Council missions like X-com enemy unknown?

So far I have spent 45+ hours on the game and I enjoyed it greatly so far. But I don't know if I am the only one thinking that the mission type need a little more variety. I am thinking about the council missions in X-com Enemy Unknown. Some are escorting VIP, some are reaching the other side of the map in a certain time limit (the train mission), some are recon mission (oh that Newfoundland mission....). Maybe someday this can be added to Xenonauts?

Sorry if this has been suggested before.

I always thought the Council missions was a good idea, but not really that well developed. They were very linear and once done left no variety. I`m really not a fan of scripted because of this fact.

In the old days you could get games that were only very lightly scripted and left a whole lot of randomisation so there was always something different for the same basic mission. I`d prefered that myself.

I've thought about this, but the main problem I have is, _what_ missions? I mean, finding out about a bomb being set up and disabling it just seconds before it blows up and other pretty illogical missions may be fine for the somewhat Hollywood-movie-style Firaxis game, but for the more serious nature of Xenonauts that's rather retarded. Why would the aliens need hours to set the bomb up and why don't they simply bombard the thing from their UFO without even getting out?

And it's the same with pretty much everything else:

- VIP escort. What VIP? The aliens don't seem to care.

- Recon mission. What recon? Of what? And why?

- Defence missions. Of what? And why? And how come you know when to be there and get there in time? And why don't aliens just bombard it?

And so on. So, what kind of mission types could there be in Xenonauts?

I always thought the Council missions was a good idea, but not really that well developed. They were very linear and once done left no variety. I`m really not a fan of scripted because of this fact.

In the old days you could get games that were only very lightly scripted and left a whole lot of randomisation so there was always something different for the same basic mission. I`d prefered that myself.

100% agreed. Great idea, imho even very badly done.The scripted part + thinman falling from the sky made them my least liked part of xcom.

More common base and terror missions change the feel of the game quite a lot so that is a start.

As Ilunak says most of the alternative mission types that have been suggested before don't really fit well with the scope and focus of Xenonauts though.

I've thought about this, but the main problem I have is, _what_ missions? I mean, finding out about a bomb being set up and disabling it just seconds before it blows up and other pretty illogical missions may be fine for the somewhat Hollywood-movie-style Firaxis game, but for the more serious nature of Xenonauts that's rather retarded. Why would the aliens need hours to set the bomb up and why don't they simply bombard the thing from their UFO without even getting out?

And it's the same with pretty much everything else:

- VIP escort. What VIP? The aliens don't seem to care.

- Recon mission. What recon? Of what? And why?

- Defence missions. Of what? And why? And how come you know when to be there and get there in time? And why don't aliens just bombard it?

And so on. So, what kind of mission types could there be in Xenonauts?

Dont know the story as i havent completed the game but there must be something that makes the terror sites justified, so the same logic should apply to some defence missions or Vip escort. The alien clearly dont want simply to bomb everything insight , otherwise they wouldnt bother with all the things they do.

Don't read if you don't want the plot spoiled:

A missed kickstart goal had some military facility missions (underground terror missions) if I remember correctly. We could reuse xenonauts base tileset that is really good looking but underused and maybe also integrate it with bombs and/or vips.

Dont know the story as i havent completed the game but there must be something that makes the terror sites justified, so the same logic should apply to some defence missions or Vip escort. The alien clearly dont want simply to bomb everything insight , otherwise they wouldnt bother with all the things they do.

So, in order to avoid endgame spoilers, let's say that the aliens have come just to kill off some people and have fun. That's not the story of course, but I think the consequences of assuming this would be about the same. That's why terror sites do make sense but defence or VIP don't - the aliens don't seem to care about anybody or anything in particular, so aliens don't have any specific people or targets they would want to destroy (apart from resistance). This turns defence missions into come-when-the-hell-has-already-broken-loose missions, i.e. what we already have.

And unless people are here for random chit-chat about the topic, what would help would be specific proposals for missions types, together with describing how they would work and why would they make sense (at least somewhat). Being realistic and aware of technical constraints would be a nice plus (e.g. rescue of downed pilots has the problem that they would need sprites for the pilots, which is nowhere near trivial work).

Some mission types that I think would work:

- Military base missions (aliens attack a base, X-COM shows up to defend).

- MIA Rescue missions (soldiers who are MIA have a random chance to send out an SOS, prompting a rescue/retrieval mission, this ends up being a VIP mission a la FiraXCOM that makes sense in the context of Xenonauts).

- Evacuation Missions (similar to Terror missions except that civilians are actively leaving the map and you just have to survive long enough for every civilian to evacuate and then get your team to dropship).

The military base missions can either be a 'kill-all' or 'evacuate'.

I imagine there's more if we spent some more time thinking about it.

Regarding pilot sprites, I think that's doable as well if I can get a good sense of GH's exact spriting process and if they were willing to share the base soldier model (so it just becomes an issue of modeling pilot gear and spriting, something I can do).

A UFO mission could also potentially spawn 'defense' missions under the assumption that we recover some intel/transmission during the mission that gives us advanced notice of an attack on an installation, city, etc.

VIP missions can make sense under a terror mission type, very loudly and flashily killing world leaders and other people of import would be quite a morale killer as well nudging nations to signing a pact with the aliens (if thats in xenonauts as opposed to them merely stop funding you).

I've thought about this, but the main problem I have is, _what_ missions? I mean, finding out about a bomb being set up and disabling it just seconds before it blows up and other pretty illogical missions may be fine for the somewhat Hollywood-movie-style Firaxis game, but for the more serious nature of Xenonauts that's rather retarded. Why would the aliens need hours to set the bomb up and why don't they simply bombard the thing from their UFO without even getting out?

And it's the same with pretty much everything else:

- VIP escort. What VIP? The aliens don't seem to care.

- Recon mission. What recon? Of what? And why?

- Defence missions. Of what? And why? And how come you know when to be there and get there in time? And why don't aliens just bombard it?

And so on. So, what kind of mission types could there be in Xenonauts?

IMO better gameplay + replayability is always more important than being realistic. Think of the best games you have played. They do not have to be totally realistic to be fun. Skyrim: Shooting fireball out of your palm; Max Payne: slow-mo bullet time; GTA: hijack any car within 5 seconds. Oh and Saint Row, the fun of this game is the unrealistic parts. Even realistic game like ARMA 3 has parts that doesn't make sense if you really think. The same is true in Xenonauts.

I don't mean Xenonauts should be like Saint Row. But adding more game content is always better if that's feasible. We can always think of something that make sense and suit well into the story. Here are some suggestions, some of them are inspired by you guys:

Locating and rescuing MIA soldiers/pilot: Triggered after your intercepter got shot down. Within 24 hours you have to land a rescue team to search for your pilot and bring him to your dropship. The pilot is "activated" when the other xenonauts members arrived. He has a pistol on him and he only has half hp and TU.

Escorting VIP: whoever is the VIP doesn't really matter. Can be your hired scientists that get cornered by a squad of alien scout. Or a rich businessman who is funding the xenomauts project. Or the president of the region that you are about to lose. Escorting him/her to your dropship with aliens attacking from all directions. The outcome will be improving the relation of that region/ gain free scientists, funding, etc.

Military base defense: not the xenonauts base. Survive a number of waves of alien attacks with at least 1 local force surviving. Get a couple of new recruits to the xenonauts team.

I've only got five minutes, but there was going to be another mission type that Aaron had proposed a while ago. Aaron proposed creating an "Abduction" mission type, where the goal was to save pre-abducted humans before they were carted off for hideous experimentation. Here's the link to the proposal of the time. Now, this is something that I could get behind, and fund several props for (either from a certain person on this forum, or from an outside contractor).

And I'd gladly provide some maps

An abduction mission type seem to rather make sense. Aliens have landed and started collecting people, when Xenonauts arrive, aliens start retreating (that actually even really makes sense). I suppose there could be civilians and their AI would be just something simple as 'follow the nearest alien non-combatant' or somesuch, and aliens wouldn't shoot them (it'd also have the extra "bonus" that excessive weaponry usage against aliens would be risky). The timeout could be the time needed for those alien non-combatants to leave the map at a specified edge. Xenonauts would get penalty for every civilian that leaves, less for killed, and bonus for those who stay alive. I think it wouldn't even need anything special, besides some coding changes which I should be able to do, there doesn't seem to be anything complicated.

Does that seem ok?

Great ideas, I especially like the idea of using the Xenonaut base tiles in other maps, because we don't get to see them a lot now.

I'd like the maps to be more linear and confined than vanilla maps so players wouldn't need to search for the civilians but rather make decisions about how to keep them alive. This would make these missions faster paced and more action orientated thus making them feel different compared to more open crash and terror missions.

That sounds more like a certain game made by Firaxis, and I don't think that fits Xenonauts. The different objectives should make the mission already different enough and I see no reason why e.g. a normal scout map shouldn't do.

I've thought about this, but the main problem I have is, _what_ missions? I mean, finding out about a bomb being set up and disabling it just seconds before it blows up and other pretty illogical missions may be fine for the somewhat Hollywood-movie-style Firaxis game, but for the more serious nature of Xenonauts that's rather retarded. Why would the aliens need hours to set the bomb up and why don't they simply bombard the thing from their UFO without even getting out?

And it's the same with pretty much everything else:

- VIP escort. What VIP? The aliens don't seem to care.

- Recon mission. What recon? Of what? And why?

- Defence missions. Of what? And why? And how come you know when to be there and get there in time? And why don't aliens just bombard it?

And so on. So, what kind of mission types could there be in Xenonauts?

I had lot of post about this kind of mechanics and ideas.

Maybe in xenonauts can be more combat/tactical oriented.

Example

"A mind controler alien have dominate a local military force, you need to kill the alien or deal with tanks and huge infantry platoon"

Dear coders we modders take care of creativity

I ask for this kind of random "events" for long time ago.

I'm not sure "xcom 2012 did that so let's not" is the greatest argument of all time. Variety in maps is a good thing. If you think about warcraft or c&c, ever so often they'd have a different mission type without a base, and although I prefer to have a base, doing something different did make the game more interesting.

I always felt that a 'the aliens have infiltrated this location and turned the humans against you' type mission would be good in a game like this, ie you have to attack a human base to kill humans and aliens who are working together. You'd probably want to do a palette-swap on some of the Xenonaut soldier images in order to create the enemy soldiers (maybe neat near-black jumpsuits instead of the blue uniforms), but that shouldn't be *too* difficult.

Another option would be the Reaper Hive mission if someone can build up a few new tiles to go along with the ones already in the alien base set. Would work best if it was mixed with the military base terror attack set, such that you can have a military base filled to the brim with Reaper goo. Nasty.

Finally, and this is a silly idea, assaulting a UFO in mid-air rather than trying to down it. Maybe you shoot at the UFO with missiles that, instead of warheads, have people in them. It makes total sense!