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(Mod Concept/Outline) - Xenonauts: Our Last Hope


kabill

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I like the idea behind the mod suggestion.

For me destructible aircraft would be the sticking point and for the same reasons Chris decided to reduce their impact on the vanilla game.

If you are a small resistance cell then how are you getting hold of potentially large numbers of superior aircraft?

Even large numbers of inferior aircraft could be difficult to acquire in the setting described.

I would suggest that you aren't going to be able to do that.

Even if you could build your own the costs could be massive in comparison to anything needed for ground combat and add an inherent imbalance to the financial aspect of the game.

Instead I would have the player steal alien craft and then refit them to be used by human pilots, or even flown as drones to make them even more expendable.

Carriers and base assaults could be a good source of interceptors.

Maybe even capturing larger ships if you successfully assault them when landed.

Use a captured Corvette as your dropship for camouflage, maybe even send out a couple of alien interceptors for cover in case it does get spotted.

Aircraft are pretty much the main bug-bear, as they utterly screw with the economy (although, bases do that too). My current thoughts on this:

Alternative 1) All basic equipment is 'liberated' from abandoned military facilities. The cost of 'buying' items is therefore actually the cost of finding and stealing them. This reduces the cost of aircraft significantly, as it's not that much more effort to steal an aircraft than it is a cache of weapons (when no one is trying to stop you, anyway).

Alternative 2) The Xenonauts project was actually issued a large number of aircraft, but these were mothballed during the 1970s as a result of the economic collapse. "Buying" aircraft represents pulling them out of storage and fixing them up/retrofitting.

It would be possible to combine these two alternatives to explain where you "buy" aircraft from compared with "building" aircraft. (Ideally I'd have all aircraft built rather than bought, but if you don't have any buyable aircraft you get a CTD when you click on the "buy aircraft" button and I'd rather not have that if I can avoid it).

However, this doesn't help very much with advanced aircraft, unless all advanced aircraft are retrofits of existing airframes acquired via one of the two means already outlined. That has some appeal (because building an aircraft from scratch should take forever anyway and it's something which bothers me immensely in all the Xcom games) but means I need to be looking at alternative aircraft images as I can't really justify using the existing ones for advanced aircraft if they're based on old airframes.

An additional point is that I'm looking at reducing the significance of the air game considerably. In particular, I want there to be quite a lot of emphasis on attacking landed rather than crashed UFOs (mainly because I think this leads to more interesting/varied missions (more aliens; less control over day/night; less control over UFO type too sort of). Hence, the roll of combat aircraft in generating missions will be reduced; aircraft will be there primarily to help slow down the alien invasion and produce a few extra resources but I don't anticipate the player having (or needing) anywhere near the same level of air-control that they have in vanilla from the mid-game onwards. As such, losing aircraft will (hopefully) be less critical in that way, and the player will generally have fewer aircraft on the go compared with vanilla as well.

All this said, I do also like the idea of expropriating UFOs for use by the player. Some issues that would need addressing, though:

- If they were being used for drop-ships, they'd need to fit on the vanilla submaps. Otherwise, it creates incompatibility issues with maps. I'm not sure whether any of the existing UFO types would fit well on the dropship submaps other than the Light Scout and (maybe) the Scout (although admittedly if they fit, they'd both make excellent drop-ship material). This problem does go away if the modular UFO concept turns into reality, though, since it's a lot more flexible.

- Lorewise, there needs to be an explanation for how you're bringing back entire UFO airframes. Given that event the smallest UFOs are as big as the drop-ships, coming up with a sensible explanation is quite difficult. It it were possible to link item recovery to particular technologies, that might work (i.e. you only start collecting airframes after a certain tech is researched) but I don't think that's possible.

---

As an aside (and as I wrote above) there's a similar issue with based. My thinking on bases at the moment is therefore as follows:

- When you 'build' a base you're actually reoccupying an existing facility that was shut down/abandoned/mothballed.

- Again, when you 'build' a facility in a base most of the construction is already done (i.e. excavation, rooms, etc.). All you're actually doing is filling the rooms with stuff relevant to the facility.

The problem with this is artwork and base defense missions. I'd need to do some artwork for the base view that made it look like it wasn't entirely made of ground. That might actually be pretty easy (doing a collage of existing room images but greyed out and edited a bit) but it's something to consider. Defense missions are more problematic, however, as I don't know whether it would be possible to add anything into the non-built-in-space to represent the unused parts of the base. If it is, that's great, but if not I'd need some way of fudging it. (And that aside, it would implicitly make all player bases 'full-size' for the purposes of base attacks, which might come with problems perhaps.)

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For aircraft recovery you would be able to have a research item, for example Basic alien Interceptors, that allowed you to retrofit that specific alien aircraft type.

That would unlock a production job that allowed you to start building retrofitted alien interceptors using a recovered interceptor as a material.

The recovered item would just be a stored item until you used your new found knowledge to convert it into something that you could use.

I don't know if that would prevent you building up large stocks before the research unlocked though, or even if that would be a problem.

Which sizes of craft you could take would depend on how you want the game balanced really but limiting it to scouts at the largest would work best with current map types.

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It might be possible to turn aircraft into missiles. Give them a very short ranged weapon, higher speed, and some way of disappearing after making contact. I'll investigate if I have time. Reactivating a disused missile base makes more sense than aircraft.

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For aircraft recovery you would be able to have a research item, for example Basic alien Interceptors, that allowed you to retrofit that specific alien aircraft type.

That would unlock a production job that allowed you to start building retrofitted alien interceptors using a recovered interceptor as a material.

The recovered item would just be a stored item until you used your new found knowledge to convert it into something that you could use.

I don't know if that would prevent you building up large stocks before the research unlocked though, or even if that would be a problem.

Which sizes of craft you could take would depend on how you want the game balanced really but limiting it to scouts at the largest would work best with current map types.

It's the stock issue that I think is the problem, at least from a lore perspective. It could also be a balance issue, since by the time you unlock the relevant tech you might have such a large stockpile that you're actually not limited on what you can build.

It might be possible to hand-wave it with non-crash site UFOs (i.e. Fights, Heavy Fighters and Interceptors). Perhaps local resistance forces help smuggle back the airframe to your base or something like that. This would also help with the balance issue a bit, since those kinds of UFO are likely to be less common.

It might be possible to turn aircraft into missiles. Give them a very short ranged weapon, higher speed, and some way of disappearing after making contact. I'll investigate if I have time. Reactivating a disused missile base makes more sense than aircraft.

In some ways I quite like this idea, but I think there'd be too many technical issues to make it worth while. If it's a guided missile, you shouldn't be able to direct it when in flight, it should be able to circle a landed UFO, and so on. In terms of air combat, the best bet would simply be to disable manual-resolve entirely and just use auto-resolve. But that's the other problem: I actually quite like the air combat mini-game so I'd be loath to get rid of it.

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Interesting idea. If possible, I think it would be cool if the alien invasion force has already occupied most of the world and the X-com forces are a clandestine group working to overthrow the alien overlords. Initially, the X-com forces would be launching raids (ie replacing the current terror missions) where they have a specific objective (eg destroy the power plant; grab the guns from the armory; etc). Instead of radar, bases would be more interested in installing camouflage technology. As X-com succeeds at more missions, countries could revolt, bringing more funding (and perhaps a free base or planes or troops) and then the player would be tasked with defending against attacks on their newly liberated territories in addition to making more attacks on occupied lands with the ultimate goal being to free the entire world and drive the invaders back into space.

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@Tholal: What you've suggested actually sounds very similar to the very original idea I had for this mod. I was playing around with ideas that would enable you to play as the aliens and came up with the notion of an alien civil war. Set on the Caesan homeworld, the psionic web which controls the various alien species is temporarily weakened such that a small number of Caesans escape and gain independence (this wasn't actually an influence, but it's a bit Matrix-y). The game then has you play as the rebel Caesans fighting a guerrilla war with aliens and eventually (hopefully!) defeating them.

I shelved the idea because I have neither the skill nor time to pull it off, but the kinds of concepts you've mentioned there are similar to the theme I had in mind.

Even without the need for new art like my original idea would have required, though, there's some quite large technical limitations. While the things you suggest could be added in via source code changes, I'm not a programmer and have no chance of actually being able to do that kind of stuff. That's not to say that someone else couldn't pull it off, though, but it won't be me.

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  • 1 month later...

From a lore perspective, the fact that an alien invasion is happening before the Berlin Wall has fallen creates a lot of opportunities--without having to reset our "X-Unit" as one that is conducting insurgency operations against an already established occupying xenos. Just because aliens are invading doesn't mean that the world powers are all of a sudden trusting friends. I would suspect that despite the funding that X-Unit is receiving from all of the world, the USSR would be very distrustful of a secret military organization that is also working with the Americans, and vice versa. Likewise, just because this game is humans versus aliens, doesn't mean that human groups (gov'ts, homegrown militias, existing rebel groups) are not fighting other human groups behind the scenes all over the world.

So why not tap into that (unrecognized?) lore (like Tholal is basically suggesting) for the purposes of ground combat variety and resource acquisition? Why can't X-Unit also target humans, either disruptive militias or governmental forces themselves?

Of course the question is, can it be done? One (somewhat rhetorical) example: could existing aircraft mechanics be used to (roughly) create human convoys?

I understand there will probably be all kinds of hurdles for something like this, and immense amounts of work, but it definitely seems like an idea to pursue.

Edited by Armakoir
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In the final days of August, 1979, Earth is overrun. Crushed by overwhelming force, the leaders of humanity surrender to the might of unknown extraterrestrial aggressors. Immediately, the aliens begin harvesting both people and resources while constructing fortifications and strongholds from which to rule their new domain. The Xenonauts project, which had been established two decades before, receives orders to disband. But, refusing the order, they instead mobilize for war as humanity's last hope.

HOW DID YOU ENTER MY BRAIN?

I've been running a D&D game with this exact concept (based on Firaxis X-COM, 'cause that's what my players are familiar with) for almost a year now.

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[stuff to do with Cold War theme

I'd love to make more use of the setting, but I think it would be next to impossible to do without an overwhelming amount of effort (and mostly effort by people other than myself). So it's unlikely to happen.

HOW DID YOU ENTER MY BRAIN?

I suspect it may have something to do with the mind pro-

Er, great minds think alike?

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That idea reminds me the series Falling Skies :P

I'd never heard of it 'til now, but apparently, yes it does.

I have an idea for the building of aircraft. Make Alien Electronics, Alien Reactors etc. recoverable objects. Then you have to research that specific kind of craft to make your own bastardized version of it using the resources you have recovered.

That's more or less in-concept already (not that it was written anywhere here, mind!). It's something I miss from the OG, actually, having to use components (power source, navigation etc.) for aircraft. It also makes aircraft 'building' make a bit more sense - rather than building a new plane from scratch, you're taking an existing airframe and retro-fitting it with salvaged bits of UFO instead. It also makes recovering intact UFOs more valuable and encourages care when assaulting UFOs to ensure you don't break things.

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:P

Actually, a lot of the work is already done. I possible wrote this upthread, but all the mods I've been working on have been standalone components for stuff that will end up in this mod, and I'm largely all finished with those. Still needs some work tying it together, mind. And apparently writing Xenopedia articles is a lot of effort that I don't care very much for. I suspect I might do summary placeholders when it comes to it and be a bit more creative with them at a later date.

I suspect, as well, I might write up a big intended feature/design list that will be a bit more specific than what's written above before doing anything drastic. Better to get some comments before hand, I think.

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From what I've read, a blocs funding is changed to a resistance value. So would the mods failure state be when all, or a certain number, of blocs are completely subjugated by the Aliens with all resistance stamped out?

---

Also, some random suggestions or ideas I'll just throw out.

1: When a Aircraft is shot down, instead of getting it back as is what occurs now, instead allow it to possibly generate a "Craft Recovery Mission". Essentially a mission where you send out a squad to recover the wreckage. In the early game you'll see no resistance in recovering the craft, but as you continue to annoy the Aliens, and become a greater threat, you will have to fight off Alien attackers attempting to stop you from recovering the aircraft.

This would place a significantly higher value to aircraft, and demand the player do everything they can to avoid getting them shot down. But also gives the player the opportunity to recover the aircraft without having to expend resources in getting another one.

2: Allow the player to divert personal resources/money/whatever to a bloc to increase its resistance figure. Could be a fixed number of resources that increases as the game advances and the Aliens further clamp down on resistance.

3: Have the Aliens kill/abduct more people throughout the game. In the base game I usually see around 10,000 to 20,000 people die throughout the invasion. I think it would be interesting to see the aliens preform more overt actions that claim a lot more peoples lives.

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From what I've read, a blocs funding is changed to a resistance value. So would the mods failure state be when all, or a certain number, of blocs are completely subjugated by the Aliens with all resistance stamped out?

Yeah, the major lose condition would be losing blocs just like vanilla. I suspect it will be higher than vanilla though (maybe 8?), with the expectation that some of the smaller ones will probably leave over the course of the game unless you really prioritise defending them.

1: When a Aircraft is shot down, instead of getting it back as is what occurs now, instead allow it to possibly generate a "Craft Recovery Mission". Essentially a mission where you send out a squad to recover the wreckage. In the early game you'll see no resistance in recovering the craft, but as you continue to annoy the Aliens, and become a greater threat, you will have to fight off Alien attackers attempting to stop you from recovering the aircraft.

This would place a significantly higher value to aircraft, and demand the player do everything they can to avoid getting them shot down. But also gives the player the opportunity to recover the aircraft without having to expend resources in getting another one.

I suspect the code support needed for something like that would be too high to convince someone to do. That said, you've given me the idea to try setting resource drops on destroyed player aircraft to see if the game will let you auto-salvage some of the remains like with alien fighters. If that works it would be excellent.

2: Allow the player to divert personal resources/money/whatever to a bloc to increase its resistance figure. Could be a fixed number of resources that increases as the game advances and the Aliens further clamp down on resistance.

I'm undecided about this. On the one hand, I like resource-exchange systems so inherently like the idea of exchanging cash/other resources for greater longevity. On the other hand, my current feeling is that the mod won't allow any method of increasing resistance such that - at best - the player can only stop it from being reduced so I'm not sure it would fit.

(I should probably explain that decision. It's more or less impossible to get to the end of Xenonauts and be up against the wire. By the time you're half way through the game, you're well on top of everything and numbers just keep going up. I don't like that, because it takes the tension away. There's also some game balance reasons, but I'll probably articulate them later in detail).

3: Have the Aliens kill/abduct more people throughout the game. In the base game I usually see around 10,000 to 20,000 people die throughout the invasion. I think it would be interesting to see the aliens preform more overt actions that claim a lot more peoples lives.

I'm not entirely sure how to mod that, actually. It might be hard-coded to the UFO events. I'll investigate, though, because I'd like that too.

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I determined some wages close to what they'd be in 1979 for you (I figure you might find some use for them).

CODE:

<scientistCost value="5050" comment="The initial hire cost for a scientist and his monthly wage." />

<technicianCost value="2700" comment="The initial hire cost for an engineer and his monthly wage." />

<soldierCost value="2500" comment="The initial hire cost for a soldier and his monthly wage." />

Edited by Man of Doge
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  • 3 months later...
For aircraft recovery you would be able to have a research item, for example Basic alien Interceptors, that allowed you to retrofit that specific alien aircraft type.

That would unlock a production job that allowed you to start building retrofitted alien interceptors using a recovered interceptor as a material.

The recovered item would just be a stored item until you used your new found knowledge to convert it into something that you could use.

Having just watched Independence Day, the idea of salvaging Alien fighters was CLOSE to the top of my mind! I think that'd be a great mechanic, and it really goes along with this whole thread and another idea I had for a sort of "Xenonauts: Guerilla Tactics" concept. And yes, this is all very Falling Skies. Which I really like.

Yeah, the major lose condition would be losing blocs just like vanilla. I suspect it will be higher than vanilla though (maybe 8?), with the expectation that some of the smaller ones will probably leave over the course of the game unless you really prioritise defending them.

DISCLAIMER: What I'm going to outline is less of a mod and more of a total conversion that suggests an entirely new game built with the existing resources. It might not be possible, or it might have extremely difficult coding challenges. But I stand by it all. This is a lot of spit-balling, so some of it might be inconsistent. I haven't worked out all the thinking in my head....

Nooo! You've got it backwards! You're the resistance! You've already lost every region to the alien invasion. Your lose condition needs to be having lost all your bases. Your win condition needs to be RECOVERING every region.

Every region, based on area, needs X number of alien bases. When all alien bases in a region have been destroyed, you reacquire that region. Regions gained this way can then provide income just as they do in the vanilla game, and be lost as per usual. However, I'd make the income provided much lower. Basically just enough to recruit new soldiers.

HOWEVER! Give yourself a "signing bonus" so that when you rescue a region you get a one-time cash payout large enough to build a new base. Make this one of the ONLY WAYS you can get cash. You need to change the economy so that it is as CASHLESS as possible, and leave base construction as the only currency-demanding task remaining. Remove the building and vehicle maintenance costs. You'll only get them if you can find them.

Remove monthly funding costs for Soldiers, Engineers, & Scientists. They're survivors fighting for Earth's freedom, and doing it pro bono. Yeah, it'd be neat to introduce a "Food & Supplies" mechanic to keep your forces operating, but it'd need to be a separate value from your cash and it would introduce a second way to lose.

As others have said, you need to make most or all of your resources be acquired through capture. Guerilla tactics! If possible, remove sell values entirely. Would it be possible to make salvage values instead? So that you can recover half of the materials it cost to build something? Dismantle Wolf Armor (4 Alien Alloys to build), get 1 or 2 alloys back.

Instead of hiring new personnel, the chief way to get them needs to be as "salvage". Rescuing them from Alien Bases. Capture an alien base? Gain X Soldiers, Y Engineers, & Z Scientists. By controlling the speed at which scientists are acquired you can control the rate at which the player reaches different tech levels.

Going back to how this mod has a focus on guerrilla tactics? NO weapons should be set to unlimited. Nor should their ammunition. HOWEVER! We can still abstract ammo management so that you don't have to find a way to track ammo used in missions. Reward weapons and ammunition in finite amounts for missions. You might only have 2x units of Shotgun ammunition. That doesn't mean once you use it, it's gone. It means you only have enough ammo for one or two Xenonauts to carry a shotgun (assuming you have any shotguns). To expand on this concept, I'd recommend adding in all the Soviet weapons to give you a sort of rag-tag feel to your troops who are just carrying whatever you could find.

If we could add more types of ground missions, I'd say add urban locations that you can raid for supplies and personnel. It doesn't have to function differently. Drop some aliens on it, you win if they're dead, add new rewards (ballistic weapons, equipment, armor, personnel, etc). Maybe make repeatable missions that can be taken when visiting a city? With a limit of how many times it can be performed per city, or each subsequent mission meeting heavier resistance or providing fewer rewards.

Ideally, I'd set every city up so that it has an alien ship resting stationary above it that must be shot down before your team can go in (set them to heal to full if not defeated). By setting this up in advance, you could tier each funding region to appropriate difficulty levels. The highest difficulty cities would have Battleships with 2x Interceptors for defense. There are 5x starting regions, so I'd suggest breaking it down like this:

Occupation Forces:

  1. Region 1: 1x Corvette (or Bomber), 2x Fighters

  2. Region 2: 1x Landing Ship, 2x Fighters

  3. Region 3: 1x Cruiser, 2x Heavy Fighters

  4. Region 4: 1x Carrier (or Strike Cruiser), 2x Heavy Fighters

  5. Region 5: 1x Battleship, 2x Interceptors

This ensures that a new region cannot be taken until the appropriate technologies have been acquired and the necessary air combat craft have been built or recovered. But this brings up the topic of the air war, which you were concerned about!

So... how to work the air war... Spawn a bunch of alien fighter squadrons to roam the map on Air Superiority missions that last a month each and respawn them at the start of each month. 3x Fighters for Region 1 & 2, 3x Heavy Fighters for 3 & 4, 3x Interceptors for 5. Now, we also need an incentive to keep people from farming these UFOs. A meter which displays the perceived threat level of your resistance. Threat goes up for every UFO destroyed, but is reduced only a small amount at the end of each month. Before threat reduces, spawn a UFO squadron set to the Base Assault mission for each of your bases and determine the size of the attack force by your Threat Rating. Threat must generate more easily than it can be dissipated. Plus, this means you may need to use your main base's aircraft to defend your secondary bases which might not yet be fully up and running.

Threat Ratings:

  1. Minor Threat (1-20) - 1x Corvette, 2x Fighters

  2. Moderate Threat (21-40) - 1x Landing Ship, 2x Fighters

  3. Serious Threat (41-60) - 1x Cruiser, 2x Heavy Fighters

  4. Severe Threat (61-80) - 1x Carrier, 2x Heavy Fighters

  5. Critical Threat (81-100) - 1x Battleship, 2x Interceptors

Previously I mentioned spawning superiority squadrons based on region. Wandering UFOs could screw that up. Alternatively, determine the category of superiority fighter by your current Threat Rating. Spawn Fighters for 1-40, Heavy Fighters for 41-80, and Interceptors for 81+.

In this way, it would be undesirable to go Fighter-farming because you could provoke an attack which is much more severe than what you can defend against. And also, with the severely limited resource set-up being able to recover fighters is no problem because the length of time it takes to rebuild them is so extensive that you wouldn't want to risk it. Your fighters become a necessity for escorting your dropships because of the high number of air superiority squadrons in flight on the map, but at the same time it becomes preferable to try and plot courses that avoid the alien fighters whenever possible. In fact, a solid strategy might develop from baiting: using your Condors to lure alien fighters away from objectives. While they're chasing you, the dropship can hit the mission. Then, instead of shooting down fighters it's better to escape and disengage. This avoids Threat Generation, and maintains the Guerrilla Tactics theme.

Back to Ground Combat...

If possible, disable the mechanic that auto-sells alien weapons, grenades, and ammo for cash. Instead receive Alenium and Alien Alloys for them.

Anyway, under this new set-up there's no longer any need for Operation Endgame. Instead, you win the game when every Occupation Fleet over every city has been destroyed and every alien base has been destroyed. For an alternative final mission, make a REALLY BIG Alien Base as their main HQ and make that your big final coup de grace.

The challenge under this scenario is making sure that there is a finite number of resources with which to build your resistance. If one of your bases is destroyed, you shouldn't ever make enough money to replace it. If you implement a finite number of soldiers, then losing a soldier in a mission one too many times could cost you the game through attrition.

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