still outside of player control.

Edited by Gorlom
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The language thing is legit, but humans are still recognizably humans, even if they have weird guns and uniforms you don't recognize. If you're running away from an ALIEN and a human with a gun points THAT WAY, you'll do that if you can control your panic long enough to think about it...

I'd like to see civs in two AI modes:

1. Panic: They run away from the latest perceived threat (last alien they saw, or last dead unit or other civ, or last explosion/gunfire, etc. This would include reversing direction if they turn a corner and they see ANOTHER such scare.

2. Herded: They move towards the nearest safe zone or the chopper.

Being near your units increases the odds of them entering mode 2 during the off-turn. Maybe your units have a stat that improves this?

Seeing an alien die/disable may also prompt them to enter mode 2 and head towards the source of the shot.

Seeing a live alien, seeing one of your units or another civ die, explosions/gunfire that they can't see the origin of, etc. increases the odds of them going into/stay in mode 1.

If this friendly NPC AI stuff is really going to happen, that kind of behavior ought to be doable as well...

EDIT: If no soldier stat is relevant, Civs could have a hidden (and wildly varying) morale stat that affects how likely they are to be in/stay in mode 2 instead.

Basically the same as my suggestion.

The leadership aura of the troops is what controls how well the civvie responds.

The longer they stay nearby the higher their morale gets, and the closer they get to behaving rationally and heading to safety.

The humans being recognisable is not really true though.

Maybe that is correct at the very start of the game but if you are seeing and hearing shots and screams and then a power armoured figure with a jetpack flies at you then it is less likely you will think "Oh he looks friendly" and more likely you would hide.

I suggested the aura for simplicity.

It represents the whole spectrum of removing your face mask, acting friendly, speaking to them calmly (even if they don't understand the words) etc.

It also has no buttons to press.

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AnotherDevil makes a good point about not even necessarily knowing what's going on, especially at night.

That's why I propose to make it all chance based and affected by proximity. A civ in 'mode 1' would run away from whatever they perceive as a threat, which would include your units and their fire, unless/until they got close enough to 'figure out these might be the good guys'.

I think it's also reasonable for a subset of civs to try to stay in whatever building they're in (maybe they keep closing the doors if you'd opened them too :)). After all that may well be the safest option - if you get to that building before an alien does.

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Plus, you could represent 'strong willed' (maybe foolhardy given the situation :P) civvies by making them be affected more easily by the soldiers aura. You might end up with a group of strong willed civvies following you while the cowards flee, (or head to the chopper, safe zone etc)

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Hmmmm, not sure how I feel about implementing a "leadership aura". Chris can obviously speak to this far better than I can, but Goldhawk is an indie team, and they can't really afford to stretch themselves thin for extraneous features. Basic stuff, such as having them stay in buildings like Xentax suggested, is fine, but I'd much rather see AI coding time go into making the aliens more formidable and intelligent opponents than into making civilians behave slightly more realistically.

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I don't like that. You're trying to save them, it would be terribly annoying if they then turned around and killed your man.?

Shotgun or pistol could not harm a soldier, if he equipped in armor on the alien tech. But surely, wanting to shoot in aliens will be very little, especially at the terror-sites.

S.Alex: There will likely be local armed forces on some missions. THe likelyhood that civvies will be armed is rather low because of this. and realisticly people would only be armed on maybe farm maps or in America. I'd prefere if Civvies weren't armed tbh.

That suits me fine - if local armed forces sometimes will fight on terror-mission or at crashsite a battlship. This will make the game more interesting and various.

But if it's a complicated development or make it much longer - I agree that it is not will add to the game.

Edited by S.Alex
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I don't buy the theory that civilians wouldn't recognise people in power armor: People are still people and when you're that far into the game, it's extremely unlikely they haven't heard of the brave humans who battle aliens using their own tech. They may not have the internet but there certainly were global news networks back then.

It's the same reason why I doubt various nations would stop funding you, given that the alternative is death/enslavement, although I accept it as a game mechanic to make things difficult. "If I don't get to live, no one gets to live" is cartoon-villain logic after all and real-life politics continually prove that mindset wrong (if there's one thing people are good at, it's banding together against ridiculous odds, no matter our differences).

I would love for the civilians to go to safe zones as soon as they realise there is one: A "command aura" of sorts would be a good way of doing this, as the civilian realises that there are friendly humans nearby, hopefully equipped with giant guns to kill the aliens. All things considered, it's not like you wouldn't notice a UFO the size of warehouse landing or crashing near you, even at night. As for Terror missions, especially at night, it would make sense for civilians to go for the nice guys throwing flares around: If you've ever been to a truly dark place (like a farm in the middle of nowhere during the night or a city at night during a complete blackout), you'll generally want to give anything for a light source.

It'll depend on gameplay reasons and the final AI in the end, though, but it would make sense for civies to seek out the safest place (areas soldiers have cleared) or by hiding somewhere in a building, where aliens are unlikely to be around.

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I don't buy the theory that civilians wouldn't recognise people in power armor: People are still people and when you're that far into the game, it's extremely unlikely they haven't heard of the brave humans who battle aliens using their own tech. They may not have the internet but there certainly were global news networks back then.

It's really important to keep in mind that all of these aliens are humanoid. There's no way for a civilian to tell whether there's an alien or a person in that alien-looking armor, and even if they could, it's going to be difficult to distinguish a human from an alien at any appreciable range, particularly on a terror mission.

If you're a civvie and you see movement, you aren't going to stick your head out to see if it's a human or an alien; you're going to run and hide for your damn life.

It's the same reason why I doubt various nations would stop funding you, given that the alternative is death/enslavement, although I accept it as a game mechanic to make things difficult. "If I don't get to live, no one gets to live" is cartoon-villain logic after all and real-life politics continually prove that mindset wrong (if there's one thing people are good at, it's banding together against ridiculous odds, no matter our differences).

If you're failing to do an effective job, nations will deem it not worth their investment and pull their funds in order to funnel them into homegrown anti-alien efforts. Makes perfect sense to me.

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The other reason - even in the original X-Com was "Alien Infiltration". As in, they co-opt the government; whether it's mind-control, duplicates, hostages, whatever. I don't think it was "I, for one welcome our SnakeMan overlords..."

The original X-Com project itself was still a secret (even if "the world is at war with aliens" isn't, some details are always classified). It would be pretty easy to have a vichy-style government convince its people it's still doing the right thing. After all, once that government flips, I have no doubt alien "terror-style" attacks in that country come to a halt (yay, our government is protecting us!). Meanwhile, alien bases are built to attack elsewhere and internal 'disappearances' don't make the news...

Not all that different from our own history, in the end.

(Edit: Grammar)

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Hmmmm, not sure how I feel about implementing a "leadership aura". Chris can obviously speak to this far better than I can, but Goldhawk is an indie team, and they can't really afford to stretch themselves thin for extraneous features. Basic stuff, such as having them stay in buildings like Xentax suggested, is fine, but I'd much rather see AI coding time go into making the aliens more formidable and intelligent opponents than into making civilians behave slightly more realistically.

I suggested using the morale aura because it is already going to be part of the game, used to represent the positive effect officers have on their troops when nearby.

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It's really important to keep in mind that all of these aliens are humanoid. There's no way for a civilian to tell whether there's an alien or a person in that alien-looking armor, and even if they could, it's going to be difficult to distinguish a human from an alien at any appreciable range, particularly on a terror mission.

If you're a civvie and you see movement, you aren't going to stick your head out to see if it's a human or an alien; you're going to run and hide for your damn life.

If you're failing to do an effective job, nations will deem it not worth their investment and pull their funds in order to funnel them into homegrown anti-alien efforts. Makes perfect sense to me.

Humanoid doesn't mean "looks human", it means "vaguely resembling something human-shaped". For instance, greys are humanoid, yet you'd have to be more than a little bit blind not to notice their short stature, their skelton-like limbs, the sounds they make and balloon-shaped head: Lizardmen are humanoid but you'd still notice them looking like a walking crocodile or whatever and so on. A little bit of darkness doesn't make you unable to see this, as evolution has made sure we're damn good at recognising humans specifically. I mean, a chimp or gorilla is infinitely closer to a human in shape and size than the aliens I've seen here, yet you wouldn't mistake them for humans, no matter how dark. In fact, we're so good at recognising humans specifically that we'll avoid anyone who looks even a little bit off with all our might: That's why, say, people with Down's Syndrome can often provoke a sort of "ugh" reaction for those who haven't learned the political correct behavior yet (ask any kid), or why we'd like to avoid people who look sickly, even if they don't actually carry anything that can hurt us.

As for the funding argument, that makes no sense at all. It's basically the country doing an alternate version of what I said, only instead of letting the world burn, they somehow think they're better at shooting aliens than the guys who are barely able to do it with ALL COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD FUNDING THEM.

Also, People tend to forget that when the "we're totally safe" dictatorship works (and it does so extremely rarely), it's because almost everyone really ARE safe: It's always some tiny minority that gets persecuted, usually one that isn't well-liked anyway for whatever reason. People will not trust aliens bombarding the crap out of them two days ago, even if their government goes "no, seriously, they're totally nice".

It's very illogical to go rogue in such a situation, no matter what, and the population will know it in no time. It's a perfectly fine difficulty modifier, I'm just saying that you can't really find a logical reason for it, without giving the aliens enough power to just do it to everyone anyway. For instance, the president of the United States or Soviet Union would surely know where the Xenonauts operate, so mindcontrolling one of them and then mindcontrolling the Xenonaut commander would make an easy-mode win for them.

Edited by Zinn
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Assuming that the governments in question actually do believe that Xenonauts are the best chance.

I am not sure of the numbers but I know that the Soviet army would massively outnumber any force the Xenonauts could field.

Add into that the fact that no matter how much funding they sent there would still be a massive amount more available to the Russian leadership to spend on its own R&D etc.

This would be worse if they were sending large amounts of cash to an organisation that was supposed to be protecting them but only had a base in a capitalist country.

Same works the other way round with the USA sending funds to a commie organisation that has done nothing in the US.

I think it is more than understandable that any government that was sending money to an external organisation but felt they were getting little in return would redirect that money to its own use.

As for the funding argument, that makes no sense at all. It's basically the country doing an alternate version of what I said, only instead of letting the world burn, they somehow think they're better at shooting aliens than the guys who are barely able to do it with ALL COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD FUNDING THEM.

MY answer would be that if they could barely manage with everything we are all giving them then lets use that money to fuel our own massively bigger research and manufacturing facilities.

Use that cash to upgrade and reinforce our military.

Use the cash to give the people a circus and a free beer.

Especially the last if the aliens are promising to sign a non-aggression pact with us if we stop funding the terrorists who keep attacking their ships.

Governments don't pay someone else to do something they feel they can do better.

To prove you can do better is the point in the game.

If you fail to provide security after you have been paid then that money would be withdrawn and used to fund internal security.

Makes perfect sense to me, more so than the spirit of mutual trust and co-operation that has never been present in humanity and probably never will.

If that was the case you would be getting a significant proportion of every countries GNP to play with.

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Humanoid doesn't mean "looks human", it means "vaguely resembling something human-shaped". For instance, greys are humanoid, yet you'd have to be more than a little bit blind not to notice their short stature, their skelton-like limbs, the sounds they make and balloon-shaped head: Lizardmen are humanoid but you'd still notice them looking like a walking crocodile or whatever and so on. A little bit of darkness doesn't make you unable to see this, as evolution has made sure we're damn good at recognising humans specifically. I mean, a chimp or gorilla is infinitely closer to a human in shape and size than the aliens I've seen here, yet you wouldn't mistake them for humans, no matter how dark. In fact, we're so good at recognising humans specifically that we'll avoid anyone who looks even a little bit off with all our might: That's why, say, people with Down's Syndrome can often provoke a sort of "ugh" reaction for those who haven't learned the political correct behavior yet (ask any kid), or why we'd like to avoid people who look sickly, even if they don't actually carry anything that can hurt us.

Chimps and gorillas don't have an upright stance when standing and walking (atleast not without extending their arms above their heads) which contribute. But nevermind that. By your argument humans wouldnt recognize Xenonuats in the bulkier armors that distort the silluette.

Have you considered panic, shock, confusion and not knowing what an acctual alien looks like when you consider what a person might recognize as human? What about fatigue in night missions? Will a person acctually look at something showing up long enough to see what it really is or will they just run when spotting anything?

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Humanoid doesn't mean "looks human", it means "vaguely resembling something human-shaped". For instance, greys are humanoid, yet you'd have to be more than a little bit blind not to notice their short stature, their skelton-like limbs, the sounds they make and balloon-shaped head: Lizardmen are humanoid but you'd still notice them looking like a walking crocodile or whatever and so on. A little bit of darkness doesn't make you unable to see this, as evolution has made sure we're damn good at recognising humans specifically. I mean, a chimp or gorilla is infinitely closer to a human in shape and size than the aliens I've seen here, yet you wouldn't mistake them for humans, no matter how dark. In fact, we're so good at recognising humans specifically that we'll avoid anyone who looks even a little bit off with all our might: That's why, say, people with Down's Syndrome can often provoke a sort of "ugh" reaction for those who haven't learned the political correct behavior yet (ask any kid), or why we'd like to avoid people who look sickly, even if they don't actually carry anything that can hurt us.

Again, you're assuming people are going to have several seconds to stare at the alien and rationally asses it.

This is a warzone. No civilian is going to stick their head out for more than a second, and they sure as hell aren't going to be rational about it. They're going to see something moving with a gun and duck the hell back into cover.

As for the funding argument, that makes no sense at all. It's basically the country doing an alternate version of what I said, only instead of letting the world burn, they somehow think they're better at shooting aliens than the guys who are barely able to do it with ALL COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD FUNDING THEM.

How does that not make sense?

If you're doing a crap job and lose funding, that means you are not protecting those countries. If you aren't protecting them, why should they give you their money when they could spend it to protect themselves, something which you are not doing?

Whether or not the entire world is funding the Xenonauts is irrelevant if, in the eyes of that country, they're doing a crap job. As the president of the US, why should I continue to authorize funding to the Xenonauts when they've constantly permitted mass attacks on US cities and nonstop violations of US airspace? Better to pour those billions into a homegrown defensive organization which will have actually protecting the US as its sole goal.

Also, People tend to forget that when the "we're totally safe" dictatorship works (and it does so extremely rarely), it's because almost everyone really ARE safe: It's always some tiny minority that gets persecuted, usually one that isn't well-liked anyway for whatever reason. People will not trust aliens bombarding the crap out of them two days ago, even if their government goes "no, seriously, they're totally nice".

People won't trust them, necessarily, but if you're given a choice between "I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords!" and "DIE HUMAN", I think I know what most people will take.

Edited by TheTuninator
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I'll just say, middle of the night, woken up by explosions and gun fire, if I stumble into the street and see some heavily armed humans who I don't recognise as from my country, I'm running away. I may not even know there are aliens invading, all I know is that my town/city is being blown up and there are some scary dudes around...

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I'll just say, middle of the night, woken up by explosions and gun fire, if I stumble into the street and see some heavily armed humans who I don't recognise as from my country, I'm running away. I may not even know there are aliens invading, all I know is that my town/city is being blown up and there are some scary dudes around...

QFT.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that the Chinook is literally the last place you would want to put civilians. It's a huge, lightly armored target in a free-fire zone, and it won't be lifting off until all the aliens are dead.

The smartest thing a civilian could do in this situation would be to hide and stay away from the Xenonauts, who are the main target of enemy fire.

As such, I really don't think any kind of special civilian AI is called for. It's not very logical or realistic in the first place, and from a gameplay perspective, I think herding civilians like cats would grow tiring rather quickly.

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Tuninator - that's why I argued against any direct player-civ interaction, having it become tedious would be a step backwards.

But, in terror missions (at least!) the aliens ARE actively hunting civilians. Therefore, giving the player a choice (spend more time units near civilians = civilians move towards areas you've "cleared") is a potentially interesting gameplay dynamic. You can be fast and aggressive and try to find the aliens before they kill any/many civs, or you can try to find the civs and get them out of the way. If the latter strategy works you'll get a higher score but it'll take longer and your units may be more exposed (plus a higher chance of accidentally killing civs yourself).

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Hey, assuming that Xenonauts soldiers also get reaction fire, will they accidently fire on civilians or do they only react to aliens?

Xenonauts do get reaction fire; I would assume that given that they are trained soldiers, they would be trained in target discrimination and so would identify as a hostile target before opening fire. Having them shoot civilians when you had no control over them would be an incredibly frustrating mechanic, since there wouldn't be anything the player could do to prevent it other than not reserving time units.

You could have a reaction penalty to Xenonauts if in an environment which might contain civilians, to represent the time taken to ID the target, but to be honest we already have a system (the red alien faces on the right hand side when an alien is spotted) that automatically distinguishes between aliens and civs, so I'd rather have the game stick to the abstraction of being able to flawlessly distinguish between alien and civ.

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