[Suggestion] Revising the Command Tile to make it more class specific

This request is for mappers like Skitso, it was prompted by a thought I had in the Alien Roles thread over on the modding discussion sub-forum.

The Command Tile allows any alien with the Command subtype to appear on that tile. This assures a map designer that an alien will appear on the tile and will stay near it. This should allow the creation of things like guard posts or machine shops staffed by non-coms. However, the alien is seemingly chosen at random. A guard post may in fact be staffed by the commander of the Ufo/base, which sounds fun but can be very annoying for both player and map designer. This would be a serious undertaking, but could the design of the Command tile be revised so a map designer has more control over what appears on a specific Command tile?

What I conceive is being able to set a class limitation to a command tile so a tile can only be occupied by a specified range of classes. A guard post could be occupied by any class of alien with the exception of a leader or commander. A machine room may have several tiles occupied only by noncoms. The command room might have several tiles which could be occupied by a leader. You could even do things in later maps like create alien field posts staffed by a leader class and several guard classes. Would this be possible at some point in the future?

I like that idea. It does give the option for a more logical troop distribution if you want to use it. For example setting the front entrance of a UFO to be manned by guards, the room outside of the bridge to be held by the elites and the bridge itself to be where the commander lurks.

Ugh, forgot about this. Yes, I really like the idea. I would be particularly useful in conjunction with modularised UFOs as you could tie aliens to particular parts of the ship (and have a variety of different designated areas for random distribution) rather than having all the aliens camping in the same place every time.

It could also work the other way and allow you to (almost) always have an alien at a designated point if you wanted to, for example manning a guard station. The option is the useful part

Command tiles, are those the things set in the submap editor? I suppose I should actually run that thing to see what it looks like, I just find it intimidating.

What's an alien class that you are referring to here? Do you mean ranks (warrior, officer, elite)? Or is it the alien script type (defensive, command room, etc.)?

Hmm, so I'd persume that in short, it's a script that can place specific aliens any place on the map?

Then by a stretch, could it be possible to tweak the scripts for entirely different objectives in the missions? it could certainly gives us more options at mapmaking here, we could certainly add in new variations other than the usual 3 Crash Site, Terror Mission, and Alien Base,

We could add Assault enemy encampment, or Defense missions, that could be used to beat repetition.

Command tiles are indeed tiles which can be painted over. They aren't that scary! I promise!

By class I mean the pan-racial class type. Non-com, guard, solider, warrior, officer, leader, etc. In ufocontents all aliens are defined by their race and their class, so class is a separate identifier to race. If a command tile could filter what class types are permitted to appear in it, you can specify what alien types you want to appear in a tile without changing ufocontents. You can just say in ufocontents "There are 4 solider types with the command ai type" and the game goes "Okay! I have 4 tiles which can accept solider class so I'll put them here, here, here and here."

I forgot to answer LJ's question, so this justifies a double post to provide informational content.

The Command Tile isn't a script, per se. Instead it's a flag which can be set on any tile in any submap. When the Command tile flag is set, any alien with the ai subtype "Command" will appear in that tile. It's been called the Command Tile as it's almost exclusively used to designate the room which the leader and his bodyguard appear. However, in the later stages of development, Chris started to use it more liberally in the Scout UFO to ensure that aliens will occupy both the engine room and the cockpit. The problem is at the moment ANY alien with the Command subtype can appear in a Command tile, so as a map designer this limits where you can put Command tiles because you can't ensure what will appear in the tile.