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Abduction missions plan


Aaron

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Certainly a few different ways to do it. From what I understand, the intent was to have a relatively uncommon mission type, and while I often dislike escort missions, reverse escort missions are (in my experience anyway) pretty enjoyable with quite a few opportunities for variety and keeping it fresh. For a mission type that is supposed to be relatively uncommon and break up up the standard UFO assault strategy, I think they would work well. Better than mini-terror-missions-without-civilians anyway.

I think any of the currently existing maps would work well enough for it, if the enemies had to get from one corner to the opposite corner, and players started in one of the other two corners. Some would probably work better than others, and obviously custom maps would probably work best of all (especially smaller ones, so the player doesn't have time to just get to and camp the extraction point well before the enemies arrive). There's also considerations like how you'll probably want the runners to be unable to move at full speed (weighted down with supplies, maybe?) to give the player the ability to catch up if engaged early and someone slips past, that would be more or less important based on map design.

The only maps I don't think would work well would be the farm maps - you'd have to be careful that the player can't just park a hunter car or a few units and completely block off access to the rest of the map, or send all your guys to a little 3x3 box the enemy HAS to go through. And it seems like the design of the farm maps would probably make that pretty likely.

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I am not sure that i am a fan of this idea.

Mainly because the Risk/Reward seems to be so incredibly out of balance, it's just not funny.

Let me just get through this:

- They pop out Anywhere and vanish pretty quickly --> You'l get stuck with night missions pretty often.

- They pop put ANYWHERE --> You will need to send you Transporter a long way, which is an immense risk of getting it shot down by ufos. The long way also means your fighters won't have enough fuel to protect the Transporter.

- Even when you reach them they will be timed --> Timed mission means risky play, risky play means lots of dead xenonauts. Risky play in a night mission means Obliteration.

To conclude on the Risk part:

You have to play reckless, will be forced into night missions, with a good chance of getting you ship shot down and all your soldiers killed by ufos.

So incredibly high risk. And for what? Yeah you don't know yet, but the only things i can think of are either funding or money, since the research tree seems to be done mostly. That is so not worth it.

In most cases you will loose so many soldiers for nearly no reward.

You could maybe fix the fact that your Transporter is very likely to get shot down by making abductions only appear outside of those ufo waves.

But all in all:

It's a cool idea, don't get me wrong, but it sounds not balanced at all.

It's even supposed to be an early mission, so you want us to send our untrained soldiers with crappy equipment into that tough a mission?

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At the start of the game, there will be no fightercraft to shoot down transporters. Fightercraft on interception missions don't appear for a considerable period of time, only spawn one squadron, and have a low probability to be spawned in a wave (this isn't v12). As the game progresses unless the player doesn't have the sense God gave him, he will very likely construct interceptor bases which provide the local coverage necessary to shoot down the incredibly obvious single-per-wave-if-spawned fightercraft squadron on an interception mission. That's if the interception squadron doesn't attack xenonaut interceptors instead.

The mission is described as a "mini terror site". Shock horror, terror sites don't immediatly vanish the moment they flash up if a dropship isn't sent out RIGHT AWAY. It is in fact possible to wait a while before attending a terror site to improve the daylight option, and if abductions are anything like a "mini terror site" then it will be possible to do exactly the same thing.

Vehicles (which you can research and build almost immediately) are tough, with a longer sight range than any Xenonaut or alien and have more AP than any starting Xenonaut. It's entirely possible to use a vehicle to storm ahead and carry out recon while troops hang behind it. They are perfect for "risky play" because they have the armour, the HP, the AP, the sight range and the weapons to play rough without getting badly hurt. And they also have headlights which make a mockery of nighttime missions.

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I am not sure that i am a fan of this idea.

Mainly because the Risk/Reward seems to be so incredibly out of balance, it's just not funny.

Let me just get through this:

- They pop out Anywhere and vanish pretty quickly --> You'l get stuck with night missions pretty often.

- They pop put ANYWHERE --> You will need to send you Transporter a long way, which is an immense risk of getting it shot down by ufos. The long way also means your fighters won't have enough fuel to protect the Transporter.

- Even when you reach them they will be timed --> Timed mission means risky play, risky play means lots of dead xenonauts. Risky play in a night mission means Obliteration.

To conclude on the Risk part:

You have to play reckless, will be forced into night missions, with a good chance of getting you ship shot down and all your soldiers killed by ufos.

So incredibly high risk. And for what? Yeah you don't know yet, but the only things i can think of are either funding or money, since the research tree seems to be done mostly. That is so not worth it.

In most cases you will loose so many soldiers for nearly no reward.

You could maybe fix the fact that your Transporter is very likely to get shot down by making abductions only appear outside of those ufo waves.

But all in all:

It's a cool idea, don't get me wrong, but it sounds not balanced at all.

It's even supposed to be an early mission, so you want us to send our untrained soldiers with crappy equipment into that tough a mission?

You are assuming a constraining time limit. As long as the time limit is relaxed enough to not make the mission into a race you should still be able to advance with caution. Besides rushing recklessly is going to make the mission that much harder if your soldiers die since you get less actions per turn. Surely there will be some way of informing the player that playstyle is the LEAST benefitial.

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Even if they balance it, so that your Transporters won't get shot down easily. (Which btw. is an issue with terror missions right now. It doesn't happen often, but if it happens there's nothing you can do about it, because fighters are so fast and you loose nearly all your troops without being able to do anything against it).

And @Gorlom:

A time contraint is supposed to make you play more reckless and aggressive, that's the whole point of it and the reason i think that this kind of mission is a very bad idea.

If the time contraint is so lax, that you can just play the usual cautious playstyle, then what's the point of having a time constraint in the first place?

I don't think it's a good idea in Xcom: Enemy Unknown and i don't think it is a good idea here.

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And @Gorlom:

A time contraint is supposed to make you play more reckless and aggressive, that's the whole point of it and the reason i think that this kind of mission is a very bad idea.

If the time contraint is so lax, that you can just play the usual cautious playstyle, then what's the point of having a time constraint in the first place?

I don't think it's a good idea in Xcom: Enemy Unknown and i don't think it is a good idea here.

No, a the point of a time limit (noone has said it was ever intended to be a time constraint, which in my understanding is inherently more restrictive than indicated by a yet to be defined limit) is to give a sense of urgency, not to encourage reckless play. It gives an atmosphere and prevents a mission without secondary victory condition from being a drawn out bughunt.

As long as failing the mission does not penalise you (more than a slap on the wrist by showing a "failed mission screen") reckless play will be more penalising and discouraged over time.

Besides you don't know how everyone plays the game. there may be players that are overly cautious. more so than they need to be. a timed mission may allow them to up their tactics to be more in line with what the developers assume the normal playstyle to be. It's an excellent tool to help with the learning curve... if done right.

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A time limit that forces you to run recklessly around is bad. A time limit that forces a rapid, aggressive advance instead of the usual slow and cautious advance can be a good thing on some missions. As the Yugoslav dictator says, the game has to provide a real possibility of failing, that's one of the key aspects of the original's game design (and of 90s game design in general).

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What's wrong with having to play recklessly once in a while? You might lose on occasion? Good, a game's only fun when you have the possibility of defeat. Game's to easy if the player is always the one dictating the pace of ground combat.

I didn't said it was inheretly wrong. Just that it makes a mission so much more difficult. And a higher difficulty needs to give you more rewards, otherwise the game isn't balanced.

Btw.

Although i am not quite onboard with the mission type itself i do have an idea for a potential reward, although it would be a lot more work to implement then a simple money or relationship bonus.

Alien Narcotics.

Just think about it. The Aliens need to capture a lot of humans quite fast without killing them. So they need a way to knock them out for a long time. Well Aliens will have special kinds of narcotics than can do such a thing. And when you win an abduction mission you get some of those narcotics.

You can then research these narcotics to allow you to spend them on different usefull things. You can easily tier that too. Since these abduction missions will get bigger over time, the aliens will need more time to transport of the higher amount of humans. When they need more time for transport, they also need to use stronger narcotics to knock out humans longer.

So in the beginning you will only find "Weak Alien Narcotics", later "Medium Alien Narcotics" and in the endgame "Strong Alien Narcotics" (Or something like that, it's just an example).

The research of these different doses of Narcotics will unlock different things you can spend them on.

A few Things i thought of just of the top of my head:

- Higher Concentration pills, which increases the speed of your researchers for a few days.

- Higher Strength pills, which increases the speed of you engineers for a few days.

- Soldier pills like:

- Strength pills: Adds 10 Strength to a soldier for one mission, BUT makes it impossible for him to get a permanent strength increase through the mission. Would be good when one of your elites is wounded and you need a rookie to fill in for him for just one mission.

- Healing pills: Instantly heal a small amount of health to the soldier himself. (Like 5 health). Usefull, but not overpowered, since you need to manufacture them and they would take up one slot of the backpack, so you can't carry a large amount of them with you.

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Since the aliens are stunning the abductees, shouldn't they have a stun weapon of some sort?

I say lets give them a plasma pistol that shoots a purple projectile (simply recolor the normal projectiles) that deals good amounts of stun damage, and give it to them on the abduction missions. Call it the Alien Stun Pistol, or Stun Gun, or something.

So, you get the Alien Stun Pistol. Once you research it, it gives a description where it talks about how it somehow makes the plasma carry an immense electric charge that stuns the target, or something like that. Once you research your own plasma weapons (and can build them) you unlock an "Improved Stun Weapons" research that talks about how you've unlocked the secrets of the Stun Pistol and have improved your stun weapons that now utilize the non-leathal plasma electricity or something.

Give the Stun Pistol to a few of the aliens in the Abduction Mission so they can stun your guys. If a Xenonaut soldier gets stunned and you have to leave him behind (you bug out in the Chinook, for example), the alien ticker advances a bit to indicate that they've interrogated the soldier. Also could give you a massive "you're an idiot" smack on the head with a funding decrease.

Sound interesting?

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Since the aliens are stunning the abductees, shouldn't they have a stun weapon of some sort?

They just use halloween masks and jump out as the civvies they are "stunning" rounds a corner. Then the aliens take off the halloween mask and that shocks the civvies into a coma.

I'm not sure I like the idea of a ranged stunn weapon unless there are some severe limitations to it.

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I'm not sure I like the idea of a ranged stunn weapon unless there are some severe limitations to it.

The limitations would be the sharp range limitation. You cannot fire it unless you are one or two tiles away (like grenades), and it isn't as powerful as the melee version. (I updated my idea below, check it out.)

Since the aliens are stunning the abductees, shouldn't they have a stun weapon of some sort?

I say lets give them a plasma pistol that shoots a purple projectile (simply recolor the normal projectiles) that deals good amounts of stun damage, and give it to them on the abduction missions. Call it the Alien Stun Pistol, or Stun Gun, or something.

Actually, here's a revision of my Alien Stun Pistol idea.

So, aliens have a weapon called the Alien Stun Pistol in the Abduction Missions, and only a few aliens carry them. (Maybe non-combatants get the task of stunning people? After all, they have the correct pistol sprites already).

Alien Stun Pistol Details

  • Uses Alien Plasma Pistol sprite set

  • Fires purple projectiles (recolor the alien plasma pistol projectiles)

  • Looks like an alien plasma pistol with changes in markings (in Xenopedia and inventory)

  • Short range

  • Single shot (all three levels?) and 3 shot burst

  • Takes normal alien plasma clips (though aliens don't use ammunition, so almost a moot point)

So, you play an Abduction mission, and you win. You retrieve an alien stun pistol, you research it, it (basically) says that "the device uses non-lethal plasma that carries an electric charge. How it manages to do so is unknown, but perhaps once we understand plasma technology better we will be able to understand the weapon more fully."

Later, you research and unlock plasma technology (and plasma weapons for you to manufacture). You get a research, "Improved Stun Weapon".

Once you research it, the "Stun Pistol" is available for manufacturing. The description (basically) says,

"We now know how to make "stun plasma"; a low-energy, and therefore non-lethal, bolt of plasma that carries an immense electrical charge, perfectly suited for stunning organic lifeforms or dealing electrical damage to artificial. Unfortunately, stun plasma only carries its charge for a relatively short distance; a few meters, at most. Because of this, it cannot be used in any sort of long range engagements.
Utilizing this new discovery, we have designed an improved version of our Stun Rod. The aptly named "Improved Stun Rod", upon contact with a target, imparts a massive dose of stun plasma. It is much more powerful than our simple battery-based Stun Rods.
We have also designed a modified plasma pistol that fires this stun plasma. This will allow one to stun an enemy at range, albeit a very short one. Because the plasma has to travel through air, the stun effect of the newly designated "Stun Pistol" is somewhat less than that of the Improved Stun Rod. However, perhaps being farther away from a hostile extraterrestrial will be worth the lessened effect.
Irrespective of which you find most useful, both are now available for immediate manufacture."

Stun Pistol Details

  • Uses regular (human) plasma pistol sprites

  • Fires a purple projectile (recolor the normal plasma pistol projectile)

  • Looks like a human plasma pistol with changes in markings (for Xenopedia and inventory images)

  • Takes normal plasma ammunition.

  • Has a smallish ammo count (six or more)

  • Deals better damage than the original stun rod

  • Super close range, can only fire when right next to, one, or two tiles away (so there's still good risk in stunning something)

  • Has single shot (all three levels?) and a 3 shot burst

  • Not free; requires manufacturing just like all other plasma weapons

Improved Stun Rod Details

  • Uses standard Stun Rod sprites

  • Looks like a Stun Rod (so it can use the same sprites) with a slot for a plasma cell (for reloading) and some sort of hole, vent, or aperture for spraying the stun plasma itself at the target (probably at the end, I would assume)

  • I can't remember if there's a flash, or effect, or anything of the sort when hitting an enemy with a stun rod, but if there is, make it purple

  • Takes normal plasma cell ammunition

  • Has limited uses; 4 hits, maybe, because of the high damage output?

  • Stuns really well (deals electricity damage too, so, stuns people really well and damages robots)

  • Like the Stun Rod, it's a melee-only weapon (but if you get that close to the andron, it's gonna die soon)

Feel free to suggest better names, I just picked ones that got the point across. ;)

Anyway, this would give us improved stun weapons (showing we are improving all of our stuff, not just main battle weapons), it would give us more (technically optional) research to do so we can get our funding's worth out of our scientists, and it would add some nice flavor to the aliens in that they do, in fact, have a stun weapon that they use for abduction missions.

I think it'd be fun. :)

What about you all?

Edited by GizmoGomez
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An alien stun weapon akin to the stun launcher from the OG would be interesting, though the OG had medkits with a "stimulant" option to help your soldiers recover from a stun so that you werent helpless agaisnt it.

The thing with multiple stun weapons is that the gam doesnt really need them.

Your only interest in stuning an alien is to capture it for research and that hapens only once per alien species sans a single oficer and leader.

Anything else and its just to get more points at the end of a mission or because stuning can be a more reliable option than shooting in some cases.

The OG had a reason for having a wide variety of stun weapons, namely you got quite a bit of research points from interrogating diferent types of aliens.

But in Xenonauts we only have combat ranks. We have no alien navigators that always hang around inside specific parts of the UFO, we have no alien engineers that are always in the core/reactor room, etc.

Would be nice if certain alien clases allowed you to interrogate them for research bonuses in their respective areas similar to how the OG and Firaxi´s version worked. Then we would have a reason for stuning aliens other than just geting more points.

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this topic is very interesting, posts are either, but let me suggest:

xenonauts IMHO is not the sort of game to play its tactical missions for time, play cs, etc:)

a variaty of ideas for missions posted before are very interesting(http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1940-Mission-Types-and-Secondary-Objectives).

note, that these are not the scout maps we are tired of, but the over again scenario of doing the same,

so add "some colors" without remaiking the main game structure, using the mechanics already in it.

i`d personally preffer (if these missions meant to be mini terror site) something like helping locals to protect mil base/object/vip (alians may spawn in waves via a teleport, more local killed - worth), save pilot/vip (who becomes player controlled once reached), and assalting alian object (abducted people/destoying alian object)

reward maybe money as the main resource of the game, soldier (but what if your barracks are full?), slowing the escalation.

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I certainly don't want anything that is going to encourage players to play recklessly. Losing a ground combat in Xenonauts isn't a trival thing. You usually lose all or most of your squad and their collective experience and a lot of expensive equipment. It's a very big deal. So big, in fact, that some players will rage quit or simply start the entire game over.

My suggestion is to make it an indoor map like a large building and make raise the rewards and losses for civilians like we have in the terror maps, but a much higher values since these are VIPS.

BTW, I still like my idea about a super civilian (Rambo type) randomly appearing every once in a while on terror maps and perhaps this could be a trigger for that. Maybe a one good turn deserves another type of thing. Maybe someone the Xenonauts save is super grateful/vengeful and motivated to help.

I also like the suggestion of gaining some special/extra capture device research from recovering alien stun weapons.

Edited by StellarRat
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I certainly don't want anything that is going to encourage players to play recklessly. Losing a ground combat in Xenonauts isn't a trival thing. You usually lose all or most of your squad and their collective experience and a lot of expensive equipment. It's a very big deal. So big, in fact, that some players will rage quit or simply start the entire game over.
But that is if you lose the round by dying, right? Or are you saying that the player should lose his soldiers if he fails to complete the mission in the time limit? I assumed the player wouldn't lose anything except some points. That the timelimit would either count as an abort with all the soldiers in the transport or a victory with a score penalty.
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But that is if you lose the round by dying, right? Or are you saying that the player should lose his soldiers if he fails to complete the mission in the time limit? I assumed the player wouldn't lose anything except some points. That the timelimit would either count as an abort with all the soldiers in the transport or a victory with a score penalty.
My theory is that by having a timer the players will tend to take normally unnecessary chances that could lead to heavy casualties or complete loss of the team. Remember, a lot of players simply can't help themselves when it comes to completely every mission. That's why I suggest a non-timed mission with different rewards and consequences than terror, etc... If the mission simply has the aliens using non-lethal weapons on civilians and ends when a certain percentage are knocked out (alien victory) that would be fine by me.
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My theory is that by having a timer the players will tend to take normally unnecessary chances that could lead to heavy casualties or complete loss of the team. Remember, a lot of players simply can't help themselves when it comes to completely every mission.
Depends on 2 things: how much of a penalty the player gets if the timer runs out. IF losing one of your soldiers / half the team /the entire team is worse people will stop playing so recklessly.

If the timer is not constricting (leaving enough time to reasonably complete it in average level of aggression playstyle and then some extra for unforseen circumstances) you're not likely to rush.

I think the timelimit is the alternative to securing the UFO as a way to prevent the mission from being a drawn out bughunt.

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My idea is to have a farm map filled with bovine npcs and you have to use stunn sticks to herd them to your penn before the aliens herds them to their pen. No shooting the other team allowed! ^^

(I don't think they are going to use my idea T_T)

PS: doesn't Xenos mean aliens? I thought they were the same thing?

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My idea is to have a farm map filled with bovine npcs and you have to use stunn sticks to herd them to your penn before the aliens herds them to their pen. No shooting the other team allowed! ^^

(I don't think they are going to use my idea T_T)

PS: doesn't Xenos mean aliens? I thought they were the same thing?

Xenos = Xenonauts sorry if I confused anyone, but really I always call the aliens aliens.
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My idea is to have a farm map filled with bovine npcs and you have to use stunn sticks to herd them to your penn before the aliens herds them to their pen. No shooting the other team allowed! ^^

(I don't think they are going to use my idea T_T)...

Only if the Xenonauts get horses too!
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