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zzz1010

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I'm a little undecided about what I think would be the best way to have such a mission in the game and do it effectively.

If you have a base riddled with aggressive, smart Chrysalids, that can move pretty quickly, then you're going to have a body count. Should there be anything to give the player a nod that it's going to be that sort of mission, or do they just take their chances? Should a hive take over some of the building/ landscape as the resin did in Aliens, to give it away.

While the aliens board game is great fun, you're not then having to take those soldiers onto the next mission in the campaign. If it's your team of best Xenonauts and you've just lost 75% of them, you're not going to be terribly pleased about it. Less so, if you've walked blindly into the mission. Even in Aliens, they had all of Ripley's testimony before going to LV426.

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The objective on those type of missions I imagine would be to take out the hive while it was immature.

If you don't then it would grow into a base riddled with aggressive smart reapers.

Rather than a thriving beehive swarming with adults I see the hives as breeding grounds providing weapons for the war effort.

Many of the adult specimens would be taken from the base to perform their missions when they matured.

What would be left would be caretakers and guards to protect the younger creatures.

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I would just nuke the site from orbit.

While it's undoubtedly the only way to be sure, it's something that the locals could do anyway. So, if it can be destroyed without showing up, and you want it to be a very tough mission (in order to get the correct feel) what is the reward/threat that gets you to take it on.

Some passing thoughts -

- There's a Macguffin. It prevents Reaper mutations/ Limits them

- The Mcguffin Mk 2- aliens store their valuable artefacts within reaper hives. Clues to the final mission/ plan are inside.

- Your bioweapons division wants a small one for the labs

- your government likes the idea of its own zombie soldiers. Take a zombie and a reaper alive (or undead as the case may be)

- the nest from outside other alien bases as a protective layer. So, you're always going to have to tackle one.

- The Reapers may attack through spores and they don't want to take the chance of a spread through air bombardment.

- A la Gauddlike, taking out a hive reduces the chances of more reapers showing up elsewhere.

- The Reaper hive may not be destroyed by a bombardment (underground perhaps?) the troops have to go in.

- Reapers are shown to thrive on highly radioactive environments. While you get a nice way of tracking them, it means nuking sites may not be as effective.

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If the hive is a base then taking it out is its own reward.

Bases would not disappear on their own like a mission would after all.

I guess it depends on the effects an alien base has on the area it is placed in though.

If the enemy base doesn't have much of an effect then you could safely ignore it.

If the hive is sat in a territory you need to protect and is causing problems with that then you are forced to consider facing the hive.

If bases grow over time (there are small, medium, and large base types I believe) then maybe the hive would only appear as a small base in its own right.

As the base grows the hive may remain the same size (although with more mature reapers) while the support structures of the overseeing race would become larger.

As a terror mission it doesn't need to be tough in the sense of being full of hard to kill enemies and imminent death.

It could just be tough to complete before the aliens take out all of the local civilians and leave you struggling to get a decent mission score.

A crashed hive type ship would be a mission like any other.

If you find them tough you can just ignore them and lose out on the rewards or risk the reapers if you really need a few more alenium.

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If i would have a heads up on a hive mission I would just bring in as many incendiary and HE rockets as I could and basically rocket launch my way through the hive, with any civilian casualties considered collateral damage without a blink. Hated Chrysalids in X-COM with a flaming fury (or should I say fusion bomb fury?). Sure as hell gonna hate them twice as badly in Xenonauts.

But by god, what a mission it would make to have a reapers' hive mission *drools*

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all sounds reasonable enough. But if you have an underdeveloped squad and the base is in a key area, you may find yourself thumped. But hey, if there was no challenge...*

*[fill in the rest with a game you hate]

The same would be true if you had encountered a large caesan/andron/sebillian base and your squad was on the weak side.

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I thought that the Reapers were to provide something a little extra challenging. Back in EU1994 the Chryssalids were the one race you really, really didn't want to go up against. A terror mission with floaters? not a problem. Was that a Snakeman? uh oh.. Chryssalids. Now picture a hive of them, with all those local forces and civvies that Xenonauts has in abundance. Yikes!

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true that civvies wouldn't apply to bases, unless security forces/scientists/engineers were added. However, you had mentioned terror missions further up, so I was really thinking of them for that point.

Mind you - a base with 100 scientists, 100 engineers and 20 support staff being overrun by Reapers should make for something like an Aliens mission. You lose and you lose your main base. You win and your bioweapons division (or generic scientist bah!) can do some research on it.

Cpl Hicks: Hey suited retrieval guy. How did you get on after we shut down that UFO?

Retrieval man: Mmmff mffffh mmff mmmm

Cpl Hicks: Sorry man, you're going to have to lift the hood of your suit. I can't hear a word...

Retrieval man:mmff sorry about that. It went OK except for what happened to Kane.

Cpl Hicks: Not Max Caine!

Retrieval man:No, you can see that this name is typed differently.

Cpl Hicks: (looks through 4th wall and raises eyebrows) So what happened?

Retrieval man:Well, he came in with something attached to his face. Horrid thing. But it fell off today.

Cpl Hicks: How is he now?

Retrieval man: Oh he's fine. We're just holding an "Ignore Quarantine Procedures" party in his honour.

Cpl Hicks: Well that's good. What could possibly go wrong?

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  • 2 weeks later...

to find out how I got on with the new additions to the Creepers, you can go here.

The 17.5 maps with two or three aliens are an absolute breeze compared to having to watch for 25 Creepers on the map. I'm really going to have to try it with a better loadout and even more aliens.

If the Quickbattle ever becomes something you can customise more fully, to make that part of things easier. Anyway, lots of fun and recommended if you still have 17.1 kicking around.

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Welll first thing first

I would say go into the Xenonauts/Assets/UFOcontent folder and go to all the alien ships (open with note pad)

and up the alien count in craft (usually I treat a 1 as a 4 so 1-5 becomes 4-20 aliens of that type...ya its murder...but FUN)

Hmm alien Hives

I think the reapers should have a "companion" alien race or 3 who store bad @$$ stuff in the hive and show up in small numbers on a base attack (make normal aliens 10% of the ground force in a reaper base.)

I also like humans in holding pens that you have to "try" and get to before the aliens zombie them to bulk up and fend you off.

Hives should be clearly different from the outside so when a hive base is found it shows up as an alien base but as a dif color

so you know "oh fk I got to clear that before it gets bigger"

It could be treated as a alien supply point, much like the idea of aliens having orbiting supply points you could find and shoot down,

Only here you need to go in and destroy a hive (supply point) to slow down the alien war machine and snatch all the good stuff in said supply point making it worth the risk (also more fun then just shooting something out of orbit)

Some stuff is easier for them to make on the ground, hence the bases

If you leave the base they get a boost to craft, weapon and alien "production" ....kinky little aliens...

Not to mention have influence over the area they are in costing your funding from that country as they wheel and deal with the aliens to try and survive as you aren't doing your job

And as each alien has dif strengths and weakness' a base built by one alien race should play different and need different tactics to clear : )

Reaper bases should be a lot of open hanger type space with small 1 and 4 square blocks of cover made out of ...reaper stuff...scattered about (they are melle after all, need cover to close the gap)

Bases with Psi aliens in charge should have glass walls you have to shoot through but the psi aliens can see and psi your men through

The lizard men (forget name) have bad vision, so their base should be a lot of small rooms and corridors

etc

Whatcha all think?

Edited by Chollirem
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