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Artillery/Transport Ship Support


Aldazar

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there's a picture of a crater where the site was. Does that improve your enjoyment of the game? Probably not, but it would be a fair balance to the suggested improvements on the Xenonauts side. So, I think such things should be left alone.

or just listen-read truck load of message from very very irate & screaming diplomats from country with cratered real estate.

That is not an entertaining game!!!

R

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the second, how do you know if alien is gonna trigger the "reaction". thus cheaper to send in or sneak in only 1 chinook, whereas we could have sent in 100 chinooks with 50 armored cars and 800 soldiers. Alien are smart fella (they built those ships; engineers, designers, test pilots. enuff said) well if they saw that many chinooks, wouldn't they just let go the safeties, at least they take out 100 and let next wave have clean "way" into invading the globe.

R

Maybe rigging up a reactor to do such a thing would take much more time than the few hours it takes to send in your troops and therefore wouldn't happen. However... there is no real justification for not sending in 100 Chinooks other than the sake of gameplay... that and maybe resources since you the player are in control of a the world's best military tech and there isn't enough out there to organize something of that magnitude... I guess... and what you said I guess sorta works too as a plausible explanation.

I'm of the mind that if you get support weapons then the aliens should have something at least as good, if not better.

I agree.

Likewise, if you get airstrikes against landed craft, expect a sneaky bombing run on the landing site that your Chinook has just set down on.

Perhaps not if you are responsible and establish air superiority of your own...

Now, imagine you've just ended your second turn and instead of Hidden Movement, there's a picture of a crater where the site was. Does that improve your enjoyment of the game? Probably not, but it would be a fair balance to the suggested improvements on the Xenonauts side. So, I think such things should be left alone.

Well, I am in the minority, and this is already a niche game... no point in making it a game restricted to even more of a niche... but I actually think it would be cool for the player (or a government without any control on my part) to be able to choose to obliterate (or attempt to obliterate) a crash site or whatever. And I do think it would be cool for the aliens to be able to do the same if you don't establish air superiority. If I'm stupid enough to send in my Chinook without taking measures to prevent the map becoming a crater the second turn, then I deserve it! Anyway, on the Xenonaut side it would be counterproductive in most cases for the player to do said total obliteration of crash sites, as most of the point of sending in your troops is to capture technology, not destroy it. But I still think it would a be a cool option to have on the table, but it would only have very few instances of actually being useful (definitely NOT in terror site situations). Additionally... indirect fire from air support (allowing for controlled destruction via missiles, strafing with cannons, etc.), on the other hand, could have a fair amount of use maybe (probably not in terror sites, though).

As for alien bases, I'd imagine they'd have those places pretty well protected and buried much like human missile silos are but even better protected. And no amount of bombardment will take those out, which would then necessitate sending in a small team of troops. And no amount of indirect fire from air support would likely be useful there, and would likely be risky.

But as for the justification for aliens not just obliterating crap themselves in much the same manner (I mean, they probably don't care about collateral damage...right?)... I don't know. If we're talking plausible alien invasion scenatios... aliens probably would have orbital KEW crap and just obliterate all our major urban centers, ruin our agriculture with a few well-placed nukes, and just wait for civilization to collapse within a matter of months or a year or two... Then again, they do bother to do terror site missions and stuff. And for all we know, the ships they have may not have been intended for warfare in the first place. Maybe they didn't know we humans were here to begin with. Now this just gets into speculation about the motivations of the aliens and their overall strategy which might be completely implausible to begin with. Whatevs.

Edited by Andeerz
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Andeerz, you're veering off topic a little bit as the original premise of this thread was to have artillery or other "off map" support come in *during* ground combat, which Chris is very much against as it takes away from the ground combat scenario.

As it stands, a big chunk of your post is about essentially whether you choose to do the ground combat or eliminate the crash site, which is actually something that's been previously covered and iirc, Chris isn't opposed to having a "nuke from orbit" option as it's an obvious tradeoff; do the crash site, get rewards but risk your troops vs bomb the crash site, risk nothing but get nothing.

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I'd be interested to here more from Andeerz on how Xenonauts can prevent aliens using superiority by establishing superiority of their own. Particularly with reference to keeping game balance and a plausible alien threat.

In having Alien support weaponry, rocks from orbit, battleship laser death from above, or self destructing alien bases/ships, you are looking at a massive increase in soldier attrition. Unexpected, frustrating soldier attrition. It's more like Starship Troopers throwing in their infantry as opposed to keeping the supposedly superior strike team ethos of the Colonial Marines (possibly not the best example there, but hopefully the point gets across:))

Are there voices out there who would prefer to see the game become like starship troopers? Some options

- Seeing your interceptions always come from Saudi Arabia, the aliens have dropped a giant rock on it destroying your base.

- You didn't get to shut down the alien ship in X turns. It has self destructed recreating the Iceland incident. Your squad is lost.

- The minor damage sustained by the crashing Corvette has left it's weapons systems operational. They are devastating the surrounding area, including your men, as they try to approach.

- Reeling from the crash, the Caesian Leader brings out the Psionic Blaster Launcher (upping alien support tech over Earth's as it should be).

- Your team has successfully penetrated the Alien Base control centre, but not before the reactors have been set to blow. You have X turns to collect what you can and get out.

- On a big map, the support weaponry creates a stand off. Prepare for trench warfare!

- You arm the Chinook and get a strafing run percentage kill before the start of every mission.

- The aliens send in a support craft and every soldier in an map area gets a percentage chance to evade Nasty Death From Above.

- You land, you see, you set the timer, you leave. Boom. Area denial.

- The aliens attack you base. They set the timer. They leave. Boom. Xenonauts are crippled.

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Yeah! I am, sorry Buzzles! But it is still fun to ponder. :)

As for "off map" support during ground combat, I disagree vehemently with Chris that it would take away from the ground combat scenario for reasons I mentioned before and will summarize here:

Having the ability to call in an airstrike or some other form of off-site support will NOT at all reduce the need or value of having troops on the ground. A missile obliterating a building may or may not kill everyone inside; you still need troops to go through the wreckage which is still a pretty tense situation (and with the good armour some of the upper tier guys have, especially if balanced to account for this, I wouldn't be surprised if such a strike would only slightly scathe these baddies). Also, you still need to have the troops to actually find where the baddies are in order to target the strike. That's half the tension of a fight right there!!! And any off-site support is only going to have so much ammo... so it's not like it would be used ad-nauseum. In the case of planes, I'd imagine only one or two strikes would be able to be called within the time scale of the battles of this game. And you wouldn't be using big ordinance like the avalanche torpedo in such cases with your troops and civvies on the ground; something like a hellfire missile would be in order (don't know if those existed in the cold-war era... could be researched if not!). In the case of hypothetical cannon strafing via helicopters or planes, again, within the time scale of the battles at hand, there would only be time for one or two of these kinds of runs (maybe more with a heli...). If we are talking about artillery... I don't see much how this could be done in the time scales the game operates on (hours and minutes needed to respond to crap), but I will entertain the idea anyway. Say there is a terror site or crash site and there are allowed to be mini artillery vehicles you could buy that you could load up on a separate dropship that could land off-site. You could call in artillery support from such things, but I'd imagine these guns would functionally do nothing more than the same crap rocket launchers could do, except you don't need direct line-of-fire. This would not be broken, in my opinion, as like with all the other off-site support things, you'd need the troops to establish visual contact with the enemy and maneuver the enemies such that you could use it. Also, all of this would be quite resource intensive, as you'd have to invest in all of this. Tension and the feel of x-com would still be there... especially if we make the enemies a tad stronger and improve the AI (which that is certainly going to be planned).

Also... just for the record... I will admit that in my opinion, as the game is right now which is pleasantly challenging and awesome (though buggy) there have been very very few situations where I considered such off-site support as I envision to be worthwhile... If and when certain alien enemies come into the game, however, I could see this changing.

As for alien off-site support, I'd envision it being limited compared to the player's options in that when you are going to a crash site, there are no remaining alien craft to do such off-site support. In the case of terror sites, perhaps there could be provisions for there being alien aircraft also participating that would need to be dealt with before setting troops down. Or, hypothetically, if troops are set down successfully and alien aircraft are somehow left in the air (can't see how that would happen, though), then the aliens could do similar things as you could. In the time scales of the battles that occur in this game, the possibility of aliens mobilizing reinforcement aircraft to come in and assist after you land and do stuff seems not plausible with the speeds and stuff things have right now (which I think is absolutely fine!).

And as for Thothkins... for the record, I HATE Starship Troopers (the movie). But I will go through my opinions on your ideas one by one if you or any one else cares to read them! :D

For the first one... I think that's a neat idea, but I like to assume that your base is like a nuke silo... it's hidden underground and resistant to even a direct nuclear strike. Perhaps there could be a chance of dropping some massive kinetic weapon on the base... which might have the possiblity of obliterating it outright or damaging some structures. Interesting thought, and possibly a fun game challenge, but one that would be very hard to balance! However... for all we know, the aliens might not have the ability to do that!

For the second one... I don't know how I feel about the idea of alien ships self destructing in X turns during ground combat... Maybe this should only be possible if a downed ship is left alone for a lot of time (several hours) as it was in the Iceland incident assuming the downed ship even has the capability of self destruction. Like, we assume that the self destruction was due to the reactor... we don't really know the reactor tech works and for all we know you would have to take quite a bit of time to jerry rig a reactor to function as a bomb if it wasn't built for that in the first place. Maybe the self destruction was a weapon on board and not the reactor. Then again, it WOULD be a fun and really tense scenario to have to secure a ship fast enough to prevent it from self destructing in some instances! That would be an interesting mission!!! And if X-com-like tension is the goal of the game, I can't think of a more tense situation than that!!!

For the third one... That might be cool, but I'd only make that a possiblity with something like a landing ship (would be a nice reason for having indirect off-siite fire, no? Also... with regard to indirect off-site crap... none of it should be able to actually obliterate the ship; hull should be too strong, especially for anything corvette or bigger). All other kinds of ships... it makes no sense to have close-range turrets or whatever, as they probably aren't meant to be landing ships anyway, and space would be better spent on long range weapons. I dunno. An interior self-defense turret or two, on the other hand... maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe that miiiiiiiight make sense. But I can't envision the aliens thinking boarding of their craft to be a design consideration. (Installations, though... for sure!)

For the fourth one, heck yeah! Extra challenge-y goodness!

For the fifth one, read my opinion for the second one. I think it would be cool... and for an installation I think a self-destruct thing might be plausible. But I'd imagine that if the aliens were confident enough to set up a long term base in the first place, they wouldn't waste resources on a self-destruct function.

For the sixth one, I don't know if that would ever happen. If there is a standoff (which we are only talking about 16 troops tops on each side, right?), it would be for quite a few turns... but the in that case there would be enough time for the Xenonauts to retreat and choose to bombard the place themselves or pursue another strategy or try again. I dunno. I need to think about that more. My gut tells me that that wouldn't happen. Hmmm...

The seventh one... I like to pretend that already happens, and Chris, iirc, said that it can be assumed the dropship clears the area before landing. Then again, I think the aliens would be covered enough by hiding in their ship or in buildings or whatever to mitigate this possiblity.

The eighth one... see way above. I think the time scales of engagements would preclude that assuming you establish air superiority which should last for the duration of the mission. But in some case where what you said might happen... sure! I think that would be neat though frustrating.

For the ninth one, just have what Chris and Buzzels already said. No need to send in a helicopter. :D

The tenth one... they would have to penetrate into the complex deep enough to do that, I'd think assuming the complex is underground. I like to pretend my base is like a mini NORAD. :D

Edited by Andeerz
Spoilered sorta off topic stuff for goodness...
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The limitations in armament are more a political than military necessity.

As far as I know the XCOM project is a a *secret* organization. Ordering airstrikes or artillery barrages leaves a huge papertrail which makes it difficult for the governments (or power blocs) of this world to deny anything. Not to mention that artillery shells and bombs are very expensive..not to mention that it's nigh impossible to get an airstrike or artillery barrage in the lower saharan desert or Himalaya ;)

The reason your chinook is not armed is to prevent an international incident by entering the (air) space of another country with an armed craft, manned with soldiers (partially) from the opposing bloc (US soldiers in Russia and vice versae) for the sake of securing a crash site of aliens that officially don't exist. ;)

And above all else, not everything that adds more realism also adds more fun.

To paraphrase a german comedian: "This is Xenonauts, not 'Game over in 5 minutes'" ;)

Edited by Kentaro
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Regarding realism, I do like realism and realistic games, but I did not buy this game with the expectation it'd be a turn-based ArmA 2 game. :P

I'd only support this if collateral damage effected the mission outcome.

That would make artillery interesting and force you to make a cost-benefits-analysis whenever things may look to be bad.

Arty strike the tank to save time/lives and possibly get a lower mission rating/negative one from collateral damage and civilians dying, or risking your experienced soldiers taking it out?

That's the only way I think it'd add to the game. That and missions where you need to take out forward-artillery sites, or risk not only funding, but your base being bombarded.

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Any serious support armament would be too big a change to the game to expect it to even be considered at this point.

Also, realistically, is it that necessary?

You don't need xenonauts to destroy a crashed UFO. B-52 will do fine. Xenos come there to salvage tech and capture illegals, not blow everything up.

You don't order artillery barrages on your own cities. Xenos are sent on terror missions to do them clean.

Even though NATO tries to do it clean in Iraq and Afghanistan - not out of humanism, of course, but to play it better in the media - it consistently ends with a lot more dead civilians than dead insurgents. Well, aliens are a bigger threat. But anyone who wants to take major collateral damage and doesn't care for recovering aliens can do it with their own military.

Edited by HWP
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  • 2 months later...

hmmm well in the general wish list ive made, I have...arty (artillery) and air support...

Arty rounds (human ones anyways) mess up anything within 200 something meters....like...dead on the spot....think about a meter...every square in the game map is about a meter...200 meters in all directions from point of impact 400 meters total...so one round mid map would kill.... everyone....

Air support...well it would be nice to have it take say 10 turns for air support to show up and gun run a area you hit with smoke (or have the chopper drop off troops and take off to provide air support itself or just be an eye in the sky)...aliens could do the same calling in ufos for air support....but I don't know if the code time to implement it would be worth it just now...

would be an a$$ puckering experience in any iron man game tho...when the aliens did it I mean

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