Jump to content

Hostile Militias / Cult Of Sirius + Aliens Engaging in psychological warfare


Recommended Posts

Would it be possible to have countries which are poor (think Africa) or broken down due to the invasion be victim to terror scenarios involving insurgent militias. In these cases, we'd have to fight humans.

Perhaps we could have groups not unlike the Cult Of Sirius in Apocalypse. Such groups could arise through a Stockholm Syndrome type response to aliens taking control of their country. The aliens could be intentionally facilitating such a response through deception and promises of mercy . The aliens could therefore be more intelligent and manipulative waging psychological warfare, instead of just attacking everyone at random. So these human groups would be either "useful idiots" aiding the aliens and h ostile to X Com, or militias / pirates trying to make the most of the chaos.

Thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a good idea, but I believe Chris has his own plans when it comes to parts of the globe who have broken off relations with Xenonauts. It would really need those tileset-specific characters to pull it off, to be honest.

Yeah, but if they were there, it probably wouldn't be a long stretch toward fighting hostile humans. If you want that in a game about alien invasion is another matter entirely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Makes perfect sense you'd have a whole lot of Quislings with a population of billions of humans :) , specifically in areas that have defected from the X-Com project. I like this idea, definitely something I would love to see as a mod! The mind control explanation is a good one, too -- given we know the aliens have psionic powers, it's not too far-fetched for them to use them to "enslave" humans and use them as slaves, a bit like the Zombie units in the original X-Com game.

If they have access to human gear only then they would be no challenge
It's not about challenge as much as flavour, diversity and immersion, if you ask me. They could have a mixture of alien and human ordnance. Some would have regular old human weapons -- shotguns and pistols and knives and whatnot -- others would be equipped by gear given to them, or looted from, Xenonauts or aliens.

May I build upon this idea? What about whole nations defecting, on a governmental level, and your forces having to fight hostile fighter jets and military personell?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There should be a secretive shadow government who are selling humans to the aliens in exchange for technology that you have to defeat. You know, as in reality ;). Part of the campaign is to discover this conspiracy and overthrow the various world governments involved.

Just watched Close Encounters again last night btw, there is a scene from the Special Edition that shows the shadow of a saucer flying over the Richard Dreyfuss character's truck as he races off to try to find them. All around him are cornfields, looking EXACTLY like X-Com maps! The music is very 'X-Com' in that movie, too. Should be used for inspiration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If anything...I'd think that evil alien overlords would know better than to equip their brainwashed minions with high-tech, otherworldly ordinance.

The threat from human servents should come from quantity, not quality. A different type of battle entirely.

But I definitely like this idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If anything...I'd think that evil alien overlords would know better than to equip their brainwashed minions with high-tech, otherworldly ordinance.

The threat from human servents should come from quantity, not quality. A different type of battle entirely.

But I definitely like this idea.

Yes, I think normal humans with higher quantity would be best. It seems that the Kickstarter amount will reach the Human AI Allies. If so, then it should be quite easy to create enemy humans. I mean, just change the color of some of their models and re-render, or just shift the hue if resources are limited. But it would definitely be worth it to have such a feature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By colour change you should say "re-generate all several thousand sprites".

The game engine doesn't support colour shifts or on the fly modification of game graphics.

You would have to make all of the required graphics from scratch.

Personally I don't really feel like human enemies would add much interest to the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By colour change you should say "re-generate all several thousand sprites".

The game engine doesn't support colour shifts or on the fly modification of game graphics.

You would have to make all of the required graphics from scratch.

Personally I don't really feel like human enemies would add much interest to the game.

Did you ever play Apocalypse? I found it much more immersive when the cult or other enemy human factions attacked me (or I them).

And I honestly don't think it will take much work to re-render human sprites with slightly different colors. You only need to regenerate the human allies, and certainly not from scratch.

For example, if they are 3D models they probably use textures.. so if you simply modify the color of a few bitmaps, you can re-render every sprite pretty quickly as it will simply reference the alternate texture bitmap. This could be done in batch mode so it would be even quicker. Alternatively, you could simply create a macro in Photoshop to shift the hue of an image and resave it, then batch execute this on all the human ally sprites. More detiled functions could be performed even such as shifting the hue of only certain colors. Whether its 8 or 8000 of them, it would be the same amount of effort. Hell, I'd be willing to do it for them for free!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apocalypse is underdog if original three, its in my opinion best one but most people disagree. But yeah, human opponents ARE more immersive because 1) In apocalypse major reason for them to attack is that you made them angry 2) They ARE different opponents than aliens surprisingly enough

Anyway, I think UFO: Alien Invasion willl have human enemies infected by the

virus that causes alien hive mind, yeah I think it was inspired by micronoids from Apocalypse ;p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If they have access to human gear only then they would be no challenge, if they have access to enough alien tech to make them a challenge then they might as well be an alien.

How about giving the humans human gear but giving you minus points for killing them? So you have to stunn ALL the humans on the map and kill the alien commander that's hiing somewhere or destroy the vil mindcontrol unit. (And as other people have said up the quantity of human opponens compared to aliens on a map)

Assuming that they dress up in camo-gear (seems very typical for militia types) you wouldn't really need new sprites. Yuo can simply recycle the current "allied forces" sprites, especially if we reach the stretch goal and get "nation specific" local forces sprites.

To make this a really interesting suggestion one should probably brainstorm around an alternate primary objective (like holding the UFO for 5turns) and possible optional objectives.

Edited by Gorlom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I felt that you would just use what the game had, due to the sprite creation issues.

Destroying alien cultists

Subduing alien sympathisers

Preventing riot of mind controlled civilians

Holding assets (reactor/hospital/lab etc) from hostile local forces

Exfiltrating person form hostile area

Killing infected civilians from alien bioweapon (don''t actually need to create the bioweapon)

Liberate map (lost funding nation) by destroying increased local forces

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did you ever play Apocalypse? I found it much more immersive when the cult or other enemy human factions attacked me (or I them).

And I honestly don't think it will take much work to re-render human sprites with slightly different colors. You only need to regenerate the human allies, and certainly not from scratch.

For example, if they are 3D models they probably use textures.. so if you simply modify the color of a few bitmaps, you can re-render every sprite pretty quickly as it will simply reference the alternate texture bitmap. This could be done in batch mode so it would be even quicker. Alternatively, you could simply create a macro in Photoshop to shift the hue of an image and resave it, then batch execute this on all the human ally sprites. More detiled functions could be performed even such as shifting the hue of only certain colors. Whether its 8 or 8000 of them, it would be the same amount of effort. Hell, I'd be willing to do it for them for free!

Yeah I played Apoc quite a bit.

It wasn't a bad game.

Not as good as the first in my opinion but good in its own right.

I wasn't overly keen on fighting the humans in that one either, guess I just prefer fighting aliens when protecting the planet from aliens.

I think you are underestimating the sprite work involved if you wanted to do the changes you mentioned.

They do use the 3D models then render them out to spritesheets.

Usually they are then painted over to make them look more detailed and give them the hand painted look of the rest of the game.

That is for each of the 4000ish spritesheet animation files (for each armour type or civilian type if you want multiple weapons for them), most of which contain multiple sprites.

Give it a try with one of the armour sets from the demo if you can easily alter the existing images.

If it does turn out to be as simple as you think it could be then post up your results in the modding section, there are plenty of people who would be interested in different coloured versions of the armours.

I am no expert with photoshop so I would be really interested to see it done as well :)

Easiest way would be to use the existing images, which will probably have the starting tech and laser tech available.

That would be a bit limited but might serve your purposes well enough.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I played Apoc quite a bit.

I think you are underestimating the sprite work involved if you wanted to do the changes you mentioned.

They do use the 3D models then render them out to spritesheets.

Usually they are then painted over to make them look more detailed and give them the hand painted look of the rest of the game.

That is for each of the 4000ish spritesheet animation files (for each armour type or civilian type if you want multiple weapons for them), most of which contain multiple sprites.

Give it a try with one of the armour sets from the demo if you can easily alter the existing images.

If it does turn out to be as simple as you think it could be then post up your results in the modding section, there are plenty of people who would be interested in different coloured versions of the armours.

I am no expert with photoshop so I would be really interested to see it done as well :)

Easiest way would be to use the existing images, which will probably have the starting tech and laser tech available.

That would be a bit limited but might serve your purposes well enough.

Thank you for your reply. Would you be kind enough to point me to, or help me get a hold of some sprites to play with? I am not sure where to get them from :S

And it sounds like I should play part 1 (I only played 2 and 3 and loved them!).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GreenMen.jpg



Here is a few soldier sprites. Their blue uniforms have gone Green. The Helmets a bit as well. Their skin is still the normal color.

I used the same procedure on various sprite images using a macro. It could be done for all the thousands of sprites in just a few minutes.

GreenMen.jpg

GreenMen.jpg.0f4bfa625cfa2aba0fbc9cf63cf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What did you do to them?

Select the blues and change the colour balance towards the green?

Yep pretty Much. Shifted the hue for the cyan colors. It seems to work really well and could generate alternative sprites for enemy human soldiers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...